Basic Fried Rice

Here’s another dish from Kenneth Lo’s Cheap Chow. I went for the Chinese classic of fried rice, which I’ve attempted before without reference to a recipe, with limited success. I figured starting at the very beginning when it came to fried rice might be a good idea, so Basic Fried Rice it is.

Stir-Fried Minced Meat with Soya Sauce, Mushrooms & Green Peas with Onion Cakes

Here’s two from Kenneth Lo’s 1978 book on Chinese cooking - Cheap Chow. I’ve been meaning to cook more from this book, and now my budget is somewhat tight I hope to get on with some of the more adventurous recipes. There’s one for Broad Bean, Potato and Belly of Pork Soup, which sounds amazing, but would require me to tackle pig’s trotters and I’m just not sure I’m ready for that kind of commitment. Today’s recipe features the much more familar mince, because, as Kenneth points out ‘In facing up to the problems of budget cookery, sooner or later one has to resort to the use of minced meat‘. So here goes!

Shredded pork stir-fried with bean-sprouts and spring onions

Although I enjoy Chinese food I’ve very little experience making it – there’s an assumption on my part, rightly or wrongly, that it’s somehow difficult. I bought the following book partly to make me give it a go (and also it only cost 50p). The book is ‘Cheap Chow – Chinese Cooking on next to nothing‘ by Kenneth Lo, published by Pan in 1978. I have no idea how popular Chinese food was in the seventies, but I assume that it wasn’t a very frequently cooked cuisine in the average home (nb, I wasn’t around in the seventies, so please set me to rights if I’m assuming wrongly). This recipe book suffers no fools though, and gives a very decent run through of Chinese cooking techniques, including recipes for the standards Red Sauce and Master Sauce, which Lo explains are the basis of many a dish. I’ve certainly made a mental note to set an afternoon aside to slow cook some meat in the red sauce.  I decided to start with something easy though: