(Joyful music) (knife tapping) (onion thudding) (knife whooshing) (crowd applauding) - Hi, welcome to the "Yan Can Cook" show!

We're having a party today, and what is a party without food?

A lot of Chinese food can be served buffet style and when you put a variety of Chinese dishes together you have a real Chinese smorgasbord.

So today, we're gonna show you a few choices that you can prepare, that you can put in your buffet, you can even serve it any time you want, particularly wonderful in the summer and also when Christmas party and you don't want to spend too much time, this is perfect.

The first thing a want to show you is a very, very simple dish.

This particular dish is called honey glazed garlic rib.

Everybody love this.

It's very easy to do, you can prepare it ahead of time, so that's why this is perfect for buffet.

Here, I have approximately two pounds of pork spare rib.

You marinate it with two tablespoon of wine.

I already put in there, so this is slightly intoxicated.

(audience laughing) And then, I put a tiny, tiny bit of soy sauce and marinate it for approximately two to four hours.

In the meantime, I also want to heat up my wok because I want to start browning this.

Here I put a tiny, tiny bit of oil when the wok is hot enough.

Don't use too much, because in the rib there's already a tiny, tiny bit of oil, so it's very important not to do that.

And then, I also need a tiny bit of garlic, so I can mince some garlic.

I'm gonna need about one to two tablespoon garlic, because it's a honey garlic rib.

If there's not enough garlic, then it's only honey rib, no garlic.

(audience laughing) (knife tapping) (audience laughing) Nothing to it.

(audience applauding) See, we'll put them all together.

All you need is approximately two tablespoon of garlic, and also, you need approximately one tablespoon soy sauce and approximately two tablespoon of honey.

You can use wild honey.

I do not want to use regular honey.

Two tablespoon of honey is two days hard work for a little honeybee.

That is terrible.

(audience laughing) And also, I also in this sauce, I also used approximately half a teaspoon to one teaspoon of dijon mustard, hot mustard, very hot mustard.

Now everybody probably don't know that dijon is not exclusively French.

In Chinese, they have emperor, dijon emperor.

He loved spicy foods, he was a spicy character.

Loved the spicy stuff.

Hot, spicy food.

I'm gonna brown this, okay, brown this, look at this, put them over here.

Look at how hot this is.

Nice and hot.

Okay, make sure you brown this.

(wok sizzling) The wok, if the wok is not hot enough, you're gonna have a problem, and also I'm quite sure how many of you in the audience have a wok at home?

See, everybody.

Now, a wok is just like any tool.

You got to get to know your wok, how to take care of the wok, how to work with your tool, you've got to learn how to communicate with your tool, your wok.

I am wok-ing and talking at the same time.

(audience laughing and applauding) Stir.

Now, you've got to cover this up a little bit and put about half a cup to three-quarter cup of broth.

You can use a pork broth, a chicken broth, doesn't make any difference.

And then you can cover this up, okay, and cook it for a little while.

After that, you are going to put the garlic, okay, let it breathe, garlic, and also honey and dijon mustard.

And so you're gonna glaze this, okay.

Let me show you.

I'm gonna turn this down and let it slightly cook and glaze.

Okay, let it glaze over there.

In the meantime, we will remove these and put this aside.

Now, the next one, which is very, very good, which everybody probably have tried this before is (speaks in foreign language) chicken, paper-wrapped, or foil-wrapped chicken, or sometimes called paper-wrapped chicken, in little packages, okay.

All you need is cut the chicken up.

This is approximately, you can use approximately one whole chicken breast, or you can use chicken thigh.

Use approximately eight to 10, honestly, it doesn't make any difference, tender, small pieces, okay?

Small pieces, like this.

And then you marinate this, look at this.

I marinated this with a tiny bit of one tablespoon of dry sherry and about one tablespoon oyster sauce or you can even use hoisin sauce, and you can use about two teaspoon of soy sauce.

Now look, I'll put a tiny bit of soy sauce here.

Mix this up, and then also make sure you mix it up.

Make sure you also put a tiny bit of sesame seed oil.

