Chinese cuisine from other national cuisines differs in that it blends with the preparation of meals according to recipes treatment Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Forget the chicken and kung-pao Shui-cha-Rou in street cafeterias Central European, Chinese cuisine is about something else. Chinese cuisine is unique in that it is (like TCM) controls the Taoist theorem. Chinese food is not only the fullness, but also to maintain health and protect against specific diseases. The difficult art of cooking at the right time of authentic Chinese food here not learn - because even the Chinese and Vietnamese operating in central Europe about its restaurants often have a poor awareness. But you'll learn enough to make you an expert on Chinese cuisine was 99 Czechs% Central Europeans, and others. For long learning the difficult art would moreover not incompatible with bluférskou honor ...
At the outset
Chinese cuisine uses hundreds of ingredients, many of which come to us rather longer in the domain of medicinal plants. Chinese cuisine has a lot further regional variations that are difficult to capture in a single comprehensive culinary system. South China cuisine is approaching Vietnamese and Thai, North China is approaching the Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese cuisine reflects the East Mongolian and Central Asian element. When cooking Chinese dishes we know the theory of yin (陰) and yang (陽), to which is added the theory of five elements (五行, at Sing), cooking with the seasons and cook according to TCM. TCM raw materials are in Chinese cuisine is commonly used instead of the usual soup of vegetables and spices.
Bluféři feigning knowledge of Chinese cuisine have with us a huge advantage: Ačkolvmiv "China" we all know, the real Chinese cuisine knows almost no one. This greatly facilitates the creation bluférské facade. Although we are concerned only about the facade, we must realize that we imitate the practical arts, so we can not avoid real cooking. We will have to practically cook and serve real Chinese recipes and using up the actual Chinese materials whose choice is reduced to a minimum representative. Our façade will include a minimum of bluférské each point following the syllabus:
- Chinese raw materials
- Cooking by the yin and yang
- Cooking by 5 elements
- Cooking with the seasons
- Practical cooking specific recipes
- Chinese vegan cuisine
- Chinese regional cuisine
- Small details to smooth overall impression
After studying this článečku you take on each of these points basic awareness. You also have to learn to manage a few details and actual Chinese recipes, which convince cursory observer of the depth of their knowledge.
Warning
Before you start testing practical recipes, you must realize that the true knowledge of Chinese cuisine, this text will not get. Your success will be based on the rules of bluffing, which include the principle not to look surprised and never over all scoff. Right off the bat you have to curl one's nose at the usual repertoire of Chinese restaurants in the Czech Republic and the Czech say "China" has a real Chinese cuisine has little in common. (But be careful! Good "China" must know how to cook!) You say that even the Chinese, who in the Czech Republic wants to open a Chinese restaurant right will eventually have to adapt to the commercial expectations of the average consumer and real Chinese food, not cook. This early on to avoid comparing your creations with meals at a Vietnamese restaurant on the corner nearest the street. Instead of competition, with street eateries to learn how to cook Chinese breakfast and a small amount of exotic impression of recipes that will give the situation for specialties of regional Chinese cuisines.
1. Chinese raw materials
Blufér in practical sectors without ingredients completely in the lurch. As charlatans need a crystal ball, bat wings and a bottle issued for snake blood, and you have to have in the kitchen, a small number of authentic ingredients, whose vzájemým combining to create the impression of professionalism. They have to be flavorful ingredients typically suited to many dishes, acting strangely almost exotic, and if possible to come by. There is a short list:
- whole grain rice
- thick soy sauce
- ginger grated on strings
- ground peanuts
- fruit of Chinese wolfberry (goji)
- cicimku fruits Date Fruit (jujube)
- shiitake
- Judas ear
- lotus seed
- lotus starch
- star anise
- fresh coriander
These additives must know and be available. These are easy to store items besides fresh coriander, which must grow. Next, you need to know where to shop around tofu, soy milk and vegan soy products (soy burgers etc. - they will imitate professional Chinese soy products). You must know Ginseng and Reishi mushroom shiny, but you do not have to have, especially if you get deeper into your pockets. Reishi is one of symolů Chinese culture and culinary terms is in the realm of fungal what ginseng in the plant kingdom.
