Chinese Style Cooking Article

Chinese Food can be roughly divided into the Northern and Southern styles of cooking. In general, Northern dishes are oily without being cloying, and the flavors of vinegar and garlic tend to be more pronounced. Pasta plays an important role in Northern cooking; noodles, ravioli-like dumplings, steamed stuffed buns, fried meat dumplings, and steamed bread are favored flour-based treats. the cooking of Peking, Tientsin, and Shantung are perhaps the best known area styles of Northern Chinese cuisine.
Representing Southern cooking styles are Szechwan and Hunan cuisine, famous for their liberal use of chili peppers; the Kiangsu and Chekiang styles, which emphasize freshness and tenderness; and Cantonese food, which tends to be somewhat sweet, and full of variety. Rice and rice products such as rice noodles, rice cakes, and rice congee, are the usual accompaniments to Southern style cooking. In Chinese cooking, color aroma, and flavor share equal importance in the preparation of each dish. Normally, any one entree will combine three to five colors, selected from ingredients that are light green, dark green, red, yellow, white, black, or caramel-colored. Usually, a meat and vegetable dish is prepared from one main ingredient and two to three secondary ingredients of contrasting colors. It is then cooked with the appropriate method, seasonings and sauce to result in an aesthetically attractive dish. Please visit www.chinatownconnection.com/chinese_style_cooking.htm to finish this article.