Coquettish Rebirth

As a cook like Lao Zhang, he is of course a good cook, and at the same time he is also a cook with great national pride. ≧Top≧Point≧Small≧Speak, why do you say that?Because he would rather die than cook dishes like Zuo Zongtang's chicken!What the hell are these?Can the Chinese make such a dish?It’s not that you can’t cater to American tastes, but you still need Chinese cooking methods and concepts to cater to American tastes!Even if the Chinese make sweet and sour chicken like General Tso's chicken, would they use such a large piece of chicken?The meat that will be made is not tasty at all?Totally impossible!If we Chinese want to cook, we will cook according to the Chinese culinary philosophy!Even if you want to cater to Americans, you have to dig out the corresponding tastes in China, instead of inventing a weird dish that only foreign devils can eat out of thin air!From Lao Zhang's point of view, he is completely unworthy of being a cook!

Among our Chinese dishes, there are more sweet and sour ones, okay?It's like kimchi, and it's the kind of Shuchuan kimchi, isn't it sour, sweet and refreshing?It's like scrambled eggs with tomatoes. Although the northern method is sour and salty, there are sour and sweet ones here in the south of the Yangtze River, so it can be made into sour and sweet!Then sweet and sour pork tenderloin, isn't this sweet and sour?Then the Northwest-style hot and sour potato shreds, although not sweet, but hot and sour Americans also eat?Dongbeikou's Guobaorou, is it sweet and sour?Sweet and sour fish, is this sweet and sour?Even the simplest cold cucumber is made into sweet and sour in China!This is very appetizing!Among these Chinese dishes, there are too many sour and sweet ones. Is it necessary to invent such weird dishes?It can be said that the people who used to cook Chinese food in the United States are basically immigrants, and they are not professional cooks themselves, but only know how to cook.Therefore, even the dishes of several major domestic cuisines will not directly open restaurants to foreigners, which is why this kind of weird dishes are possible!

Lao Zhang brought five old friends to the United States with Jia Hongjian and the others. These six people spent the whole day studying how to make dishes suitable for American tastes.These old guys used to work in the state banquet kitchen. Everyone was about the same age, so they also retired in batches.Working in the state banquet kitchen, sometimes foreign leaders will bring a group of dozens or even more than 100 people to discuss state affairs and attract investment.Therefore, there cannot be fewer people in the state banquet kitchen.These old buddies have been cooperating for a lifetime, not to mention, but at least there is no problem in cooperating with each other, and even the tacit understanding can be said to be great.These people are not with Jia Hongjian, they are not even in New York!where are theyThey are following Ye Jing in Los Angeles. While studying the recipes, they are constantly giving the people Ye Jing found to try!

Who did Ye Jing find?All kinds of celebrities in Los Angeles!Don't forget that Jia Hongjian and the others have already integrated into Los Angeles. When they were canvassing for the Oscars in the early years, Jia Hongjian had been entertaining various celebrities in Los Angeles every day.It can be said that the celebrities and politicians in Los Angeles know Jia Hongjian and the others!So their method is to study the recipes here in Los Angeles, and then ask Ye Jing to invite someone to come and taste it!Lao Zhang and his old brothers, when they tried it, they made another transformation of the so-called "American Chinese food" that already exists!This transformation, first of all, is aimed at the so-called "Tso's Chicken".This General Tso's chicken is made in the United States. It is a large piece of boneless chicken thigh, peeled off the skin, then wrapped in batter and deep-fried.This approach is in the eyes of Lao Zhang and the others.That is simply heresy!They should have been tied to the stake and burned to death!

Who invented General Tso's Chicken?It is said that it was invented by a chef who went to Daiwan after the War of Liberation.The chef is from Fran, and he learned Lingnan cuisine.So the taste of this cooking is a bit skewed, with Lingnan flavor but spicy.As for Zuo Zongtang's chicken, he later came to the United States to open a restaurant and carry it forward.On the one hand, it has the sweet and sour taste and deep frying that Americans like, and on the other hand, it is spicy and meets the taste of the cook himself. It was originally called sweet and sour chicken nuggets, but he insisted on calling it Zuo Zongtang chicken!Later, Kissinger was said to have visited China.Then I often go to support such a restaurant, so the popularity of this dish in the United States has greatly increased!

Of course, the surface taste of this dish is good, with both hot and sour, and the chicken is crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.The outside of the chicken was fried because it was covered in batter.So the outer shell is still a bit hard, but the inside is very tender.But the consequence of such a practice is that the meat inside basically can't absorb the hot, sour and sweet taste, so the taste just stays on the surface and doesn't go deep into the inside at all!So how did Lao Zhang and the others re-sinicize this dish?How should they use various methods of the eight major Chinese cuisines to remake such a dish in line with the Chinese way?First, they decided to slice the chicken thighs.The thin slices of meat are naturally easy to taste, and at the same time, the method of wrapping the outside in batter has been cancelled.

