Chinese Food: Kung Pao Chicken

During our recent trip to Beijing we enjoyed some really good food.  Our family tends to like food from North China, spicy and noodles are two things I think of when I think of North China food. 

In South China they grow rice and thus rice is eaten several times a day by all, but in North China they grow wheat and noodles replace the rice as their starch and filler food.

One of our favorited dishes is the Kung Pao Chicken.  We have learned that Chinese food in Asia is very different from Chinese food in the U.S.A, at least at the places we eat.  The food in Asia has a lot more flavor and a lot less sugar.

Tonight for dinner I decided that I needed to learn to make a good authentic tasting Kung Pao Chicken dish before we return to the U.S.  I am howere an American so I needed simple directions, understanding this I searched one of my favorite online recipe sites, Simply Recipes and sure enough there was a recipe and it looked authentic we decided to give it a try.

I had Tony, our grocery delivery man gather the ingredients for me as I wanted as local as possible.  He was able to get me the dried chilies, the old ginger the roasted peanuts and the Mee Poh noodles.

Mee Poh noodles are an egg type noodle it has quickly become my favorite kind of Chinese noodle but you can serve this over rice or rice noodles as well.

The Kung Pao Chicken is not difficult to make, one word of caution, when you seed the peppers please use gloves, non latex gloves.

Our iron wok is one of the best and most used purchases we have made in Singapore and this dish is made entierly in the wok.

After cooking the chicken part place it in a bowl, add some water to the wok and bring to a boil to cook the Mee Poh noodles, this will allow some of the flavor from the chicken to get into the noodles and clean your wok so you can cook the broccoli.

Place noodles in a serving dish and top with the chicken.

Enjoy!  We loved this recipe!  It did taste just like the one we had in Beijing, not a drop was left.  Well almost, see those black things, they are the peppers we did not eat the actual peppers you could but watch out they are really spicy, we just push them to the side and enjoy the dish.

Here is the recipe from:Simply Recipes

Just a few notes, we used cooking sherry and in place of corn starch we used potato starch as I am allergic to corn, and we did not use the Szechwan peppercorns  otherwise we followed the recipe exactly as written.

Kung Pao Chicken Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 2 1/2 tablespoons of sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon of Szechwan peppercorns (optional)
• 8 red, dried chili peppers
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1 tablespoon of freshly grated ginger
• 6 green onions, chopped
• 2/3 cup of roasted, unsalted peanuts

For the marinade

• 2 teaspoons of soy sauce
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of sherry or Shaoxing rice wine
• 1 tablespoon of water
• 2 teaspoons of cornstarch

For the sauce

• 3 teaspoons of Chinkiang or 2 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons of soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon of sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon of water
• 3 teaspoons of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of cornstarch

Method

1 Mix together the marinade ingredients. Chop the chicken into bite sized pieces and toss them in the marinade and set aside.
2 Combine all the ingredients for the sauce, whisking well to ensure the cornstarch is fully incorporated. Set aside.
3 Thinly slice the garlic. Break the chilies open and discard the seeds inside, then cut them into a few large pieces (the dish will already be very hot, keeping the seeds will make it near inedible).
4 Place the 2 1/2 tablespoons of sesame oil in a wok or large saute pan and place over medium-high heat. Add the chilies and Szechwan peppercorns if using. Stir-fry for a few second until they become fragrant being careful not to burn them. Add the chicken, as soon as the pieces have separated add the ginger, garlic, and green onions. Stir-fry for a few minutes until the chicken is cooked through.
5 Add the sauce and toss. When the sauce becomes thick add the peanuts, toss, and serve.
Serves 4.

Beijing Day 5~ Happy 16th Caleb!

While we were in Beijing Caleb had his 16th birthday.  We couldn't be more proud of Caleb, he is quickly growing into a man. 

Caleb had wanted to be on the Great Wall for his birthday but when we realized that it was 2 hours away from our hotel we knew we needed to be on the Great Wall on the day we had our tour guide.

The Forbidden City was within  walking distance so off we went for a day of exploring and celebrating.

Our Forbidden City day was ridden with pollution smog in the city

The Forbidden City is where the Royal Family of China ruled the country, it was forbidden for any common person to enter the city.  Now the Forbidden City is a tourist attraction in Beijing, it is actually now called the Palace Museum.

The court yards are vast and the buildings are many, as with a lot of the attractions we visited you can not enter the buildings, only tour the court yards.

Security is present everywhere in Beijing both in and out of uniform.

This is the throne from which the Emperor of China would address the people.

The roof lines and tiles on all of the buildings are very beautiful.

