Cantonese Regional Cuisine

Easily the most well-known of the Chinese regional cuisines, Cantonese cuisine comes from the region around Canton in Southern China. Simple spices and a wide variety of foods used in cooking characterize Cantonese cuisine. Of all the Chinese regions, Canton (Guangdong province) has the most available food resources. Its proximity to the sea offers a veritable marine cornucopia to be added to its dishes, making possible such delicate matings as Seven Happiness, a dish that includes shrimp, scallops, fish and lobster along with chicken, beef and pork. The light, delicate sauce, quick cooking and subtle spicing allows the natural flavors to shine through rather than being overwhelmed and blending together.

The spices used in Cantonese cooking tend to be light and simple: ginger, salt, soy sauce, white pepper, spring onion and rice wine. For many who are used to the more rich, spicy and complex flavors of Hunan and Szechwan cooking, Cantonese cooking may seem bland – but the subtle blends of flavor and aroma are created by the hand of a master chef.

All Chinese cuisine takes far more into account than the flavor of a dish. Chinese cooking is a presentation of texture, color, shape and aroma with even the name of the dish contributing to its overall presentation. In true Oriental fashion, a meal is poetry, with every part of it contributing to the overall effect. Chinese courtesy demands that a guest be treated with honor, and to present a guest with anything less than perfection is the height of rudeness.

As an honor to guests, freshness is one of the ultimate ‘ingredients’ in Cantonese regional cooking. In many restaurants, guests can choose their meal from a seafood tank in the dining room. It’s not unusual for a patron to be brought a live fish or crab at the table as proof of the freshness of the meal about to be prepared. Vegetables are likewise fresh, crisp and sweet, and the quick cooking methods preserve each flavor separately to play against the others.

Light sauces with subtle seasonings bring out the natural sweetness of seafood – but the Cantonese chef will only use the very freshest seafood in those dishes. For ‘stale’ seafood, Cantonese cuisine offers thick, spicy sauces meant to mask the characteristic odor of fish. Pungent/sweet dishes like sweet and sour butterfly shrimp might be served this way.

There are few Cantonese desserts that are indigenous to the region, though many restaurants serve a mango based pudding or tapioca. Most meals are served with plain boiled rice, and accompanied by either tea or rice wine.

Wherever in the world you are, you’re likely to find restaurants that serve Cantonese cuisine. It has been carried across the world by emigrants from the Quangdong province, and its light, delicate flavors are easy on the Western palate. To truly appreciate it though, takes more than the taste buds. Cantonese cuisine is a treat for the eyes and the nose as much as for the mouth. Appreciate it.

About the author:
Kirsten Hawkins is a food and nutrition expert specializing the Mexican, Chinese, and Italian food. Visit http://www.food-and-nutrition.com/ for more information on cooking delicious and healthy meals.

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Easy summer salads, lighter foods for a brighter summer

Easy summer salads are the way to go, now that the winter blues are fading into the distance and salad days are here. The best salads are light, bright and easy to prepare.

After all who wants to spend hours slaving away in the kitchen when friends are round for lunch, the garden is in bloom and the wine is chilled and ready to pour. But before you start to cook you save a lot of energy by buying the right ingredients for a simple salad. That way you don’t need the heavy bottled sauces and dressings to make a great flavor

Do you really want to take a beautiful crisp summer salad and soak it in a mixture of fat, sugar, salt and chemicals? If you start off with great food and don’t do too much to it you don’t need all these strong tastes as you still have great food.

All you need is to combine it well so that the flavors work together, have a nice crunchy texture and add a little light dressing to set it all off, and let the taste buds do the rest Freshness is, as in all cooking, the way to a good salad. Don’t take what the supermarkets give you. Although it’s easier to pick up the ready packed tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, bell peppers etc.

To make sure you get the best, take a minute or two and pick over the vegetables, choose what is firm ripe and ready to use. The same of course applies with meat and fish. There is a reason why supermarkets prepackage, and it’s not always convenience. So choose well, cook quickly and simply and your friends won’t have finished the wine by the time you get there! Enjoy a little bit of summer now with this easy poached chicken salad.