However, this chicken still uses the same frying procedure as Chinese food in the United States, but the frying method is completely different from that in the United States.Generally speaking, fried chicken in the United States is fried with high-temperature shortening—this shortening is a kind of artificially blended oil, using refined animal and vegetable oils and hydrogenated oils, etc., the effect is The fried stuff is very crispy.If ordinary people learn how to make fried chicken in street shops, and then go home to make fried chicken by themselves, then it is guaranteed that the outer layer of the fried chicken will not be as crispy as other people's. Why?Because of the shortening used in other shops!This kind of shortening, that is a folk name in our country, but the official name in Europe is called "mixed cooking fat".

But here, Lao Zhang and the others are not going to use this shortening to make it. On the one hand, there are easily trans fatty acids in the shortening, which is not good for health. Both of these things are foreigners. Lao Zhang and the others have never used it, and they are still used to cooking according to the Chinese method.So in the end they adopted a method of frying the chicken with low-temperature oil first, and then quickly frying the chicken with high-temperature oil to make it crispy on the outside and tender on the inside!Of course, in this way, the outside is not as crispy as it is after being wrapped with shortening and batter, but it is a bit hard, which is a bit like the taste of spicy chicken nuggets, relishing and hard, but the inside is not like spicy. The chicken nuggets are so hard, but the inside is tender and soft!

After such a piece of chicken is ready, then cut the tomato, cut the tomato into thin slices, put it in a bowl, sprinkle sugar and mix well, use the concentration difference caused by the sugar to absorb the juice from the tomato, and let the tomato slice ooze in a few minutes Tomato juice came out.With the sugar that was originally sprinkled, it is of course sweet and sour.At this time, put some chopped green onion and minced garlic, put it in the oil pan and fry it. After the aroma is released, put the tomato juice and slices in and boil it. After the juice is thicker, put it in the fried Chicken slices and shredded green peppers.Although on the surface it seems that the recipe is no different from the so-called General Tso's chicken, but this tomato juice is different from their deliberately chosen sweet and sour sauce. After this tomato juice is fried with green peppers, it tastes delicious. very!And basically there is only a little bit of spiciness, but the overall taste becomes very fragrant!

Then such a plate of modified General Tso's chicken, because it is juicy, so the cooked rice is put in before it comes out of the pot. After heating for a few minutes, the rice absorbs part of the juice, and the rice is delicious!After collecting the juice at the end, put it on a plate, and it looks very good!The overall orange-red juice is covered on the rice, and then there are chicken, green peppers, tomatoes and other things on it. The color looks good too!With the decoration of a little Chinese carving, this plate of vegetable rice looks no worse than Western-style Italian seafood baked rice!Such an improved so-called "Tso's Chicken", after Ye Jing found twenty celebrities in Los Angeles to taste it, everyone really applauded it!Except for a Mexican descendant who said that the spiciness was not strong, everyone else ate everything, and almost licked the plate at the end!Just by looking at his behavior, you can tell what he thinks of this dish!

In the end, Ye Jing also conducted a survey with these people, asking them how much they thought the "staple food" would be appropriate to sell in high-end restaurants.And these people have said that 50 dollars a plate, they can accept!Shit, according to the exchange rate these days, a plate of 50 dollars is more than 300 RMB!Did they accept more than 300 RMB?Yes, these people are not short of money!And relatively speaking, what kind of steak, what kind of pasta, what kind of baked rice do they eat, and they are a bit tired of eating. Although every restaurant has a slightly different taste of the same dish, the overall taste is still the same after all.Now when I eat this high-end Chinese food, I immediately feel the taste buds rejoice!All of a sudden, there is a sense of freshness and an unprecedented taste impact!So they feel that the 50 dollars a plate is worth more than buying steak!

In addition to this "Tso's Chicken", Lao Zhang and the others have also developed a variety of sweet and sour dishes, such as sweet and sour shrimp, sweet and sour short ribs and so on!There are even sweet and sour fish-flavored eggplants. The recipe of the fish-flavored eggplants is really similar to the so-called General Tso’s chicken, that is, the eggplant pieces are wrapped in half-flour and half-provincial batter and then fried, and then fried. Stir-fried tomatoes and green peppers, the taste is also excellent!Especially the eggplant cubes are stuffed with a little meat stuffing. The meat stuffing has been specially prepared. The final product tastes like meat and has the delicious taste of eggplant and vegetarian dishes. It's really a praise!Celebrities in Los Angeles who had eaten these dishes told Ye Jing one after another—don’t go to New York to open a restaurant, come to Los Angeles to open a restaurant, we will definitely frequent it, we can’t wait!Look, our flagship store has not yet opened, the first store has not yet opened, the masses have asked us to open a branch! (To be continued..)