This is an HP R Episode 19146 entitled, What Corker It.
It is posted by May Moris and in about 21 minutes long.
The summary is, I prepare a vegetarian version of Chau main for my son's visit.
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Hello everyone, this is Dave Morris.
My show today is called Walk Cookery.
And not for the first time, I'm following the footsteps of Frank Bell, who did an HP R episode in
titled, a beginner with a walk episode number 1787 on the 9th of June 2015.
He talked about his experiences with stir fry cooking using a walk which he'd recently purchased
if I remember correctly.
Frank got a lot of comments about this.
I was one of the commenters actually.
And there seemed to be an interest in the subject.
It was discussed on the community news and it seemed that there might be some mileage in doing
another show on the subject.
So that's why I'm doing this.
I've been interested in Chinese and Indonesian and other Far East and Cookery styles for quite
a number of years.
And I do a lot of cooking, having been a single parent family for quite a number of years.
And so I thought I'd record a show about one of the recipes that I use.
What prompted this was that my son visits about once a week and eats dinner with me.
He doesn't live in Edinburgh, he lives in Aberdeen so he comes down to study at
Napier University here in Edinburgh and he pops in for his dinner the end of the week usually.
He's quite keen on Chinese food as well but he's vegetarian.
So for a change I offered to cook him my version of
Chaomain which without any meaning.
I've done this before and it gone down pretty well with him and his girlfriend.
It both enjoyed it a lot.
So I thought I would do that and then I'd make a record of what I was doing and set up a show on the subject.
So my version of Chaomain is based on Ken Haom's recipe from his book Chinese Cookery.
If you have a copy of that and it's the same as mine, it's beige 226.
This is quite an old book I bought this after he's show in the 1980s,
1984 to the series called Chinese Cookery on the BBC and I watched him and joined this a lot.
And I actually learned a fair amount of what I know about Chinese Cookery from him
and from his various books so it's about preparation and the cooking as well.
So preparation is quite important I believe.
So let's talk about preparation.
There's some long notes shown at the series in case you haven't spotted them.
With pictures and stuff as well.
So I prepared quite a lot I do quite a lot of cooking large batches because
if my son visits he often comes in twice for to be fed.
And so I like to cook plenty and often there's enough left over for me to
to eat for a few days afterwards so it saves me any more cooking for a few days.
So I'm a bit fussy about cutting things up for a stir fry.
That's partly because getting everything pretty much the same size and shape to some extent
is useful from the point of view of cooking.
It makes sure that things cook similarly and also the having them similar sizes
is nice and more aesthetically pleasing.
And it's the way the Chinese cookery is done so I like that.
Being a geek and being slightly obsessive I do tend to spend a lot of time
fiddling around this sort of thing.
So that's just the way I am I'm afraid.
I do enjoy chopping up vegetables and preparing things.
I use a large cook's knife these days for this purpose and it's what I prefer now.
I've had a few Chinese cleavours of various sizes over the years.
I've got a big thin one and a big chunky one and a small one.
But I find that they don't chop and all that spectacularly well.
Maybe I haven't bought the right ones I need to get a big steel one not a stainless steel one.
Anyway the cook's knife which is stainless steel does really well.
It takes a very good edge and keeps it for a long time.
So the ingredients of my stir fry start with carrots.
I use about six medium size ones and I what I do with these is like slice them diagonally
as you can see in the first picture and in the second picture.
I make slices about five millimetres thick and then I cut them into sticks again about five millimetres.
So there's a sort of a julien style of cutting but it's diagonally to expose the
the fibers better so the argument goes anyway.
There's lots of pictures about this I hope you're able to see them.
I'll also use celery about six or seven sticks of this and I always cut them up by
trimming top and bottom. If they tend to be a bit stringy which celery often is.
It is the stuff I buy from the supermarket. I peel the out of the combat surface with a
potato peeler to remove the bigger fibers and I usually cut the sticks into two or three
depending on how long they are. It's up to you how you do that. It's just the way I do.
And if they're big I cut them along the way lengthwise to make conveniently
convenient pieces as you can see in the pictures and then I cut those remaining pieces
diagonally to make pieces two different in size and thickness to the the carrots that I
talked about before. I also added French beans. That's what I discovered that's what they're
called in the UK but tend not to be called that mucher at many other places. They're
think they're referred to as green or stringless beans elsewhere.
He can buy them trimmed in the supermarket but I never do that because when you look at them
they're always browned at the ends. Look really nasty. So you'd have to trim them off.
He might as well just trim the beans themselves. So I top and tail them. I actually do them by
cutting them diagonally and then rolling them and cutting again.
That means that you get pieces with the two ends cut at two different angles. It's called
roll cutting in Chinese cuisine. It's not usually used with these things. I just did it because I
just liked the idea of it. Usually done with larger vegetables like carrots and courgettes.
