Healthy Chinese food – steamed, braised, and stir-fried, homestyle recipes that are low in fat
- In her 1997 book, Eileen Yin-Fei Lo points out the difference between takeaway Chinese food in the West and ‘proper’ homestyle Chinese cooking
- The recipes include steamed sea bass with ginger and scallions, garlic steamed shrimp, beggar’s chicken and Singapore chilli crab
Many people think Chinese food is unhealthy. It can be, if you’re eating in restaurants and have an unbalanced meal of sweet-and-sour pork, fried spring rolls and deep-fried chicken. But homestyle Chinese food is entirely different.
At home, any cook would make a more balanced meal. For every deep-fried dish, there will almost certainly be one that’s steamed and another that’s stir-fried or braised. It makes sense, not just for a balance of flavours and textures, but also because many traditional home kitchens have just two burners, and making too many dishes that require last-minute cooking means dinner will be a drawn-out process.
In the introduction to The Chinese Way (1997), author Eileen Yin-Fei Lo writes, “Let me make the point first that Chinese low-fat cooking is virtually redundant; proper Chinese cooking, that is. In those corner neighbourhood Chinese restaurants with which most Westerners have grown up, there has always been an extensive use of fats and heavy oils. This is not proper Chinese cooking.
“For subtlety and ho mei doh [the finest of taste], the fine Chinese kitchen has always relied upon small amounts of oil, just enough to stir-fry vegetables, meats, and seafood to proper doneness. It has always relied heavily on steaming to preserve the inherent nature and taste of whichever food is being steamed. That is the Chinese way.
“Steaming food gives life. There is simply no better way, for example, to prepare fish than to steam it – not covering it with a beurre blanc or other sauce, not dredging it in flour or breadcrumbs and allowing it to swim in hot fat [...]
“So often today when we eat low-fat foods we feel deprived. This should not at all be the case. If what we eat tastes good; if it provides nourishment; if it is balanced; if it ultimately satisfies, it is not ‘low fat cooking,’ it is rather ‘cooking that is low in fat’. And there is a difference.”
In addition to steaming, Lo uses techniques such as blanching, where the ingredients are dipped briefly in hot water to soften them and seal the exterior before they are cooked (usually by stir-frying). Instead of using water to blanch, she uses stock, which adds a layer of flavour.
Recipes in the book include Chiu Chow congee, striped sea bass steamed with ginger and scallions, flounder stuffed with bean curd, garlic-steamed shrimp, Singapore chilli crab, beggar’s chicken, soy sauce chicken, steamed chicken with Chinese mushrooms, stir-fried Chinese broccoli, white cut pork, beef steamed with pickled peaches, and winter melon soup with shredded pork.