1.1 wholemeal rice
It would be correct to say rice because the Chinese use for cooking so. Sticky rice, which is good gathering chopsticks. I will not bother differences between glutinous rice and basmati rice. Instead, buy the brown rice, which easily identified by their yellowish color. Diners say they use it because it is tastier and healthier than ordinary rice. In the role of sticky rice Use any white rice you have available. Some recipes also call for black, more purple rice. (Not to be confused with rice fermented fungus Monascus purpuraeus, which in small amounts is added to the Chinese food to reduce cholesterol in the EU is prohibited.)
1.2 thick soy sauce
Our soy sauces are thin and salty. Thin soy sauce in Chinese cuisine has its uses - dipped into it, such as Chinese meat raviolis (水饺, Shui Chi AO), but they will not cook as bluféři. We need a thick, sweet sauce that is added to many dishes. Thick soy sauces there are many kinds. Some are dark, some bright, easily seating in Chinese or Vietnamese shop. Buy light (ie. With light brown) moderately thick sweet soy sauce and when they have, and dark (blackish) thick soy sauce, prefer bigger packages (about 200 ml).
1.3 ginger grated on strings
Fresh young ginger can easily get in the refrigerator and will last up to a month. (Attention, hates too low temperatures!) Before using it we must fundamentally grated on strings grater correct size. It's about perception. Ginger Czechs know, but ginger grated on strings served with meals of meat and tofu already acting exotic.
1.4 Minced peanuts
Prepare easily by grinding roasted peanuts at the mill nuts. Again, this impression: Peanuts and chicken kung-pao Czechs know, ground peanuts as an annex for meat and sweet dishes already operates abnormally. This way inexpensively creating the exotic feel of conventional materials.
1.5 The fruit of Chinese wolfberry (goji)
Wolfberry can add almost anything and is absolutely indispensable if we want to pretend that we know how to cook by the principles of yin and yang. Again on the impression, so buy a good quality Large fruited varieties that diners will provide the correct sensory experience.
1.6 Cicimku Fruits Date Fruit (jujube)
I jujube are important in pretending that you know how to cook by the principles of yin and yang. They are used as a sweetener "hot" (yang) of raw materials, which do not mix with cold (yin), sugar and honey. They will replace prunes, but they do not cause an exotic impression. It is best to combine jujube with a small amount (1-2) prunes.
1.7 shiitake
Shiitake is very typical of Chinese cuisine and is sold almost everywhere. Because of the impression we will essentially be sliced in order to identify food. That our wild mushrooms are tastier than houževnatec not comment.
1.8 Judas ear
Again, very typical and readily available raw materials. Chinese alloweth gelatinous materials tasteless and wood ears is one of them.
1.9 The lotus seed
Very healthy and in our unusual material, which when dry long lasting. TCM considers it as a drug.
1.10 lotus starch
Use instead of potato starch puddings not only, but also to "Chinese" and Chinese soups. It is prepared from lotus subway and is very healthy. Fresh lotus podzemek would have been even better, but it is not easy to come by. Diners for its use must tell (the food is not easily discern).
1.11 Star anise
Available but rarely used spices typical of some Chinese dishes. Its use (eg. Soups) turn up factor exotic.
1.12 Fresh coriander
Coriander leaves for most people podstatně tastier than parsley or zelerová leaves. It must be planted in the garden or in a house in a sufficiently large crate.
