Wok Fusion Flavor

Millions of Muslims across China celebrated Eid al-Fitr Friday, the festival that signals the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan — a season of fasting and spiritual reflection.

Early Friday, Muslims of different ethnic groups in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, as well as in other Muslim-populated regions, donned festive costumes and swarmed mosques to hear imams preach.

Sumptuous foods have been prepared at Muslim homes celebrate the fast-breaking festival.

In Xinjiang, people can have a day off for Eid al-Fitr, and in Ningxia, the local government has decided to lengthen the public holiday from one day to two from this year, to enable Muslims to have more time to attend religious rituals and visit relatives.
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One of the great joys of travel within China is its eating opportunities, from ornate banquet halls to the street vendors all over the cities. Well, perhaps that was one of the joys. It turns out that as many as 1 in 10 meals in China is cooked with reused cooking oil. Perhaps “reused” is the polite term—oil collectors often salvage cooking oil from restaurant drains or even glean it from sewers, and then recycle it into cooking oil.

The shock over tainted food from China, which gave cable TV commentators in the US like Lou Dobbs plenty to screech about, caused not only a scare with China’s trading partners, but within the nation of 1.3 billion hungry people. Contaminated milk, high melamine content in food products, tainted vegetable protein, dumplings laced with pesticide, and beans with a side of isocarbophos have caused outrage among the Chinese as well. But in a country where fried bread (you tiao) is a cheap and popular breakfast food on the go, cooking oil from sewers has pushed many Chinese, albeit wealthier ones, to buy organic.
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American Institute for Cancer Research – Chao and Bao are stir-frying techniques that differ in the amount of heat used, the speed of cooking and how much the ingredients are tossed. The goal of both techniques is to brown the food quickly while preserving the nutritional value, color, texture and flavor of the individual ingredients. Chao is the more common technique for home cooking since Bao requires making the pan red-hot.

Canola oil is high in beneficial monounsaturated fatty acids, and with its light taste and high smoke point, it is ideal for stir-frying in a healthy way.

Soy sauce has been used for over 2000 years in Chinese cooking. Dark soy sauces are usually thicker and employ a single fermentation process, aging over a longer period than the lighter varieties. The flavor will come through, however, with any reduced-sodium soy sauce.
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Reuters reports Chinese police have detained three people suspected of selling milk powder tainted with melamine, state media said on Thursday, the industrial chemical involved in a massive toxic food scandal last year.

The three were detained in northwestern Shaanxi province on Dec. 2, before tainted goods reached stores, the official Xinhua news agency said.
It named the three as Liu Ping, general manager of Shaanxi Jinqiao Diary Company, and two of the firm’s employees and said they were detained for “the suspected crime of producing and selling toxic food.”
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Every six seconds a child on this planet dies of hunger.

We’ve had industrial revolutions in the west and more recently in China and South Asia; budding revolutions in “superjumbo” aircraft and plug-in electric cars; and Seinfeld episodes that can be downloaded onto cellphones worldwide.

Yet we remain trapped in some previous century in that most basic of necessities; keeping the world population fed. Remarkably, the facts today point to yet another global food shortage just a few years after the food crisis of 2007-08, which ended only when the Great Recession curbed a debilitating upward spiral in prices of basic staples like rice, corn and wheat worldwide. As the world economy recovers, the prospect of another global food crisis looms large.

The determining factors in famine are mostly man-made. They include civil war and political instability in many, if not most undernourished regions. Protectionism in affluent nations that removes the incentive for developing-world farmers to enhance crop yields in the hope of earning export revenue. A sharp decline in affluent-world donations of agricultural assistance to underfed countries. A growing scourge of crop failure related to global warming. And a ferocious debate between advocates of natural farming methods and those arguing for a new agricultural revolution based on genetically modified (GM) crops.

By David Olive. Read more about this story.

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HIS FIRST trip to China will include a tour of the Forbidden City and some banquets of great Chinese food, but President Barack Obama’s visit to Beijing is no ordinary jaunt to the ancient capital.

Mr Obama landed in Shanghai yesterday to start his four-day visit during which he will try to balance his efforts to underline strong Sino-US ties with the need to emphasise Washington’s global role in the face of growing Chinese economic muscle.

International efforts to fight climate change, the need to co-ordinate action on global trouble spots such as North Korea and Iran, and concern over the value of the Chinese currency will all feature on the agenda.

