(Joyful music) (knife thudding) (audience applause) - Hi, welcome to the Yan Can Cook.

I'm glad to see so many of you here in the audience today.

Also I love to see you today at home.

Today we're gonna share with you a unique dining experience, a formal Chinese banquet.

A Chinese banquet is a very special event.

In China, the actual and the most ultimate banquet is the Han-Manchurian Feast.

It lasts for three whole days and each day there are two meals, and each meal has approximately 36 courses.

And you eat and you eat for about three to four hours each meal.

And in between they bus you to a remote area, (audience laughs) then you have to jog back to the restaurant and you'll eat again.

(audience laughs) And this kind of banquet is very famous, it's called (speaking in foreign language.)

And this normally costs about $250,000 Hong Kong for a party of 10.

You know what they serve?

With dessert, antacid.

(audience laughs) And not only that, not only that.

After three days, you probably don't want to see, you probably won't be hungry in about three months.

You probably don't want to see any food in three years.

This is the ultimate banquet experience.

I attend one of those recently.

I sit there and I got so confused, I don't know what to eat, I don't know what to choose, so I end up having cheeseburger.

(audience laughs) The first thing I wanna show you is one of the most popular, most classical Chinese dish, is Nesting Scallop.

First of all to save time I wanna do the scallop with the nest, I wanna do the nest first, the potato basket.

And you can use potato or you can use taro, traditional in China, potatoes, very rare.

Here in North America, potatoes, no big deal, we have potato.

When I was growing up in China, when I was growing up in China potato excites me.

(Audience laughs) This is the one that I got as my pe..

This one I get on my fifth birthday, and I still have it.

I even have my pet peas, but anyway, all you're doing is you julienne all of these potato.

Julienne them, and you always remember to soak them in a tiny bit of salt water because it will delay the browning reaction, okay.

It keeps it white, so make sure you sprinkle salt when you soak this.

And then, we'll put a tiny, tiny bit, dip this in oil a little bit.

This is two basket here, I dip one in and I put the potato here, this is julienne potato.

Put enough so you can move them around like this, you have to have enough, okay.

You should cut it long enough, and you are able to push this aside like this.

And then you put in other one right on top, like this.

Can you see that?

Now, the next step is you hold onto this, and you put in this hot oil.

(oil sizzling) Look at this.

Very slowly, very slowly.

Can everybody see that?

Isn't it wonderful?

- Yes.

(audience applause) - Now, let it sit there for a little while.

Now of course, of course you cannot buy basket like this.

You buy a basket, straight, and then you bend the damn thing, (audience laughs) it looks like this, okay.

We're gonna let it sit here for a little while.

In the meantime, I'm gonna remove this because I won't be using this right away.

If you have leftover of julienne potato, you should once again sprinkle some salt, fill it with water, to keep it white.

In the meantime I wanna show you we're gonna stir-fry.

I'm gonna turn this heat on, please turn on.

I'm gonna turn this on.

Okay, we're gonna stir-fry some scallop.

Here I have approximately one pound of scallop, party of four, see everybody will have four ounces.

You can actually serve up to six people.

You marinate it with approximately one tablespoon of dry sherry, about 1/4 a teaspoon to 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, and also a tiny bit of cornstarch, about one to two teaspoon of cornstarch.

Let it sit there for about half an hour or so, set aside.

Move it a little bit like this, okay.

Set it aside.

In the meantime, I also get about a tiny bit of snow pea, cut it up, because this is too big.

So what I do is I cut it in half like this, look at this, cut it in half like this, cut in half, cut in half, and all you need is about maybe 10 or 12 of these.

Cut it in half, and if you wanna make it fancy, you cut a little thing like this.

If you wanna make it even fancier, you can do more.

But I never have the patience, you see this?

It make it more ridiculous.

(audience laughs) Looks more ridiculous.

You put it over here, and set it aside, put it over here, set aside.

And also I have some red onion, some bamboo shoot, okay.

All of these ingredient, we're gonna put them all together because I wanna show you.

All I have is about 1/2 an onion, red onion.

Also about six or seven of these black mushroom and some water chestnut, because water chestnut looks like scallop.

So we wanna stir-fry this.

Now this is hot enough, so we wanna stir-fry this.

All I have to do is get the oil from here, look at this.

Put it over here, about two teaspoon.

Hot and then, first you stir-fry your scallop.

