A popular national dish during autumn and winter, when chestnuts are in season.
The wind-dried sausage in this dish makes the chicken, already highly seasoned in the marinade, even spicier and richer in taste.
The dragon and phoenix of the title are metaphors for the two main ingredients: chicken and prawns. Because it is a very elegant dish, it is worth the trouble to use the “going through the oil” technique to seal in the juices of the ingredients before stir-frying them.
This is a pleasant Southern stir-fried dish of tender and tasty chicken with crunchy sugar peas. The oyster sauce, a special condiment of the South, adds a pleasing taste to the dish.
A famous Szechwan dish that tempts the palate with a full range of tastes and aftertastes: peppery hot and spicy, savory and slightly sweet and sour. It is said that this was a favorite dish of a Szechwan governor during the Ch’ing dynasty (1644–1911), after whose official title, “Kung Pao,” the dish was named. The governor must have been fond of peanuts, for it is unthinkable not to add them.
In Hong Kong and China, some restaurants specialize in a very sophisticated dish, Winter Melon Pond. A whole winter melon of the perfect size is partially hollowed, filled with such delicacies as crab meat, diced duck, pork, Chinese mushrooms and bamboo shoots and then steamed for hours to produce the most delectable soup. But it is not a practical dish to make at home. This recipe, however, is, and the melon is succulent in the soup.
This Cantonese soup, like sweet and sour pork, is tremendously popular with non-Chinese, especially Westerners. Canned products are used here for labor-saving purposes. The soup will still be delicious if you want to make it very simple and omit the chicken.
A Cantonese fire pot reflects what’s easily available in the region, and it therefore consists of seafood as well as meat and vegetables. If you don’t have a traditional charcoal-burning fire pot for cooking at the table, use a fondue set or heatproof bowl and burner or an electric pot.
The Chinese are unanimous in their appreciation of shark’s fin soup, and this very nutritious soup is rightly considered to be one of the most exotic examples of Chinese cuisine. A fin of the best quality is, however, extremely expensive and takes four days to prepare. The fin used in this recipe is sold in a package consisting of the cartilage with some fin needles and is already processed and then dried again. By itself, shark’s fin has little taste, but when combined with other ingredients in a prime stock, it makes the perfect soup.
Like shark’s fin soap, bird’s nest soup reaches the heights of Chinese cuisine, though Westerners are often put off by the name and the fact that it is produced by swallows’ saliva. Alone, bird’s nest is bland, and its function is to provide texture, rather than taste, to the soup. A very rich prime stock is therefore essential as a base, as is the chicken velvet. And yet, without the bird’s nest, no amount of prime stock or chicken velvet could produce the unique quality of this soup.
Even though most salads are considered light fare, a Cobb salad is substantial enough to make a one-dish meal. Created by Bob Cobb in the 1920s at the Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles, it has become a classic that New Englanders enjoy, too. Its combination of salad greens, tomatoes, avocados, chicken, bacon, blue cheese, and hard-boiled eggs supplies you with plenty of vegetables and protein.
I am partial to chicken salads that contain some fruit.With each bite, you get the savory taste of the chicken with a burst of juicy, cool fruit. Toasted nuts add crunch as well as a savory punch.
You can really get down and dirty with this sandwich. It’s so very delicious that I never recommend sharing it. Many times I have witnessed a customer hiding in a corner to gobble up this sandwich, hoping not to be recognized while enjoying a messy feast. Big, soft onion rolls hold everything together, but there is always something yummy slipping out. For the maximum amount of crunch and zing, make the coleslaw the same day you assemble the sandwiches.
I like my chili full-flavored and zesty, but you can control the heat by adding as much or as little chili powder and Tabasco sauce as you want. This chili is incredibly popular, especially during football season. People come and buy gallons at a time for their playoff and Super Bowl parties.
When my daughter, Emily, was a baby, she loved sweet potatoes so much that one day, when I went to lift her from her crib, her skin looked orange. I panicked, thinking she had hepatitis, but the doctor knew right away that I had just given her too many jars of sweet potatoes. She never lost her taste for this naturally sweet, creamy vegetable. When she got older, I made her this soup to take to school for lunch. When she opened her thermos, all her friends wanted to try this eyecatching, chunky array of chicken, vegetables, and barley pearls. They wrote a song about it called “Sweet Potato Chick Chick a Barley.” Every time I start making this recipe, I can’t shake that tune out of my head. Though Emily doesn’t bring it for lunch everyday any more, it’s still one of her favorites. At the shop, grown-ups like it, too.
Isn’t it amazing how children will eat just about anything made with pasta? My daughter, Emily, would eat a bowlful of this soup every night if I let her. I have to admit that her preference comes in handy on those days when I am so tired that just the thought of cooking and grocery shopping makes me want to cry. This soup helps turn a meal of last resort into a real dinner.
What makes this Greek classic so appealing is its intensely rich chicken broth, infused with lemon juice and zest. It is also enhanced with threads of cooked eggs, vibrant leaves of fresh spinach, and orzo. The soup is definitely a spirit lifter. I always like to see the response when I ladle out a sample for someone who admits to not feeling well. A smile— and an order for an entire bowl—usually follow. I also like to make this soup during Easter because it features eggs.
This is one of the few recipes I reserve for special occasions at home because it just doesn’t suit the tremendous quantities I usually make at the store. It needs to reduce and fortify all day so the broth becomes almost like a demi-glace—clear, thick, and concentrated. The vegetables that are added towards the end need to be carefully cut into small pieces. The contrast between the rich, clear broth and the delicate vegetables makes this a treat. I always serve this soup at Druker family holiday gatherings.
This soup can’t substitute for a visit to a doctor, but it should help settle your stomach, clear your sinuses, and improve your mood. We go through gallons of it every winter, when people are desperate to alleviate the sniffles, coughs, and other symptoms of the viruses that make their annual rounds.
When I was growing up, almost everything that came out of my Grandma Florrie’s kitchen tasted like perfection to me. Whipped egg whites and club soda helped make her matzo balls nice and light.