Why the Chinese Don't Count Calories (14 page)

About five years after I moved to Beijing, a branch of IKEA opened; like all ex-pats I made a beeline for it, keen to lose myself in the anonymity of the Western consumer environment. At first I was amazed that so many Chinese people were in the market for designer kitchens and three-piece suites, even inexpensive ones. But as I pushed my way through the throngs to the check-out, I noticed that most people were leaving the store with nothing more than a pack of light bulbs or a wooden photo frame. IKEA’s first visitors did not come to spend money on superfluous household items, they came to look and wonder. IKEA Beijing’s range of goods gradually adapted tomeet the needs of the Chinese household. Inexpensive functional items – shoe-racks, kitchen storage, fold-away tables and beds and melamine coffee tables with removable lids replaced top-end bulky ones. Six-piece saucepan sets gradually gave way to shiny woks, and dinner services to piles of ceramic rice bowls. The average Chinese kitchen is still a corridor with a single gas ring, a steel sink, with a small cupboard above.

I spent many an hour at the tiny apartment of my Chinese teacher Hong Yun, on the third ring road. We studied at the tiny bench that served her and her husband as both a desk and dining table while Sam slept obligingly on the double bed in the only other room that was deserving of the name. While Hong Yun patiently went over the finer points of Chinese grammar I marvelled at what I glimpsed through the open door to the neighbouring kitchen. There was nowhere obvious to prepare food and no store cupboard either. When I did manage to distract her attention from the lesson of the day on to this much more interesting subject, she laughed and told me that her husband, who had a safe job with the government and worked regular hours, shopped every day on the way home from work and that he chopped the vegetables on the table. Where else?

The significant difference between the Chinese andWestern kitchen, whether traditional or modern, plays a major part in keeping the cuisine fresh, light and healthy as Mr Li Guo, the Director of the CCTV’s International Channel 9, pointed out to me in my job interview.

It was a tense occasion. Sitting on an incredibly low sofa, I was relieved by my final choice of outfit, a pair of black trousers and a twinset, as coping with a rising pencil skirt, as well as answering his oblique questions, would have been far too much. ‘So what do you think about Chinese food?’ asked Mr Li Guo. My immediate response, ‘I love it,’ sounded trite and insincere. ‘Do you like our programme?’ came next. Never having watched it, as we didn’t have a television, I told him I found it interesting, not exactly a lie as anything to do with Chinese food was of interest to me. Then came the big one: ‘What do you think is the main difference between Chinese and Western cooking?’

This was the question I had been waiting for and I launched into my explanation of
cai
and
fan
. I talked animatedly about the preparation involved in Chinese cooking. I waxed lyrical about how Chinese chefs really understand individual ingredients. Mr Guo listened tolerantly. ‘The Chinese don’t have ovens,’ he said firmly. ‘And can you start on Wednesday?’

A whole range of cooking methods

The multi-dish approach of a Chinese meal allows it to feature a whole range of cooking methods, as any well-balanced eating occasion always does. There is a very widely held misconception that Chinese cooking is all about stir-frying, and certainly this fast and efficient art opens up a wealth of possibilities on the culinary front – I urge you to use it more. But stir-frying is not the most commonly used method of cooking in Chinese cuisine; in fact it comes in third, after boiling and steaming. Of course a lot of rice is boiled and I have already talked about the importance of
zhou
and
tang
in the Chinese diet, but there are also all manner of stews and braised dishes, not to mention simple steamed delicacies.

Deep-fried and stir-fried, the types of dishes my Finnish friend erroneously associated with Chinese cuisine and which you will probably be familiar with, are considered by Chinese people to have very
yang
characteristics and so are generally consumed in moderation. They are always balanced with
yin
dishes, which have been cooked by methods that retain moisture, such as boiling, simmering and steaming. Of course nothing is entirely
yin
or totally
yang
, and the overall characteristic of a dish will also depend on the
yin
and
yang
and the heating and cooling properties of its ingredients. As mentioned earlier, food that is
yang
ascends and disperses; it tends to have an influence on the skin, the body tissues and body surface in general. Food that is
yin
descends, with an astringent effect on the internal organs. Also, and perhaps self-evidently when you consider the different characteristics of the cooking methods,
yang
foods have a tendency to dry out the body whereas
yin
ones will moisten it.

Roasting, baking and grilling are also
yang
cooking methods, so much of the foods we eat in the West are of a
yang
nature. Bread is a prime example. I have already mentioned in Chapter Four how the Chinese steam
mantou
, some plain, some flavoured with sesame paste or ground Sichuan peppercorns; they also make cornmeal bread, either in great slabs or fashioned into little conical towers known as
wo tou
.

You are unlikely to find time to make
mantou
on a daily basis, but you don’t need to. Just make sure that you are aiming for a balance in the nature of the food that you cook. This is the overwhelming theme of Chinese food culture. In China, where every meal features a soup and most staples are eaten plainly boiled or steamed, there is scope in the diet for some rich stir-fries or even deep-fried foods. If, however, your diet is based on a baked staple or, even worse, a deep-fried one, then you will need to eat a lot of steamed or boiled accompaniments. That means lots of soup with your bread, extra vegetables with your chips, or, better still, work towards the multi-dish approach where the rich
yang
dishes are just one part of a meal which includes plenty of
yin
options.