Once we saw the amount of smog in the air we were happy that we had gone to The Great Wall earlier in the week when we had blue skies.

There was a cool bamboo forest area in The Forbidden City.

more cool buildings:

We walked around the city for about three hours.

After touring the city it was time to go back to the hotel for some cake.  We were happy to find a cake in Beijing for Caleb's birthday, it was not really sweet but it was cold and refreshing.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CALEB!!  WE LOVE YOU.

Here are some pictures from years ago, oh how you have grown!

We were suppose to fly out of Beijing the night of Caleb's birthday so we hired a driver to take us to the airport.  Before going to the airport we went out to dinner at a Brazilian Barbecue place to celebrate 16 wonderful years with Caleb.

This place was awesome the meat just kept coming to your table, hot and fresh, they sliced it off for you right onto your plate.... we loved it.

There was some time left before we had to be to the airport so the driver took us to a Wal Mart!  Whoa how exciting to be in an American store, and the best thing....... they had gum!!  One can not buy gum in Singapore, so we loaded up on some gum to take back with us.

China Day 4~ Shopping Day

There is plenty of shopping to be done in Beijing.  We thankfully have a friend who lived in Beijing for 10 years so we contacted him before leaving to get some suggestions... it just so happens that he used to work at a pearl store.... bonus!  He gave us the name of the store owner and then contacted her to let her know we were coming so we would get whole sale prices from her without barganing.

Barganing, there is a fun activity you can expect to pay 25% or less of thier original asking price, it helped that my boys spoke Chinese with the sales people. 

This is the first day that we were on our own and needed a taxi, the other days we walked when we were on our own, taking a taxi is so much more difficult than walking as it involves communication with the driver.

We went to the Pearl market... the bell boy at the hotel got us a taxi, talked to the driver and told us not to worry the driver would take us there.  We obtained a card from the hotel to give to our return taxi so they would know where to take us.

We did arrive at the Pearl Market:

And we did find our pearl shop that we were given information on, and yes we did buy some pearls.

We did not take many pictures at all this day as the mall was busy and we felt it was not too wise to pull out our camera.

The lower part of the mall is a huge electronics area, they have everything but be careful as most things are fake. In China they copy stuff, like, for instance, an iPad, they make something that looks like an iPad but isn't really and then they sell it "cheap."  In fact we were offered an iPad 3!  Ummm they have not even been released yet.....

As a family we decided to not buy anything that was fake as we felt that the sellers are stealing from the companies that make this stuff.  Coach bags, Nike shoes, North Face coats etc..... can all be bought but none of them are real. 

We met up with another friend the last night we were in Beijing for dinner, he just published his first book of which we will tell  you about later, but he said that  China will be the very last market that his book is realeased to and that they will wait as long as possible to release it in China.  China is a huge market but as soon as his book is released you will be able to find copies of his book not from his publisher in places like the Pearl Market and the Silk Market.

We have a few different friends that are artist in various forms and they work really hard to produce a painting, an illustration, a book, a song, we feel that they should be compensated for their work and that the materials should not be able to be copied and sold for "cheap."


After the Pearl Market we were able to easily get a taxi as they sort of line up in the area waiting for tourists to be done shopping.  We got back to our hotel without a problem.

We were told before going to China to be careful about what you say, "they" are listening and watching everything. 

We learned that if it says free wifi in China, like at Starbucks or the Airport, you must put in a Chinese phone number in order to get access to the internet this is because they monitor EVERYTHING.  You can not just log in or connect our device like you can in the U.S.  you must put some identifying information into the system.

Our tour guide had no idea what you-tube is, facebook is blocked in China and we had very limited access to google.

We were invited to a church by a certain person...... that we know :)  but in order to enter that church you must show your passport as only people not from China may enter.  In China and they will not allow their citizens to enter a Christian church unless it is registered and controlled by the government.

After our day of shopping we rested at the hotel before heading out for some dinner.  A friend in Singapore reccomended Tim's BBQ.

Texas in China!  The food was good the atmosphere fun and relaxing, exactly what we needed.  We had a wonderful dinner, we were full and content and ready to go home.

It was at this point that our good day of being out and about on our own turned not so good.  We needed to get a taxi in order to get home, it was 6:30 that means it was rush hour.  Being that we are not from the area we were unsure where to get a taxi so we thought about areas that would work in Singapore and stood in those areas for 45 minutes we tried to get a taxi.  Suddenly we saw one, Scott flagged it down, the taxi pulled up to the curb and WHAM  a group of four Chinese people ran in front of us and took the taxi!!  To say the least we were not pleased, at all, some of us less pleased than others.  How frustrating to have spent 45 minutes in the cold to have the rudeness of someone taking the taxi,  but this is the culture, there is definately a me first get out of my way or I will push you out of my way mentality.  Our family experiences this in Singapore with certain populations too so it was not too surprising just frustrating.