Let me get all this ready here.

Scallop is hot, you stir-fry them.

You can even do blanching.

Wow, hot, can you see that?

Nice and hot.

Make sure you stir-fry them properly.

(oil sizzling) (audience applause) Make sure you catch it.

Do not cook too long.

You should never cook too long, because when you cook too long, it's no good.

You see this?

Now a lot of people don't know, why shellfish normally tastes sweeter than fish.

The reason is because in shellfish, particularly like lobster, prawn and crab, the reason why they are sweeter because they are higher in collagen.

You know glycogen is a protein, so when it's cooked, they turn to sugar, so that's why they taste sweeter.

The sweetest thing is lobster and then crab, and then shrimp.

When this is done, you remove this.

Remove this and put it over here.

And then you stir-fry the rest.

Now you can use your spatula to scrape this because this is burnt a little bit.

And then you add a tiny bit more oil, and then we stir-fry the rest of the ingredient.

Water chestnut, about 10 to 12 snow pea, 1/2 an onion and some mushroom.

And also about a small can of bamboo shoot.

Stir-fry, stir-fry this.

Look at this, stir-fry.

And then you put the scallop back, okay.

This way you do not overcook your scallop.

Put it back over here.

And then you season with a tiny bit of salt and pepper.

Tiny bit of broth to make a sauce, okay.

Tiny bit of white pepper.

You don't wanna add soy sauce in this particular dish because you don't want to color this up.

And then you thicken this up with cornstarch solution, right in the middle where the boiling liquid is.

And then in the meantime, let me show you, let's remove this so we get it out of the way.

The whole thing is ready, look at how beautiful.

(audience applause) And then we set it aside, we'll check on this.

Now normally, this would take, look at this.

Look at the basket.

(audience applause) You see that?

Now normally it would take about five to six minutes to do this.

And you use a ladle to go like this, one, two, three, to make sure this is nice and done.

And then when it's done, all you have to do is you shake it like this, let me show you.

You go like this, the whole thing comes out.

Isn't it beautiful?

(audience applause) Now, here I wanna show you how to garnish this dish, okay.

Because this is very easy to do.

Here I have one of these already done.

And all you have to do is garnish a little bit.

Look at how beautiful.

You need some beautiful garnish.

And then when it's done, you get all this.

Look at beautiful, this is what you call Nesting Scallop.

(audience applause) It is so easy.

Now the best way to understand a Chinese banquet is actually to go to one.

Recently, I invite some of my good friends from the San Francisco Chinese Cooking Teachers Association to celebrate my 99th birthday and this is what our banquet looked like.

In China, we love a good party and a good party means a lot of food.

And a lot of food means a banquet.

Look at all this food we have here.

A banquet is no ordinary meal.

Normally, each course is served separately, but we laid it all out for you to see, isn't it beautiful?

This is our appetizer, look at this, it is flying out of the plate and it's too pretty to eat!

And of course, the Imperial Peking Duck and you remember the Nesting Scallops?

Pineapple fried rice and no banquet is complete without Shark's Fin Soup.

Actually the best part of a banquet is when you let your teeth do the talking, so let us all dig in and (speaking in foreign language.)

(upbeat music) (audience applause) In China, when we toast we say ganbei, it means bottoms up!

Oh, what a scrumptious Chinese banquet.

I want to thank all my good friend from the San Francisco Chinese Cooking Teachers Association, besides, a lot of them are actually here.

Thank you, and welcome!

The next one I wanna show you is another exciting, very simple yet very, very classy Chinese banquet dish, Double Prawn.

Normally, one prawn, you just stir-fry prawn by itself, it's for ordinary, every day meal.

This is for special occasion.

Here you start with 10 jumbo prawn like this, jumbo prawn like this, see how big?

It's so jumbo, like a jumbo jet.

(audience laughs) And then all you have to do is sprinkle a tiny bit of salt and pepper, which I already have done earlier.

Just let it sit for about 50 minutes to half an hour.

And then you use a little knife, dinner knife, get ready and then you dip this in.

This is cornstarch or flour, okay.

Set it aside because otherwise the stuffing would not stay.

Now the idea of doing this is you cut this open from where the vein part is, but don't cut through the whole thing.

So basically, you're basically butterflying it and flattening a lot, a little bit.

If you want, you can also do it like this, so this way it would be easier, flatter, okay.

