Notes about Recipes in this book

• Smacked soy and cucumber sesame salad

  • lorloff on June 30, 2019

    We love this dish at a local Chinese restaurant and I have been looking for a version to make at home. The technique really works smashing the cucumbers helps them absorb more of the sauce. Very delicious and easy to make. Next time we will try adding some chili oil to spice it up a bit.

  • Ro_ on February 26, 2020

    Simple and tasty Asian cucumber and carrot salad recipe, that requires no time for the cucumber to salt and drain, no cooking and no lengthy marinating time. I'd make it again, possibly with the addition of some toasted sesame seeds and a bit of chilli to give heat.

• Beef in oyster sauce

  • redjanet on January 07, 2014

    This is a really delicious, simple and quick meal that is perfect for a week night. It goes beautifully with rice and the baby pak choy adds an extra element to the dish, though I also recently used pointed spring cabbage instead, which also worked very well.

• Sichuan orange beef

  • FJT on September 27, 2018

    We really enjoyed this dish. The beef doesn't really pick up much of the marinade even though I marinaded it for several hours (she suggests just 15 minutes), but the mushrooms cooked in the marinade are delicious. We'll make this again, but with more marinade / sauce.

• Spiced beef stir-fry topped with spring onion and coriander

  • FJT on September 28, 2018

    This is certainly well-spiced and is to be recommended if your sinuses need clearing out! I looked at the ingredients for the spicy coating and decided that 2 tablespoons of chilli flakes for 400g of beef was going to be totally overpowering, so I halved it. We now wish I'd reduced it yet further. Before our mouths were tingling too much to taste anything, we agreed that overall it was very tasty and with fewer chilli flakes this would be a nice dish.

• Radish and sesame soy noodle salad

  • Ro_ on May 12, 2020

    I used buckwheat (soba) noodles as that's what I had. I think there is a little too much vinegar in the dressing. This dish was OK but nothing special, I probably wouldn't make it again.

• Peanut chicken noodle salad

  • Ro_ on March 16, 2020

    I'm a big fan of the Bang Bang Chicken recipe in Ching-He's collaboration book with Ken Hom: Exploring China, and I was sceptical this was going to be much more than a paler imitation of it. The key differences are a different type of noodle, a sauce that needs cooking (and contains fewer ingredients) and a different mix of salad vegetables (bean sprouts, cucumber and spring onion instead of cucumber radish and carrot). I was a little perplexed during the making of the sauce because it kept seizing up, until I realised it needed to come off the heat and have cold water/stock added (not hot) to get the texture right. Overall this was better than I thought it would be, a little lighter than the Bang Bang recipe, but with less complexity of flavour - so I still prefer my old favourite.

• Drunken chicken

  • Ro_ on June 30, 2020

    I didn't particularly care for this: I guess the whole point is that it tastes strongly of alcohol, but it was a bit overpowering for our tastes.

• Crispy duck

  • Ro_ on March 15, 2020

    I just made the marinated duck without the apricot/plum sauce, since I had mango sauce to use up. The marinade and cooking instructions gave v nice duck breast: but I lengthened the cooking time both on the hob and in the oven since my duck breasts were huge and very thick.

• Basic glutinous rice

  • Ro_ on November 01, 2020

    Didn't find this method gave great results - very gloopy. I'll go back to steaming it in a bamboo steamer, which gave me sticky but not gloopy rice.

• Soy and sesame French beans

  • Ro_ on July 08, 2020

    In the end these were delicious, but I had to pick out a lot of the garlic before serving because it had gone very burnt and bitter. Not sure how to resolve this: maybe just use garlic infused oil?

• Sichuan crispy chilli pork on lettuce

  • Ro_ on May 12, 2020

    This was very nice, especially the crispy pork element. I'd just say the beansprouts are unnecessary (and hard to fit into the lettuce cups) and also a drizzle of sauce of some kind would be nice, maybe an oyster-sauce based dressing?

• Fish fragrant aubergine pork

  • Ro_ on May 27, 2020

    Didn't have minced pork, but I cut up some pork chops finely. I liked the flavours of this dish quite a bit, it definitely had that familiar fish fragrant flavour. But I think I've tried a couple of other variants on similar recipes (from Fuschia Dunlop and Ken Hom) that I prefer.

• Dan Dan noodles

  • Ro_ on May 18, 2020

    I thought this was "only OK" (the broth lacked depth of flavour and the whole dish felt like it needed lifting somehow) but my OH really enjoyed it. That said, since I do the cooking I probably won't make it again!

• Chilli chicken with noodles

  • Ro_ on June 18, 2020

    This was pretty nice. It kind of reminded me of a pot noodle type thing, but nicer. The courgette and pepper gave it some nice crunch. I wasn't sure what to expect from the sauce, but it was basically sweet and tomato-y with a Chinese tang. I think two large spring onions is too much for the shredded topping, just one spring onion would be fine. Overall I'm not a massive fan of noodle dishes, I'm more of a rice person, so I probably wouldn't make this again but I think noodle-lovers might well love it.

• Fast hot and sour noodle pot

  • Ro_ on November 10, 2020

    Very tasty, took me about half an hour to make (prep + cooking) from start to finish. A lot of that time is just getting ingredients out of the pantry/fridge - there's not too much work in terms of chopping/cooking but there are lots of seasonings and things to add. For me this was just lacking slightly on the sour note, I think a squeeze of lime juice or some fish sauce would be nice. I loved the crunchy texture provided by the baby corn, which I kept in quite large chunks. I omitted the bamboo shoots and upped the bean sprouts.

• Roast duck noodle soup

  • Ro_ on November 20, 2020

    I didn't have Chinese cabbage, I added some baby sweetcorn as a kind of substitute. The broth for this was quite light, though I suppose a lot depends on the quality of your chicken stock. Overall this was a nice dish, but probably not my favourite way to eat duck. I only marinated it for a few hours and I think I should have done it for longer - some of the sweet notes of hoisin and sugar got a bit lost and I think would have added a lot to the dish.

• Black bean mushrooms

  • Ro_ on November 12, 2020

    I used champignons de Paris instead of mixed oriental mushrooms. I really liked the textures of this dish, and the nice thick sauce, however it was a bit too overwhelmingly salty/spicy for me. I think the chilli I used must have been a particularly hot one (and I didn't completely deseed it). I'd make it again but possible leave out the chilli, and a bit less soy sauce.