Let marinate for about half an hour to two hours.

And then, I want to show you how easy it is to wrap this up.

See, look at this, you put one piece here, put a tiny bit of cilantro, okay, because you want to give that nice color.

Put it right here, put one piece, and then put a tiny piece of ham.

Use Smithfield ham, smoked ham, and also water chestnut, and a tiny bit of green onion.

Now, I'm gonna turn this down a little bit so make sure it won't burn.

And then, like you're going to make a little envelope, one, two, three, four.

You see how you do it?

And then you tuck the whole thing in like this, you see this?

Tuck the whole thing in like this so you have a nice little package just like this, Can you see that?

(audience applauding) Now, aside from this, you can also use a foil, aluminum foil.

If you use aluminum foil, you put all the stuff here, and then you can go like this, fold it into a little triangle, and then you wrap it up like this, okay, because this way you can deep-fry this, or you can bake it.

Now I am gonna bake this, because I don't want to bother with the deep-fryer.

This way the oil, even if you deep-fry, the oil will not get in here.

So a little triangle, like this, you see?

(audience applauding) Now, of course, you can use foil, you can use parchment paper, but don't use newspaper.

(audience laughing) Now only it's not clean, besides the chicken don't care about the news.

(audience laughing) Now after this is done, I'm gonna show you, I'm gonna put this out, put it right here, put everything here, see this one got a little C-O-D, like chicken on delivery.

(audience laughing) Let's get rid of the darn thing and put one over here, one over here, we are gonna take it over there.

I'm gonna remove these and put it underneath here, put it underneath here, and then I am going to bake this, see, because you can bake this about 350 degrees for approximately 10 to 12 minutes because it's not that thick a piece.

When it's done, you will take a piece out, take another piece out, and when you serve this, all you have to do is open this up like this.

Look at how beautiful, a whole package like this.

This how you serve these.

(audience applauding) Now, let me quickly come back and take a look how wonderful this is being, oh, this is beautiful.

This is rib already done.

Can you see how beautiful this is?

When it's done, you scoop it out, and then you sprinkle with sesame seed and it's wonderful and it's easy and you can do it ahead of time and I have one that I want to show you how wonderful it looks.

(audience reacting) (audience applauding) Isn't that beautiful?

Another food that is great for a Chinese buffet is shrimp, or you can call it prawn.

I'm gonna show you how to make the classic, very popular shrimp toast.

Everybody know that when you go to Chinese dim sum restaurant, you can actually order shrimp toast.

This particular one, I'm gonna show you how easy it is to mince the shrimp, because in China this is the food processor.

(audience laughing) Okay?

First of all, you have shrimp here.

This is the way that my mom had been doing it for 600 years.

(audience laughing) Put it over here.

First, you smash the darn thing, okay?

Set it aside.

Do that again, you smash the darn thing, you set it aside.

(audience laughing) And once again, you smash the darn thing and set it aside.

Then you use two knife, you go.

(knives clanging) (knives tapping) (audience applauding) Done, isn't that simple?

(audience laughing) Nothing to it.

By then, you already lose about six million calories.

Now, after this, all you have to do is marinate this.

I wanna show you how easy it is.

You marinate this, chop them all up, you're gonna marinate this with approximately two teaspoon of dry sherry and about a tiny bit of minced ginger, and also some chopped green onion, and also half a teaspoon of salt and a tiny bit of white pepper.

And not only that, I'm gonna add a tiny, tiny bit of egg white.

You use about one small egg white to mix it up so this way it's easier for you to mash it and make it into a nice paste, and let it sit aside for a little while.

I'm gonna set this aside.

Now, I am making shrimp toast.

It's not done the toaster.

It is not shrimp cocktail toast.

Toast.

(audience laughing) (speaks in foreign language) means cheers, ..

This is shrimp toast.

And then I want to show how easy it is to crush a water chestnut.

This is a king water chestnut, and this is fresh water chestnut.

You see, by the time you peel it, this is what it looks like.

(audience laughing) No, actually, this one was small water chestnut.