2. Cooked by yin and yang
Yin and yang are the two principles of Chinese philosophy - darkness and light, cold and heat, 0 and 1, female and male. Yin and yang is the only thing we will from across the Taoist theories need to rest for declaring obsolete and unnecessarily complex. We say that the theory of yin and yang is also unscientific, but in Chinese cuisine too widespread, than to be ignored. Yin foods are "cold", while yang foods are "cooked". It has nothing to do with their physical temperature. The Chinese have an entire table yin and yang ingredients. Bluféři as a complete learning tables avoided, we make do with general rules and a few tweaks that we learn by heart. General rules are:
- Salt is warm, sugar, cold
- Meat is generally warmer, colder sweets
- Grain products are mostly neutral
List of yin / yang of cool things to learn is:
- Red beans are warm, green beans are cool
- Oranges are warm, cold lemons
- chili peppers are hot, cold green peppers
- melon is warm, red watermelon cold
- yellow pumpkins are warm, green squash (zucchini, cucumbers, bitter balsam apple) Cold
- peaches are warm, cold apricots
- Fish are generally warm, frogs, clams and the cold
- Shrimp are warm, the cold crabs
- hard cheese is warm, soft cheeses and yogurts cold
- Goose eggs are warm, cold duck, quail neutral
- yolk of chicken egg is neutral, cold white
- Cabbage is warm, Chinese cabbage cold
- Apples are warm, cold pears
- sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) are warm, plain potato (Solanum) cold
- Ginseng is warm, ginseng American cold
- lotus flower is warm, cold podzemek lotus, lotus seed neutral
- plums and jujube are warm, cold bananas
- ginger and cinnamon are warm, cold honey
Generally, yin foods are to be eaten in the summer, while yang foods should be eaten in winter (very intuitive). Furthermore, the yin and yang of raw materials are not just mixed. For example, when we make ginger and ginseng tea, there can add cinnamon, but we should harmonize cold with sugar or honey - better use of jujube or plums, which are warm. (If you want to reconcile with honey ginseng tea, tell diners that a cold American ginseng, do not recognize it.) Mixing yin and yang ingredients, of course, sometimes unavoidable. In this case, we have to add something to the mix to balance yin and yang, which we will use goji berries. Goji fits into almost all meals. According to the previous example, we can make tea with ginger, cinnamon and honey, when there's an extra add a few grams of goji berries.
If anyone asks you for something you know, such as "What is the onion?", Avoid explicit answers of the "Onion hot / cold." You have to give fast response fictional type "Onions are cold, but the leek is warm", or "Red Onion is a warm, green is cool," or "finely chopped onion is neutral." The answer must be that you could have on her / and take when confronted with reality (onion is actually hot). For less common raw materials (meat, fruit, vegetables, mushrooms), you can say, "I'm not sure / a, so I do not have deep knowledge, but to balance yin and yang, I added there / and goji."
If you get into a conflict, eg. If someone claimed that chicken is yang, while you just said / and the white meat is yin, so spooked: There are many versions of spreadsheets yin and yang foods, and each says something different. You can say, yes, I saw / I and the online tables by which the chicken yang, but according to popular tradition in China is a white chicken jin, so I at least told my friend from Taiwan who taught me to cook this dish. (Note that in the case of detailed questions to one friend, you must be able to confidently fabulovat.) Or you can answer yes, you're right, really dark meat chickens at home breeding is slightly yang, but the white broiler meat from factory farms is yin. For completeness, remember that the Chinese theory considers meat black animals for meat from animals better than pale and white. Pork from black pig meat is more valuable than a plain white pigs. This also applies to goats, sheep and other animals consumer. For the most valuable chicken in Chinese cuisine construed so. Chicken with black bones (烏骨雞, U-ku-ti, chicken breed silk black). These hens are black from beak to claws on their feet and have a black bones. When you meat black silk manage to find, be sure to use in chicken broth with lingzhi mushroom or other TCM ingredients and proper story for the guests.
Apology: Before you crucify me for contempt to the Chinese tradition, remember that in Taoism believe, and therefore I am in terms of TCM dissenters .
Cooking third by 5 elements
You ignore. You say that the five elements is unscientific and that cooking them is not a matter of history. For completeness, you could say that five elements of fire, water, earth, metal and wood, which the kitchen is from 5 flavors (salty, sweet, sour, bitter and hot) and it is a difficult doctrine of which have a lot of know, but even to her you do not want to express.
4th Cooking with the seasons
You need only know that in the winter you consume foods yang character, while in summer it is cooked meal jin. You will learn two summer and two winter soup soup, the soup one spring and one fall soup and ingredients will vary according to the needs. You will say that spring soups are basically yin soup with spring and autumn soup ingredients are essentially yang soup with autumn ingredients, in this sense, you can comment and famous spring rolls, Vietnamese restaurants.