The Nobel Peace laureate will also address human rights issues such as freedom of worship, although the American leader will avoid confrontation in the lead-in to his China visit, probably the most strategically important stopping point on his nine-day Asian jaunt. Saving face is important here.

On issues such as Tibet, he will have to deal with an at-times unsophisticated approach. A government spokesman said Mr Obama should be especially sympathetic to China’s opposition to the Dalai Lama and Tibetan independence, because he is a black president who lauded Abraham Lincoln for helping abolish slavery.

“He is a black president, and he understands the slavery abolition movement and Lincoln’s major significance for that movement,” said foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

“Lincoln played an incomparable role in protecting the national unity and territorial integrity of the United States,” he said.

Tibet is sure to be a knotty issue over the talks. Beijing calls the Dalai Lama a dangerous “splittist”, encouraging Tibetan independence, a charge he denies, saying he merely wants more autonomy for the region.

by The Irish Times. Read more on this story.

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Not long ago, Tsoi Chun Bun made potato chips. Now he designs and sells millions of mobile phones a year.

He is one of hundreds of young entrepreneurs seeking overnight fortunes in Shenzhen Inc. — the Wild West of the mobile-phone industry. Phones made and designed by these Chinese vendors will account for about a third of the 1.1 billion cell phones that will be sold around the world this year.

Three decades ago, Shenzhen was China’s first city to experience market-oriented economic reform, unleashing anything-goes capitalism that has spread throughout the nominally capitalist country. And while China’s mobile-phone industry has spread beyond Shenzhen, the southern region remains a center of the mobile-phone ecosystem that inspires dreams of instant success.

“It is China’s version of the Gold Rush,” said Shanghai-based Ken Qing Wang, general manager of the China operations of Silicon Valley-based Telegent Systems, which supplies analog TV chips to the mobile-phone industry. “A lot of wealth has been generated.”
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1. Could we make all seasoning in marinades for our restaurant dishes? We intend to make marinade for each dish, and then do not add any spices while cooking.

Answer: First, we need to understand the differences between sauces, seasoning, and marinades. It would take time to explain the differences between them, and this cannot be answered in one short paragraph. We interpreted your question as the following, “Can we place all of our seasoning such as salt, sugar, hoisin sauce, soy sauce all together to make one big sauce, and then use that sauce for cooking”. If you want to make on sauce for a dish, then it is ok for your purpose, but the food would taste much better if you place the spices and seasonings as specific times during the cooking process; this would allow the food to absorb the into the food. If you look at our example recipes, it tells you to put the food and seasoning at specific time and / or stages of the cooking process.

2. We would like to use commercial deep fryer for deep frying. Is it common in professional cooking, or better it is to deep-fry in wok?

Answer: Yes, you may use a commercial fryer for deep frying. The concern of using a professional fryer is that it is easy to overcook the products since there is too much oil in the fryer, and this fryer will over consume the food product. You will need to learn how to control the use and manage the amount of frying being done. It can be managed if you use it properly. There are many sizes of commercial fryers and we have worked with fryers from 2 gallons to 5 gallon sizes.

3. What is the best way to make crispy cover for meat and to escape sticking the pieces to each other while deep frying?

Answer: Take the pieces of meat and light coat or dust them with a little corn starch just before deep frying. You must be carefully in not over cooking the meat pieces using a deep fryer.

4. When I stir fry they stick to the wok every time. Is there any secret when stir frying noodles?
Answer: First prepare the noodles. Soak the noodles in water in depending on the noodle type, and blanch the noodles in boiling water depend on the dish. Use a little more cooking oil in the edge (not center) of the wok when stir-frying in medium heat setting instead of a hot heat.
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CarterSinclair Org announced that Choy Sum Food Company has signed on as a Program Sponsor to support Cartersinclair outreach program, Spoon Feeding. It is a community-based outreach campaign that brings information about the seriousness of diabetes and the importance of a healthy lifestyle to the La Quinta community.

The Marketing officer will also tackle how to stay healthy and still enjoy Chinese food by planning ahead, choosing wisely and watching how much you eat. Choosing traditional food dishes that are high in fiber, vitamins and minerals, and low in fat. Choosing beans, peas, tofu, bean sprouts and dark green vegetables such as Chinese broccoli, choy sum, watercress, Chinese chives, Chinese yard-long beans and amaranth also known as Chinese spinach.