When you do water chestnut, let me show you, you've gotta be very, very careful, okay?

If you do it like this, they fly all over the place.

(smacks knife) You see?

You lose about one half of it.

So you should never, this is all crushed, look at this, this is the technique.

This is how you should do it.

You see this?

This way you do not lose anything.

Besides, you do not have to clean up your kitchen floor.

(audience laughing) Set it aside and put it over here, and then, you start it out with two piece of bread, or depends on how many shrimp toast you want to make.

I normally would make about 16 to 20 pieces.

Okay, first you trim the, use a one-day-old bread.

It's easier to handle.

They're firmer, and you do not want to use the really fresh bread because it's too soft to put it.

Besides, one-day-old is a lot more experienced.

(audience laughing) Now, you can make big toast like this, look at this.

You can do it like this.

So you can make toast in a triangle.

But we are going to have buffet, so we're gonna make it fancy.

So we are going to use this little thing, this cookie cutter or whatever you call it.

I don't care what you, I've never seen this when I was growing up in China 200 years ago.

(audience chuckling) If you are very hungry, you don't care about diet, you use this gigantic thing.

If you are on a strict diet, then you use this one.

But for us, we're gonna use this, okay?

We make one over here, okay, one, another one over here, and then the rest, what are you gonna do, I have no idea.

(audience laughing) I am going to put it and make bread crumb.

Now, first of all, I want to show you how easy it is to make this.

In the meantime, I'm gonna heat up, I'm going to check my oil.

Once again, I am going to check my oil, make sure the oil is hot enough with pair of chopstick.

Perfect, the oil is hot enough.

(chopsticks tapping metal) Okay, now, and then I am going to show you how fancy it is, let me show you.

To make it fancy, this is for buffet, next put a tiny bit over here, nice, pack it up, smooth like this.

Don't just kinda go goodbye.

(audience laughing) Because it will fall down and jump off.

You want the darn thing to stick around for the party.

(audience laughing) So you put it over here and nice and smooth like this.

Now if you have time, you do it for two hours, try to smooth it out.

If you don't have time, you just do it quickly, okay?

Look at this.

And then, if you want to make it fancy, well let me show you, you have a little half a shrimp already marinated.

You twist this and you put it like this, one.

Can you see that?

And then you do another one.

Particular when you have plenty of time, like me, you do more.

If you are running out of time, you do less.

You do it ahead of time and put in the fridge.

Look at this, do another one.

See how easy, how gorgeous it looks.

Just press this, now you have two.

Now I'm gonna remove these so everybody can see this much, much better.

Then when you deep-fry this, make sure you put this upside down like this.

You want to cook the shrimp first.

Look at this, it only takes a few seconds to cook.

When it's done, you take it out.

Look at how beautiful this is.

Look at this.

All it takes is about a minute to do it.

Doesn't take too long, okay?

How many of you have done this at home, please raise your hand?

Everybody?

(audience laughing) Look at how beautiful, I just want to show you how beautiful it looks.

Nice, and turn 'em around, and it looks like this, isn't it?

And I'm gonna put it over here, look at (audience applauding) how beautiful this is.

One, two.

See this?

(audience applauding) Now, if you have more time, all you can do is deep-fry enough and then put them all together and garnish it so in your buffet table it look much nicer.

This looks ugly, this is beautiful.

Okay?

(audience applauding) Now, you have been listening to all my shrimp stories, but here's someone who really knows about seafood, about shrimp.

Let's welcome seafood expert, author, and columnist, the fishmonger from the San Francisco Chronicle, my very good friend, Chef Jay Harlow.

(audience applauding) - Hey Martin, how are you?

- Chef, welcome to the "Yan Can Cook" show.

Today everybody in the audience, everybody at home is getting so excited because I, myself, love seafood and I'm quite sure everybody loves seafood.

So let's tell this about what, we've got a variety of seafood, let's tell everybody what they are and where they're from.

- Well I heard this was a B-Y-O-P party, bring your own prawns, so I brought own.

- Bring your own prawn.

- Okay.

