(lighthearted flute music) (audience applauding) (speaking foreign language) - How is everybody?

Welcome to the Yan Can Cook Show.

More and more, vegetables are becoming more important, more popular, in our daily diet.

In restaurants, in home cooking.

A lot of the vegetables that used to be not available in the store or in the supermarket, nowadays is available.

In fact, you can even grow your own vegetables.

See, I grow my own vegetables, here, look at this.

All you have to do is use your own vegetable seeds, and you can grow all kinds of vegetables!

You can have snow peas, bok choy, all kinds of things.

It's kind of fun, and it is very easy to do.

So, there's always something that you can have in your meal, that means you don't have to worry about going out to buy it, but if you can't find it, you can't grow it, you can always go to the local supermarket, right?

The first thing that I wanna show you is something very, very common, very popular.

I'm quite sure everybody at home, particularly in the audience, heard of Moo Shu Pork.

How many of you have tried or would try Moo Shu pork?

Everybody!

Moo Shu pork, you can have Moo Shu pork, you can have Moo Shu chicken, you can have Moo Shu beef, you can have Moo Shu anything, it depends on your mood!

(audience laughing) Today, we cannot find a meat, so we are gonna have Moo Shu vegetables, no meat.

The first thing I'm gonna do is show you the different types of vegetables I'm gonna use.

I have some carrots, and I have some cucumber, I have some (knife chopping noise) This is zucchini.

I'm gonna slice it up; I'm gonna julienne.

You can julienne one by one like this.

(knife chopping noise) Or you can do them all together.

(knife chopping noise) (audience laughing) How are you doing?

Are you having fun?

(audience applauding) Of course, the most important thing is that you are holding onto the knife properly.

One finger here, your thumb here, so never, never raise your knife higher than your knuckle.

I never have such courage.

(knife chopping noise) Okay, set this aside, this is zucchini.

And then you can also julienne some carrots, some celery, and also some cabbage.

It depends on what you have.

You can have all kinds of things.

I have practically all kinds of vegetables from my garden, everything that I grow, everything I find in my garden is here, except the lawn mower.

(audience laughing) This is a mushroom.

You press this, if you want to get rid of more frustration, you do it one more time.

(audience laughing) (knife chopping noise) Set it aside like this, very easy to do.

Set it aside, and then you get ready a wok.

You heat this up, wrong wok.

Now, heat this up, and you can stir fry this, very easy to do, is a dish everybody can do.

It's not very complicated at all.

First of all, let's use a tiny bit of oil.

About a teaspoon to two teaspoons.

I use a little nonstick wok, so this way, you do not worry about using too much, because we're talking about diet, we're talking about vegetables, so we don't wanna use too much of this.

And then, use a tiny bit of garlic and ginger.

Put them all together.

(knife chopping noise) (audience laughing) Set it aside, garlic and ginger.

Now, everybody thinks that I only know how to mince ginger and garlic.

I actually show you how to julienne.

Tiny bit of garlic and ginger, even vegetarian dishes should add a tiny bit.

Get a little spatula, move this around, and then start putting the ingredients in.

Aside from the cabbage, I have mushrooms, zucchini, and I even have some Chinese lily buds, celery, carrots, Chinese daikon you can use, mushrooms, all kinds of ingredients.

Stir fry this, do not overcook okay.

Use a tiny bit of broth, this way, you can steam the vegetables without dehydrating, otherwise you're gonna have dehydrated vegetables.

Look at this.

And then, you're gonna put one tablespoon of soya sauce, and a tiny bit of sesame oil, tiny bit of sugar, about half a teaspoon, and then you set this aside and let it stir for little while, because you want to let it cook over medium high heat.

In the meantime you're cooking this, you wanna turn it down a little bit, because I wanna show you quickly how to make a tiny, tiny bit of, if you serve traditional, if you serve Moo Shu pork or in Mandarin, it's called (speaking foreign language) So, who cares whether it's Moo Shu or Mok Shu or Muk Shu, Nobody cares!

(audience laughing) See, I don't care!

Do you care?

(audience laughing and clapping) (audience laughing) Cut one, cut two, because I'm gonna show everybody how to make the pancake.

It's actually very easy, we have a tiny bit of flour here, sprinkle a tiny bit of flour here, our Chinese rolling pin.

Use a regular rolling pin, you sand it down to this small Chinese rolling pin.

(audience laughing) It takes about two months to do it.

(audience laughing) You round, and then while you're doing this, make sure you check your vegetables.

So I come back here, and I check.

Wow, make sure.

