THE Chinese year of the dragon begins on Monday and marks a time of celebration for the Chinese community.
Traditional food forms an integral part of the festivities so the Isle of Man Newspapers reporting team paid a visit to long-established Chinese restaurant Chinatown to discover some of the secrets of Chinese cooking.
David Cheung, whose parents first set up a restaurant in Strand Street in Douglas town centre in the 1960s, is in charge of Chinatown. Originally called the Mandarin, it has been in its current location at Derby Castle since the 1980s.
‘Fish is a traditional Chinese new year dish,’ he says.
‘It represents long life and good luck.
‘Chicken is also popular in China and Hong Kong and there will often be seven to nine dishes in total as part of the meal. It’s a time of getting the family together like an English Christmas.’
The food on offer in a Chinese restaurant is pretty authentic, he says, because the regional variations offer enough variety to accommodate western tastes. Unlike the claims made about Indian food, he says dishes are not engineered for Western consumption.
Among the traditional Chinese cookery ingredients are spring onion, ginger, carrot, garlic and side dishes like rice or noodles.
Oil in the wok needs to be hot so the ingredients can be stir fried quickly, keeping flavour and crispness, and the process often begins by cooking the onions and garlic and other such ingredients to impart flavour to the rest of the dish. Temperature is critical, keep stirring it to make sure everything is heated evenly and don’t be tempted to overcook the food, he says.
‘There is lots more variety and different styles of Chinese cookery than in Indian food,’ he says, adding if people feel adventurous they can customise dishes to suite individual taste.
He says it is a myth that the wok should not be washed but adds it does develop a surface patina and help to impart flavour to a dish.
‘We have about five woks in our kitchen for different types of dish,’ he says.
In the kitchen is a sizeable shiny stainless steel range which has large wok rings to fit their 14-inch woks. These can distribute the heat more evenly rather than concentrating it just in the centre of the pan.
Sea food dishes feature high in his own list of favourites, David says. Moreover, at the restaurant they try to make the most of the island’s abundant supplies of local ingredients like lobster and scallops.
As a restaurant owner, he doesn’t often eat out, which could be seen as something of a busman’s holiday. He diplomatically refrains from passing comment on English food.
Among the different dishes he demonstrates are sea bass cooked for 10 to 15 minutes until crisp and served with a spicy Szechuan sauce, tradtional in the North West region of China. ‘This is typical of the more spicy food traditional in that region of the country,’ he says.
In contrast a chicken dish, cooked in Cantonese sauce typical of Southern China, is less spicy.
Behind the scenes in the kitchen ‘Terry’ (‘There’s no equivalent of his real name so we made one up for him,’ David tells us.) Tian, the chef cooks in bursts of activity, throwing ingredients into the wok and dextrously tossing them over a roaring flame. The process is completed in minutes and he serves up tiger prawns stir fried with vegetables in chilli oil, pepper and rice wine – and very tasty it is too.
The art of cooking the dish fast and keeping it moving in the wok to distribute the heat but keep the vegetables crisp, before dishing it up straight on to the plate is graphically demonstrated.
Finally, there’s an essential lesson in using chop sticks.
The knack, apparently is to hold the upper one like a pen between thumb, forefinger and middle finger while the lower stick rests on the fourth finger. This allows the upper stick to grip against the lower one and pick up food.
In theory.
After considerable perseverence I show about as much dexterity as the sea bass on the plate in front of me. Finally I reach an epiphany, briefly picking up a lettuce leaf before dropping it again on the table cloth.
David supplies me with new chop sticks – gaudily coloured and hinged at the top.
‘These are for children who are learning to use them,’ he tells me, smiling patiently.
Suffice it to say, should I ever need to lose weight, chop sticks are the answer. Defeated even by the children’s cutlery, I resort to cheating with a knife and fork.
Chinatown is on Douglas seafront by the tram terminus a few doors down from the Terminus Tavern. It is open daily from 5pm.