(Joyful music) (knife clangs) (air swooshes) (audience applauds) - Welcome to the Yan Can Cook show again.

When I was a young bachelor, I got a lot of practice cooking for myself, one dish meal, because I cannot afford the time to cook five dishes.

And I'm going to show you some of those wonderful one dish meals.

The great thing about this is all of these dishes are very very simple, very very easy to create.

You don't need a whole lot of ingredients, just open your fridge and you do whatever you want.

I have recorded all these wonderful one-dish meals in this little black book.

(audience laughs) - I remember, when I was growing up in China, everybody in China carried a little red book, but I think my little black book is a lot more exciting.

So today I am gonna share some of my secrets with you from this little black book.

This particular dish I call fragrant beef casserole.

It is on page 645.

(audience chuckles) This particular dish is very easy to do.

You start it out with either sirloin or beef stew, or even flank steak; or I would prefer chuck steak.

You need a whole chunk of chuck.

When you say whole chunk, it sounds so masculine.

(audience chuckles) This is approximately three quarter pound to one pound.

You cut it into chunks like this, about one and a half inch chunks.

You put them aside and you quickly marinate it with soy sauce, about one tablespoon soy sauce, and about two teaspoons of particularly use a tiny bit of corn starch, all you need is about one to one and a half teaspoons.

Don't use too much, otherwise they get stuck and form a gigantic chuck, chunk meatball.

(audience laughs) See, when you have chuck chunk, it got stuck.

Now in the meantime, you also want to make sure you heat up a brown, heat up a either frying pan or you can use this wok, frying pan, skillet, it doesn't make any difference, heat it up because you want to brown the beef, okay?

First of all, I want to brown the beef, 'kay?

Marinate it for about an hour to two, nice and brown.

In the meantime, I want to show you, you have to make some fragrant sauce.

What I have is something like this.

This is gonna something we will use fragrant sauce.

I have cinnamon stick, I have dried tangerine peel, and I have Sichuan peppercorn and also, I'm quite sure some of you have seen this and some of you have not.

This is lemongrass.

When you use this, what I do is I cut this and set it aside and go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, while you are doing this make sure your beef is not burned, but brown.

And then put them all together and set this aside and put it in a cheesecloth like this, you see this?

Aside from this, I'm gonna use a tiny bit of this daikon, this is daikon, Japanese cuisine it's called daikon, in China it's called Bak, Lo Bak.

It's actually the Chinese white turnip or white radish.

And this I will set aside, you cut, peel it and cut into chunks, I'm gonna show everybody so everybody can see.

I'm gonna cut it into chunks like this.

Wrap all these fragrant sauce ingredients up, you put it over there, and then come back to this and make sure this is being browned, okay?

When it's brown, you know what, you add a tiny bit of soy sauce, not only you add soy sauce for color, but you also add for flavor, because the soy sauce has a tiny but of caramel, so when you brown it the soy sauce kind of burn a little bit and caramelize and give that nice brown color.

Now stir this a little bit, allow nice uniform cooking.

When you do this at home, the great thing about this, you can do it at about two weeks, two months, even two years ahead of time, you know why?

You can freeze the darn thing.

I have done something when I graduated from college, and I still enjoy it myself.

(audience laughs) Everybody knows, if you simmer and stew something, the next day it always tastes better than the same day, so this is why I want to show everybody how to do this.

When this is done, you put five to six slices of ginger, some green onion and this wonder daikon.

And then put a tiny bit of extra soy sauce, and then we are also going to put about one cup of beef broth.

It depends on what kind of broth, you can use beef broth, you can use chicken broth, doesn't make any difference.

This is beef broth, and let it simmer.

Allow this of course, without this ingredient there won't be any fragrant sauce, so put this in and allow it and cover this up, okay, and let it simmer for 30 minutes to allow the Chinese white turnip get to know the beef well.

And not only that, (audience chuckles) let it cook for a little while, and in the meantime I want to show you how easy, oh you can either serve over rice or you can serve over noodle.

I have some noodle here, and you can also serve over rice, it doesn't make any difference, but today we're gonna serve it over noodle.

When this is done, after thirty minutes, we'll shut this off and we can actually use this to scoop this out, one dish meal.

You said, what am I gonna do with the leftover?

With leftover, keep it in the fridge, try it again next day, next week, or next year.

(audience laughs) Now let me smell it and see whether it is fragrant.

It is so fragrant, I think you at home would like it.

I think this is the fragrant beef casserole, I like it.

