One thing I haven’t found here in the old country that were found in San Diego is good Chinese restaurants.

Well, no good French ones either, but I brought my own.

Anyway, I have some orange chicken, frozen, and a bag of frozen stir fry veggies mix. There needs to be a sauce for these veggies, I think.

Any recipes like your grandmother used to make? Simple is better here.

I just make a teriyaki sauce. Soy sauce, brown sugar, some ginger and garlic. Add some hoisin for texture and added flavor. Sesame oil is a nice addition. I don't measure but equal amount sugar and soy sauce is about where I'm usually at.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
One thing I haven’t found here in the old country that were found in San Diego is good Chinese restaurants.
<snip>

After reading this, I may have to make a trip down to Convoy St. Asian restaurants galore. Ranch 99 is near there too – an Asian supermarket with 5 gallon jugs of soy sauce sitting in the narrow aisles.

You need basic Chinese pantry ingredients for passable Chinese food. Teriyaki sauce isn't even remotely similar.

For Chinese food you'll need soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, black pepper and Chinese black rice vinegar as staple pantry items. Any large grocery store should have these readily available in their ethnic food section.

For Vietnamese foods you'll need the above plus Fish Sauce.

For a basic stir fried vegetables you want to start with vegetable oil, then your aromatics (minced ginger and garlic, chopped white and green onions), then hard vegetables (carrots, snap peas, cauliflower, broccoli), then your soft vegetables. Get the vegetables to 90% cooked, then add sesame oil, oyster sauce, and soy sauce. Toss, reduce temperature, taste, and re-season according to preference. Oyster sauce adds savory mouthfeel and sweetness, soy sauce adds sharp saltiness. A dash of vinegar at the end to add acidity and brighten the flavors. Finish with white pepper.

If you want to start simple,

Start with green beans. Hot oil. Add garlic and ginger. Add blanched green beans. Season with sesame oil and oyster sauce. Done and Done.

The seasoning is less important here than the texture, and blanching the green beans is pretty much cheating.

If this was a cooking lesson, I would also take this opportunity to demonstrate the subtle change in taste of garlic as it fries. Let the garlic brown before adding the green beans and you get a significantly different flavor than adding the beans too soon.

When I moved to China in 2011 I was excited to eat lots of orange chicken. I quickly learned that theres nothing Chinese about orange chicken.

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
One thing I haven’t found here in the old country that were found in San Diego is good Chinese restaurants.
<snip>

After reading this, I may have to make a trip down to Convoy St. Asian restaurants galore. Ranch 99 is near there too – an Asian supermarket with 5 gallon jugs of soy sauce sitting in the narrow aisles.

Yep. No need to cook at home there. Let real Chinese folks do it. Not much of that around here, except P.F. Chang down in San Antonio.

quote:

Originally posted by newmexican:
When I moved to China in 2011 I was excited to eat lots of orange chicken. I quickly learned that theres nothing Chinese about orange chicken.

Probably not but it is what is here and on many menus.

We had a restaurant in South Bay, off the 805, San Diego, that had the best Shrimp in Lobster Sauce and another Shrimp concoction, plus fantastic vegetables.

If it were me, I'd add a little peanut oil or sesame oil with ginger and garlic. Then add Hoisin sauce or Oyster sauce with Tai Sweet Chile sauce. Just add and use to taste. By the way the Oyster sauce doesn't taste anything like oysters. It's very savory and we use it for a lot of different dishes.

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
If you want to start simple,

Start with green beans. Hot oil. Add garlic and ginger. Add blanched green beans. Season with sesame oil and oyster sauce. Done and Done.

What’s the diff between green beans and blanched green beans?

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:

quote:

Originally posted by newmexican:
When I moved to China in 2011 I was excited to eat lots of orange chicken. I quickly learned that theres nothing Chinese about orange chicken.

Probably not but it is what is here and on many menus.

We had a restaurant in South Bay, off the 805, San Diego, that had the best Shrimp in Lobster Sauce and another Shrimp concoction, plus fantastic vegetables.

Netflix had a good documentary a while back. I think it was called Searching for General Tso, a history of Chinese and not so Chinese food in America. Though there certainly was a General Tso and he did evidently like chicken, such a dish as Americans know it did not exist until it was invented in San Francisco I believe, invented especially for American palates. Americans love sweet and savory, a combination evidently not usually found in traditional Chinese cuisine.

