Comments on: Tastes Like Home

By: Joe Coxall

Joe Coxall — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:40:53 +0000

Cynthia,
Here’s another one. It is called steamed chicken with GUNG CHOO. Again I am useing the phonetic spelling since many chinese words spell differently to the way they are pronounced in english. Do I know the right spelling? NO. So do some more research on that.
So here we go again.
In China town they steam the chicken whole but I like to steam about four legs which fits easily in my steamer.

When I was in Guyana I can remember that poultry and meat took quite some boiling to soften. Not here in the USA. You can cook just about every meat without the use of a pressure cooker. So you will need to experiment with your cooking time.
Making the GUNG CHOO.

Chop up some scallions (Spring onions) and ginger into a fine paste. (use more ginger than scallions). Do not use your blender or you will end up with a slimy paste. Add this paste into a small bowl of cooking oil or olive oil,

Add salt to taste.

STEAMING THE CHICKEN.

Salt your chicken legs generously and place in your steamer.
steam under very slow heat until tender. You can test by sticking a fork down to the bone. You should see water oozing out instead of blood.

When done your chicken should look the same as before. If it changes to a grey boiled look then you are useing too much heat.

Chop up your legs into angled slices. Drizzle with gung choo and serve with steamed rice and steamed vegetables.

Use the steamed water to steam your rice or add some scallions and use as a light soup.

Enjoy.

Joe.

By: Joe Coxall

Joe Coxall — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:25:49 +0000

Cynthia, You did right by seperating the various layers of the noodles (I forgot to mention that step) Also you mentioned the use of ginger, which is an essential spice in chinese cooking. From the picture I get the impression that the noodles came out somewhat stiff. It should be “limp” A rule of thumb is to hold one of the squares at the edge, if it remains straight then it is over cooked. Here again the magic word is “experiment” If you know of anyone coming in from New York, have them contact me and I can try to get you some from China Town so you can make a comparison. I must say that the ones we get over here has no intense rice flavour, it is sort of neautral and soaks up the flavour of the other ingredients.

Joe.

By: Joe Coxall

Joe Coxall — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:22:42 +0000

Cynthia, Your dish looks authentic and thanks for the additional research information. There are many variations to this dish. It is usually stir fried in a wok so that it has a real nice “burnt flavour”. You can also make it as small round pancakes, add some steam fried fresh shrimp of ground beef with scallions fold over then serve with soy sauce. This is called dim sum. You said that your noodles came out a bit thick, next time try adding some more water until you get it right.

Joe.