(audience claps) Now, a lot of people don't know that mushrooms are very very popular in Chinese cooking, so I'm going to show you a few of the mushrooms, some of those, you probably have seen it, but some of these are so exotic, you probably wouldn't be able to find in your local market.

Everybody have tried this or seen this, this is straw mushroom.

In America, only available in cans.

When you open it up, it looks like it's a little big helmet, see, and then here is the regular button mushroom.

You ran out, there's a lot of button in your houses, don't worry about it.

(audience chuckles) This is very interesting, this is what you call trumpet mushroom, looks like a little trumpet, see?

So you can use this in soup, in stir fry and casserole dishes even as a garnish, it's very nice in your salad.

And this is would you call wood ear, see, this is black fungus, it's a mushroom.

You soak them for about half an hour and they will look like this, this is the back, this is the ugliest looking thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

This, when you go out to Chinese restaurant and have Moo Shu Pork, hot and sour soup, those black crunchy things, they give nice texture.

Not much flavor, a lot of good texture, and also they are believed to lower your blood clot possibility, slow down your blood clots, so very very good.

This is the regular shiitake mushroom, the Chinese call donko, this is how it looks at the back, how it looks up, see, nice pattern like this.

And you can even find fresh shiitake mushroom, or Chinese donko, looks like this, can you see this?

You can buy them, you can actually grow them, you see?

I grow them underneath my bed.

(audience laughs) Aside from this, this is oyster mushroom.

It looks like this, oyster mushroom, okay?

And then also, this has also got a nice woodsy flavor.

And how many of you know that this is enoki mushroom?

Enoki mushroom, this is good for soup, for your salad, a garnish, it looks like, Chinese call golden needle mushroom.

Looks like this, look at this.

And then, here is the Chinese medicinal mushroom.

And it's very very hard, and you can kill somebody with this, you see this?

(audience laughs) How many of you know that there's 2,000 mushrooms in the world, in the wild?

The thing is, a lot of times people go out to get mushroom, harvest, pick mushroom, but you should be careful, because some of those mushroom are poisonous.

So you should consult a local expert in mushroom, because you don't want to pick up something are poisonous.

And also mushroom is very very good, they're very low in salt, very low in sodium, very very low in calorie, they got a very good texture, like the Chinese mushroom, got a very meaty texture and also got a meaty taste.

And some of them got a little woodsy taste, that's why some people try truffle, because they got a woodsy plate, add that flavor and aroma, and you can do it soups, stir fry, all kinds of things.

Now the next dish I want to show you is also one dish meal, it's very easy to do, I call it stone soup over rice noodle.

You can put over rice noodle, over rice, over wheat flour noodle, over long grain rice noodle, all kind of noodle, or you can use this just put into your spaghetti or pasta, doesn't make any difference.

I start it out with anything, the reason I call it stone is 'cause anything you can find in your house just throw it in.

In the meantime, let me heat up my wok so I can get ready.

I have in my fridge I found some zucchini, so I'm gonna put some zucchini over here.

I julienne everything, see, stack them all up, hold onto your knife like this, see this, eerybody can use, and put the knife against your plate, and go... (knife chops) Look at what you do!

(audience claps) Set it aside and put it right here.

Then you also cut up some carrot and mushroom, this is the shiitake mushroom.

Soak it about half an hour, remove the stem, and then julienne.

Now make it easier to julienne if you go like this.

(audience chuckles) Just press the darn thing.

Set it aside and put it right here, and then, in this particular dish, I also want to cut up some chicken, because this is very easy.

First I want to butterfly the chicken like this, butterfly this, and then it come out twice as big and I put 'em all together and I julienne this all just slice it up like this, cut it up, cut it up, and then I'm gonna season this.

I'm gonna marinate this with a tiny bit of soy sauce, marinate the chicken, and a tiny bit of salt.

If you don't want to you use soy sauce, then use type of wine, okay?

Mix them all up with this, set it aside for a few minutes.

Because you want to get this out of the excitement.

Let it rest for a little bit so it won't get too excited.

(audience laughs) Now in the meantime I'm gonna get .. and I'm heating up my wok and also I'm gonna get some oil.

Teaspoon or so, and then I am going to put the chicken in.

(chicken hisses) Wow!

Stir fry.

Allow it to sit for a few seconds, okay?

When you stir fry, you move your wok around and you stir, don't just stand there and go... (audience chuckles) You move!

And then you put all kind of ingred.. mushroom, zucchini and carrot, okay?

Stir, stir.

Move 'em around, move 'em around, stir.