And then I coat it with starch or flour, otherwise it won't stay.

The idea of doing this is it absorb all this.

In the meantime, I'm gonna heat up some hot oil.

And then you use this to make a little shrimp paste.

This is the feeling, okay.

You use approximately two dry mushroom, black mushroom, chop it up and use about six ounce of fresh, frozen shrimp, and also use a tiny bit of cornstarch, about one teaspoon to two teaspoon is fine, and also use about an egg white.

Aside from egg white you also use a tiny bit of salt, a tiny bit of mince ginger and garlic, and then you will do this.

In the meantime, you see how you do it, very easy to do.

You fill this in, very, very carefully, nice hump like this.

It depends on how hungry your guest is.

You can put anywhere from one tablespoon to about 1 1/2 tablespoon, nice and smooth like this, you see how I do it?

One, two, three, okay.

Now, after that, you're gonna have to deep fry it.

Take it over here, take it over here, and put this side down like this.

One, deep fry this, deep fry this.

Use about 350 to 360 degree.

And then, let me do another one just in case some of us get hungry.

(audience laughs) Besides, I know everybody in the st.. are looking at what I'm doing, eagerly.

(audience laughs) And I'm quite sure you watching at home also, you look hungry, are you hungry?

- [Audience Members] Yes.

(laughs) - Everybody's hungry, see?

The amazing thing about the new technology is actually I can talk to you at home.

How are you doing today?

(audience laughs) Now all you have to do is, you can actually do this ahead of time.

In the meantime, let's get rid of these.

In the meantime, we're gonna make the sauce.

This spicy tomato sauce here, I have 2/3 of a cup of broth and about 1/2 a cup of tomato ketchup, and also about one to two tablespoon of lemon juice, and also I have a tiny bit of sugar, about one to two tablespoon of sugar.

Mix this up, so this way, you are actually doing two things at the same time.

One, you are doing your prawn, you see this?

Now how can you tell whether the prawn is done, when the prawn is done, they turn pink, and the tail also turn pink.

We call it the tell-tail sign.

(audience laughs) Okay, now I'm quite sure some of you probably know what I was doing.

So you deep fry this, you deep fry this and make sure you do it properly, nice.

And then the sauce is ready.

When the sauce is ready, all you have do to is thicken this up, a little bit, and I wanna do it more a modern style.

I put the sauce on the bottom, can you see how wonderful the sauce is?

It's nice and sweet and sour.

Also have a tiny bit, two teaspoon of Chinese mustard.

The hot mustard is a must in this particular case.

It's nice and we set it aside, get the prawn out, look at this beautiful prawn, wow!

(audience applauds) Set it aside, put it over here.

You see that?

And then when it's ready, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put the prawn like this.

How beautiful, look at it.

One, two, three.

And then, put it right here, look at this.

Put it right in the middle.

(audience applauds) Isn't that beautiful!

See that?

Now aside from this, you can also serve your banquet with this gorgeous-looking barbecue duck salad.

All you have to do is some lettuce, about half a duck, barbecue duck, slice it up, use a chicken, and you chop it up, and use a plum sauce dressing, which include a plum sauce, Chinese hot mustard, soy sauce, sesame seed and chili oil.

Got a nice, sweet aftertaste.

Of course, since this is a banquet dish, I garnish it with this gorgeous-looking garnish.

If you think that is something, I'm not gonna show you something even more spectacular.

Garnishing can be a very important part of a dish.

In fact in some cases, it can be a dish by itself.

Just look at this beautiful pair of carp, made from cucumbers and carrots.

Isn't it gorgeous?

This rose was once a turnip, and this is lotus flower, it looks like someone just brought it back from a lotus pond.

Look at this masterpiece, a peacock!

This can take up to several hours to create.

(audience applauds) You need the eye of an artist.

Now, let us meet the artist, who has created them.

From Beijing, China, will you all please welcome Ms. Lily Lijun Wang.

(audience applauding) (speaking in foreign language) Welcome to the Yan Can Cook show.

(speaking in foreign language) Where do you work before?

- Great Wall Hotel in China.

- She is from Great Wall Hotel in China.

Specifically come over here to do this for you, are you feel privileged?

(audience applauds) - Yeah, thank you.

- She is the principal garnishing artist in Great Wall Hotel.

Anybody visited China, that's one of the best hotel in China today.

