(crowd applauds) - In China, where I grew up we have a saying, "We don't eat to live, we live to eat."

The Chinese believed coking should be a celebration of foods and flavor and on special occasion we really celebrate here is a recipe you might just make it once in a long while.

It is a little bit of extra work but it is extra special I call this yin-yang chicken and spinach soup.

And until I show you how to do it you'll be amazed how wonderful and how easy it is.

Here I have some spinach and I water blanch the spinach for approximately three minutes okay?

And then I'm gonna squeeze the water out okay?

Look at that I squeezed the water out and then I'm gonna cut this and chop this with my knife okay?

You know why you would do this?

Because when you water blanch this you water blanch it with tiny bit of chicken broth and tiny bit of ginger and garlic and seasoning.

This is the easiest way to do it like a little pancake and then I cut it up like this first, always hold onto your knife, like this firm grip you see this?

from grip this way you would not lo.. and then you, once again turn it 90 degrees and you'll cut it up.

And then if you have time and you happen to have two knives you hold onto this and you you chop it up like this.

(chopping sounds) I'm amazed.

This should excite you all at home.

(chopping sounds) I'm having fun I don't know about you.

(crowd laughs) And make sure you see you transfer this, transfer this and you put it here and then and we are going to let this boil in another chicken broth look at that.

Spinach in chicken broth right here.

Always learn to clean up and you do the same thing with chicken okay?

I have some ground chicken I do basically the same.

And then I also put the chicken, in some chicken broth right here okay?

And then we stir them around.

We stir them around.

Now of course you do not have to use your spoon to stir you can use your chopstick to stir it's very, very easy to use chopstick to do a lot of things let me show you.

Cooking chopstick, stir your spinach.

You have to marinate your spinach a little bit.

All you have to do is put a tiny, tiny bit off white pepper, a tiny bit of salt and if you want you can use a tiny bit of sugar.

Okay?

And then of course use a tiny bit of Sesame seed oil, stir this and then you cook the chicken the same way.

Cook it in a little bit of broth and then if you want once again put a tiny bit of white pepper, a tiny bit of salt, tiny bit of sugar and this time I also use a tiny, tiny bit of wine or vinegar okay?

Oh, give the extra flavor to it.

Make sure they are nice and smooth and if you want you can add a teeny tiny bit more broth okay?

And then you can thicken it up with a tiny bit of corn starch and egg white cornstarch.

And egg white always gets some corn starch ready right next to you and then when it's almost ready is already flavor stir this constantly, come back here and stir and then you'll come back here and you stir.

And then you'll come back here and you thicken, look at this stir this is in, use long cooking chopstick.

Very easy to do, make sure this is thick enough so you're gonna put it in yin-yang style.

Just enough thickness okay?

Very unique, very simple.

You know, yin and yang is a very, very much practice as a light way of life is our practice like a religion.

Yin and yang represent our contrasting culture, contrasting force yet at the same time they compliment each other just like white and green.

Just like sweet and sour, male and female.

They have a contrasting characteristic and personality yet at the same time they are also complimenting to each other like this flavor and texture contrast of the chicken and the spinach.

When it's done I will show you very, very simple.

You've got a little bowl and you slice some thin slice of tomato like this.

You make this into a yin-yang shape okay?

And then get ready some black and white Sesame seed and then when you're ready you scoop one with spinach very interesting basically you're putting two dishes together okay?

And then one is this and then the other one you use chicken okay?

Very easy to do.

You use chicken, very light, very healthy and it's absolutely unique.

And then this is how you do it look at that very unique.

You pull them in simultaneously at the same time.

Look at that.

See they stay put and then you put a little thing here, a little thing here and then you put the rice sesame seed on this side.

Rice sesame seed on this side okay.?

And then black sesame seed on the other side in order to make it easier you put it with a little spoon.

Little spoon and then you have two very interesting contrasting soup and it's beautiful.

(crowd applauds) Now, what do you do when you want to turn a humble Napa cabbage or regular cabbage leaf into an elegant, interesting and delicious appetizer.

As they say in a movie business, roll them.

Let me show you how to make tangent cabbage row.

Here you look at all the ingredients a half.

Since we're talking about cabbage, I wanna show you this whole big piece of cabbage.

Sit.

(crowd laughs) Napa cabbage in China they also called Tianjin cabbage, Tianjin dàbáici.

You water blanch the Leaves like this water blanch the leaf, until they're nice and soften like this.

This is the original leaf is stand up and this is the leaf now, stand up.

Look at that.

Please stand up.

Water blanch it with a tiny bit oil and salt okay?

Approximately two and a half to three minutes.

Now I wanna go through all the good stuff that you need to put it in this filling for the cabbage raw.

