Modern Chinese Cuisine

This post is long overdue. My son is in his second year Diploma in Professional Chef. Currently, a lot of young men are into culinary arts, cooking, hospitality and chefs stuffs. Must be the influence of the glamour of the angmohs chefs show. Do you know that the professional chef course is more expensive than the other diploma courses? Funny, right? However, the positive thing is they don’t have to pour over textbooks. Of course, they have to study all the funny terms, French, cost management, etc etc.

So, usually, the students have to prepare one lunch on their own. They draw lots and one will be assigned to manage it while the other team members help. The cost is RM12 per person and they have to stick within the budget. Maximum number is 10 pax.

My son was in charge of Modern Chinese Cuisine. He asked me for ideas. I went, “HUH? Chinese cuisine? Monk jump over the wall! Sharksfin! Abalone!” But doh..he said, RM12 per person only. Chey..how to make a meal at RM12?

So, they have to cut costs. The appetizer is prawn salad. I love the prawn salad, especially the orangey mayo. My son told me they mixed Sunquick with the cheap mayo. It tastes nice. Try it.

Soup was a little tough to manage. I am not sure if they have lecturers supervising cos the soup looks ugly but tastes good. Hahaha, it is my own son so I dare to give him some tips like skimming off the surface fats and not let the chicken feet look so gross. However, the soup is wholesome with chestnuts, peanuts, carrots and is very sweet. Chinese soup is not easy to deal because one needs to boil at very low temperature to get clear, nice ones. They have only a few hours in the morning to prepare.

I love the main dish. It is drunken chicken in herbal sauce. The herbs were recommended by his lecturer so I do not know what Chinese herbs went into the dish. But it is nicely balanced as there is no overpowering of Chinese herbs smell which many people don’t like. The chicken is nicely flavoured right down to the bones. My little boy and a friend’s daughter, age 6yr and 5 yrs old enjoyed the chicken rice. (in Chinese cooking, the alcohol in the cooking dissipated during cooking, so one doesn’t get drunk)

And the dessert! It is so pretty though I find the colouring a tad bright for tong yuen. But it needs to be brighter because there is dried longan, brown sugar and ginger in the soup. Otherwise, it will look a messy blob of rice balls.

So, overall, it is a nice meal. What’s important is the fun they had in planning, organising and cooking, I think. LOL, please don’t ask me for recipe because they way they prepare it, it is very complicated, with portions broken into per dish and costs included.