Also pointed out other Chinese vegetables that are rich in iron like Chinese mushroom, seaweed and black fungus. Go for the mung beans (green gram beans), yellow bean and black bean dishes for soup or desserts with artificial sweetener. Sweet potatoes are also high in fiber and very nutritious . Whole wheat and rye bread and cornbread are good sources of fiber and are good for everyone.

As the sponsor, Choy Sum will support Carter Sinclair Org’s mission to prevent the onset of diabetes within La Quinta community and help those who are already living with the disease. Support will emphasize importance
of diabetes information from the CarterSinclair Org, including information about making better food choices.
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1. Use White Flower Oil under the nostrils. We all know that hand washing helps to kill germs, but germs also enter through the nose. White flower oil is a mixture of lavender, eucalyptus, camphor and wintergreen oils and is used to stop the spread of germs and prevent colds and infections. White flower oil comes in small, easy-to-carry bottles and is sold at Chinese groceries. It’s also available at Oliver’s Market. In addition to dabbing a drop at each nostril, you can put some on your hands to kill germs. Use it any time you’re going to come into contact with a lot of people. Also, if you have a headache, you can apply a drop at each temple and at the back of the neck where the skull mets the top vertebra. This increases circulation and promotes healing.

2. Supplement a healthy diet with Emergen-C. This is easy to use and available at grocery stories everywhere. It comes in a variety of flavor packets and has good absorbable vitamins C and B, as well as zinc, all of which help boost the immune system during stressful times. Both children and adults can use this product. Of course, supplements work best when you’re getting proper nutrition in your diet, so remember to eat plenty of green, leafy vegetables and whole grains, and limit your sugar intake because bacteria loves sugar in the human body. Bacteria thrive on glucose.

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We hear about China all the time in the news. It has one of the richest and longest literary histories in the world. It’s a huge and changing country, and there are a million books out there to enjoy. In order to help us understand China, join the China Challenge!

The challenge will last a year and a day, from September 1, 2009-September 1, 2010.

Audio books are fine, as are books for all age levels. If you want ideas of things to read, just click on the “China” tag at the end of this post to see a bunch of my previous reviews of all sorts of books about China.

There are several levels to choose from:

Armchair Traveler:

Read 1 book about China. I’m defining this pretty loosely, but the majority of the action should take place in China. For the sake of ease, places such as Hong Kong, Macau, Tibet, and Taiwan count.

Fast Train to Shanghai:

Read 5 books about China

1 should be a translated work of fiction by a Chinese author (or not translated if you have the language skills.) I will make exceptions for Chinese authors that also write in English– their English works are fine.

1 should be nonfiction
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Facebook fans of Panda Express are furiously downloading coupons for free SweetFire™ Chicken Breast from this buffet, chain Chinese food restaurant.

Panda Express promises “all-white meat chicken, fresh red bell peppers, diced onions and juicy pineapples, wok-tossed to perfection in our zesty sweet chili sauce,” but abstains from advising that it is not part of their new “WOK SMART” dish, and rightly so, as indulging in Panda Express SweetFire Chicken Breast might not be such a good idea.

Panda Express clearly states that the SweetFire Chicken Breast is 440 calories and is based on a 2,000 calorie a day diet. Panda Express “WOK SMART” dishes all claim to be less than 250 calories per serving.

However, the serving size is 5.8oz and 5.8oz of Panda Express SweetFire Chicken Breast is a smidgen over one cup. I don’t know about you, but I eat way more than one cup of food, and if you’re hitting a buffet, more than likely, you’re going to get a plateful of extras, to not only fill the plate, but to get your money’s worth.
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Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen” by Marilyn Chin. The story is told in 41 tales that are, at turns, lyrical, ironical, fantastical and satirical. Then there are the gratuitously profane and vulgar parts, which can at best be described as provocative, and will surely challenge many a reader’s comfort zone. Its practical effect might be that the book would be embraced for college teaching but barred from the average high school English class.

It is too bad, since one wonders what a teenager would make of the characters’ hijinks and romps. The grandmother —- who does not appear to ever leave home without her cleaver —- visits the San Francisco mayor’s new water garden and kills the carp gifted by the Emperor Hirohito of Japan, because “Hirohito was a mass murderer and rapist and this pond was built with Chinese blood.” Moonie does Gung-fu (kung-fu) on unsuspecting boys. Mei Ling, the sexpot of the two, constantly throws herself at men, testing her powers and satisfying a desire that no respectable Chinese girl should dare admit. All the while, there is a huge dance around prepping, cooking, serving and delivering food to customers of Double Happiness, the restaurant owned by the grandmother. Throughout the novel, Moonie and Mei Long move inexorably toward fulfilling their Chinese immigrant destiny: both go to Ivy League colleges and become successful.
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Although it is something I really do not know a great deal about, I did some reading on soy and found the subject very interesting. I have had some people ask me about cooking with soy milk and other soy products.

