Asia Tatling Dining

Many people may think Chinese cooking is relatively difficult and involves complicated preparations. For newcomers making their first steps in this genre, once acquiring the two essential skills - marinating and wok-fry, everything will fall into place. Marinades are ubiquitous in Chinese cooking and this essential process helps to add flavours and textures to any meat or seafood. Equally popular to steaming, wok-frying is a popular method of quick cooking and allows cooks to mix and match different ingredients. In the video above, we show you these basic culinary skills, providing the foundations to any Cantonese culinary education.

In this week’s Epicurean Express, we headed to the new Chinese restaurant Yu Lei at Harboutfront Landmark in Hung Hom and asked head chef Mikiya Imagawa, who has over 20 years of experience in preparing haute Shanghainese cuisine in Japan, to demonstrate its signature wok-fried wagyu beef fillet. Chef Imagawa demonstrates how to use premium Kyusyu beef from Saga and Japanese mustard seeds to give the dish an extra kick, as well as teaching us how to heat up the wok and control the heat of the ingredients while frying, two essential steps in the art of Chinese wok-frying.

Ingredients (serves four):

100g wagyu beef fillet

4pcs mushroom (12g each)

4pcs zucchini (15g each)

4pcs red bell pepper (8g each)

3g spring onion

3g ginger

Marinade:

1/2tbs salt

1tbs pepper

10cc Japanese soy sauce

1/2 egg

3g starch powder

Seasonings:

5cc shochu

4g sugar

100g yellow mustard

10cc Yamasa soy sauce

10cc soup stock

3g starch powder

2g sesame oil