Chapter 102 - Is that it?

Wang Ming started off with cooking the meats he had experience with from the pricy cuts. He started with the sirloin steak, as he's most familiar with this cut, his father used to serve these steaks the western way by grilling or sautéeing (Cooking with high heat minimal oil/butter) them.

But for Wang Ming, even though he's using cuts more popular in the west, he wants to cook them using Asian cooking techniques so the recipes are more suitable for the locals here. Since the sirloin cut is a fairly thick piece of meat which has a good beefy flavor, Wang Ming wanted to play with the fact that it has a strong taste already by making it even more intense.

Cooking the meat in the new kitchen, Wang Ming felt a refreshing feeling. Finally he's cooking again, finally he's making new recipes he was getting sick making the same recipe every day in and out.

Wang Ming cooked the sirloin steak for a few minutes on each side to create a beautiful crust on both sides of the steak. Since he had cooked it on so high heat, the steak was still rare inside, but this is exactly what he wanted as he was going to cook the meat later again in a savory, sweet and spicy sauce using the Xi Zai Qing soy sauce he had gotten from Uncle Hou as base.

Cooking up the sauce was simple as he only needed to boil up a bit of the Xi Zai Qing with some water, after he put in some brown sugar, dried chili for a little kick and ginger. He was careful to not put too much of the seasoning in as the Xi Zai Qing is very hard to get, also it's much easier to save the dish if you put too little than too much.

After a few tries the sauce tasted perfect, it was thickening up too, so he hurriedly cut up the meat which was still rare and put it in the sauce and hurriedly tossed it around. He had to be fast as he only wanted to meat to cook to a medium rare and not more than that, since the sirloin steak don't have as much fat as other cuts if it get's overcooked it's going to taste like cardboard.

Tossing the pan around while taking it on and off the heat, Wang Ming felt satisfied after 5 minutes when he could see the sauce bubbling and it sticking to the meat. He then cut some spring onion and spread it over the meat. This was to help counterbalance the strong savory taste. He took the pan off the heat and grabbed a piece of meat with a pair of chopsticks and took a bite.

He didn't bother to cut further to see how much he had cooked the meat as you can eat steak raw fine. Chewing and tasting the meat in his mouth made Wang Ming disappointed. The sauce tasted perfect, but the meat just didn't complement the dish as he thought it would. He had cooked the meat close to medium which was a bit over but it shouldn't matter.

Sadly, the sirloin steak just doesn't fit in Asian cuisine as well. He understood now why his father's restaurant served the steak in a western way, as using western herbs and butter complements the steak much more.

Wang Ming encountered the same problem with the entrecote but this time he tried another recipe, he tried to stir-fry it with noodles. He used the soy sauce as base again to flavor the meat and egg noodles. He cooked the meat first, then stir-fried it together with noodles, onion, green onion.

The entrecote tasted amazing as it has more marbling than the sirloin it came out more tender, the beefy flavor was also there. But Wang Ming felt it just didn't fit again, as he felt the dish would be much more complete if he used duck instead of the entrecote.

He tried the other steak cuts he had bought also with different type of Asian recipes and found the same thing again and again it just doesn't fit together. Wang Ming just couldn't point out why it's like that most of the dishes tasted good but also wrong. He couldn't figure it out at all, so he went on to the cheaper cuts.

Seeing the cheaper cuts made him feel more excited this is his forte. He wouldn't feel as bad also messing up these cuts as they are cheap he could buy a lot of them. Even though he has a lot of money now, and could buy lots of expensive ingredients, he still didn't like the feeling that he's wasting them. But for the cheaper ones, he's less reserved.

This time he started with the lamb as he has no prior experience with them the only thing he knew is that for the cheap cuts like lamb shoulder you usually need to marinade them for a long period like 24 hours. But Wang Ming didn't want to wait, so earlier he had not only tenderised the lamb with a meat hammer, but he'd also covered it in baking soda and cornstarch and covered the meat with it, which is called velveting.

What this does is that it tenderizes the meat, many Chinese restaurant uses this mixture to ensure their meat is tender. This is also the reason they can cut the meat so thinly and even if the meat is overcooked it will still be fairly tender.

The lamb had been marinating for roughly two hours, which he hoped was enough. The reason he needed the lamb to be tender is that the meat tastes a lot better if it's tender, but also he was going to make the recipe mongolian lamb. The meat and the sauce is the hero in that dish so the meat has to be perfect else it's going to ruin the dish.

The dish is fairly similar to how he had made the sirloin steak earlier, but the big difference is first the marinating process of the lamb, he marinated it two times once in the baking soda and cornstarch making it tender. Then he also marinated it in a soy sauce base for it to absorb as much of the savory soy sauce as possible.

Wang Ming had to experiment multiple to make the perfect mongolian lamb sauce as every restaurant and family has a different spin on their sauce, some like it more savory, others like it with more chili. Even though he likes a lot of chili, he couldn't make the recipe too hot, as most people can't eat foods with too much chili.

After experimenting with the sauce a few times, Wang Ming found out that using the Xi Zai Qing here was actually a total waste, as it didn't make the sauce better at all, the earthy bean flavor that the Xi Zai Qing gives, the other ingredients Wang Ming uses overpowers it.

Instead, he used normal light and dark soy sauce the combination of them both gave a perfect base for the sauce. He then used some sesame oil and just a tad of chili. Tasting the sauce now, the sauce tasted good, but still he felt like it was lacking depth. It couldn't be a sauce for meat as it didn't have enough depth the meat would totally overpower the sauce.

But what more could he add?

It was then Wang Ming thought about the recipes he had made up till today, the multitude of dishes he had made when he was an apprentice at his father's restaurant, the meat skewers he ended up selling on the streets. But then he thought about one dish, the dish that have made him famous: the pork belly, what if he used the five-spice powder he uses on the pork belly in the sauce?

Is that it?