I have to admit soy-based products have not always been among my favorite snacks. I do notice more soy products available today then in prior years. Stores carry everything from soy milk and soy-based drinks to even snacks made from soy. Soy really isn’t the next new craze. Reports state that use of soy milk was recorded on stone slabs as early as A.D. 25-220 in China. Now that is some really good record keeping.

Soy milk is produced by soaking dry soy beans in water and grinding them to get the milk consistency. I guess it is very easy to make at home if you have the proper equipment. Like anything else, if you can get it at the store, why not get it there? I wouldn’t buy a cow so I could get fresh milk. I do want to say that having a cow is not a bad thing. I just don’t have a place to keep a cow, and I could only imagine what it would cost me to buy cute clothes for it to wear.
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In the private dining room of a restaurant, chef Su Ning* sings a song from a new hymnal. Her face glows as she finds the melody, marking time by drumming her fingers on the table. Others around the table join her as she adds motions to the hymn, smiling as she remembers one gesture then falters at another.

Su and a group of friends pooled their money to print the hymnal, which will be distributed to house churches in China. The one she holds in her hand was one of the first off the press.

“We have not had a hymnal,” she says smiling. “All of the songs are written by Chinese. It’s very exciting to have our own praise songs.”

Like so many others, Su came to the city from a rural family of nine children to build a better life. Families are larger in rural areas since minority families often can legally have more than one child.

“I have six older siblings and two younger ones,” Su says. “We knew we needed to move to the city if we were going to succeed.”

Su’s interests lie in cooking. Since she was young, she has been in the kitchen learning to prepare new dishes.

“At first, my mother and my aunts let me cook only the greens,” she says. “I learned more as I got older.”

One of her older sisters moved to the provincial capital and became a believer. She began sharing her faith with Su, especially after she also had moved to the city.

“I didn’t like this Jesus,” Su recounts. “I told my sister her beliefs were not Chinese, that this religion was foreign and not good for us.”

She did notice, though, that her sister seemed much happier, and her personality was different — so much so that Su began to listen.
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In some ways, art can better express a people’s pain, suffering and aspirations than history books can. At the same time China’s communist regime was showcasing its power with a massive military parade in Beijing, an art exhibit of paintings and sculptures, illustrating the blood-and- tears history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s tyranny, was on display at the Rayburn House Office Building of the U.S. Congress.

Artwork by well known artists Haiyan, Chen Weiming, Tom Block, Yan Yukun, Bob Hieronimus, and Daxiong told the story of the CCP, as well as serving as an inspiration to all of us.

Wei Jingsheng, 59, is much more at home with words than with art. As one of China’s most renowned dissidents, Wei was incarcerated by the Chinese regime for nearly 18 years for advocating democracy, before he was finally released and exiled to the U.S. in 1997. His 1978 essay “The Fifth Modernization—Democracy” challenged the Communist Party’s new leadership’s stance that progress could be made without democracy.

Organized by the Wei Jingsheng Foundation and open on October 1 and 2, this art exhibit in the nation’s capital is a way for the proponents of human rights and democracy to observe the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China by condemning the crimes perpetrated by the CCP over the past 60 years. The major co-sponsors of the exhibit are the “Tear Down This Wall” Foundation, the Human Rights Painting Project of Amnesty International, and the Asia Democracy Alliance. Several other groups, including The Epoch Times, also supported the exhibit.

The concept behind the art exhibit and news conference, which were followed by a seminar the next day, was to include not only the Han Chinese ,who have suffered under 60 years of tyranny, but the minority groups who have also been victimized by the CCP since it took power by force in 1949. The Tibetans, Uyghurs, Inner Mongolians, Burmese, and Vietnamese were represented at the news conference and by the art depicted. (Dr. Quan Nguyen, representing Vietnam, was invited but was ill and could not attend.)
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Oct. 1 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. A mammoth birthday fete will include China’s largest ever military parade showcasing new weapons, and an Olympic-size gala. Efforts are even being made to improve the weather.

U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates just warned China’s growing military power “threatens our freedom of movement and narrows our strategic options.”