Pretty much the only nice thing left about the SF Bay Area is the diversity of restaurants all the immigrants have brought with them. We were visiting my wife’s father who lives ~2 hours south of Nashville and he’s wayyy out in the country. He insisted on taking us to the 1 Chinese restaraunt in town one night and frankly it was terrible.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
If you want to start simple,

Start with green beans. Hot oil. Add garlic and ginger. Add blanched green beans. Season with sesame oil and oyster sauce. Done and Done.

What’s the diff between green beans and blanched green beans?

To blanch green beans drop them in oiling water for 2 minutes or so...then immediately drop them in ice water to stop cooking...it makes them crunchier and aids in flavor...my wife always did that when she stir fried them...she was a great cook

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
If you want to start simple,

Start with green beans. Hot oil. Add garlic and ginger. Add blanched green beans. Season with sesame oil and oyster sauce. Done and Done.

What’s the diff between green beans and blanched green beans?

Blanching means to boil the beans for just a couple of minutes, to start the cooking process and make them a little more tender, before you add them to the hot oil.

Drain them WELL before adding them to the oil!

Would you use green beans and blanched green beans in the same dish?

I’m taking up stir fry cooking as well due to a lack of any good restaurants nearby. I bought a book off Amazon by Grace Young called ‘Stir Fry to the Sky’s Edge’. She has some YouTube videos also if you don’t mind YouTube. People refer to Grace as queen of the Wok or something like that.

So what's a good wok?

My ancient one got so bad it was trashed.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
Would you use green beans and blanched green beans in the same dish?

Not really.

Blanching is a cooking technique. It's kinda like asking would you use BBQ'd pork and braised pork in the same dish. Sure, if the intention is to have two different textures of pork in the same dish.

Blanching is the process of boiling something very briefly, then immediately stopping the cooking process with ice or cold water. The benefit is that it yields a very vibrant colored vegetable that is is firm in texture, yet cooked all the way through. Has something to do with reducing the amount of trapped steam in the ruptured vegetable cells at the surface of the vegetable.

I get a pot of large pot of water, hopefully capable of holding all the vegetables plus 3 to 4 time their volume in water. I salt the water pretty heavily--anything up to and including the saltiness of sea water is ok. I get the water to a rolling boil, and drop my vegetable into the water--hopefully, there's enough water in your pot that the boiling is only disrupted briefly and the water comes back to a boil almost immediately. For something thin like a string bean or green bean, 2 or 3 minutes should be enough. You want the vegetable compliant enough to bend, but still provide a snap when broken.

I strain into a colander and immediately run cold water over the vegetables while tossing, to bring down the cooking temperature. If you are badass, you could dunk the colander in ice water to immediately stop the cooking, but I usually don't have the patience to wait for my ice maker to spit that kind of ice out. Icing does make for really bright green beans or asparagus, and I'll go through the trouble of icing something if I need something brightly colored for a sauce, soup or garnish.

Drain thoroughly before adding to hot oil. Water and oil is a splatter risk.

With a hot pan, you can give the vegetables a quick toss with aromatics (in this case, ginger and garlic) and sauces (oyster and sesame oil), and you should get bright green beans that aren't overcooked.

The traditional way is to stir fry in a wok over a large flame. The continual movement of the vegetable in a tumbling motion across the very hot, narrow bottom of the wok, disperses heat and steam up through the rest of the vegetables. Stir frying is basically steaming vegetables in their own vapors--that's why you don't really get a really nice crisp with a stir fry.

quote:

Originally posted by OKCGene:
So what's a good wok?

My ancient one got so bad it was trashed.

I'm of the opinion that good woks aren't suitable for standard kitchens.

Good woks have rounded bottoms,and shallow inclines around the bowl so that you can prop food up to one side, tip the wok to the other and cook something else (for instance, scrambling an egg on one side of the wok, to then later mix into your fried rice). The problem then, is that something that is wide and rounded needs a wide burner and ring to hold it up. Not really suited for home cooking.

For a while, I had a sweet 36" range with a huge middle burner and I used a steel wok. It was heavy, it rusted from time to time, and it work.

These days, I use a cheap aluminum wok pan with a non-stick coating from the Asian market. The Korean market seems to be a little more upscale. The aluminum is light, transfers heat through the bottom really fast, and the nonstick helps with keeping the food in motion. I don't have the room for a huge wok with a big spoon that I can toss with reckless abandon. So a lightweight aluminum pan that lets me flip food with a flick of the wrist is far preferable.

I'm not endorsing this particular wok, but I have something like this at home:

https://www.amazon.com/Non-Sti...non+stick+korean+wok

This pretty well covers what you're looking to do. If anything, you'll be more familiar with the techniques.