I can’t remember where and when I wrote about it; I think it was here – but since I forget, it does not count. The point, I recall (because I keep discovering a’fresh) is that there is a certain basic recipe for cake and once you understand it, everything is a matter of proportion of flour to milk and how you cook it. For example, a pan cake is a cake cooked in a pan. A waffle is a cake cooked in a waffle iron. A popover is a cake cooked in a cup. Now, we can argue whether lard or tallow or butter makes a popover a Yorkshire pudding, but the basics are: a quantity of flour, a quantity of eggs (for structure) some salt, some melted butter (or lard or tallow or even vegetable oil, and then something to make it foam a bit, maybe. If there is absolutely nothing to make it foam, I think maybe you have shortbread. If there’s baking powder, it’s a pancake or a waffle. If air is lofted into it with a whisk, it’s a popover or Yorkshire pudding. But once you understand how runny it should be, how fatty it should be, and how airy it should be, you can produce a tremendous amount of Europe’s greatest cuisine. Unless you get into millefeuille which is basically butter/bread damascus with no air in it… Anyhow.

What if I told you…

There is a similar logic to Chinese noodles. What if I told you there is a similar underlying rule that would let you make scratch-rolled cut noodles for your soup, or to go with some stir-fried anything? Or if I told you that the same dough used to make noodles is also the dough for dumpling wrappers? Or scallion pancakes (the delicious Chinese response to millefeulle)? You are forgiven for not knowing these things, unless you have delved a little ways into classical Chinese cuisine, which is what I have decided to do with the remainder of my non-blade-making and molten-metal-pouring and other stuff life. I’ll be frank with you, generally, Chinese cuisine is slightly less subtle than Japanese, but vastly more subtle than American. A bit more subtle than Italian, but only because I think the Italians are a bit more comfortable with self-expression.

As one book I read once said, “Japanese food is unique in that not only are you preparing the food to be elegant, you must take into account precisely where it is in its cycle of decay.” My immediate thought was the time a bunch of Icelanders tried to get me to each beach-pickled shark (they don’t call it that) and I had to invent an entirely new category of personal excuses. [See notes]

Boom. Ok, that discouraged me from attempting Japanese food until I understood that pickles and kimchee are the same thing and (drum roll!) soy sauce is a fermentation byproduct and is as closely regulated as fine champagne. Suddenly I was completely comfortable putting kimchee on my ham sandwich, or – even better – Scottish style smoked salmon. Based on the realization that bacon, air-drying pork, and fermenting gross stuff (I see your tofu!) are all part of the art of taking into account where the food is in its cycle of decay. By the way, chili, stew, and curry are all ways of staving off decay, but perhaps that another topic for some time when I can try to sort my way through the incredible selections of those dishes and perhaps I’ll need an explanation why I don’t just make boef bourgignon until I die. (and if you make it with chicken it’s coq au vin).

So, the Italian way it to make dough with salt, water, olive oil and flour. Depending on what you are trying to do, the water has yeast and sugar in it. By varying those things you can make pizza crust, the pasta around tortellini, or spaghetti. God knows what else. During my period of exploring Italian cuisine I decided pasta and prosciutto were such a win that everything else was secondary.

The Chinese way is fairly similar: flour, to 1/2 water, to a pinch or whatever of salt. From there, the entire secret of Chinese-style doughs is what you plan to do with it. If it’s going to be a wonton wrapper, it should be dry but soft enough to weld if you pinch it. If it’s going to be a scallion pancake it should be wet and stretchy so it doesn’t tear, but not so wet it’s goo. If you are making dumpling wrappers, it should be about midway dry and lightly floured. That same works for noodles. If you flour it, roll it out, and fold it over upon itself so it doesn’t stick, you can take a sharp knife, slice it into noodles, throw it in some broth, add some other stuff, and it’s heavenly. Or turn it out into stir fry with anything else. Or roll it into a sort of tootsie roll, cut it into 3/4 or 1″ pieces, then roll them out and fill them with ${stuff} fold them over and you have wontons.

Basic wonton stuffing: ground pork 1 unit, ground shrimp 1 unit, green onions 1/20 unit, cornstarch. Mix in bowl, drop onto dough with a spoon, fold and pinch, then put it on a tray. When ready, bring soup to a boil and toss the little bastards in. When they float they are ready. Or, put them in a steamer for 10 minutes and eat them with grilled pork or cheeseburgers.

The point of this posting it not to try to turn you into a Chinese chef. We are all, currently, too old for that. But once you understand the logic of “oh wow, a bit of chicken stock and some hoisin sauce and some noodles and maybe a piece of bacon and I am a ramen god?” it’s hard to go back.

So, here’s what I want you to do. Get a bunch of green onions and some flour, water, and salt. Look on youtube for some recipes for making scallion pancakes. Scallion pancakes are some of the best damn stuff I have ever eaten. Properly made they are crispy on the outside, gooey (but not squishy) on the inside, and delicious. The best thing is that they save just great. I make about 8 at a shot, wrap 7 of them in saran wrap and oil (to keep it from drying) and freeze them. Microwave till soft and throw the pre-oiled pancake into a frying pan and pull it out when it looks heavenly.

