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Cooking Class: Rice Flour Meet & Lees Fish Slices

2002/04/01

Rice Flour Meat (mi fen rou)

This meat is a type of steamed pig cured by salting and mixed with rice flour.

Ingredients

500g pork with skin; 150g rice flour; 15g soybean sauce; 50g sweet flour catsup (tianmianjiang); 5g salt; 3g gourmet powder; 15g cooking wine; 5g green onion; 5g sliced ginger; 50g sesame oil; 1g condiments; 20g sugar.

Preparatory Steps

1. Clean the meat and cut into strips 10cm in length and 3cm width. Mix them with sweet flour catsup, green onion, ginger, condiments, cooking wine, soybean sauce, salt, gourmet powder, sugar, and sesame oil. Place aside for two hours.

2. After this period, coat the mixed pieces with rice flour and lay them in orderly lines in a bowl. Steam for about one hour until the meat becomes brittle. Turn the bowl upside down, and tap contents onto a plate before serving. This will give the meal more visual appeal.

Creating Rice Flour

Place rice, water and condiments into a pot and boil until they become yellowish, then crush the mixture into powder. If you prefer to steam the meat in lotus pads instead of a bowl, the result will be Lotus Rice Flour Meat (heye fen zheng meat).

Lees Fish Slices (zaoliu yu pian)

Zaoliu refers to flavoring food with fragrant lees. This dish, a Beijing traditional food, is whitish to the eye, has a fresh taste and a strong flavor of lees.

Ingredients

150g fish; 25g agarics; 50g egg white; 4g salt; 50g watered starch; 5g ginger juice; 25g lard; 20g lees; 750g vegetable oil (75g of which will be used during cooking); 200g soup; 10g sugar.

Preparatory Steps

1. Immerse the fish in water for two hours to rid it of blood, then dry it and it cut into pieces 5cm in length, 2.5cm width and 2cm thick. Mix the egg white, salt and watered starch and "blot" it onto the fish. Briefly cook the agarics in boiled water and lay them on a plate.

2. Place a pan on the fire and pour in the soup, followed by the ginger juice, salt and sugar. Immerse the fish slices when the soup is boiled. Skim off foam, then add lees and the watered starch to produce a thicker mixture. Finally, drop in some lard and lay them above the agarics on the plate.

Creating Fragrant

Lees Mix 1,000g of cooking wine with 200g lees, 75g sugar and 10g salt, then filter through a piece of gauze before consuming the juice.



	Article featured in Beijing This Month, April 2002 Publication sponsored by Information Office of the Beijing Municipal Government, Beijing Municipal Bureau of Tourism