You do not want to overcook this.

This is done.

If you overcook this, what happens?

If you overcook this, what happens is you're not gonna have tender, crispy vegetables.

You're gonna have mush instead of Moo Shu!

(audience laughing) Stir in a tiny, tiny bit of cornstarch, thicken it up, and the whole thing is done.

I use about one portion of cornstarch to about three portions of water.

Set it aside, shut it off, it's done.

And then, I wanna show you how easy to make this.

See, what I'm doing is, I use a tiny bit of sesame seed oil, put a tiny bit over here on one of these, I press this, and I put another one on top, okay?

See how I do it?

And then I use this Chinese rollin.. which you have sanded down, roll it up.

Roll it once, okay, in the meantime heat up one of these little frying pans, okay.

And then you turn it to the other side.

You roll it, you see how I do it?

You can make small ones, you can make big ones, nobody cares!

(audience laughing) Then when it's done, you put this over here, no need to put any oil, okay?

You let it brown.

In the meantime, while I am letting it brown, I wanna show you how you can serve it.

I have some of this hoisin sauce right here, okay.

You can buy them in a can.

Don't bother to make it, it takes about two years.

(audience laughing) First you have to ferment your soy.. then you make the hoisin sauce.

By the time you finish, you probably have to retire.

And this is what I have, this is the wonderful wrapper.

This is what they call Mandarin pancakes.

It looks like this gorgeous looking pancake like this, can you see this?

Then when you serve this, you use a little spoon, okay?

Put it right over here, put about half a teaspoon of this, and you put, of course you have to turn this down, upside down, otherwise you burn the darn thing, you're gonna burn Moo Shu pancake!

(audience laughing) This is how you do it, you wrap this up nice and hot, this is how you should serve it.

And you can wrap it up like a cone, like this.

Or you can wrap it up like a burrito, nobody will care, see?

(audience laughing) And then, when you're ready, open your mouth.

(audience laughing) (audience applauding) Now, I wanna show you how easy it is to do this, look at this, this is done, we'll put it over here, because I'm basically let me put this down, basically making two pancakes at the same time.

(Yan exclaiming) (audience laughing) You get rid of all your frustration.

(audience laughing) You see this?

Wonderful, two of these.

(audience ap..

In Chinese cooking, the squash family, or the gua family, is very, very popular, very important because you can serve it all the time.

So let us introduce, and say hello, all of us, to the gua family.

Chinese love all kinds of squash, interesting enough, Chinese don't call it squash, they call it melon, called gua.

This is a fuzzy melon, called hairy melon, mao gua, mao means hair.

You see this guy needs a little haircut.

We use this for stir frying.

Peel it, cut it in half, slice it up, you can put it in soup, you can stir fry them, it's one of my favorites.

Nice and sweet, tastes like squash.

And then here, we have bitter melon, fu gua, fu means bitter.

A lot of people love it simply because it's bitter.

When you prepare this, you cut it in half, slice it up, take the seeds out, and then you can put it in soup, you can also stir fry it into a black bean sauce, with beans, it's wonderful, it's my mother's favorite.

When you cut it up, it looks like this if it is a mature bitter melon, look at this, nice and red, this is a mature, older bitter melon, it's very, very bitter, so beware.

Now here, we have what I call si gua, Chinese okra.

It looks like regular okra, like this, can you see this little baby one, for thickening.

The Chinese one is a lot sweeter, it's actually a squash.

You normally, when you prepare this, all you have to do is peel the ridges out like this, and then cut it into bite sized chunks, you can put it in soup, you can stir fry them, it is nice and sweet and spongy, good for a lot of nice, wonderful sauces.

Here, we come to the exciting part.

We come to the grand deity of melon or squash, this is what I call the dong gua, you gotta be a weightlifter to hold on to this, this is about two hundred and fifteen pounds.

And when you prepare this, I wanna show you, all you have to do is cut it up, and then it looks like this inside.

This is big skin, get rid of the skin, and then this white flesh, you cut it up into pieces, you can stir fry them, you can put them in a soup, it tastes like a very succulent, sweet squash.

Of course you ask me, how are you gonna cut this up?

Of course, for a little baby bitter melon like this, you use a little, small knife to cut it up.

For a grand big deity of this bitter melon, you need a knife slightly bigger than this, and you cut it up!

Today, I am gonna show you how to prepare this grand deity of the dong gua.

I hope I can carry this back to my kitchen.

(audience applauding) I must have burned off five thousand calories carrying this darn thing back from the store.

Next time, I should take a bus.