Easy poached chicken salad

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts (skinless)

1 finely sliced red onion

1 whole half onion

4 good ripe tomatoes sliced thickly

250 grams/4ozs salad leaves mixed

4ozs raisins soaked in hot water for ten minutes

1 half lemon

2 fresh or dry bay leaves

1-teaspoon peppercorns black

1 small French, stick loaf or similar sliced into 1/2 slices

For the dressing:

1/4 cup olive oil
1clove garlic crushed

1/2 dessert spoon Dijon or other mild mustard

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
To make the dressing, whisk the vinegar and mustard together with the garlic, slowly add the olive oil while whisking and season with salt and pepper to taste.


Bring a pan of water to the boil with the bay leaves, 1/2 white onion, lemon and peppercorns. Carefully add the chicken and simmer gently until cooked, if you unsure it is worth investing a few dollars in a meat thermometer. The temperature should be at least 75 celcius/167 Fahrenheit, put the sliced bread on a baking tray and drizzle with the olive oil and season with salt.

Bake in a medium oven until crisp but soft in the middle. Mix the leaves together with the onions and raisins. Turn in the salad dressing and put into 4 good-sized bowls. Place slices of tomato and bread around the edge. Slice the warm chicken at an angle and put attractively on top off the salad. Sit back, enjoy and get someone else to do the washing up.

About the author:
Mark Brading
"http://nearlyhealthy.com" is a new quality easy recipe, cookery tips and information site, for great tasting food that is also easy to cook. Cooking should be a joy not a chore. Using the best ingredients and keeping it simple means your food tastes good with the minimum of fuss. Cookery book reviews, we choose the best in current and classic recipe books and food travel writers. Also product and good food suppliers.
Need to know the best food processor we take the time to choose so you don't have to. Need to know where to find the best organic pork? We bring you the best suppliers and information.
We have started small but will add more and more content over the coming weeks so do keep checking back. We look forward to seeing you and listening to your comments and feedback. "http://www.nearlyhealthy.com"
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Edith's Cake That Thrilled the French

Twenty-three chefs who cooked for world royalty and heads of state (The Club des Chefs des Chefs) were, during their 1987 visit to the U.S., wined and dined with the best our finest chefs had to offer. What impressed them most? Lunch at an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, where they ate homegrown new potatoes, string beans with cream sauce and corn, charcoal-grilled chicken, and baked ham, washed down with homemade root beer and peppermint tea, served by the family in a barn lined with handmade quilts.

They were stunned. Happily so, it seems. The chef for the president of France said, “Cooking has evolved so much. Nobody presents the true product as it is, and all of a sudden we were presented that.”

But the desserts impressed them most. Especially one they couldn’t name. One they described as a light “pain d’epices” (spice cake) with a layer of chocolate filling. Gilles Brunner, chef to Prince Rainier of Monaco, was so taken with the cake, which he described as a chocolate gingerbread, that he tried to get the recipe. His request was refused.

The Amish family did not want their identity revealed, which refusal greatly hampered efforts to identify the cake as well. Research by Phyllis Richman, then food editor of the Washington Post, seemed to show that the mystery dessert was Amish applesauce cake with chocolate frosting, and the Post printed a version of it contributed by Betty Groff, a cookbook author from the Pennsylvania Dutch country.

Which applesauce cake turned out to be pretty much what our family had been enjoying since my father married Edith Kennedy in 1977, and which Edith’s family had been enjoying long before that. Her daughter, Lorenelle Doll, who gave me the recipe, says that it was a favorite of my father and Lorenelle’s husband Arnie. (So far as I know, Edith didn’t actually feed any to a French chef.)

I like to think Edith’s version is better than Betty Groff’s, because that recipe says to “frost with vanilla or chocolate frosting if desired.” Whereas Edith’s gives a recipe for chocolate frosting MADE WITH BUTTER. And in my view the humblest frosting made with butter is better than the fanciest frosting made without. I’m not implying that Edith’s frosting is humble. It isn’t. It’s purely wonderful, as is her cake.