(wok clatters) And then use approximately half a cup or so of broth, chicken broth to finish the cooking, stir this a little bit.

As I said, I call this stone soup, because I have enough broth here and set it aside and also, I'm gonna thicken this up a little bit.

Now it depends on how many ingredients you have.

I'm just joking.

If you ran out of all this, you can actually use stone.

(audience chuckles) Just kidding.

And then put this over here, set this aside.

Now this is done.

When this is done, I want to show you, we are going to serve this over rice noodle.

This is what they call rice thick noodle, it looks like this in packages, and you have to have 12 cups of water to bring it to boil, because this darn thing is very thirsty, it soak up a lot of water, so you gotta make sure you have enough water when you do this.

And then you need about four cup of broth.

I have four cup of broth here, I want to show you.

First I serve in this stoneware, that's why I call it a stone soup.

The broth is nice and hot.

Just because I call it stone soup, it doesn't mean that I am going to serve it stone cold.

(audience titters) When this is nice and done, let me show you.

This actually came out really nice, look at this.

I put this over here, look at how beautiful the dish is.

(audience groans) Look at this, and then for a little garnish, you know what you can do?

You can use a tiny bit of enoki mushroom that I just show you earlier, look at how beautiful.

This is a wonderful dish, stone soup over rice noodle!

(audience claps) Now, of course I don't need the stone so we throw it away.

We'll set this aside.

The next dish I'll do is very very simple, and I am going to do it over here so everybody can see.

Once again, I'm going to heat up my wok, and I'm gonna show you how to do a dish.

It is so simple, everybody can do.

It is shrimp with cashew nut.

(audience murmurs) This is wonderful, I love it.

Everybody can do it.

You need approximately three quarter pound of prawn.

As I said, very easy to shell this, look at this.

All you have to do is take this one, twist this and do it one more time and you twist this and the whole thing comes out very easily, like this.

You see?

And then all you have to do is remove and de-vein this by cut it right in the middle and remove this vein like this, look at this, and then remove this.

Of course you should do them all at the same time, in the sink, otherwise you got vein guts stuck all over your finger, okay?

(audience laughs) And you put it over here, and let it marinate in about half a teaspoon of salt, some wine and a tiny bit of corn starch or tapioca starch, it doesn't make any difference.

Make sure the wok is nice and hot, okay?

And then I'm going to have cashew nut.

All you need is about three quarter cup, but I normally always start with one cup, because it's very important to start one cup because you got to test one of these for texture.

And then you test another one for taste.

By the time you finished all the quality control, you have exactly three quarter of a cup.

(audience laughs) Now I use approximately two teaspoon, up to a tablespoon of oil, and then, this particular dish very easy, I want to show you.

You put this over here, shrimp, when it's hot, put it over here.

(shrimp hisses) You can use regular spatula or this kind of spatula, it doesn't make any difference, you can use this spatula.

Stir, make sure you toss this.

Allow uniform cooking, look at this.

Make sure you catch the darn thing, otherwise you're gonna have picnic on the floor.

(audience laughs) Very important.

Now I have some green peas, frozen green peas.

You do not have to worry about this because in order to make the dish look really wonderful, you should always cook the shrimp and everything else separately.

You can remove the shrimp and give the shrimp a little coffee break, when it's done, put 'em all back, but in this particular case, this one take too long to cook, so I put the snow pea down.

You can use this green pea over here; stir.

Put a tiny tiny bit of, in order to make it hot and spicy, sprinkle a tiny bit of chili pepper, and then some broth with about half a teaspoon of salt and a tiny bit of wine, oh look at this.

And then in the last minute, thicken it up.

Use one portion of corn starch to about three portion of water, look at this, the whole thing is done.

This is all we need.

When it's done, we're gonna serve this over rice.

Cashew shrimp over rice.

Of course you cannot have cashew shrimp over rice unless you have cashew.

(audience laughs) If you forget cashew, you're gonna b..

Put the cashew in the last minute, see?

Don't get so excited and then you forget something.

When you forget something, you gotta change the name of the dish.

(audience chuckles) When it's done, we'll put this right over here, look at how beautiful, this is wonderful.

(audience applauds) Isn't this beautiful?

When the Chinese chef prepare dish, they always cut everything up into bite-sized pieces.

This way, they can use the chopstick.

There are all kind of chopstick.

Wood chopstick, bamboo chopstick, I want to show you some of those you probably have in your collection.

And this is my collection of chopstick.

Here you have a lacquer chopstick here, and it's stored in this little gorgeous looking box.

After you use it, you wash it and you put it back here so nobody know what's going on.