(audience laughing) You sure can lose a little bit of weight.

This darn thing can feed the entire population of the whole state of California.

(audience laughing) And it weighs about two and a half tones.

One, two, three!

(grunting) (audience laughing and applauding) I cannot believe it myself.

Now, I'm gonna show you how to do a stir fry winter melon with mushrooms.

When I say mushrooms, that means I have several types of mushrooms.

See, when you use this winter melon, I wanna show you all of these ingredients here, okay?

This is the winter melon.

First, you cut it up into bite sized chunks, it depends on how many people you have.

This is enough to serve an average dish about four people.

First, you cut the skin off like this, see this?

Cut it off, and then you say goodbye.

And then you can cut it into pieces like this, okay?

And then, we set it aside here, and then this way, you can cut this into cubes, like this.

This way, we can match the shape and the size of most of the other vegetables.

Aside from this, we also have carrots, we also have little baby straw mushrooms, just like a little baby with a gigantic oversized helmet.

And this is a button mushroom.

Aren't they cute as a button?

(audience laughing) Now, we put it over here, we're gonna heat up this, we're gonna stir fry okay.

For the button mushroom, all you have to do is cut it up like this, and set it aside, okay?

This is gonna be a wonderful dish.

Set it aside, and then you're gonna stir fry it.

First of all, you're gonna hit up the wok, put about one teaspoon or so, this is exactly one teaspoon, or a little bit more.

Now why the darn thing is singing, because somewhere along the line, I have put two drops of water over there.

I purposefully give you a demonstration.

You have water, they splash like this, and you can get into trouble.

Make sure you stir, and then put a tiny bit of sliced ginger, one, two, three, four, and then we julienne this.

(audience laughing and clapping) Put the ginger and then the carrots and the winter melon, takes a little bit longer to cook, so we'll cook this first because you always cook things that take a little bit longer to cook.

This is a regular round-bottom steel wok okay.

Cook it for about a minute or so, and then you put the rest of the ingredients in.

Look at this.

This I'll save it for my lunch, and then stir fry.

In this particular dish, I'm gonna make a little sauce because you've got to make it very nice and tasty.

Here, I have a tiny, tiny bit of dark soy sauce, this is soy broth, I have one tablespoon of dark, one tablespoon of light.

It's called wonderful combination, gives a nice looking rich color to it.

And then, a tiny bit of broth, which is about anywhere from 1/3 a cup to 1/2 a cup.

And then, stir fry this, wow.

Can you see the change in color?

Can you see how beautiful this is?

It looks so good.

I would like to try it myself, don't you think you'd like to try it right now?

(audience applauding) And then, I'm adding the sesame seed oil at the last minute, right at the last few seconds, put a tiny bit of sesame seed oil.

Now, in this particular dish, it is very important to quickly stir this cornstarch solution to thicken it up.

Approximately a teaspoon.

If it's not thickened, put another half a teaspoon, and if it's not thickened, put another half a teaspoon, (audience laughing) until it thickens you stop.

And then, you can serve it over rice or noodles.

I'm gonna serve it over rice.

Oh, look at how beautiful!

Now, I don't really need that anyway, (audience laughing) we'll put it over here, that's all I need.

So it's no problem at all, but what happens if you're making a mass like this?

That doesn't look good, right?

All you have to do is clean it up, it's no big deal, you see.

This is why cooking is so much fun, see?

Perfectly clean.

(audience laughing) Now, the next dish I am gonna do is, this is not perfect, nobody's perfect, I'm not perfect, we are not perfect, but we are gonna show you how to do a Swiss chard with black bean sauce.

I'm going to set this aside, and this particular dish is very easy to do.

I guarantee you'll like it, okay.

Here, I have Swiss chard.

You cut it up into about one-inch pieces like this, and you use some lean bacon and fresh water chestnuts or canned water chestnuts, and all you have to do is stir fry it.

We're gonna heat this up.

Use approximately one teaspoon or two teaspoons or two and a half teaspoons, doesn't make any difference, of vegetable oil, and then we'll flavor this with about one tablespoon of soy sauce, a tiny bit of Shaoxing wine, and also some salted black beans, they come in packages like this.

When you take it home, you take it out, transfer it and put it in a glass jar.

It will last in the fridge for approximately six to eight months, up to a year.

If you freeze them, they last for two thousand years.

(audience laughing) Now when this is done, first we'll slice some garlic.

(knife chopping noises) Set it aside, put it here, flavor it, a tiny bit of, I've got a bowl because this, rise this a little bit, and then I crush this with my knife, and then I put it over here and put the bacon, I used about two strips of bacon, and I stir this.