What we have here is actually a bunch of different things that go by the names of shrimp or prawns.

Starting up here at the top, we have these small, brown shrimp.

These come from Ecuador.

These shrimp come from all over the world now to our markets.

These are some black tiger prawns from Taiwan.

Down here at the bottom, we have some white shrimp.

Those are also from all over Asia and this side of the Pacific.

These particular ones came from Malaysia.

These are really interesting, these come from Thailand and these are a freshwater shrimp.

See look, these big long claws.

- Is there any meat inside here?

It looks really interesting.

- There's a little bit in there.

If you don't get enough to eat with everything else, you can crack those open and get those little morsels.

These are generally called freshwater prawns.

And then over here, all of those are frozen.

Here we have something that's fresh, sometimes here on the west coast.

- This one.

- This is a spot prawn from Alaska.

- [Martin] Spot, oh yeah, I can see the little red spot over here.

- Right.

And then this one here, these are precooked.

These also come from the north Pacific from Canada and these are cooked prawns, and-- - How about this one too?

- Okay, this is the brown shrimp.

Brown shrimp from Ecuador.

- Brown shrimp, this is one of the most popular one in the mark.. - Yes, and if you go into especially Chinese markets, you can find, I got all of these this morning in Chinese markets right here in the Bay Area.

- Right here.

The thing that always get confused, I'm quite sure many of you in the studio are, and also you at home, always confused, what is a shrimp?

What is the difference?

What is the definition of a shrimp and a prawn, a prawn and a shrimp?

I got all mixed up.

You should give an idea, what is shrimp, what is prawn?

- It really depends on where you're from, Martin.

If you go to the east coast of the United States in the southeast, they call them all shrimp.

Here on the west coast, we tend to call the little ones shrimp, the big ones prawns.

If you go to England or go anywhere in the British Commonwealth countries, Australia, Hong Kong, they call them all prawns, so it really depends where you're from.

- I'm really confused.

It depends on where you are.

Fortunately, I only stay here.

I don't go anywhere.

- Right.

- But the thing is, thank you, Jay, because this is very informative, but if you know, really want to know a little bit more about prawn, about shrimp, about seafood or shrimp or prawn, Jay has written a very informative book.

This wonderful cookbook is the "California Seafood Cookbook".

Now we're going over there and I'm gonna put Jay and the prawn to work.

- Okay.

So we're gonna make some - What are we gonna make?

- Skewered grilled prawns, or shrimp, whichever you wanna call them.

- Skewered, grilled, the problem is I don't know whether in this particular case, they're not big one, they're not the small one, should you call this shrimp or prawn?

- Well, where I'm from, we call 'em shrimp.

What do they call 'em where you're from?

- Chinese, when I was growing up it's called (speaks foreign language).

- Huh?

(audience laughing) (both repeating word in foreign la.. - If you had one, it's (speaks foreign language).

(Jay repeats foreign word) Two, is (says foreign word twice).

(audience laughing) Three is (says foreign word three ..

So let's everybody practice in the audience.

If four shrimp, how do you say it?

(audience and Jay say foreign word four times) Wow, that's wonderful.

That's perfect Cantonese.

- That's a cheap way to get a laugh, Martin.

- Cheap is actually a very bad word.

- Sorry.

- I just love bargains.

Now, the thing is, I notice that you, of course, you have to start with this Chinese knitting needle.

Skewer.

- Right, this is actually a bamboo or a wooden skewer, and it's.. when you're gonna grill with these to soak these first in water so that they'r.. - So they don't get burned up and dried out.

- Otherwise, yes, they'll burn when they're on the grill.

- Now, before you do it, you gotta marinate it first.

- Right.

- Let's talk a little bit about what kind of marinade we should use.

- Okay, the marinade, we've got a .. of hoisin sauce, two tablespoons of soy sauce, two tablespoons of vegetable oil, and one teaspoon of sesame oil, and a little bit of black pepper, and those are all combined.

- Mix them all up, - Right.

- So you look in here, we have, after, this marinade will look like this.

- Right.

- How long should we marinate this?

