Let me start by saying that I’m not the world’s greatest fan of Chinese takeaways – gloopy sauces and MSG just don’t do it for me! But a few weeks ago this book seemed to all over social media so of course I had to order it (easily lead, me, never! 🤣) and I thought it would be perfect for my Friday Facebook Cookalong
The first recipe I tried (pre the cookalong) was Drunken King Prawns with Mixed Vegetables (p. 76) . I had to make a few substitutions with the vegetables but all the other ingredients were pantry staples. The finished dish looked great and tasted ok but I just felt it lacked a certain wow factor.
I couldn’t judge a book on one recipe so I decided to wait til after the cookalong to give my verdict.
So what did I cook:
The dish that topped my facebook poll was Shredded Crispy Chilli Beef (p.91) – a dish I have to admit I had neither ordered or made. It’s not a cheap dish to make as you need fillet steak – I used Island Farm Foods steaks from my freezer.
Earlier in the day I watched Kowlyn making this dish online- thankfully because he alters the method from the printed recipe – but even still coating and frying the beef got very messy . And from feedback from those of you that cooked along , I know I wasn’t alone in this mess.
To be honest I’m not sure it was worth the effort and it definitely didn’t do justice to a beautiful piece of meat.
If I was to repeat this dish I would make the delicious sauce and simply stir fry the beef in it .
Next up was Chinese Broccoli in Garlic Sauce (p.115) – now this was a gamechanger ! I’m not a big fan of cooked broccoli but this was crunchy and full of flavour and I’ll definitely be making it again 😉
I used tender-stem broccoli and added in a few lonely green beans from my vegetable drawer.
If you want try this dish for yourself here’s what to do : fry 2 garlic cloves in oil for 15 mins, add the broccoli steams and a sliced onion , cook for 2 mins, then add in broccoli leaves for another minute. Then you add 1 tbsp Chinese rice wine, 2 tbsp oyster sauce, 1/2 tbsp each of dark and light soy sauces, 120 ml vegetable stock (I forgot to add this but I didn’t miss it),1/4 tsp each of salt and white pepper and 1/2 tsp sugar. Bring this to the boil and then thicken the sauce with 1 tbsp cornflour. Drizzle with sesame oil to serve. Enjoy😉
The Egg Fried Rice (p. 129) was also worth doing – I would never have thought of adding oyster sauce to fried rice
My verdict:
Overall I like this book and there are a few more dishes I want to try. The book is well laid out and I loved all the information about techniques and customs in the introduction. There are timings with every recipe and almost all have pictures.
Do you need to buy it? I’d check out Kwoklyn’s website first as a lot of the dishes are included there – and there’s a free ebook at the moment 😉
If you missed my Chinese Takeaway Cookbook Cookalong you can catch up here
Hey Pesto! 