FOR years I have cooked with a slim volume of Ken Horn's and Easy Cookery Course, purchased (or maybe it was a free gift?) with its eponymous wok. I've produced meals within minutes that prompted general praise and approval. When I cooked one of the recipes from his current volume and asked for comments, one guest said the sauce tasted of "old socks" and the other said, "Yes, and bananas too".
Did the fault lie with me for the cooking Hom for the recipe or, heaven for fend, the guests for dead palates?
Reluctantly my two guests agreed to return for another tasting (or testing) of a different recipe from the earlier book. On this occasion, I produced in less than 30 minutes an Orange Lemon Chicken dish pronounced delicious by both diners. Given that both dishes used chicken as a base and shared some similar ingredients, why such opposite reactions from the consumers? I think the earlier cookbook simply made less of a "production" of cooking a Chinese meal. It relied on the food itself to make an impression, elegant but not trendy or fussed over.
The first recipe had a longer and somewhat more exotic range of ingredients impressive because of their unfamiliarity but really adding little in the way of interest or subtlety to the taste buds.
A good cookbook knows which of items enhance a recipe rich are really extraneous or optional. True, Mr Homdoes labour the point that one should always experiment and make substitutions when any of the required ingredients are not available but it is harder to do this when cooking in an unfamiliar cuisine. This is where the book falls down. It is elaborate in a coffee table style that offers lots of quickly cooked, exotic sounding meals beautifully photographed but really no better and sometimes worse than their earlier counterparts.
ORANGE-LEMON CHICKEN
(From Ken Hom's Quick and Easy Cookery Books, published by BBC)
12 oz (350g) bone less chicken breasts salt tablespoon oil (groundnut, preferable)
2 tablespoons coarsely grated garlic teaspoon finely chopped fresh root ginger
2 teaspoons each finely chopped orange rind and lemon rind
4 tablespoons each fresh orange and lemon juice tablespoon light soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon corn flour mixed with
1 teaspoon water
1 teaspoon chilli bean sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil
3 tablespoons coarsely chopped spring onions
Remove the skin from the chicken and cut the meat into long strips. Blanch the chicken for 30 seconds in a pan of boiling, salted water. Drain and set aside.
Heat a wok or large frying pan, the add the oil, garlic and ginger. Stir fry the mixture for 10 seconds and add the rest of the ingredients except the chicken. Bring the mixture to a simmer, add the chicken to the wok and cook through. The chicken will continue to cook for at least 30 seconds after you have removed it from the wok, so be sure not to over cook it. Serve at once with rice and a salad.