Oh, you know that a lot of these cabbage you can buy in any supermarket so you don't have to worry about it they last for almost five or seven days in the fridge.

Here and we'll go through the most important thing the most interesting thing is this.

This is a piece of five spice flavor braised bean cut firm and we're gonna cut this up into julienne.

Of course julienne carrot slightly water blanched that's nice and soft, mushroom, shiitake mushroom sock it for half an hour and julienne it and this is bean sprout, chopped cilantro, this is Sichuan pickle.

I've been using it for a while this is very, very flavorful, very pungent it adds a punge to the dish and of course we have garlic, ginger and green onion.

Now let me show you very easily how to prepare this.

I wanna show everybody how easy to cut this.

This is a little bit too thick so what I do is I put this and cut it in half like that, cut in half look at that.

Little thin slices like this and I stack them up if you have patient and time you do it one more time, and depends on how much patient you have.

Look at that.

When you practice, practice makes perfect and then you cut this up into long strips like that.

Now when you cut make sure you remember never, never raise your knife higher than your knuckle is not funny at all.

And not only that when you move make sure you move in the right direction never move on the other side.

(crowd laughs) And then when this is cut up the next thing I wanna show you is something very interesting.

When you go out to great Chinese restaurant, to buy bean sprout, to eat a dish use bean sprout.

They normally snap this part off look at this, the leaf snap it off and a root this is root you snap it off and they call this silver sprout.

in Hong Kong, China, you can actually buy this bean sprout like this already trim in the market.

Remove this and remove this.

Remove this both end, remove both end so you have beautiful, silver sprout like this and we're gonna quickly saute all this feeling and we can fold it up okay.

Look at this.

First, we are going to show you how.. Use a teeny tiny bit of oil and use garlic and ginger look at that.

Lot of garlic, a lot of ginger and everybody should learn how to do this.

Don't let it burn.

Put things that take longer cook, carrot takes a little bit longer to cook we'll put carrot.

And the mushroom takes a bit longer to cook so we're putting mushroom, okay?

Things take longer to cook always put it in first.

And then of course Sichuan pickle.

Now do not use too much Sichuan pickle because they are pretty strong Stir it up a little while, add a tiny, tiny bit of chicken broth.

I'm gonna stand on the side so everybody can see me.

(crowd laughs) Use high temperature short time to (indistinct) juice practically when you're stir-fry dishes with meat.

And then the other thing I put in is, oh, look at this.

Spicy bean cut.

It adds texture, flavor, and protein to your dish.

And then lastly but not least, bean sprouts, silver sprout, some cilantro and some green onion.

That's all we need and then we will take these out and we are going to get ready.

Don't marinate this.

Oh, marinate it with a touch of five spice powder, Chinese five spice powder kind of a vinegar, kind of a sesame seed oil, kind of soy sauce.

Oh, and after this is done, you can slightly thicken this up and you let it cool down for a little while you know why?

You gotta let it cool down because if you don't let it cool down, if you fold it into like you can actually use egg roll wrappers, one time rappers and mushu pop wrapper to do this then they would not be tweezed they will have too much steam and moisture coming out so let it cool down for about half an hour until they're cool and then you fold it okay?

Let me show you.

This is a piece of cabbage, is already done and I want to do it on this side on the outside, on the outside a little bit thick so I'm going to trim the end from here look at that.

I trim this, I trim this and I trim this so I wanna make this exactly the same thickness.

So now the whole piece is very thin.

And I trim this, look at this parallel cut.

I actually trimmed the whole thing like this.

Now you know how thin this is?

This is this thin look at that isn't it amazing?

And then when this is done we're going to fold this and I'm gonna use a chop stick.

Chopstick is very, very functional and I will put this right over here.

Just like you do egg roll okay?

Put right over here.

Do not use too much okay?

And then you'll roll it up like that very tight.

You roll it up and you roll it up and you roll it up on both sides and very, very tight.

Very, very tight.

And our cabbage rolled like that.

And then when you're done with it you put them all together like that okay?

And then you know what?

You can serve this very, very nicely.

I wanna show you how easy it is to serve.

You can actually serve it like this.

And I wanna show you how easy is to cut it.

You cut it an angle like this, 45 degree angle so they stand up like this.

You see this?

45 degree angle, 45 degree angle and if you want we can actually make a dipping sauce with rice vinegar, with a tiny bit five spice powder and you can actually do all kinds of things with it and when it's done, you can actually serve it with a dipping sauce right here and serve with a nice, beautiful garnishing like that.

(crowd applauds) Now for the main course of our special occasion dinner, a exciting, dramatic, rip rose Asian style.

I call it pepper corn rip rose.