Yin
and
yang
cooking methods

Yin
cooking methods:
boiling • simmering • stewing • braising • plunging (hot-pot style) • steaming

Yang
cooking methods:
roasting and grilling • baking • deep-frying • stir-frying • sautéing

The need for a range of cooking methods to achieve a balance in a meal is one reason why, despite IKEA’s efforts and mock-up displays, ovens have yet to catch on in China. Actually, roasted foods do feature in multi-course meals, though I was smart enough not to point this out to Mr Guo. In Hong Kong and Canton barbecued and roasted meats are great delicacies, but they are always coated and carefully seasoned because Chinese people believe that meat that is browned or burnt could potentially be damaging to health. This has also been shown in recent studies in the West. 7 And in China roasted foods are not cooked in people’s homes but bought from specialist shops. Roasting or baking in an individual oven would be considered a waste of heat, and ovens would probably be used for less than half the year at most. In the stifling summer months many Chinese people favour quickly cooked light dishes: noodles or dumplings are plunged into soup; vegetables are steamed on top of rice and then dipped in piquant sauces.

The paradox of Chinese cuisine

I spent several of my years in China living in houses where the kitchen had no oven. Friends were amazed and could not imagine how I managed. Basing a meal around a large roast, or even casserole or bake, does appear an easier option than producing lots of different dishes at the last moment. But over the years I came to find that working in a Chinese-style kitchen has its advantages, one of the greatest being that producing one dish at a time creates far less washing up.

When I presented the Chinese cooking programme for CCTV the chefs and I worked in a small windowless hotel room, furnished with nothing but an oblong white sheet–clad table, a gas bottle and a burner. On the burner sat a single wok and at its side lay a chopper, a long handled spoon, a sieve and a pair of long chopsticks. The simplicity of the setup always brought home to me the paradox of Chinese cuisine: even complex dishes can be produced with the simplest of utensils. I used to remind myself of this when I needed confidence on the culinary front, and I emphasize this to encourage you to cook new foods in new ways and not fear that your endeavours will result in kitchen chaos.

In the TV studio, and in my cooking classes, we would pour the necessary sauces and seasonings into small bowls, complete the chopping process and arrange all ingredients for each dish together before starting to cook. Chinese cooks work in a similar way in their own homes, to ensure they are in complete control, not only of their ingredients, but of the cooking process too, so they do not end up desperately wielding the chopper or searching for sauces and seasonings at the last minute. And they never let their tiny cooking areas get disorganized or untidy. In the Chinese mind, food is always in the proper place, whether on the chopping board, in the wok or pan, or on the table. Thus cooking is never daunting, the idea of eating well is never intimidating.

The Chinese word
sheng shi
can be roughly translated as ‘sensible’ but also means ‘appropriate’. It aptly describes the Chinese kitchen, which is never encumbered with superfluous utensils. There is no room to store unwieldy bowls and platters of differing depths and sizes, or complete sets of saucepans. Apart from a wok, most households own one flameproof glazed sand-pot and a double-handled saucepan, which will also be used as a steamer. A couple of long-handled spoons will usually hang on the wall, along with a slotted spoon, a sieve and a pair of outsized chopsticks.

The wok

Sheng shi
is also a particularly apt way to describe the wok – a wide round-bottom pan, traditionally made of cast-iron whose clever design allows for maximum heat transfer with minimum use of resources. One of the reasons that Chinese meals are produced quickly and neatly is because, in the tiny Chinese domestic kitchen, the same wok is used over and over again, not just to produce the delicious stir-fries which are synonymous with Chinese food but also for blanching, boiling, steaming and simmering.

Note that if you buy a wok with a lid and a steaming rack you can use it for almost every culinary purpose. Water comes to the boil much more quickly in a wok than in a saucepan because of its efficient design, so it is equally useful for a simple task such as poaching eggs as it is for tasty stir-fry dishes.

I have mentioned that woks are traditionally made of iron; hand-beaten cast-iron woks are still favoured by serious Chinese cooks. They do not come up clean and sparkling after washing like the new shiny stainless-steel varieties, and they will rust if not used regularly, but they are simply much better to cook with. Many modern range-style gas cookers are fitted with a wok burner; and if you are fortunate enough to have one of these then stir-frying will be a pleasure. If you don’t, then think about Hong Yun’s tiny burner and persevere.

Gas cookers allow you to fine-tune the heat supply to your wok, but they are not a pre-requisite for stir-frying. I have seen amazing spreads cooked on wood-fired stoves in rural China. If you are cooking on an electric stove, however, you will need to buy a flat-bottomed wok, and I have found in this situation that the non-stick variety works best.

I have already eulogized stir-fried vegetables in Chapter Two. In order to avoid your ingredients sticking to the pan or burning, always heat the wok before you add the oil; then heat the oil before tossing in the vegetables. If you are using dried chillies or Sichuan peppercorns these should be added first to flavour the oil. Minutely chopped pieces of ginger and spring onion have a tendency to shrivel in hot oil, so I tend to add them at the same time as the vegetables; the taste still permeates the dish as the wok is very efficient at transferring flavours as well as heat.