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Chinese Cooking 101 - The Quiz
 Featured Recipes
• Chop Suey
• Chow Mein
• Honey Garlic Barbecue Spareribs (Baked)
• Stir-fried Broccoli, Hong Kong Style 
  Related Resources
• How to Deep-fry 
• How to Shred and Mince Ginger
• How to Stir-fry
 

Cooking Chinese food can be a little intimidating at first. Here's a fun quiz that will give you some useful tips on handling some of the more common problems that can arise: 

I) You've just completed an introductory course in Chinese cooking. You can't wait to impress friends and family with your newly acquired culinary skills. You invite a few people over to dinner on the weekend. What should you serve?

a) Honey Garlic Baked Spareribs with Stir-fried Bamboo shoots and Mushrooms in Oyster Sauce
b) Stir-fried Fish fillets, with Stir-fried Broccoli Hong Kong Style
c) Beef Chow Mein and Pork Chop Suey

<Find Out the Answer >

II) Since several of your friends are dieting, you decide to make the stir-fried fish and broccoli. This will take a bit of finessing, as you need to prepare two stir-fry dishes with only one wok. You look over the recipes to decide on a plan of attack. What should you do first?

a) Cook one of the dishes and set it on a warming tray while you prepare the other dish. 
b) Wash and cut up the vegetables for both dishes.

<Find Out the Answer>

III) You discover that the fish (in this case, carp) has a rather strong odor. You're worried that this might affect the taste of the dish, overpowering the other flavors. What can you do? 

a) Soak the fish in rice vinegar or 1 tablespoon of any wine. 
b) Serve the fish with lemon slices as a garnish. 

<Find Out the Answer>

IV) Dinner is a success, and a week later, you decide to tackle Stir-fried Chicken with Pineapple. Everything is proceeding according to plan as you marinate chicken breasts and chop vegetables. However, when the time comes to start cooking, you discover that the recipe merely says to "add all the vegetables and stir-fry." 

You're at a loss. You know that vegetables are supposed to be stir-fried in order of density, giving the thickest or most dense vegetables more cooking time. While it's pretty clear that thinner vegetables should be added near the end, you have no idea how to organize thicker vegetables such as celery, water chestnuts, and onion in order of cooking time. What do you do? 

a) Move to plan B - give up on stir-frying and steam the vegetables. 
b) Stir-fry the vegetables separately. 

<Find Out the Answer>

V) One night when making chop suey, you discover that you're out of bok choy. What do you use for a substitute?

a) Sui Choy - (the light green and white vegetable often sold alongside bok choy in supermarkets). After all, if supermarkets pair them together, they must be interchangeable, right? 
b) Broccoli

<Find Out the Answer>

VI)
Fried rice is one of your favorite dishes, and you can't wait to make it at home. You whip up a batch of Yangchow fried rice that Martin Yan himself would be proud of. You've barely finished cleaning the wok when your spouse telephones, suggesting dinner out at an expensive restaurant. Should you take him/her up on the offer, or insist that you both stay home and eat the dinner that you slaved over all afternoon?  

a) Stay Home
b) Dine out 

<Find Out the Answer>

VII) A recipe calls for "lightly beaten eggs." What utensil do you grab from the cupboard to beat them with? 

a) Chopsticks
b) Egg beater

<Find Out the Answer>

VIII) When it comes time to make a sauce, you see that recipe calls for one tablespoon of cornstarch mixed with water. How much water do you add to the cornstarch? 

a) An equal amount
b) Two tablespoons - double the amount of cornstarch

<Find Out the Answer>

IX) Your family has been begging you to cook chow mein for weeks, and you decide tonight is the night. However, the supermarket is out of the crispy, dried chow mein noodles that you normally use. What do you do? 

a) Use fresh noodles
b) Substitute rice
c) Put off making chow mein until you have the right noodles

<Find Out the Answer>

X) While preparing chow mein, you discover the recipe's instructions are rather vague. It says "cut the vegetables" but there is no information on how to cut them. What should you do?

a) Slice the vegetables on the diagonal into bite-sized pieces
b) Mix it up - cut the vegetables into an assortment of shapes and sizes for more variety. 

<Find Out the Answer>

XI)
You've just taken your first class in Chinese cooking at the local high school. Eager to show off your skills, you rush to the Asian market on Saturday morning, and spend a productive afternoon seasoning, mincing, and chopping. Everything is proceeding according to plan - until the time comes to cook the food. 

You add oil to the wok and, following your cooking instructor's example, set the stove temperature at the highest setting.  However, despite frantic stir-frying, the food cooks too quickly and starts sticking to the bottom of the wok. A few more minutes and dinner will be ruined. What do you do?

a) Add water
b) Move the wok to a cold element, stir-frying as you do so, and lower the temperature.

<Find Out the Answer>

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