Dinner Lately…

I had just remembered a very convenient way of steaming food, i.e. wrapping in foil or parchment paper and cooking it in the oven.

I tried this technique with my Steamed Vegetarian Tuna recipe yesterday and it worked amazing, without the excess water that dripped from the wok cover. Another reason why this worked great for me is because I do not own a big wok that allows me to place a large place in for steaming, nor do I own a pair of the special tongs that you use to remove a steaming plate of food from the wok.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F degree.
2. Drizzle some white wine and soy sauce over and around fish. You could use fresh lemon juice or apple juice if you like. The liquid seasonings will create the steam inside the parchment pouch when the dish is baked.
3. Starting with the “point” of the paper heart, roll and crimp the edges until the fillets are totally encased and sealed in the “half-heart” shape.
4. Place the pouches on a cookie sheet and bake in the middle of the oven for about 20 minutes or until the pouches are puffy or had turned light brown in colour.
5. Remove from oven and place the pouches on a plate.
6. Using a pair of scissors, carefully cut an “X” in the center of the pouch, or cut an outline of the half-heart shape on the inside of the folded edges. Use extreme caution because the steam is very hot.

A friend of mine from a bridal forum would like to know more about Chinese cooking. I’m not an expert, but here’s some basic tips that I had shared with her, that I thought would be useful for some readers out there:

• Chinese cooking is like Taoism… yin & yang. That’s how you balance the flavours, salt & sugar, sweet & sour.
• In most stirfries with sauces, you thicken with a tablespoon of cornstarch mixed with 2-3 tablespoons of cold water, and add to the stirfry just before turning off the heat.
• The sequence of making stir fry is normally in this order, some exceptions may apply:
  1.  Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a hot wok.
  2. Add the underlying flavour (garlic / ginger / onion) into the wok.
  3. Add protein (meat or tofu). You can pre-cook the protein in a wook with some hot oil and then set aside if you don’t want to overcook it. Add the protein back into the wok after adding in the last pieces of vege.
  4. Add in hard vege, e.g. carrots, celery.
  5. Add softer vege, e.g. mushrooms (with the exception of enoki mushroom becuase too much heat will make it tough and stringy).
  6. Add water to help cook down the ingredients.
  7. Add sauce, e.g. oyster, black bean, soy.
  8. Balance the flavours, i.e. add sugar / salt / pepper / flavouring essence
  9. Thicken the sauce with cornstarch + cold water mixture just before turning off the heat.
  10. Remove from heat.

I do not own any Chinese cookbooks, I pretty much just follow my intuition