Having done that, I just bought a standard pack. I don't remember how many there were but
this is all sort of. It's not measured. It's just sort of how much looks good I guess.
It's hard to convey. So apologies if it's not really much of a recipe to follow but hopefully
you'll get the general idea. You always look at a proper recipe book to get the
get a better idea of quantities. I also use Mines II which you probably know is French for
eat or because it's type of pea that you can eat all of. It doesn't have the
hard fibrous bit in the middle of the pods. They're known as Mines II in Scotland,
probably in the rest of the UK too. They're probably snow peas and biologically
botanically and I think that's the way they're called in many other parts of the world.
These are snow peas and pretty certain of course they're very flat. They're very nice so.
I just top and tail them and cut them diagonally into reasonable sized pieces.
No point in cutting them small. I reckon for this meal because they're edible just as they are
and they don't need much cooking so just keep them fairly big. I think maybe a couple of
peppers, red peppers in this case, I've shown one being cut up. I cut them vertically into
quarters and cut the seeds and the core bit out of them and then I cut each individual quarter
across or is on to the pepper and then slice the remaining piece downward so I get sort of
reasonably short, similar sort of length pieces to the carrots and the celery and so on and not to
thick. I just do it for this type of stir fry because it just seems to fit better with the
subgeneral size. People do cut peppers into all sorts of different shapes sometimes they're quite
big chunks if you eat other sorts of Chinese food and a Chinese restaurant and stuff but that's
the way I do it. Onions I had I think a couple of medium sized onions in here and with them I peel
them top and tail and take the the the root piece out of the bottom of the base of the
bulb actually. So bulb yeah I think so and then I have them lay them flat side down on a board
and then cut them vertically into quite thin slices. Maybe about the five mill, maybe less
similar. So they end up being sort of similar lengths that there's sort of a long strip
similar lengths to the carrots and the celery etc. A picture just to show this is as again.
Garlic always is a lot of garlic. I'm a great garlic fan so are my kids. I'll probably force them
to be that as they grow up anyway. So I just use an entire bulb of garlic, a head of garlic
over you like to call it and I obviously trim the base of all of the individual clothes and peel them
and then I just slice them whichever way as most convenient. So I ended up end up with quite a
number of slices. I find that that works well with stir fry. I had mushrooms as well. I use
chestnut mushrooms here. These are a brown colored ones. I think they're the same species as the
white but different variant or something, different variety. I cut them in half, wash them first,
cut them in half and then put flat side down on the chopping board and cut them vertically
to get reasonably sized pieces. I also use bean sprouts in this recipe and I just got it. I think
it's a 400 gram pack of them. That's a definite necessary. Some of the other stuff is not always
in charming but it is in my version. In the notes I've shown the meat substitute that I'm using
which is called corn, cu-u-o-r-n and this particular one is formed into chunks that look like
pieces of chicken breast. I think I've got a special deal on 300 gram bags that particular time.
So I got two of them certainly enough for about six people I think there's quite a lot still. So
you have to prepare that one. It's frozen so you just add it to a wok or a frying pan and you
stir-fry it in a little bit of oil which is what I did. From frozen I'll remedial heat.
It takes about 8 minutes and it thawes and browned slowly on the outside and it looks nice and
flavours up a bit as a consequence. It's fairly bland but it picks up flavours from
the other things it's cooked with. It's actually really nice as a meat substitute.
Charming needs noodles. I use medium egg noodles. These are a common brand you can find in the supermarket.
You can also get lots of other varieties from the Chinese supermarket I find but in this particular case
I'd grabbed this brand shawoods and you get enough for I think six people in a pack and I
can't remember how many chunks of noodles are out there. There are sort of blocks of noodles inside
there. I think it used four for this. I might be the whole lot I can't honestly remember. I didn't
note it down. You have to cook these by putting them in boiling water and simmering them for
four minutes and then draining them. At that point I added soy sauce to the result and a little bit
of sesame oil and that was really done to flavour them and to stop them from sticking. It's
picture of the pack and of the resulting noodles. I've also shown the various sources and things
that I've added to stuff. I use rice wine a bit later on when I get to the cooking and I use soy
sauce which like I said goes in the noodles and gets added to the stir fry and there's sesame oil
as well for flavour. You don't cook sesame oil because it burns but it's great flavouring.
So let's get on with the cooking. I've got a large 200 wok. I think it's only gave this to me.
I can't remember where I go from. It's one of the three that I have though. One of them is actually
a tempura wok. I meant to fill it with oil and fry stuff in it in batter. Japanese way. The
big one is 18.5 inches in diameter which is about 47 cm. It's round bottom but it's quite shallow.
It's made of stainless steel. A shallow shape allows it to balance on my gas hob. It takes up almost
the entire hob so big and I've got a small one which is more rounded but it's got a flat bottom.
That one it's much deeper than this one but if it was rounded it would fall over. I
profound so I needed the flat one in the smaller version but this one seems to work fine as it is.