Edith Kennedy Glidewell went to be with her Lord in March 2002, but before that she gladdened many hearts in many ways, this applesauce cake not the least of them.

EDITH’S APPLESAUCE CAKE

Cream together 1/2 cup room temperature butter or shortening and 1 cup sugar. Add 1 egg and beat together. Mix in 1-1/2 cups applesauce.

Sift together 2 cups flour, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. soda, 1 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. allspice, 1/2 tsp. nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp. cloves. Add to applesauce mixture, along with 1 cup raisins and 3/4 cup chopped walnuts.

Lightly oil a 9" x 12" pan and dust with flour. Add the cake mixture and bake at 350 degrees 50 to 60 minutes, until the top of the cake’s center springs back when touched. Frost with chocolate frosting when cool.

Chocolate Frosting: Combine in a heavy saucepan or double boiler 1 square baker’s unsweetened chocolate, 1 cup sugar, 1/4 cup butter, and 1/3 cup milk. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, and cook 1 minute. Cool and beat until the frosting has a satin finish.

About the author:
Find Janette Blackwell’s storytelling country cookbook, Steamin’ Down the Tracks with Viola Hockenberry, at http://foodandfiction.com/Entrance.html -- or visit her at http://delightfulfood.com/main.html
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Japanese Cuisine

Tempura, sukiyaki, sashimi, sushi – even the words used to describe the most basic of Japanese dishes are exotic and beautiful. Japanese cuisine is easily one of the healthiest in the world, with its concentration on fresh fish, seafood, rice and vegetables. The pungent sauces and delicate flavors of fresh foods complement each other beautifully, and the methods of presentation turn even simple meals into beautiful events.

The Japanese have easily a dozen different names for rice, depending on how it is prepared and what it is served with. The most common meal is a rice bowl, a bowl of white rice served with various toppings or ingredients mixed in. So popular is it that the Rice Bowl has even made its way into the world of Western convenience foods alongside ramen noodles. Domburi is a bowl of rice topped with another food: domburi tendon, for instance, is rice topped with tempura and domburi gyudon is rice topped with beef. The Japanese adopted fried rice from the Chinese, and a century ago, when curry was first introduced, developed Kare Raisu, curry rice. It is now such a popular dish that there are many fast-food restaurants that serve several versions of it in take-away bowls.

Besides white rice served as a side dish, Japanese cuisine also features onigiri – rice balls wrapped in seaweed, often with a ‘surprise’ in the middle, and kayu, a thin gruel made of rice that resembles oatmeal.

As an island nation, it’s not surprising that seafood is featured in Japanese cuisine. Sushi and sashimi both are raw fish and seafood with various spices. Impeccably fresh fish is the secret to wonderful sashimi and sushi, served with wasabi and soya sauce. The Japanese love of beauty and simplicity turns slices and chunks of raw fish into miniature works of art. Fish sliced so thin that it’s transparent may be arranged on a platter in a delicate fan that alternates pink-fleshed salmon with paler slices of fish. Sushi is typically arranged to best display the colors and textures to their best advantage, turning the platter and plate into palettes for the artistry of the chef.

Traditionally, meat plays a minor role in the Japanese diet, though it has been taking a larger and larger role over the past fifty years as Japan becomes more westernized. Beef, chicken and pork may be served with several meals a week now. One of the more popular meat dishes is ‘yakitori’ – chicken grilled on a skewer and served with sauce. A typical quick lunch might include a skewer of yakitori and a rice bowl with sushi sauce.

In an interesting twist, Japan has imported dishes from other cuisines and ‘Japanized’ them, adopting them as part of their own cuisines. Korokke, for instance, are croquettes adopted from those introduced by the English last century. In Japan, the most common filling is a mixture of mashed potatoes and minced meat. Other Soshoyu – western dishes that have made their way into Japanese everyday cuisine include 'omuraisu', a rice omelet, and hambagau, the Japanized version of an American hamburger.

About the author:
Troy Pentico
Visit The Tasty Chef for more great tips, techniques, and insights pertaining to cooking and recipes. http://www.tastychef.net

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