Now, first of all, why don't you show that this is, look at all this garnish.

Let us take a look at all this, this is the peacock, look at how beautiful,..

This is already finally done, this is half done, and this is the one that I already have showed you.

See, all of this garnishing.

Now I'm gonna ask her to do us a favor, to show us how from a piece like this, daikon, and will come out to be so beautiful.

Look at this, see that?

Can you show us how to do this, do one more petal.

(speaking in foreign language) - Sure.

- Very carefully, very care, so this way, everybody, are you looking or what?

(audience laughs) You see that?

Everybody see?

This is one extra petal, can you see that?

All you have to do is use your knife to go like this, and then you have one extra petal.

And after that how can you come from this color to this color?

You're dyeing it.

Okay, let's show them how to dye this over here.

- Sure, this one is food color.

- USDA.

- Okay.

- Wow, look at how beautiful!

(Lily laughs) (audience applause) Look at that, let's show them, look at how beautiful it is.

And then we'll set this aside.

Now of course, if you want to have yellow, you use yellow.

I've never seen a dark rose before, so don't put in ink.

(audience laughs) Now the next one she'll show us is how easy it is to shape these feather for the peacock, and this is one.

(speaking in foreign language) Start with this, look at this.

This is the daikon, the Chinese white radish.

Look at this.

She has been doing this for 64 years.

(audience laughs) She is only 21-years-old.

- [Audience Member] That's young!

- Look at her skill, this is a basically wonderful garnish.

The thing is how she use her little knife, and this all-- (Lijun speaking foreign language) Basically all she needs.

(speaking in foreign language) Means big knife in Chinese.

(knife thudding) Wow, she try, look at this.

Look at how easy.

- Yes, sure.

- Look at this, you see this?

- Yes.

(audience laughs) - I wanna show you one more time, don't, don't, don't move!

You see this?

You see this?

And then you put a little red, either bell pepper or carrot, put it right on there, and you stick it over here.

Then you have beautiful things, look like this, look at this, you see this?

Can you see this?

(audience applauds) Now, the next thing I'm gonna ask her to do is show something very, very wonderful.

I'm gonna ask her to show you quickly, I'll ask her to show you how quickly she make this little bird for this peacock.

(Yan speaking in foreign language) (both speaking in foreign language) You see this, very carefully and very, very slowly.

While she's doing that, I'm gonna quickly show you how to do something very easy.

I call it Jay Chicken, okay.

Here, I have marinate a whole chicken prior.

For about two to three hours.

- Sure.

- And I steam them, okay.

Then I steam them and I before I steam them I marinate them.

I marinate them for about two to three hours in about one tablespoon to two tablespoon of dry sherry and a tiny bit of salt, and also some ginger.

And then I steam them and I cut it up like this, this is the chicken breast, I set it aside.

I put it right here.

Look at this, I just put it right over here.

And then I cut another one.

How are you doing, Lijun?

- Sure.

- Oh, let me show you.

You see this?

Now, if you cannot see, when you dye it you will be able to see, see this, the color contrast, you see that, now.

(audience applause) (speaking in foreign language) Okay, she is gonna show us how to make something like this, look at how gorgeous.

This is a rose, and she can only takes about 1 1/2 minutes to do.

Okay, do this while she's doing that, I'm gonna cut up more chicken.

In the meantime, I can also do.

Look at this, we put them all together like this, look at this.

And then put the ham in between.

This looks like a domino.

This is what I call LAN's cable work in a dish.

You use about four to six ounces, up to eight ounces of this Smithfield ham, or you can use any good quality smoked ham.

And I put it over there and you line them all up and you see how beautiful it looks.

And in the meantime, I also would make a little sauce with broth, about 1/4 cup to a 1/2 cup of broth, and then also 1/2 a teaspoon of sesame seed oil and a dash of white pepper, and also some salt.

When it's done, I pour that over here, look at how beautiful, this is Jay Chicken.

(audience applause) You see that?

Jay Chicken, look at beautiful, now.

All of these are wonderful garnishing everybody can do.

I want to thank my guest, Lijun Wang, for showing us all these beautiful garnish.

By the way, she's now the Garnisher in Residence at the Royal Palace Restaurant in the San Francisco Bay area.

Please join us next time.

If Yan Can Cook it, so can you!

“Goodbye!” (##!)

(audience applause) (Joyful music)