It's like a 200 wok so not quite so easy to maneuver on the stove. If you can get a large
wok with a single handle it's better and if you can actually flip it to make things
to flip over and move about in the pan then you've become a very professional wok user.
I have not reached that stage yet. These are wok spatula to stir everything up. It's the
stainless steel one. You can get them in all the Chinese supermarkets I find and not very much.
It's stainless steel has got a wooden handle on the end. Always it gets quite hot but I quite
like it for the shoveling action. If you watch professional cooks in the far east and wherever
you stand by the watch them cook your food in the in a wok they tend to use a ladle because they
can scoop stuff into the the wok and then they just stir stuff around. Mostly they're flipping
stuff around in it but they have a much better heat source than I do here so everything cooks
quicker than it does for me and they tend not to use these these shovels then my experience anyway.
So first they had to just put peanut oil in the wok and put the gas burn on full and got the oil hot
hot enough checked in the onions and the garlic and stir them up just for a couple of minutes.
It's a classic thing. It flavours the oil and makes everything smell fantastic and
starts the whole cooking. Then I added the the tougher ingredients, the harder ones, the
carrots, the celery and the beans, the green beans and they stir they fry full blast on my
gas stove with a lot of stirring they need to be stirred a lot otherwise they they would burn
but they start to cook pretty well. About five minutes I reckon as they're progressing I put
maybe about a tablespoon of rice wine. I just pour the rice wine into the cap of the bottle
and put that much in maybe a couple of capables even what that does is add flavour to the
to the thing. I also add a fair bit of soy sauce. Again it's not measured I just sort of
tip the bottle up and it's got a got a dispenser top and you just sort of slap some in there.
You'll see the professionals they have an open top bottle and you just put the firm over the top
and shake it in. I don't think it's done very scientifically. It's more experience than anything
you can see if you start to see the soy sauce in the food if it's very obvious then you're
probably putting too much in. Then in when the the next soft ingredients that was the
peppers the moisture to the mushrooms and the corn remember that had been previously cooked so
it didn't it doesn't need a lot of preparation now and we don't want the peppers to
cook right down too much we don't the moisture to to lose its crunch. The mushrooms they also
don't need a lot of cooking. If this had been a classic chairman I would have used chicken rather
than corn here which would have been pre-cooked of course if you look at most of the
Chinese recipes you'll see this. This stage then cooked for about another five minutes. I think
I probably put a bit more soy sauce in at this stage because I imagine that the I must have
reason that the corn would need a bit more flavour than it had so far. Anyway once that lot had
cooked for a bit I could add the noodles. Now this is the point at which there's a lot of noodles
you can see the picture. There's a lot of noodles as gone in there and these are of course
a cold because I've been sitting around waiting for the rest of the stuff to be started up.
There's a lot you want to mix them thoroughly in. Now if you do this in a small walk and you use
the quantity I've used you're in trouble because it's really hard to mix. You might use the
biggest water. So they get a few minutes of stirring mixed thoroughly and along the way there
they're warming up. Then I added the bean sprouts and these also need to be mixed well into the
mixture and to warm through. They don't need a huge amount of cooking though there's some
talk of bean sprouts needing more cooking when people previously thought because they they're not
always as clean as you would hope they were. I've never come across that problem myself but
reading up about it was a bit surprised to find out that there can be problems with raw bean sprouts.
Anyway these got a reasonable amount of cooking. I want them to have a bit of crunch to them
and I want them to mix in with all the flavours in the in the water. So at this stage the
carrot celery and bean should be well cooked. You can check them and see. I like them to have a
bit of firmness so that the whole result is quite crunchy. The bean sprouts should be slightly
wilted but not overcooked and the whole thing should have been heated through including the
noodles. So by that point everything should be done and there's a picture of what I
consider to be the final result. Lots of lots of colors, lots of vegetables and corn,
noodles, beans sprouts etc. Now both my son and I are very keen on all sorts of chili sources.
Don't know how it's chili mate. That's just the way of the world. So we yet this with Chinese
chili sauce with the brand name. I think it's you pronounce it and forgive me if you speak
Chinese, um, Mandarin or whatever this is Cantonese. I think it would be pronounced
Lao Gan Ma, which means old god mother apparently and the jar seems to have a picture of the
old god mother. It's very likely to make her but rather fierce looking lady. I get this from my
Chinese local Chinese supermarket and there's hardly anything on it to identify as this particular
one other than the Chinese symbols that I've shown in the picture and I'd recommend this particular
one as opposed to some of the others. Just my personal taste, it does contain peanuts if that's an
issue with you. So that's pretty much the tail of making the vegetarian charming and there are
lots of links relating to all the various components and stuff that they're of any interest. So
I hope you found this markedly entertaining and possibly informative even. Okay then cheers now,
bye-bye.
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