How to Cook Cantonese Food: A blog about a form of Chinese food. Useful for anyone who enjoys Chinese cuisine but has never cooked it before.
Cantonese cuisine is the most popular type of Chinese food in the world. Cantonese food is characterized by its use of fresh ingredients, especially seafood and vegetables. The flavor of Cantonese dishes is light and subtle, and the cooking style emphasizes quick preparation and presentation over long simmering or frying times.
Chinese food has long been popular in the West, but it’s only recently that Western home cooks have begun to explore cooking this cuisine at home. The key to great Chinese cooking is finding authentic ingredients. You can find them at any Asian grocery store. In addition, you’ll need a wok and some basic tools such as a rolling pin and a wire rack.
Authentic Cantonese cuisine relies heavily on seafood, so you will want to buy your seafood as fresh as possible. Here are my tips for buying fresh seafood: Fish should smell like the ocean, not like fish; shellfish should be alive when you buy them (unless you’re buying them cooked); shrimp should still have their heads; crabs should be alive when you buy them; and lobsters should be alive when you
I’ve been a fan of Chinese food for years, but have mostly stuck to the same handful of dishes that I know and love. I’ve always wanted to try cooking more Chinese recipes myself – but, since I don’t know the language, I’ve had trouble finding good sources.
The five-spice blog has been a real eye-opener for me. The author translates lots of Cantonese recipes and then gives his own take on them, along with detailed instructions and photos.
I’ve been cooking since I was 12 years old, and I have been learning to cook Cantonese food when I was in my twenties. I’ve learned a lot of different Cantonese dishes and styles of cooking. Some of my dishes are very traditional, and some are more modern. My style is usually to keep the ingredients as simple as possible and use spices and ingredients that are common to Cantonese cuisine. Most of my recipes can be found here on this blog or on the sidebar. You can also find my recipes in the Cookbook section of my website.
The most important thing I’ve learned from Cantonese cuisine is to always be ready and prepared. All ingredients must be chopped before cooking starts, sauces mixed, pans and pots selected, the heating temperatures and times carefully calculated. In other words, attention must be paid at all times. This includes the creation of “the five spice”:
This is a simple recipe that provides the backbone for many Cantonese dishes: it is the secret ingredient in many Chinese dishes and will transform your cooking immediately.
1. Chop up one large or two medium white onions finely.
2. Chop up two large red peppers in a similar way (although they should be chopped into larger chunks than the onion).
3. Chop up two large green peppers in a similar way (although they should be chopped into larger chunks than the onion).
4. Chop up two large yellow peppers in a similar way (although they should be chopped into larger chunks than the onion).
5. Chop up any kind of hot pepper you can find in a similar way (although they should be chopped into larger chunks than the onion).
As someone who is part Chinese, I grew up drinking tea and eating rice with every meal. My parents would take me out to eat at Chinese restaurants where I would always order chicken rice or noodles because there was nothing else on the menu I liked. As I grew older, my parents would visit Hong Kong yearly and bring back all kinds of goodies. When I visited Hong Kong for the first time, my taste buds were blown away by the authentic Chinese food that I was now able to enjoy.
Being in Hong Kong meant that I had access to a wide variety of delicious Cantonese food that is not available in Singapore. One of my favorite dishes that is also very popular among tourists is dim sum. Dim sum is basically a small portion of dumplings or buns served with tea (cha). Some of the most common varieties of dim sum include: siu mai which are steamed dumplings filled with shrimp, pork or both; cha siu bao which are steamed buns filled with roasted pork; har gow or shrimp dumplings; cheung fun which are steamed rice noodle rolls filled with shrimp or beef and many more varieties.
When I was a child I loved reading cookbooks. I used to get them out of the library and look at the pictures.
My favorite ones were the Chinese cookbooks, because they had recipes for things like shark fins and thousand-year-old eggs. I could never make those recipes myself, not having any shark fins or thousand-year-old eggs, but it was fun imagining that I did.
The madder grown in China produces a purple dye prized throughout history for royal robes, ecclesiastical vestments, and fine carpets. Many Chinese towns grew up around madder production sites.
Madder also yields a red pigment called alizarin that was used to produce crimson dye until 1868, when a synthetic version of alizarin was invented. The synthetic version is inexpensive and permanent, which is why we rarely see the reddish purple color produced by natural madder dye today.