5. Practical Cooking specific recipes
Because you pretend knowledge of practical art, you have to learn virtually certain minimum amount typically Chinese recipes, with which people in ordinary Czech Chinese restaurants meet. (Some of the recipes cooked and shot my friend from online stores ariadne.cz ) recipes, learn to cook properly, but note that some of them will not taste diners. In this case, you must insist that this is an authentic Chinese flavor, to which we have become accustomed boarders.
- A Chinese breakfast with traditional ingredients
- A Chinese breakfast with us using available materials
- Chinese rice porridge White
- Chinese rice porridge dessert
- Chinese rice porridge festive (congee)
- Spicy papaya salad from green
- Chicken soup with ginseng
- Chinese rice dumplings Jong-dz
- Dessert soup rosolovky řasotvaré and TCM raw materials
- Chicken soup with Chinese angelica and TCM herbs
- Soup of pork bones with bitter balsam apple
The list of recipes optimized to create bluférské facade and is currently editing the letters. The attention in the event of interest also suggest Job's Tears (Coix lacrima-jobi), unusual cereals used in TCM, which in culinary treatment demonstrates a strange lady from TCM Bohemia.
6. People Vegan Cooking
Chinese cuisine, unlike ours vegan cooking a real tradition. China is also homeland tofu, so you have to learn to know the basic types of Chinese tofu. In China and Taiwan, there is a huge amount of vegan ingredients derived from tofu. They are of different shape and consistency, and most require seasoning thick soy sauce. You can also make a complaint that Chinese restaurant Czech behave consumerist and cook the meat itself and that no vegan cooking Chinese cuisine can not be imagined.
These types of tofu with us you can buy a hard time, so be content with a combination of soy milk (basically unflavoured) + white + tofu tofu + smoked soy burger stiffer consistency. Of these you can combine vegan dishes. An easy recipe is 'China' with smoked tofu (tofu smoked sliced + red and yellow pepper + Judas ear lotus seed + + + thick soy sauce a little on the strings grated ginger).
7. an understanding of regional dishes
- Salad of green papaya is very versatile dish that can if necessary pass for South China, Szechuan, Taiwanese, Thai hainanskou or regional specialty.
- Kung pao chicken with excessive amounts of chilli peppers can be issued for the southern Chinese or Sichuan specialty.
- Boiled octopus or squid with coriander, ginger and soy sauce thick you can declare Taiwan's regional specialty.
- Give modestly that regional variation is a huge number and you do not know how it all
8. Minor details to smooth overall impression
- You will use bold (not lean) meat (preferably mutton) and notify diners that the Chinese prefer fatty foods. Mutton fat as you prefer declare Manchu / North China / Mongolia specialty. (See also the soup of pork bones with bitter balsam apple (vertebrae pork, pork and bacon cut into large cubes, grated ginger to strings).)
- Bring to the table 100C soup and notify boarders, it is customary to serve Chinese soup very hot and that you have to be careful and blow. For a better effect on the surface of the soup swim a continuous layer of fat to slowly waned.
- On the table you drink cups lukewarm water with warmer, diners say that Chinese cuisine is fundamentally drinking lukewarm water, cold is considered too yin.
- Serve Chinese food as possible with hůlkama and Chinese-style table setting (described in the instructions for Chinese breakfast ). If you do not have a wand, on the contrary, you can say chopsticks in China represent a saving measures (easier to produce and wash if Do not discard), while in the Czech Republic it's just pointless snobbery.
- But even if you do not use chopsticks, you must observe the rule that all the food on your plate should be pre-chopped into pieces that are easy to eat
- When someone says "sponge Reise", note that it is not correct that the Chinese fungus called Japanese name. You can call her Chinese name ling-chi (靈芝), but why use foreign names, though its Czech name is lingzhi mushroom .
- When someone houževnatci edible says "Shiitake", note that in Chinese cuisine, he says Sian-ku (香菇), literally "fragrant mushroom."
- We assume that you know how to cook chicken or pork so. "China". If not, you'll learn that someone not caught on such evidence. Doing so will use its battery authentic Chinese ingredients, especially shiitake and thick soy sauce to emphasize the Chinese character can add chestnuts and wolfberry to balance yin and yang. Cooking "China" must comment in the sense that traditional Chinese cuisine is not everyday food, but festive, and that there is only one facet of the dozens of Chinese cooking, the Czechs picked up and repeated it over and over again.