Betta Zan Mama!

For those of you who own a Wii and have played the game Cooking Mama, you will know that the virtual cooking experience using a Wii controller is much more tedious than doing the real thing. However, the Wii game does provide one thing you may not have at home - a tiny, bespectacled, playful, apron-wearing Mama who evaluates your cooking with comments such as "Betta zan Mama!" and, if you don't grease the wok just right, "I haf ah pity fo you!"  If you feel the lack, then grab a copy of Eileen Yin Fei Lo's outstanding cookbook The Chinese Kitchen:Recipes, Techniques, Ingredients, History and Memories From America's Leading Authority On Chinese Cooking.  

Lo translates recipes from her childhood in Sun Tak, China and brings along the indomitable spirits of two original Cooking Mamas - her own Aunt Number Six and her Ah Paw (grandmother), both expert cooks and super-foodies.  The voice of this cookbook will prod you to be mindful of your actions in the kitchen while giving you flawless direction for cooking your way through the cannon of Chinese cuisine.  

Lo is a stickler for maintaining authenticity. For example, she comments dourly in her recipe for Yangzhou Chau Fan (Yangzhou Fried Rice), "often different ingredients are tossed into this classic dish - sliced lettuce, green peas, chunks of Western ham, chunks of chicken.  None of these should be in the classic friend rice from Yangzhou, presented here." Personally, I really like green peas in fried rice, having grown up with the Craig Claiborne/Virginia Lee fried rice recipe from The Chinese Cookbook and Lo herself says Chinese food is nothing, if not adaptive. 

For New Year's, my husband, Lincoln, and I got busy using three Chinese cooking techniques: steaming, stir frying and (gulp!) deep frying.  We made Lemon Chicken (steamed), Salt Baked Shrimp (deep fried), Lamb With Leeks (stir fry), Yangzhou Fried Rice (stir fry) and a side of Yu Choi (steamed greens).  This was a Chinese meal of four main dishes: fish, fowl, meat, vegetable and a side of fried rice (in case you aren't full enough).  Our flavor balance accounted for most of the major taste groups: sweet/tart, spicy, salty and bland/clear.

Following the Lo family's passion for fresh ingredients, we shopped in the morning, purchasing choice ingredients from our favorite local purveyor of all things international, Jungle Jim's. All of our dishes came out beautifully and we had enough leftovers for New Year's Day, which was very Chinese of us as a common greeting during Chinese New Year (coming up and we'll be ready) is "This year may you have extra."  

Lincoln gets kudos for learning to make his favorite dish - mastering both blanching in water and oil to make Salt Baked Shrimp.  We should all be inspired by his courage to cook with a quart of peanut oil before we head directly to the gym.  Once again, the simple amazed him as for desert I made a fruit salad of canned pineapple and Li Chi fruit. Lo would give me points for serving the right ending to a Chinese meal, but demerits for using canned fruit.

Lo's book is a treasure that belongs on your cookbook shelf.  Cooking is much betta zan playing Wii.