Exploring Cantonese Home Cooking: Authentic Flavors from Guangdong

dish per person plus rice so two dishes for two people four dishes for four people and as a home cook getting all that hot to the table and finish relatively at the same time it's definitely a skill in this video we are not going to be going chronologically though so if you want some tips on how to pull that all off do you check out our Chinese Mis on plus video up here and remember if you ever feel overwhel wamp you can always just hop poot if you ask 10 countes people what's the most important part of a count homecook meal probably 10 of them are going

to tell you soups and we do love our soup growing up my grandma's Sunday dinner will always uh involve a relative intense one and we'll get to that later but after going around a little bit more seeing how people from different places eat I have to disagree we would have some sort of soupy thing on the table for most meals but not all of them but what you have to have on every meal and every table is vegetable a lot of vegetables cook now I know Western food also has salads and I love salads as well but to me that salad was Never Enough like this looks

like a normal size side salad but if you actually cook your salad greens the vegetable quantity May strike you a little differently as a general rule of thumb we would suggest try to aim for 250 gram of vegetable per adult uh and about 150 g uh per kit and generally speaking there are three ways you will eat your vegetables uh first it's you blanch it and eat it straight often with some oyster sauce or second you can make it into a super super simple quick soup and we'll also get to that later or third you can stir fry depending on the vegetable you are

using though you often want to face oil which is giving it a quick pre- blunch after blanching though you don't have to go crazy with the ice bath or whatever like some fancy restur restaurants just run your vegetable through some uh running water to just quickly cool it down and set aside till you're ready to fry so for our baby b chart today we'll simply just be frying it with some garlic and ginger now in the US and some other places I've seen people reaching for jars of pre minced garlic because they don't like don't like mincing okay so if you are

lazy you can just try grabbing one clove of garlic and smash it a little bit this way the pills are easy to get rid of as well and aromatics will be sort in no time so let's fry that up to a hot walk toss and about 1 tbspoon oil here we're using L because lar fried vegetables are awesome over a medium flame go in with the garlic and ginger once those are fragrant about 30 seconds then up the flame to high and throw in some wine now a quick exide for KES restaurant the go-to cooking wine would usually be Shing aka the Shing wine uh but for ky's home

kitchen though the go-to cooking wine would usually be the stuff uh mijo ma rice wine it's sort of tastes like sake but a little bit stronger about 30% and today we will be using this for the maximum authenticity bonus point and of course you can always just use housing or L because those are both common choices as well okay now back to our vegetables now give it a quick mix then add in the pre- blanched vegetable another quick mix and then a swirl of soy sauce add in the final seasoning together with an optional slurry and out okay so I said that

Chinese food doesn't have a larger mean uh in the western sense but usually there will be one dish that's slightly more Central slightly more involved and that would usually be the meat now this is probably going to be the part that's most similar to restaurant cocaine and the three most common meats that you will see in County's home kitchens are pork fish and chicken and today we got ourselves a fish hosting fish it's basically the most classic way to eat a fish in Guang do do and there are lot of videos online uh show you how to make it so today we

want to do something a little different we'll be be doing one fish two ways this was one fish that we already got fated at the market and we'll be using the fillet in one dash and the bones and hat in another and at restaurants sometimes it will even go more intense like at some Sashi jimy joints and swand do you will sometimes see one fish three four or even five ways so this fish had about 300 G worth of fillet and then we'll slice that into about half CM slices sprinkle over the white parts of four scallion then we'll marinate that with a/4 teaspoon

salt 1/4 teaspoon sugar4 teaspoon white pepper half teaspoon of our Meo rice wine a half tablespoon of corn starch and about one tablespoon of peanut oil spread it out evenly Steam on high for 4 minutes and after that we'll sprinkle over a half tablespoon soy sauce together with a good handful of scallion curls now scallion curls are not difficult at all you don't need any special equipment or anything all you need to do just uh slice your scallion greens lengthwise as thin as you can possibly get and if you got some bigger pieces you can optionally tear

it open but don't obsessed with it you don't have to get it perfect and I know now they don't look curly at all and here comes the magic trick just toss them in some cool water for about 10 minutes and they will just curl right up all right so back to the fish uh then in a walk get 2 tablespoons of peanut oil until it's smoking hot then tiet and drizzle it over your scallions and now we've got ourselves a ourselves a main lastly soup now again if you ask most KES people like soup will be the most important component in a countes meal because guangong has

a soup culture that's both super vast and deep which has a lot of crossover with traditional Chinese medicine as well and soup in a meal is like a ritual uh it's the first course of a meal and you have to drink it before you eat everything else so broadly speaking there are two types of soups in guangong uh there's the very famous L Lang Tong that will take hours to make uh it usually involves some sort of meat component with some other herbal or medicinal ingredients added to it and then cook together for at least at least 2 hours or even way longer

