Hot pot

Hot pot, and the less common Chinese fondue, refer to several East Asian varieties of stew, consisting of a simmering metal pot of stock at the dining table. While the hot pot is kept simmering, ingredients are placed into the pot and are cooked at the table. Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leafy vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, and seafood. The cooked food is usually eaten with a dipping sauce. In many areas, hot pot meals are often eaten in the winter.

The Chinese hot pot boasts a history of more than 1,000 years. While often called “Mongolian hot pot”, it is unclear if the dish actually originated in Mongolia. Mongol warriors had been known to cook with their helmets, which they used to boil food, but due to the complexity and specialization of the utensils and the method of eating, hot pot cooking is much better suited to a sedentary culture. A nomadic household will avoid such highly specialized tools to save volume and weight during migration. Both the preparation method and the required equipment are unknown in the cuisine of Mongolia of today.

Hot pot cooking seems to have spread to northern China during the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-906). In time, regional variations developed with different ingredients such as seafood. By Qing Dynasty, hot pot had become popular throughout most of China. Today in many modern homes, particularly in big cities, the traditional coal-heated hot pot has been replaced by electric, gas or electromagnetic cooker versions.

Because hot pot styles change so much from region, many different ingredients are used.

Dongpo Pork

Dongpo Pork (dong po rou) Hangzhou's trademark dish. To eat dongpo pork is to begin to understand the role of fat in making meat taste good.

The dish is named after revered Song Dynasty poet, artist and calligrapher Su Dongpo, who is supposed to have invented, or at least inspired it. The meat should be so tender that you can quite easily pry it away in small pieces with chopsticks. As it is made from a slab of pork belly, there is a lot of fat, but the lengthy cooking time (3-1/2 hours) results in fat sans much of its greasiness. Eat as little of the fat as you choose. The accompanying ginger and plainly cooked broccoli also help offset the fat. You will need at least four hours to make dongpo pork during which time it is simmered twice, braised, sautéd and steamed.

Method

　　Blanch the pork in a pot of boiling water. Throw out the water.
　　Put the pork back in the pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, and simmer for 30 minutes.
　　Heat a wok and add the sauce ingredients. Mix well and bring to a boil. Add the pork and cook each surface for a few minutes over a medium heat. Remove pork and drain well. Pour the remaining sauce into a small saucepan and set aside.

　　Clean and drain the wok. Heat the vegetable oil to a medium heat. Fry the pork on all sides until it is well browned, making sure the skin side is a little crispy.
　　Steep the tea leaves in hot water for a couple of minutes, remove and set aside. Place the pork in the pot of water again–topping up the water if necessary. Add the tea leaves and simmer for 30 minutes.

　　Place the spring onion stalks on the bottom of a steamer. Transfer pork to the steamer. Steam for 2 hours, turning the pork after 1 hour (because of the long steaming time, you may need to replenish the steamer water).
　　Add the broccoli to the steamer for the final 5 minutes of cooking time (boil it separately for 3 minutes if there is no room in the steamer.
　　Remove the pork to a serving dish and arrange the broccoli around it. Reheat sauce in the saucepan, adding and stirring in the thickening. Pour over pork and serve.
　　Garnish with the young ginger slivers, which are meant to be eaten

Tzung Tzu

Tzung Tzu

A very popular dish during the Dragon Boat festival is tzung tzu. This tasty dish consists of rice dumplings with meat, peanut, egg yolk, or other fillings wrapped in bamboo leaves. The tradition of tzung tzu is meant to remind us of the village fishermen scattering rice across the water of the Mi Low river in order to appease the river dragons so that they would not devour Chu Yuan.

During the Duanwu Festival, a glutinous rice pudding called zong zi is eaten to symbolize the rice offerings to Qu. Ingredients such as beans, lotus seeds, chestnuts, pork fat and the golden yolk of a salted duck egg are often added to the glutinous rice. The pudding is then wrapped with bamboo leaves, bound with a kind of raffia and boiled in salt water for hours.
In addition, there is also a festival called the Duan Wu or Dragon Boat Festival. If you ever visit China during the Dragon Boat Festival, you can't miss the nationwide custom of enjoying Zong Zi. You are sure to be impressed with the delicacy of this snack, and with the faint scent of the leaves imprinted on the skin of the dumplings.

I still remember making and enjoying Zong Zi as a child. Along with my brothers and sisters I hovered around the stove, begging to have a taste, unable to wait until they were cooked. We were very eager since the food was made only once a year on May 5th. But now it is quite different. The Chinese Zong Zi is not only made for the Duan Wu Festival. It is available at any time of the year. And local areas have developed their own styles and varieties of dumpling.

