Regular readers will know I have been studying to be a Chinese cuisine chef at New Oriental Cooking School here in Anhui province. I graduated in May and received my diploma in August. I’m now a fully licensed chef. A large part of our training focused on the presentation of food. So, today I want to share with you some of those presentation techniques, using a very simple recipe for Chinese Long Bean Salad.
How to make a dish delicious and beautiful? In Chinese cuisine, we can roughly divide the evaluation of a dish into several categories: color, fragrance, taste, and shape. If a dish has all these characteristics, then it will be a very excellent dish.
Chinese long bean salad does not require a complicated cooking process. So, we can focus more on the placement and decoration of the dish, and the knife skills used in the process. This is a dish served cold (not raw: Chinese yardlong beans must be cooked to be safe to eat). Most cold dishes require delicate placement or decoration to better highlight the ingredients.
When you invite friends over for dinner, you can impress them with the elegant presentation of your dishes. On the dining table, delicious dishes are a must, and at the same time, exquisite dishes also need to exist. These exquisite dishes can also get good taste. If you’d like to learn more about aesthetic presentation techniques, please let me know in the comments section below.
Chinese Long Bean Salad
Equipment
- 1 wok or saucepan
- 1 whisk or cooking chopsticks for mixing the sauce
- 1 serving plate
- 1 small serving bowl for serving the sauce
- 1 mixing bowl for mixing the sauce
Ingredients
- 200 g Chinese yardlong beans also called "snake beans," "long beans"
- ¼ mild red pepper bell or Anaheim, skinned and shredded
- 1 clove garlic minced
- 5 ml cooking oil
- 3 ml salt
- Chinese chili oil
Sauce:
- 10 ml light soy sauce
- 5 ml oyster sauce
- 3 ml toasted sesame oil
- 3 ml sugar
Instructions
- Prepare the ingredients and clean them.
- Fill a saucepan or your wok with enough water to cover the beans and bring it to a boil.
- Remove the heads and tails of the beans and cut into pieces about 5cm (2 inches) long.200 g Chinese yardlong beans
- Thinly peel the skin from red pepper.1/4 mild red pepper
- Then cut the red pepper into shreds and soak the shreds in water.200 g Chinese yardlong beans
- Prepare the sauce by combining the light soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and sugar, then mix well until the sugar is dissolved. Pour the sauce into a small serving bowl, to serve with the beans.10 ml light soy sauce , 3 ml toasted sesame oil, 3 ml sugar, 5 ml oyster sauce
Cook the beans
- Add the beans to the boiling water with 5ml (1 tsp) oil, and 3ml (rounded ½ tsp) salt. Bring the water to a boil again, then continue cooking the beans over medium-low heat for 2 minutes. Drain the beans and set them aside.5 ml cooking oil, 3 ml salt, 200 g Chinese yardlong beans
Presentation
- Arrange the beans neatly on a serving plate as shown, 7 beans per layer, 6 layers in total. Alternate the direction of the beans on each layer: for example the first row has the cut ends arranged top to bottom (facing you), the next layer has the cut ends positioned left to right.
- Put a small amount of Chinese chili oil around the beans. Next add the curled pepper strips and minced garlic on the beans for decoration as shown.1/4 mild red pepper, Chinese chili oil, 1 clove garlic
- Serve the beans with the sauce on the side in a separate dish.
Notes
- Please cut the beans neatly in equal lengths. You need 42 segments, each 5 cm (2 inches) in length.
- Soaking the chili strips in water can make them curl.
- Adding oil when cooking the beans can keep the beans green and shiny.
- You can pour the sauce into the beans and mix well when eating.
Nutrition
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