it's quite intense and not an everyday thing but today we want to cover something much simpler and much quicker it's guant that people would make on a daily basis even though guong it's a simpler version of the canes soups uh but it still has different levels of intensity you can take 10 to 20 minutes to make a a base with some sort of fish or dry seafood or Cur meat like laap it's a classic or you can just throw everything into your walk and call it a day here let's show you how you can make a soup with a base first uh fish is one of the most common

choice for this kind of uh quicker soup with a base and you fish head with tofu it's one classic combo and today will be using both the head and the bones to make a quick fish uh milky stock so to uh walk first go in with a tablespoon of oil large preferably and over a high flame begin to fry the head and Bones flip periodically and once they begin to Brown after about 2 minutes swirl in a tablespoons of Meo or saing wine then go in with some aromatics and fry those until fragrant about 30 seconds now pour in 5 cups of hot boiled water from the kettle

and bring that all up to a rapid boil turn the flame back slightly to about medium medium high to keep things at a rolling boil and cover 15 minutes later come back your soup should be good and milky at this point you can really add whatever you want to this but we toss and 30 G of sliced carrot let it boil for a minute and then 250 g of Lua skir which as in the side we first peel it and cut it with the Chinese rolling cut into 1 in pieces let that boil for another 2 minutes then season which will list on the top of the screen and with that you've got

yourself a simple tasty guant Tong now the fish soup that we just make will at least take you about 20 minutes and next I'm going to show you how you can make something that can be done within 5 minutes so this kind of soup will usually include some kind of protein uh like pork slice or pork slivers or the most comment or there will be some kind of tofu or there can be egg be it fresh salted or centry and then you just toss in whatever vegetables that you have into it and bring it all to a boil and that it's done something like Hong Hong orong all belong

to this category for us let's use whatever we have in the kitchen and just boil it all together as it meant to be so to a hot walk add in 1 tbsp peanut oil heat on low toss and couple cloves of crushed garlic fry it till a slightly golden brown then toss in one Sentry egg that's cut into eight pieces fry it till slightly blister about 2 minutes and next add in 100 G of Napper cabbage turn the heat to high quick mix stands well in half tablespoon Meo AKA canones rice wine given another quick mix add in three cups of hot water right after bring it to a

boil cover and keep it boiling for 2 minutes then come back add in the seasoning which is on top of the screen heat off finally finish with a small handful of cilantro and out and now your her s pong it's also done all within 5 minutes before we go though there's one more thing that we want to talk about so besides eating around dishes there's also some other stuff that can help you consume more rice especially back in the time when food was not abundant rice was the major calorie intake people would count on this kind of things to help them consume more

rice for this type of can San or rice killer stuff a salted fish is probably the most classic item that I can think of they are generally very salty and very fragrant or funky if you like and a little goes a long way my favorite is the mushy type mu hamu they are particularly soft and flavorful almost close to a solidified fish sauce if you can imagine it's usually steamed in a small tiny plates on top of rice with a little bit of Ginger juliant or sometimes even pork belly growing up my family would always make a whole lot of rice if there's saled fish

on the table as we say found after sorted fish tossing a little bit of LP CH or LP May over your rice it's probably another very classic thing to eat along with more rice now L May k C sausage and meat was not a common sight during times with food shortage but for us kids that grew up in the 80s and 90s that was no longer the case and L may become this thing that our parents would add in the rice to make us eat more rice now the real poor people item uh to eat more rice is probably Fu fermented tofu so fuu itself it's very flavorful and is widely used

use in many couny dishes and it is because it's very flavorful it can help you eat a lot of rice growing up me and my cousins we always love having some f you with some white rice but the adults would never let us have as much as we want one main reason was that uh for our parents generation when they were younger there was food shortage as everybody knows um and for you being being one of the few available food items that you can eat with rice that was their kind of only choice and they need to eat a lot of them so in their mind eating a lot of fuu with

white rice all the time uh was associated with difficult times so when there are more food items available on the table for you become this kind of thing that will only appear once in a while on the table as a treat for us kids with all that that for it's probably my top five all-time favorite rice koler especially when steaming it uh overr with some sugar and some toasted sesame oil and turning it into almost a sauce consistency and then mix it with some white rice with that only and uh together with some together with some vegetables it can just be a

meal for me all right so as to how Kies home cocaine deferred from restaurants we had a little discussion in our substack post if you're curious do check it out so right recipes in description box and as always a big thank you for everyone that's supporting us on patreon and of course subscribe for more Chinese cooking