See, this is perfect, I'm not making a mess.

And then, I will put the water chestnut, Swiss chard right over here okay.

And then, we are going to stir this one more time.

See, I'm getting better, (audience laughing) I cannot believe it myself.

Practice makes perfect.

And then, you put the sauce right here, then thicken it up.

Wow, look at this.

And then you serve this when it's done.

This is so beautiful, I tell you, I am going to try this myself, look at how beautiful this is.

(audience applauding) Chinese often use preserved vegetables, I already mentioned they don't have refrigeration.

So they use a variety of preserved vegetables in a variety of dishes.

Here are some of the more traditional ones.

I'll start from here.

This is red-in-snow, you buy them in a can or in a jar.

(speaking Chinese) Pickled vegetable.

And this is Szechuan pickled vegetable, and this is very, very popular in Szechuan-style restaurants, and it's Szechuan peppercorns, you see this little black thing?

Salt, and chili powder.

You soak them for about three months, and you preserve them.

And this is dehydrated bamboo shoot tip, and this is dehydrated lotus root.

This is dehydrated bok choy, not the fresh one, but bok choy, you have to dehydrate this for about three thousand years.

(audience laughing) And here, we have some pickled ging.. and then also pickled ginger, but with a red dye okay.

So all of these you can find in a variety of traditional Chinese dishes.

I'm gonna put this aside because I'm gonna show you how to do a very, very wonderful, extra delicious, easy-to-make vegetarian pasta okay.

Here, I wanna show you the wonderful thing about dishes.

The good thing about the Szechuan pickle is it's very fragrant, very zesty, got a lot of character, it gives a dish that final kick.

(audience laughing) This is Szechuan vegetable, you stir fry it, or you can put it in soup, I julienne this, I slice it by parallel cutting technique, nice thin slices like this, put it over here.

Now of course, you don't have to do it so thin.

And then I julienne this.

(knife chopping noises) You can do it at home.

You can also do it at home.

(knife chopping noises) Make sure you practice, practice makes perfect, right?

(audience laughing) And then you put it over here, and then you can also stir some carrot into your salad.

First, you julienne them, you slice them all up, you go (knife chopping noises) The good thing about this is, you can pour this either over noodles or over rice.

Now, I'm going to quickly go through, I have julienned carrot, julienned green onion, red-in-snow pickled vegetable, Szechuan pickle, and also julienned, a tiny bit of celery.

And then, in the dressing I'm gonna use, let me show you all of these wonderful things.

You cook the noodle, you can use any pasta, linguine, spaghetti, Chinese noodle, any pasta of your choice, whatever, what do you have at home, tell me?

Oh, the lady said they have pasta of any kind.

You can use Chinese egg noodle.

You can use anything you want, it's no big deal!

Now here, all I have to do is about two tablespoons of soy sauce, two tablespoons of red wine vinegar, put it all in a big bowl, and also two tablespoons of oil mixed with about a teaspoon of sesame seed oil.

And also, use a tiny bit of sugar, half a teaspoon of sugar, and also a tiny bit of salt, just a sprinkle of salt, and a tiny bit of white pepper, mix them all up.

(whisking noise) (audience laughing) Chinese don't have this, they use chopsticks.

When you don't have chopsticks you go-- Exercise.

When it's done, (audience applauding) you toss this noodle with this dressing, okay?

Very, very easy to do, and then you move these vegetables right in here, look at this.

I'm gonna save some because this you don't really need the whole ..

When it's done, this will be absolutely wonderful.

And then you toss this with a nice spoon.

Can you see?

This is gonna be very, very easy to do, and it's very colorful, and everybody can do it at home.

How many of you like pasta?

(audience applauding) Of course, the great thing about this dish is you can actually use a touch of cilantro.

The cilantro is very aromatic like the Szechuan pickle, it gives and extra kick.

I guarantee if you add a tiny bit of cilantro, it will not be a boring dressing.

(audience laughing) I guarantee that okay.

This is also good because this particular pasta salad is for all seasons.

You can eat it as a main course, you can eat it in picnic, a buffet, it's for all temperatures, you can eat it at room temperature, you can eat it hot, you can eat it cold, all temperatures, all occasions, for all people, this is the best and the most versatile.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you today to join me in the studio and helping me to use up all my vegetables.

(audience laughing) And I would also like to tell you .. and grow some more.

Thank you so much, if Yan can make a meal, so can you, thank you.

(crowd applauding) (upbeat music)