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It never ceases to amaze me how, in even the tiniest little towns on the outer edges of nowhere, you can still find a little Chinese restaurant dishing out soy-sauce-drenched fried rice, sticky General Gau’s chicken, fluorescent yellow egg drop soup. So unless you’ve been living in a cave your whole life, you’ve no doubt encountered enough Chinese cuisine – or at least its Westernized bastardizations – that the foundations of its flavors don’t seem so terribly exotic to the palate. Soy sauce, ginger, scallions and rice … these may already play a role in your cooking. But there’s a lot more to Chinese cooking than those familiar fundamentals. If you’re looking to expand your skills beyond the same old soy sauced stir-fry medley, you’ll need to get your kitchen stocked with some of these goodies … the basic pantry 1. soy sauce | Soy sauce is a staple of Chinese cooking. Made
from a fermented mixture of soy beans, flour and water, the richness and
saltiness of soy sauce varies considerably from one brand to the next
– an important factor to keep in mind when you’re following recipes.
In general, I prefer Japanese soy sauces, which seem to have a smoother
flavor to me than Chinese brands … the organic San-J brand tamari is a
favorite. ---------------------------> lounge . nourish . host . laze . home. |