Spring rolls

Spring rolls

Spring roll is a traditional Chinese folk festival food. Popular all over China, Jiangnanand other places. In addition to civil society for their own consumption outside the home, commonly used in hospitality. Tang and Song dynasties after the date of beginning of spring there are fresh lettuce and custom. Cake loaded with lettuce to the plate, which is known as the spring plate. Originated from the Han Dynasty and the Six New Year's Day set of links to a certain extent. Therefore, the spring plate or disk, also known as Sim. Ming and Qing, the in, lettuce, the radish polygoni orientalis and food that could go, thus the entire activities referred to as "bite the spring." Said spring means to meet. Han Cui"Simin so on"

　　

   The main approach is cooked with baked dough roll wrapped round a thin, linear growth, and then under the float golden oil from. Su- can be meat, could be salty to sweet. Varieties have pork spring rolls, shepherd's purse spring roll, spring rolls, such as red bean paste. Spring rolls spring from the date of the ancient spring plate of food customs evolved. Began in the spring plate of the Jin Dynasty, the beginning of disk. There are five sites Xin Sheng meat dish of vegetables, such as small garlic, garlic, Allium, Brassica, coriander, etc., for consumption in the spring after five internal organs of the gas used. Tang, the contents of the spring plate has changed the contents of the spring plate more attractive. Yuan, "The Complete Works of home category will act" has been the emergence of fillings wrapped volume after the consumption of fried records. Similar records, the Ming Dynasty recipes "intended to left" also. To the Qing Dynasty, has emerged the name of spring rolls. The production of spring rolls, the general system to go through skin, transfer stuffing, packet stuffing, fried four process systems. Beforehand. In recent years, has been able to carry out mechanized production.

Dumpling

Chinese Dumpling Chinese dumplings or Jiaozi, with meat and vegetable fillings, is a traditional Chinese Food, which is essential during holidays in Northern China. Chinese are Masters in the Art of Making Dumplings. History The history of jiaozi dates back to ancient times, some 500-600 years ago. As the Spring Festival marks the start of a new year, people choose to eat jiaozi to connote their wishes for good fortune in the new year. China has been perfecting the art of dumpling making since the Sung dynasty. Fillings There is no set rule as to what makes dumping fillings. They can be anything from vegetables, meat to seafood. Whatever the fillings, the wrapping skill needs to be exquisite to make jiaozi look attractive. Shape and variety Chinese dumplings may be round or crescent-shaped, boiled or pan-fried. The filling may be sweet or savory; vegetarian or filled with meat and vegetables. Of course, all this variety can be confusing. As China is a country with a vast territory, there are great difference in various regions in ways of making jiaozi or even serving it. For example, dumplings wrappers are made with a rolling stick in most areas of Beijing and Hebei Provinces, whereas in some parts of Shanxi Province and inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, wrappers are hand- pressed. How to make Chinese dumplings? To make Chinese dumplings, first of all, chop the meat into pieces and mash them, then add salt, sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger, scallions, Chinese cabbage and MSG if you like. Mix thoroughly the ingredients; add two spoonful of water if necessary.

Tangyuan is the traditional food for the Lantern Festival or Yuanxiao Festival. The small dumpling balls are usually made of glutinous rice flour. We call these balls yuanxiao or tangyuan.

 Obviously, they get the name from the festival itself. Made of sticky rice flour filled with sweet stuffing and round in shape, it symbolizes family unity, completeness and happiness.










The fillings inside the dumplings or yuanxiao are either sweet or salty. Sweet fillings are made of sugar, Walnuts, sesame, osmanthus flowers, rose petals, sweetened tangerine peel, bean paste, or jujube paste. A single ingredient or any combination can be used as the filling. The salty variety is filled with minced meat, vegetables or a mixture.







The way to make yuanxiao also varied between northern and southern China. The usual method followed in southern provinces is to shape the dough of rice flour into balls, make a hole, insert the filling, then close the hole and smooth out the dumpling by rolling it between your hands. In North China, sweet or non-meat stuffing is the usual ingredient. The fillings are pressed into hardened cores, dipped lightly in water and rolled in a flat basket containing dry glutinous rice flour. A layer of the flour sticks to the filling, which is then again dipped in water and rolled a second time in the rice flour. And so it goes, like rolling a snowball, until the dumpling is the desired size

Beijing Duck
Beijing Roast Duck

Beijing Duck or Beijing Roast Duck

Beijing Roast duck is thought to be one of the most delicious dishes all over the world; most visitors coming to Beijing will never forget to have a try. Eating Peking duck is seen to be one of the two things you are absolutely supposed to do while in Beijing.

How roast duck was made?

Roasted duck than duck weight about 1/3, color is red, shiny bright, crisp skin and tender meat, delicious taste, place Jiao tender, fragrant. The general yield of about 2 kg weight, leaf blade into, with 108 pieces of qualified, while it is hot on the table, when the guest piece, the knife as quick as lightning, patches of skin, it is as the acme of perfection.
 

  How to eat it ?

" Beijing duck " eat a variety, the most suitable folders or in the hollow sesame eat in the lotus leaf cake, and according to personal preferences with appropriate condiments, such as onion, sweet sauce, garlic and other machine. Eating sweet, can add sugar to eat, can also according to different seasons, with cucumber and green radish to eat, to clear the mouth of greasy. Tablets had duck skeleton with cabbage or wax gourd soup, do not have the flavor. Cold duck roasted, bone cut into 0.6 cm wide, 4.5 cm long duck pieces, and then poured the sauce, as well as the dish on the table.