And then you have these jade chopstick, can you see these jade chopstick, when you use this it also put in a jade chopstick rest.

And here it is for somebody got very frustrated when they eat, so they twist the lacquer chopstick like this, they just twist it.

(audience titters) Once you twist it, there's nothing .. you can do to reverse the process.

Here, this is my favorite ivory chopstick.

Here you have sterling silver serving ware.

In China, this is the most prized ivory chopstick, and also we have these porcelain chopstick, with ivory, can you see how gorgeous it look?

And then you have the silver chopstick.

I was told in the early days in Paris, in the imperial palace, the kings and the imperial family always used this kind of silver chopstick because if somebody tried to poison them, it would change this color the silver and they'd they know it's something.

Here is one of my favorite chopstick, just a regular cheap bamboo chopstick, four and a half cents!

And here you have something so ridiculous.

(audience laughs) Because this way you have, when you.. to break the darn thing up, you have to go like that.

Drive me crazy.

And then this is my favorite, look at this.

I don't have to worry about a darn thing.

(audience laughs) But this is actually my second favorite, because when I eat, I use this.

This is cooking chopstick, this is cooking chopstick, you see, much longer, when you deep fry something or make noodle you stir them around, and this is lethal weapon, this is also a cooking chopstick, stainless steel.

You be very very careful.

So we're gonna set these aside and put it back in my drawer.

In the meantime I want to show you a very very interesting dish.

This particular dish, I called it chicken and egg over rice.

As I said, you can also put it over noodle.

Let me turn on my heat again, wrong burner.

No if you want to cook the right thing, you gotta turn on the right burner.

Otherwise you're gonna take forever to cook.

And also I'm gonna turn on this burner too, because this way, okay, here I have some chicken.

All I need is approximately half a pound of one chicken breast, and I have one egg, because I'm gonna make an omelet.

And also have some cucumber, I'm gonna cut some cucumber, because I want to, the most important thing about one dish meal is because you want to have not only meat, you also have some vegetables to give a variety of vitamins and minerals, so it's a well-balanced diet.

How are you doing, everybody?

(audience applauds) I hope you at home is having a good time too.

As much fun as all of us here.

Now here it depends on how much bell pepper you have.

If you don't have that much, if you have a lot of bell pepper, you just cut it up like this.

(knife clacks) Put 'em all together.

(audience claps) If you don't have enough bell pepper and you have to feed about 50 people, all you have to do is trim this, look at this, my goodness.

(audience chuckles) And then you go... (audience claps) (knife taps rhythmically) Nice and thin, this way you can feed four times as many people.

Now I am gonna set this aside.

Oh also, how many of you like Sichuan pickle?

I also want to use a tiny bit of Sichuan pickle, slice a little piece and I will julienne this like this.

There's a lot of ways to cut, to julienne, this is julienne.

So this is going to be a very delicious dish.

First I'm going to get some oil, two teaspoon here, two teaspoon here, for one I'm going to make omelet with this, see, I'm gonna make a little omelet right here.

Please stay together.

And then in the meantime we're gonna stir fry this.

Now here I have chicken.

(chicken sizzles) Turn it up high, so everybody can see, when you stir, stir fry means when the darn thing is frying.

You stir and you toss, and then it doesn't take too long to cook because it didn't long too long to cook because it's chicken.

If it's pork, it takes a little bit longer to cook.

Beef takes even shorter, because you slice it in bite-sized pieces, you can use a chopstick.

That's why I always say wok softly and carry a chopstick.

(audience laughs) And then you put all of these bell pepper, cucumber, Sichuan peppercorn and a tiny bit of green onion, put them all together, look at this, stir, stir stir.

And then use a tiny bit of broth with about a tablespoon of soy sauce and about a teaspoon to two teaspoon of wine or dry sherry, and then thicken it up, look at how easy.

Always get enough corn starch and mix with water.

When it's done, we are gonna serve right over this gorgeous looking plate.

Do you see how beautiful, when this is done.

First you slide this, because this is really nice and beautiful, look at how beautiful.

It's a one-dish meal.

And then you put this right over here.

Look at how beautiful.

(audience claps) All these one dish meal.

Now you see how easy it is to create delicious one dish meal for yourself, for your friends?

And it's all in this little black book.

Yan's little black book, soon to be best seller.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you so very much today to watch the Yan Can Cook Show, and also to come over here and see us, I would like to take this opportunity once again to say, if Yan can cook, so can you!

- So can you!

“Goodbye!” (##!)

(audience claps) (Joyful music)