SELECTION OF INGREDIENTS

The quality of the ingredients plays an important part in good cooking. Just as no good painter can work well with a broken brush or dried up paints, so no good cook can succeed without the correct kind of ingredients. For instance, in choosing chickens, poulets are more desirable because their meat is more tender;on the other hand, with duck the male species is preferable. For stewing, steaming and the Chinese way of frying, use spring chickens; for roasting choose capons, while for making chicken soup, when the meat will not be served, old birds may be used. Fillet should be used for frying, flank for making meatballs, and loin for roasting. Eat everything in season, and you will get more palatable and more economical dishes.Sam Lai(三黎) or Shih Yü(鰣魚) (i.e. shad) is, as its name implies, a seasonal fish, and when in season is in great demand. The fish swims up the Yangtsze and other rivers to spawn. On the return journey, its eyes become reddish in colour and it is not as fat as when it started. For this reason red-eyed Sam Lai is considered inferior in quality and can be obtained at cheaper prices.

In the case of vegetables the “heart” only should be used for cooking. Bamboo shoots and mushrooms can be prepared with or without meat. They are equally delicious either way.