Why the Chinese Don't Count Calories (15 page)

Steaming

Mastering the art of stir-frying will greatly enhance your culinary repertoire, but do also keep coming back to the issue of balance, and experiment with other new ways of cooking. Steaming is a great way to prepare moist and nutritious dishes. Fish is particularly suited to steaming, as are root vegetables, including sweet potatoes and the nutritious yam known as
shan yao
(‘mountain medicine’). In China, steamed aubergines are mashed with garlic and sesame to make a pungent dip reminiscent of the Middle Eastern
babaganoush
; steamed pumpkin is drizzled with garlickly oil; tofu pieces are stuffed with slivers of bamboo shoots and Shitake mushroom, then steamed until the flavours merge. Most modern Chinese kitchens now boast a rice cooker and, in another example of how Chinese cooking is
sheng
shi
, many Chinese cooks place vegetables, morsels of meat or Chinese sausage on top of the rice, to steam while it cooks and flavour the rice at the same time. This can be done either on a special steaming basket or by opening the cooker part way through cooking and placing the ingredient directly on the rice.

Plunging

Another very simple but delicious way of eating that is popular throughout China, though with regional variations, is the hot-pot, whereby slivers of meat or fish, slices of beancurd and a plethora of vegetables are plunged into boiling stock or water, removed with chopsticks and then dipped into one of several accompaniments. A particularly sociable way of eating, it is also easy to prepare at home. The Beijing favourite is a combination of wafer-thin lamb, cabbage, cellophane noodles and beancurd, with a spicy sesame paste dip. But you can prepare any combination of ingredients that you enjoy.

Stewing and braising

In rural areas, stews and braised dishes simmer on wood or coal-fired stoves, the same ones that are used in winter to heat the water for the household. Specially designed pans fit onto the burners so that no heat escapes and food can be cooked using a minimum amount of fuel, creating dishes that are low in oil and high in nutrients. City dwellers in their modern apartments have become accustomed to their single gas ring, but the traditional importance of the stove in Chinese culture is illustrated by the fact that the kitchen god is said to reside within it.

Very few of the rich repertoire of Chinese stews have ever made it to the West. When meat is stewed in China it is almost always left on the bone for maximum flavour and nutrition, and Western diners often find this off-putting. Stews are usually made in sand-pots, traditional earthenware bowls, glazed on the outside but with a creamy, unglazed texture on the inside. Porous and heat-retardant, they add a delicate flavour of past meals to every stew. And each new dish is packed full of esoteric ingredients, from cellophane noodles to mushrooms and fungus and from dried beancurd to lotus root and seeds. They also feature pungent spices including variations on the famous ‘five-spice’,8 which, contrary to what is often taught in the West is a seasoning used for marinades and stews, not for stir-frying. Ingredients such as star anise, cinnamon, hawthorn, orange peel, red dates and wolfberries (known in

Beef and potato stew

Tu dou dun niu rou

This simple stew is packed full of health-giving ingredients yet is incredibly simple to make. If you cannot find all the spices listed just use the ones that you have. In the north of China people sometimes add dried chillies or Sichuan peppercorns too.

500 g/1 lb/3 cups diced stewing beef
(the more sinew the better)
splash of Chinese cooking wine
1 spring onion, cut into four or five lengths
2 cm/1 in piece ginger, crushed
6 slices dried red hawthorn
6 slices dried orange peel
3 pieces of star anise
1 stick cinnamon
1 bay leaf
2 tbsp soy sauce
½ tsp salt (or to taste)
1 potato, peeled and cubed
1 carrot, peeled and cubed

Put the beef into a saucepan or casserole pot. Cover with cold water and add a splash of cooking wine. Bring the water to the boil and skim off any scum that collects on the surface. If you cannot get rid of all the scum you can change the water.

Add the spices (but not the salt and the soy sauce) and turn the heat down to a simmer for half an hour. Then add the soy sauce and simmer for another hour. Finally add the salt, potato and carrot, and simmer for a further half hour until the vegetables are cooked.

China as
gou qi zi
and sold in the West as
goji
or
gouji
berries) are all commonly used to make the meat in Chinese stews immensely flavoursome and either to help make it tender and easy to digest, or greatly enhance the nutrient value of the mix.

The British equivalent of a stove is of course an Aga but if you do not have a farmhouse kitchen, a slow or pressure cooker will help you prepare simmered dishes in a Western context. The good old-fashioned stew has slipped from favour in recent years, as richer, more visually appealing dishes have reached our tables. But you can add interest to your pot with Asian spices and give stew another lease of life, especially if you present it as just one element of an interesting meal. The preparation is minimal: just chop up your ingredients, put them in the pot, cover with liquid and bring to the boil.

