Improvising a Chinese-style meal

Today my wife asked me to cook tonight’s dinner for the four of us, only mentioning it as we went to the market, so I improvised. I have quite a few Chinese cookbooks, mostly in English, but I rarely use them any more, and in this situation consulting a recipe was not a possibility.

I felt like cooking chicken (ji in Mandarin using pinyin romanization), so I picked out a package of boneless chicken breast, about a pound and half, and checked the expiration date. Chicken for stir-frying (chao) really needs to be fresh.

Then I went to the vegetable section, looked around at what was available and looked nice, and picked out a medium-sized bok choy (bai cai, pronounced “buy tsai”), a couple of nice-looking green peppers, some shiitake mushrooms (xiang gu), a bunch of scallions, a can of peanuts, and a small package of fresh ginger root. I knew that I had plenty of long-grained rice, peanut oil, chicken broth, corn starch, soy sauce, rice wine, sesame oil, red oil, coarse salt, and San-J Sichuan sauce at home. I also knew that I was out of most of the other prepared Chinese sauces that I sometimes use, but I didn’t feel the need to buy more.

Cooking a meal like this takes me an hour start to finish. I started at 5:30 by putting two cups of rice and four cups of water into a large saucepan that has a tight-fitting cover. I put that on the stove to soak.

I got out my stainless-steel mixing bowls, a Teflon cutting board, my Chinese cleaver (dao), and my fresh ingredients, and set them on the kitchen table. I lined up the oils and sauces and spices on the counter in the order I’d use them. I put my heavy, well-seasoned carbon-steel wok (guo) on its ring on the largest burner on the stove, and laid out my extra-long cooking chopsticks and the wok turner and ladle nearby. The wok ring is what lets me use a traditional round-bottomed guo (essential for getting enough heat to the ingredients) on a western-style gas burner.

I set to work slicing and chopping the meat and vegetables into roughly the same size pieces. I felt like doing slices (pien) today; other times I might dice (ding) the ingredients into small cubes, or reslice the slices into shreds (si).

At about 5:50 I lit a high flame under the white rice (bai fan), and went back to my slicing. When I heard the water boiling, I covered the pot and turned down the flame to low, and again went back to my slicing.

At about 6:15 I lit a high flame under the guo and lined up my bowls of ingredients. When the guo started to smoke I added some cold peanut oil, enough to puddle at the bottom of the guo. When the oil looked like it was heating up, I checked it with my cooking chopsticks: no bubbles yet. Half a minute later there were bubbles around the chopsticks when I checked the oil, so I added the ginger slices and scallion pieces and stirred that sizzling mix with my chopsticks. When they were brown, I added the chicken and switched from the chopsticks to the turner and ladle to keep the fry stirred. Sometimes I take the cooked ginger and scallion out before adding the meat, leaving only their flavor and aroma in the oil, but this time I felt like leaving them in.

When the chicken pieces were all white outside with a little brown, and had no pink showing, I added the bai cai and peppers. I stirred this up with the meat. Sometimes I push the meat to the side while I cook the vegetables, but this time I tossed them all together. When the bai cai greens started to shrink, I added the mushrooms, a ladle full of rice wine, and some soy sauce. After tossing that a bit, I added some broth and put the cover on the guo, since I wanted to have lots of sauce. If I wanted a drier dish, I’d skip the broth and not cover the guo.

As soon as I heard the broth boil, I took the covers off the guo and the rice, and turned off the flame under the rice. I added the rest of my sauce ingredients and a handful of peanuts to the guo, tasted a piece of meat, added a bit more salt and red oil, and stirred until the sauce thickened. Then I turned off the flame, set a container of chopsticks and a pile of napkins on the table, called my family, and served out four bowls of white rice covered with stir-fried chicken, vegetables, and peanuts in a savory sauce.

We all had seconds.