Right before my trip back to the States, I took a cooking class. The class was billed as a chance to learn about the ingredients and techniques of authentic Chinese cooking, so that you can duplicate the flavors of a good Chinese restaurant at home. Plus, the class included a guided tour of the Mong Kok wet market, which was something I needed very badly.It was a very small class so we were all able to get a lot of hands-on experience. Each student was given a face mask (because of the swine flu), along with a massive cutting board and a Chinese-style cleaver. It was my first experience using this kind of knife. At first it was kind of intimidating to use something that looks like a small ax. It seemed more suited to chopping wood and not ordinary kitchen tasks. But as I got used to it, I liked it. I found that the weight of a heavy blade helps a lot in cutting food into very tiny pieces. Plus, the big blade is handy for jobs like smashing garlic and pounding meat fillets, and it makes a handy scoop when transferring pieces from the cutting board.
But a traditional cleaver is not necessary to make authentic, restaurant-style Chinese food. What's really needed are two things, as follows:
First, you need a shelf full of vinegars, sauces, wines, powders, and pastes (as in the first photo), which are used to make the sauces and marinades for meat. I was familiar with many of these ingredients, but there were also plenty of surprises, like a bit of instant custard powder used in a meat marinade. We can thank the English for introducing that ingredient, as well as Worcestershire sauce, into Chinese cooking!
Second, you need a lot of cooking oil. I mean, liters of it. Because apparently just about everything that comes out of a Chinese restaurant kitchen is deep-fried in some way. Even the vegetables get a quick dip in hot oil before being combined with the meats and sauce. This was a big revelation to all of us. It must have shown on our faces because our instructor joked, "Bet you thought that Chinese cooking was healthy!"Here's one of our finished dishes, pork with a sweet-and-sour style sauce. All the recipes we learned can be adapted in a more healthful way, but now I understand why my version of this dish will never taste as wonderful as this one did.
After class, we went on the tour of the wet market, where our instructor pointed out where to find most of the ingredients we used in class. This stand has all kinds of pickles and sauces:
I also learned the best times to go shopping for seafood. It's entirely dependent on the clientele of the particular market. For example, a lot of senior citizens shop at the North Point market, so the freshest seafood arrives early in the morning. In Mong Kok, most of the business takes place when younger people get off of work and swing through the market to pick up things for dinner. So nothing new arrives until late in the afternoon.
Also learned this interesting little fact: At a market like this, chicken feet cost more than chicken breast fillets. Chinese people think that chicken breast is kind of bland, so you can buy bags of frozen breast meat far more cheaply than at the expat-type supermarkets. I also happen to think that chicken breast is really boring, but I'm not sure I'm ready to stock my freezer with chicken feet instead.
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