Chinese Recipe

Chinese food has its own philosophical, dietetic and symbolic rules. When cooking Chinese food, you need to consider all of the dishes as a whole and not individually. The meal is a unit and the concepts of appetizer, entrée and dessert do not exist; vegetables are always on the menu and in southern China, rice is an indispensable ingredient. The purpose of this book on Chinese cooking in Peru is not to teach people how to eat according to the Oriental Empire, but to introduce the reader to a world of simple and affordable recipes.

The decision to prepare four, five o six dishes or combine them with a Western style starter is all yours.

The following recipes have been supplied by experienced cooks from famous chifas (Chinese restaurant) in Peru. It was not always easy for them to disclose their secrets.

The secret to any dish is the personal touch that makes it just perfect, and they are usually not given out freely. These generous chefs eventually allowed me into their Kitchen, a place that is often off limits to women. Moreover, they answered all my questions, which were sometimes naive. Although I love to cook, I was unaware of the vast universe of Chinese cooking.

There is an incredible variety of recipes for meat, vegetables, spices and sauces- more than 2,000 in Chinese cooking. You will be amazed as you begin to open the folds of this gastronomic curtain, and you will be excited to start these recipes at home. Always remember, however, that they represent just the tip of this amazing iceberg.

The majority of the dishes offered here are Cantonese, a style that has been established in Peru for a long time. However, we also introduce others from the Sichuan region and from the stylish city of Hong Kong. The selection of dishes is not based as much on the philosophy surrounding this cooking as it is on satisfying your appetite a sensible approach on the threshold of the new millennium. We also decided not to divide the recipes proportionally among the different types of meat or vegetables, so you will find a bit of everything. While all the recipes are easy to prepare, some will require more patience than others. Nevertheless, this does not mean that they are difficult to prepare. All of them have been prepared beforehand at home, in order to avoid possible disappointment and to assure you that they will turn out well. We have tried to simplify their preparation, using a tablespoon and a teaspoon as recommended measurements. There are occasions when weight scales are not available at home and this could discourage the temptation for cooking.

Our goal is to see you successfully have a hand at the art of cooking Chinese and taste flavors you will never forget. We are sure that you will try them more than once after your first experience. After a while they will become part of your personal collection of favorite recipes. Juan Francisco Chong, Enrique Ley and Natalia Com, chefs since the Peruvian chifas were established in the country (1920-1950) have consistently delighted connoisseurs. They have given us recipes that are no longer available to the public or that are simply made only at home. When we showed the recipes to chefs from some famous current restaurants, they could not remember some of them at the beginning, but later exclaimed: “Oh, these are very old recipes.”  We have no doubt that the reader will be delighted when experiencing the simple but delicious Lou Ming noodles from Mr. Chong, the amazing chicken with sesame seeds from Enrique Ley or Mrs. Com’s impressive shrimps with English sauce.

Restaurants were chosen after carefully researching their background. Obviously, we could not include all of them as we would have liked, but the tyranny of time and space simply would not allow it. The recipes are well known by the general public, showing the high level of acceptance Chinese cuisine has in Peru. And as mystery is part of the Chinese culture, it could not be absent from our publication. As such, we offer six recipes from an important restaurant that preferred to remain anonymous, mysterious, a decision we respect.

The Chinese Embassy in Peru also joined this festival recipe. Ambassadors Ren Jingyu and Wan Shuqin looked after the preparations from the Beijing cuisine and made sure complications were avoided. They also treated us to some pork tenderloin leans (Yu xiang rou si). Preparing it is considered a proficiency test in the Chinese cooking.