Braising involves frying or sautéing before simmering, so is more
yang
than stewing. This may be why it is favoured for vegetable dishes. Cabbage, bamboo shoots, Shitake mushrooms, aubergine and potato all braise very successfully Chinese style. The Chinese way tends to be to braise one main vegetable at a time, an approach that has many advantages. I love to braise red and yellow peppers with cumin and paprika, or beetroot with chilli and coconut. If you want to braise a mixture of vegetables, perhaps with Indian seasonings, then you may have to check cooking times to ensure that some do not become mushy before the others are cooked through.

Yin
and
yang
– a truly balanced diet

The multi-dish,
cai
and
fan
approach of Chinese cooking is ultimately flexible and can make for quick and easy eating. The various cooking methods can all be carried out in a basic kitchen with a handful of utensils. A stew or steamed dish can be in the process of cooking, usually in the dish in which it will be served, while the chef concentrates on the other dishes, one at a time. There is never any pressure to bring everything together at the last moment as dishes can be put on the table in any order. If you are often overwhelmed by multiple gadgets, pots and serving vessels, or find yourself constantly referring to recipe books while keeping one eye on the timer and frantically stirring a sauce, consider taking a more Chinese approach in your kitchen.

seven
Balance the flavours

‘I consider that the mouth and the stomach do more harm than good. It was a mistake for nature to endow us with them. ’

LI YU (1611–1680)

The seventeenth-century poet Li Yu warned his public about the risk of listening only to the preferences of the mouth and stomach, and not the rest of the body. He suggests that ‘since we are stuck with our mouth and stomach we will have them serve our purposes instead of serving them. ’

I spent many an hour huddled in an overcoat sipping green tea in a dingy lecture room at the Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine before I fully understood the meaning of Li Yu’s quote. My interest was first piqued at the close of one particular cooking class, which had been attended by a number of large ladies who all professed to eat like mice and had just signed up for a rigorous programme with a personal trainer. After they had left, Xiao Ding commented in a matter-of-fact manner that the reason so many Westerners have weight problems is that they eat too many sweet foods. I was surprised, as I had never previously heard her make the connection between overconsumption of any type of food and weight gain. Why, I wondered, should sweet foods be an issue when calories are not?

The seventh secret of the Chinese diet is that it features five flavours that each need to be incorporated into every meal, whenever possible. According to Chinese dietary therapy, which is a branch of traditional Chinese medicine, each of the five flavours of foods has a different function, and the function of ‘sweet’ foods is related to the mouth and stomach, which is why we should not eat too many of them. Of course, we all know that if we put too much in our mouths, it ends up round our stomach, especially if we indulge our preferences, started in childhood, for sweets and treats. But Chinese dietary therapy defines ‘sweet’ very differently from the way we do in the West.

The meaning of ‘sweet’

There are many ‘sweet’ foods found in nature: honey is obviously sweet, but so are carrots, sweetcorn, figs and watermelon. In theory it would be difficult to overload on these foods. The modern diet tricks nature with sugar-loaded sweets, puddings, cakes and biscuits, and we are all aware of the dangers of eating too many of these foods. But many people following restrictive slimming diets that cut out these obvious ‘baddies’ still find themselves unable to shift their excess weight. This is, according to Chinese dietary therapy, because their diet is still not balanced in terms of the five flavours. Instead, it is largely made up of rather bland foods, which in the absence of any more obvious flavour, and because of the way they are seen to affect the body, are also regarded as ‘sweet’.

The first step to appreciating the teachings of traditional Chinese medicine is to understand that it does not consider the body as an anatomical entity but as a series of energy centres. According to theTaoist concept,which has helped man work in harmony with nature for thousands of years, the world is made up of five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. These have a complex interdependence and are everywhere and in everything, including the human body, where they manifest themselves in the energy centres or organs. There are five pairings of organs:the spleen/stomach,the liver/gall-bladder, the heart/small intestine, the lungs/large intestine and the kidney/bladder. These should be distinguished from their counterparts in Western biological science because, while parallels can be drawn, they work in a much more holistic way and are endowed with many attributes and functions that Western science does not recognize. One of these is that they are linked to five orifices: the liver is linked to the eye, the heart to the tongue, the lung to the nose, the kidney to the ear. Not surprisingly, the stomach/spleen is linked to the mouth – and here lies the basis for Li Yu’s opinion.

According to Chinese dietary therapy, and the Five Elements scheme of things, there are five flavours of foods: sweet, sour, salty, pungent and bitter and each one ‘enters’ one of the five pairs of organs. Thus the sweet flavour enters the spleen/stomach. The sour flavour finds its way into the liver/gall-bladder, the bitter enters the heart/small intestine, the pungent enters the lung/large intestine and the salty flavour enters the kidney/bladder. While the right amount of a flavour tones and benefits an organ, too much will damage it and hinder it from performing its functions.