I’ve been practicing flipping them from frying pans, because they’re practically indestructible and since I no longer have a dog (/tears) I can drop one without seeing it vanish. Look, the fact that dogs eat scallion pancakes should tell you something. In fact there is a hysterical video I saw on TikTok of a Chinese chef flipping scallion pancakes in a pan, expecting the dog to be fascinated – while the dog polished off the entire stack of cooked pancakes. I imagine it makes dog farts epic, but dog farts are already epic.

Ok, so, there are SO MANY recipes for scallion pancakes on youtube, it’s not funny. One key point with all Chinese dough is that if you let it auto-lyse over night it will help develop the gluten. You almost always want that. If you use hot water initially, it loosens the gluten up a lot and makes a very stretchy dough. If you add a bit of something basic like lye, it makes a very chewy dough. What I do is make a very basic dough and wrap it in plastic in the refrigerator until I know whether I want noodles, or what. And if I don’t think of something, I make scallion pancakes and add them to my stack of frozen scallion pancakes.

This recipe is good. You want recipes that show some understanding of letting the gluten relax or tighten and when. That’s it. It’s hard to screw it up. I guarantee you that if you try making scallion pancakes you will be amazed. Once you have that down, we can talk about green onion and ginger fried rice.

Another insanely great thing is egg drop soup. For reasons that make no sense, I thought it would be hard to make. In fact, it is literally as easy to make as bilge-water, only much, much better. I use a variation of Jet Tila’s version in which I add shredded chicken and corn.

I’m going to confess here that I am a fan of the Lobo spice packs for Thom Kha soup and Tom Yum soup. Basically, you add coconut cream, veggies, shrimp or chicken or tuna or whatever and noodles or not, mushrooms or not, rice or not, whatever, and you’ve got a fantastic dinner. Start by making a fond in your frying pan with the coconut whatever, protein, garlic, ginger, and some flour, then just run around the kitchen throwing things in and yelling “Ah! Ha!” like a French epee duellist on meth.

Try the scallion pancakes. Readers who already make scallion pancakes please rally round and stick up for me. And those who do it for the first time, I await your amazed adulation.

The second big secret of Chinese food, in my opinion, is that the stuff that gets fried in the wok, etc., is the basic fond flavor but the sauce – whatever it is – gets cooked separately, very fast, and poured into/over the lot. So if you are talking about lo mein noodles, the noodles and vegetables will be browned to release flavor, but right before they are served, a sauce gets tossed in and cooked very fast. (In the case of lo mein it is dark soy, light soy, oyster sauce, and some garlic and corn starch to thicken it). Once you realize that the main dish is not cooked in its marinade – in fact the marinade sometimes goes overboard – then you can produce the kind of dishes that have a base flavor with high notes.

Pork belly is bacon. Any place where you are called for pork belly you can use bacon, just don’t cook it dry like most americans do.

Char Siu Bao (barbecued pork dumplings) and Ha Gow (steamed shrimp glass dumplings) are two forms of dumplings that completely step away from the kind of dough and cooking approaches I discuss here. I can make a mean Char Siu Bao – or at least I like it, marmalade pork, but it uses a whole different set of creations in order to make it. Jet Tila’s recipe is very good but if you watch it you’ll go “WTF!?” you’re supposed to pull the flavor off a bunch of veggies then throw them away. Yes, do it. Jet Tila’s recipes are among the best I have found because he thinks a lot about what he’s telling you and is always careful to tell you why (i.e.: “at this point you are doing moisture management not gluten development”) If you guys want to discuss bao poke me in the comments and we can get into that topic. I won’t talk about Ha Gow yet.

See, now this is a great example of why having memory brain damage sucks ass: I know I said something about something after the divider but I have totally forgotten it and I’m scrolling around trying to find it. This is very annoying. I used to have a mind like a steel trap.

Aha! New category of personal excuses. Two stories:

1. A computer security guy I used to know, who I hung out with often enough, is now a big shot executive on track to make hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more. I bumped into him at RSA conference a few years ago and we exchanged the “what are you up to?” stories. I explained I was making cooking knives and weapons in the Japanese tradition and he instantly asked me “how much for me to commission a katana from you?” Well, the fact is I realized he could afford any dumb thing I said, so I blurted out a truth, instead, which was so profound it will never leave me: “I don’t like you that much.”
2. The beach pickled shark resulted in a similar moment of unforgettable truth. The Icelanders I was visiting were very proud of their batshit crazy spoiled shark (just like the Australians who tried to get me to eat grubs!) and I realized I was cornered. Suddenly I blurted out another truth, “I will not eat for other people’s entertainment.” Boom. It was like an iron curtain dropped on the room until they thought it through and then everyone was smiles again but they never offered me more rotten shark.