I'm gonna serve it with dark Shanghai baby green bok .. Let me remove these and then we're gonna get ready for this this is gonna be exciting.

Now.

I'm not much a meat eater but when I eat meat I really eat meat okay?

All we have to do is do this very simple dish.

I have a big piece of rip rose right here oh look at that and I'm gonna do it the way I have been doing it.

First I cut up some slice of ginger, okay?

And then also I have a couple of slices of garlic, okay?

And of course if you ran out of time you can always do this a little bit faster and set it aside and I wanna show you what I'm gonna do.

I use a little knife and I cut a little thing in between the boom and I'm gonna push some garlic inside.

And not only did I push ginger inside if you like, and I'll do another piece here so the flavor of the ginger and garlic really permeate into the whole thing and I'll do another one here and I continue to do it and normally I would take the time to do it so the whole thing is gonna be flavor and then on this side I do it exactly the same way.

Garlic push it in, ginger push it in, somebody in the audience already get excited I am telling you.

I am excited too but be patient good food takes time to prepare so don't rush me.

Okay, when this is all nice and done you can even do it on the top if you want.

So that means there's a lot of possibility you can do a lot of things that you normally don't take the time to do but I said, it's a special dinner right?

And then after that you wrap this up with a teeny tiny bit of Sesame seed oil.

This way it will give that nice shine, okay?

Massage a little bit.

(crowd laughs) And then, some five spice powder, some salt wrap the whole thing, wrap the whole thing so it's nice and flavorful okay?

Last but not least you're gonna pet the whole black pepper let me remove this whole thing so everybody can see better right here.

Sichuan peppercorn, rub it.

Already slightly roasted black pepper and I'm gonna push it right here.

Push it in look at that this way the whole thing would be very, very flavorful okay?

Sichuan peppercorn and the whole thing when it's done you'll clean up your hand, make sure and you get rid your spoon you don't need the spoon anyway and then we're gonna put this in this roasting wrap right here and take it over there you can do rose.

Now.

It takes a while to roast this so we have of course always I'll prepare one already done for you.

Look at that.

(crowd applauds) And then all I'll have to do is take this out, look at that very simple and I wanna show you how easy it is.

Take this out, put it right over here, shake off some of the stuff.

Shake off some of the stuff so when you cut you don't- Because the flavor's already there and a lot of people don't realize ground spices normally takes a lot faster to cook, to get the flavor out so you always, you can use this knife or of course you can use this is knife.

And then you hold onto this, you cut look at how beautiful this piece.

Wow.

Look at that the garlic is still here.

You cut another piece.

Look at that garlic is still here.

Then when you serve, let me show you.

All you have to do is put this whole thing right over here, come out and then you line this up, line this up one, two pieces right here and of course you know what you can do?

You can make a simple sauce.

Two different sauce, one, I call this Chinese muster, hot muster with honey as a little dipping sauce mix it all together, put it right here okay?

This is one of the sauce and then you can also mix with some mayonnaise, some chop onion, some ginger and some green onion mix it all together use it as an other dipping sauce I scoop it right here then, you know, you have a beautiful rose.

(Crowd applauds) Now we are ready for the sweetest moment of the special occasion, dessert.

Here is a spectacular white chocolate and raspberry mousse that you can make way ahead of time.

Let's put this over here is very, very easy.

I call it ding hao mousse is wonderful.

All you have to do is all of these ingredient to make your usual mousse.

I have white chocolate, egg, you separate them egg york and egg white.

Sugar, whipping cream and grammier and you put them all together to make that usual mousse.

This is the wonderful mousse that I've made because you gotta let it set and everything okay?

And we're gonna scoop some mousse out here and I'm gonna dress it up it's very easy to do.

I call it ding hao ding miss top.

Hao means good, top put means the best.

And I put this peel raid raspberry right around here.

Look at this, do some design yourself.

Raspberry right here.

Look at that.

Put it right here.

Beautiful raspberry.

And if you like you can put a couple of extra piece and then some candied ginger Oh, this is what makes it.

And then have an other scoop of ding hao mousse right on the top look at that.

And then you do the same thing.

Some more puree, some more puree and then more raspberry.

You can do whatever you want just be creative.

You can put one here, one there huh no problem at all.

And then one tiny bit more candied ginger and finally put a little lychee fruit, or longan and you'll put this and you have the ding hao mousse.

(crowd applauds) Well, it has been specially fun preparing this special occasion dinner.

I hope you enjoy watching as much as I'm gonna enjoy eating it.

Tune next time, turn on your next dinner party into a special occasion and remember, if Yan can cook, so can you.

“Goodbye!” (##!)

(crowd applauds) (crowd laughs)