In Singapore the restaraunt can call a taxi for you so we went back to Tims BBQ and asked them how to get a taxi, they told us that it is really hard this time of night and showed us a place they thought would be good to stand at but they did not offer to call a taxi for us.

We decided to walk out of the busy area and down a quiet street to see if we would have any better luck.  We were getting offers from bikes, from private drivers claiming to be taxi drivers, one taxi even stopped and refused us, several empty taxis drove right by us waving their hand at us.  As you can imagine we were done, we just needed to get back to the hotel and we felt a little helpless in the whole situation.

Finally after walking several blocks down a very quiet street we were able to get a taxi to stop and take us to our hotel. 

Beijing Day 3~ The Summer Palace

We hired our tour guide Lily for two days.  Today we went to the Summer Palace, a Houtong Village tour and the Acrobat show.

The Summer Palace is where the royal family of China would go to escape the heat of the summer at the Forbidden City.  The gate to enter the palace is a replica of The Forbidden City gate.

On both sides of the gate are lions, one is playing with a baby lion representing the female and one has his paw on a ball representing the male or the king.

The ball is the world, or China depending on where the lion is and the statue symbolizes that the king will rule China or that China will rule the world.  In the U.S.A. you will frequently see this statue outside a Chinese restaurant.

The palace grounds are huge and beautiful here are some random photos we took.

There is a walkway that is 750 meters long and is hand painted with 10,000 pictures, it was built so that the royal family could enjoy the view of the lake during the rain without getting wet.

The lake is very large and is surrounded by the Summer Palace, very peaceful.

There are also a bunch of dragon boats, they do give rides in the summer but we were in China in March and there was still some ice on the water.

There is also a boat made of marble,Lily told us this boat represents the royal family and the water is the common people of China, it is the people who carry the country to its success.

There is always a place to get a snack or a drink in China, we got some hot ginger tea at this stall.

More Summer Palace grounds:

Caleb took a picture of Scott and I sitting on the bench where matches are made.  Women come to this area to discuss their children and try to set them up for marriage, this will still happen today.  I must say we have had a fabulous marriage so on the bench we sat.

There is a very formal very expensive restaurant at the Summer Palace, President Bush ate dinner with the royal family at this restaurant during the Olympic Games in China.

There are not many rooms on the Palace grounds open to the public but some were open for tourists to walk through.

As you leave the grounds there is a restaurant close to the palace that we enjoyed.  Here are some street scenes right outside the palace gate.

After the Summer Palace we went to a Hutong village for a walk.  Here are some random street scenes on our way to the village.

Hutong means well.  The hutong villages are built in an area where they share a well, there is usually no plumbing inside the homes.
Here is the gate to the village that we toured.

and a map of the village:

When you first enter there are several businesses, the village was in a trendy part of town, it was 2:30 in the afternoon so we were pleased to see a coffee shop.

We all enjoyed a cup of coffee:

But you can have tea if you would rather

In fact you can buy a lot of items in the village shopping area, we did not buy this shirt but.. you could

Street scenes~

There are doors leading into each court yard and in the court yard there are usually 4 large rooms.  Here is a peek into a court yard.

Lily told us that the North room is for the most senior member of the family because it gets the most sun, the South room is for the servants as it gets little to no sun, the East room is for the son because the sun rises in the east and your son is the hope for the future of your family the west room is for any other family members you may have.

Here is a door to the court yard.

There are two blue pegs on this door that is a middle class family the number of pegs indicates how wealthy the family is also there is no stoop at the bottom of this door is you are wealthy you have a stoop to keep out the rain.  This door has two lion statues on drums this means that it is a military family.

This door has four blue pegs, this is a wealthy family.

Did we mention we really liked our tour guide Lily?  Here she is:

If you go to Beijing let me know and we will give you her information.

One more door picture:

Here are some street scenes on the housing side of the village~

There are several modes of transport in the area:

In the evening we went to the Chinese Acrobat show the pictures will speak for themselves, it was cool, unbelievable and dangerous.

a close up of her on top of all those chairs

I think I could do this one:

That is if Scott can hold me up :)

How many ladies can you fit on a bike?  If you are in China a lot of ladies fit on a bike~

If you have been to an amusement park you have probably seen the guy on the motorcycle inside the metal ball driving around and upside down, well in China they put SIX motorcycles in that ball!

Oh my goodness, I could hardly watch, it was amazing.