Translation: the U.S. Seventh Fleet can no longer operate with impunity off China’s coast. True enough. China is reasserting its historic sovereignty and will push U.S. power back into the Pacific.

I first went to China in 1975 during the madness of the Cultural Revolution. Over the ensuing three decades, I saw China transformed from a giant, dimly-lit prison camp into today’s booming nation, which just surpassed Japan to become the world’s second largest economy.

This is the most remarkable event I have seen in my life.

Much of the credit goes to China’s late leader, Deng Xiaoping, one of the 20th century’s greatest men.

He ended Marxist dogma, releasing the energy of his long-suffering people whose nation had been raped by western imperialism, then ravaged by brutal civil wars. Until 1800, China was a leading world power.
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Europeans are aggressively marketing their wine and cheese dining culture to China’s expanding middle class.

The following is not a full transcript; for full story, listen to audio.

BBC World Service correspondent Mukul Devichand traveled to Shanghai to explore the profound impact of new European foods to Chinese society, and found that the culinary market there is already crowded:

At a Chinese radio station, on-air personalities tout the virtues of pairing the proper wines with the proper cheese, eating pasta and enjoying a good cigar.

British, French and Portuguese foodies are pushing gastronomy and fine dining to a remarkable new class of Chinese citizens.

The problem is, parmesan, cheddar and brie are pretty alien to the Chinese palate. Despite over 3000 years of Chinese fine dining, it’s only from the 20th century that dairy products were really consumed in China — many there remain lactose intolerant.

The solution for European marketers is to educate Chinese consumers.
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The overwhelming majority of so-called Chinese restaurants in North America are derived specifically from Cantonese cooking. Dim sum is exclusively Cantonese. Of a culinary tradition that has evolved in diverse geological and cultural settings within China’s borders for over 5,000 years, what we are able to taste now is only an oily drop in a bucket.

Same story with the next most popular regional style, Shanghainese food. Shanghai is only one city on the East coast. Its cookings style, while bearing unique flourishes of its own, is a subset of Huaiyang cuisine, which developed in the area between the Huai and Yangtze rivers on the Eastern seaboard.
What it Should be

Chinese food is both highly scientific and pragmatic—food is food, so it should be judged on nutritional content and taste. The standard measure for a good dish is color, aroma, taste, and cut.

The five major regional styles of Chinese food are Sichuan cuisine, Huaiyang cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, Dongbei (Northeastern) cuisine, and Shandong cuisine. All styles adhere to the principles of yin-yang theory in their ingredient selection and preparation methods. In traditional Chinese medicinal manuals, the five colors and five aromas in food correspond to the health of five major bodily organs. Therefore eating certain foods aided the treatment of specific health problems.
Presentation is Secondary

The Chinese know how to cook and certainly know how to eat, so why is Chinese cuisine so lacking in critical acclaim?
Of Zagat Guide 2009′s top ten restaurants in New York City, six are French, three are contemporary American, and one is Japanese.

“There’s absolutely no Chinese [on the list],” said Lei Xi, producer of the upcoming 2009 New Tang Dynasty Television’s International Chinese Culinary Competition in New York. “Why is Japanese food regarded so highly? It’s because it is somehow matched with Westerners’ understanding of presentation. It’s got small portions, it’s delicate. That style of presentation matches the French high cuisine concept.”

In Chinese food, “presentation” and the cooking process is intimately linked. Take for example stir fries. “After stir fry, how the chef lands the food on the plate is an art in and of itself,” said Xi. “Sometimes they literally throw it. Once it lands on the plate, you can’t touch it. You can’t do what a French chef would do—tweak it or top it with a mint leaf. It has to be eaten right then and there.”

By Christine Lin. Read more on this article.

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Police here have detained a former employee of a Coca-Cola bottling plant, whom they accused of corruption and bribery.

The detention of the employee from the Shanghai Shen-Mei Beverage and Food Company, a bottling plant partly owned by Coca-Cola, was reported over the weekend by China’s state-run news media, which said the employee took about $1.5 million in bribes.

A spokesman for Coca-Cola, Kenth Kaerhoeg, confirmed on Sunday that a female middle manager at the plant was detained by Shanghai police this year and then dismissed by the bottling company.

Mr. Kaerhoeg declined to give further details about the case, but he said Coca-Cola was cooperating with the investigation.

Calls to Shen-Mei, in which Coca-Cola has a minority stake, went unanswered on Sunday and Shanghai police officials could not be reached for comment.

The detention is the second prominent bribery case this year involving a global company operating in China.
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