Ching-He Huang - Ching’s Chinese Food in Minutes

One of the most important tips I can offer in cooking is to choose the freshest ingredients possible. The secret to making a dish relies seventy percent on the freshness and quality of the ingredients and thirty percent on your skill. With practice and in time skill can be perfected, but the dish is only as good as the ingredients you start off with.

The best part of making room in your life for cooking Chinese is that it is quick and inexpensive to prepare a delicious healthy meal. The trick to cooking Chinese at home is to make sure you invest in a good range of Chinese condiments for your store cupboard—essentials such as groundnut oil, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, dried chilli flakes, Shaohsing rice wine (or dry sherry), toasted sesame oil, rice vinegar, chilli bean sauce, five-spice powder, Sichuan peppercorns and chilli sauce. Once you’ve bought these essentials it’s just a question of buying fresh meat or fish and vegetables and the all-important Chinese flavourings of garlic, ginger and fresh chillies to create some wonderful flavour combinations such as hot-sour, sweet-sour, spicy-sour, savoury-sweet, smoky-sweet and so on. This means that every shopping trip is relatively inexpensive as the condiments last for ages. If you don’t have access to a Chinese supermarket, do try to find the authentic ingredients—there are lots of stores online, which help make ordering easier—it is worth the effort because you will taste the difference in your dishes.

Cooking on a wok is fast and fun, and the results are fabulous—so, even if you are starting out, you cannot go wrong with cooking a stir-fry in a wok. Be sure to invest in a good wok; it doesn’t need to be expensive and, as long as you look after it, it should last for ages. With my kind of cooking, a good wok and a few utensils are all you need to get going. I’ve included tips on how to buy, look after and use a wok on pages xiii-xvi.

Of course, there are more intermediate and complex Chinese dishes but, in general, if you are short of time and money, cooking Chinese at home is the answer and it will be tastier, cheaper and much better for you than buying ready-made meals because you will know exactly what you have put into each dish.

My advice for everyone is to take your time and enjoy the process of cooking and sharing food with your loved ones—each dish you create may not last long on the plate (or palate) but happy memories will be created that will last forever. Don’t be a slave to time, it is there for you to cherish and use, in the present.

These recipes are what I like to cook at home and I have become quite reliant on some of them to keep me balanced. So I really hope you will enjoy cooking and eating them as much as I have enjoyed developing them. I would like to keep bringing delicious food to your table. Sometimes we forget what makes us happy—I hope that some of the dishes I have created will make you happy. With happy blessings and wishes,

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