New Cookbook; sweet and sour cabbage, family style tofu

Over the weekend I as I was wandering down Belmont with friends I saw a copy of an interesting looking Chinese cookbook in the window of a used bookstore. I'm sure I was at least partially drawn to the image of the 清明上河图 Qingming scroll, which depicts Kaifeng around a thousand years ago. Its called Regional Cooking of China and was written in 1975 by Maggie Gin, so it has a very appealing retro free to it. It doesn't have any fancy photos, which I find usually means that the cookbook is less for cooking with than for drooling over. But that's my own feeling. I also like the way it is arranged, by main ingredient, and that she doesn't change much to fit an American audience. Plus each dish often has many variations listed, which makes sense. Since the cuisine of China is so massively varied and on never finds the same dish prepared the same way.

I tried cooking Sweet and Sour Cabbage (粮醋白菜) and Family Style Doufu (家常豆腐), which can also be translated as 'home style doufu' or 'doufu like mom makes'. It was the first time I tried making it. Since it is 'homestyle' it should not surprise you to learn that no two versions are the same. The basics are fried pressed doufu in a brown sauce which is a little sweet, a little sour, a little hot, and a little salty. Just to cover all the major Chinese food flavors. Depending on where you are and who's kitchen youa re eating from it might be more of some than the others. I've also had it cooked with many vegetables, usually green peppers and scallions. But sometimes it might contain, tomatoes, mushrooms (often wood ear), carrots, or bamboo shoots. 

As for the sweet and sour cabbage, it was a pretty simple affair. Chopped Napa cabbage fried then tossed with a mix of hot peppers, vinegar, salt, and sugar. It went pretty well, but next time I will add a little dash of cornstarch to help the sauce adhere to the cabbage. I usually go pretty easy on the cornstarch, since too sticky of sauce is one of my frequent complaints about American-Chinese food. I will try it again this week and see how it goes.