- [Jay] Oh, about an hour.

- [Martin] About an hour.

- You can do it a little longer, a little farther ahead of time if you need that extra time to get ready for your party.

- Okay, let's skewer some really quick - Okay.

- Because the people in the studio audience are getting hungry, - That's right.

- And also you at home, I'm quite sure you are hungry too, so we will send you one today.

- [Jay] Special delivery.

- Okay, so we put one shrimp on there first.

- Let's move it, let's move, let's do it over here so everybody can see better.

- All right.

- That's perfect, let's do it over here.

Okay, good.

- So we put on one shrimp, and then we'll put on a piece of pineapple here, then we put on another shrimp, and actually, I like to go through the shrimp twice if I can.

- Good, so it won't fall off.

- And then, we'll go in, we'll skewer our piece of pepper.

- [Martin] Pepper.

- [Jay] And then one more shrimp.

- Yeah, I think that people - And we want 'em to all go the same direction.

- So when they push it - So they're nice and orderly - And push it, they'll be very careful, otherwise it can be dangerous, huh?

- Right, also for this, let's work out toward the end of the skewer, so you can handle it by this end of the skewer.

- That's great.

- And then, we'll just put this rig.. - Okay.

- [Jay] This is a little portable g.. that you can use inside the kitchen.

- Now, I'm quite sure a lot of people have the same question, whether it's in the studio or at home.

A lot of time, you go in and they say fresh shrimp or fresh prawn, or frozen, or fresh frozen.

I got all confused again, so maybe you should explain to them what is fresh, fresh frozen, frozen fresh.

- Okay, well, most of the shrimp in our markets do come in frozen.

Although, if they've gotta come from Asia, of course, they have to be frozen, but these spot prawns, for example, are available here fresh on the west coast and if you go to the southeast, you can sometimes find fresh shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico.

I would encourage people, wherever you are, if there are fresh shrimp on your market, try them.

Otherwise, the frozen shrimp are an excellent product.

They're very good and most of them are now coming from farms rather than the open ocean.

They're raising them in ponds so they can control the culture of them.

Okay.

- Now how 'bout, see, there are different size of prawn or shrimp.

What is the difference in texture?

- The larger ones tend to be a lot firmer, Martin.

So if you really want that nice, firm, meaty texture of a shrimp, go for one of the bigger sizes.

Unfortunately, the bigger sizes are more expensive.

- [Martin] Oh.

- [Jay] So if you wanna save money, buy 'em a little bit smaller.

- But it doesn't make any difference, whether it's fresh or frozen, or fresh frozen, or fresh.

When I was in Hawaii recently, I can actually go to a Chinese restaurant and order live, swimming prawn.

- Yes.

- I wonder why they don't have this in the mainland, this prawn.

- I think they will pretty soon.

You're seeing more and more Chinese restaurants now with live fish tanks, so maybe we'll start seeing live shrimp as well.

- How long should we cook those things?

- [Jay] Okay, those we on the grill here for about two or three minutes on the first side, and you can see how the shells change color.

- Yes, yes.

- See how they were the dark color here first, - Yes.

- [Jay] And now they've changed to a bright pink orange.

You can also see how the meat is changing color.

- That's an indication it's getting cooked, but when it's actually cooked, they should all turn what color?

- The meat should be opaque white and the shells should be pink, that's the main thing, You see how these, when they're uncooked the shell, the shrimp is a little bit translucent.

- [Martin] Yes, yes.

- And then it turns to an opaque w.. We're ready to turn this next one here I think.

- Turn around?

Now, how long can you do this ahead of time, and then how long can you keep it, and what should you do it and serve it with aside from the menu that we have today?

What else would go well with this?

- Well this would go very nicely either as an appetizer or as a main course whenever you're grilling outside in your backyard.

- [Martin] Yes.

- And it's also nice for a party like this because you can - Another one.

- If you don't want to do all the work, you can let your guests do some of the work.

- Definitely, how 'bout doing them individually on a grill, rather than doing it like this in a skewer?

Also, I notice that you also ones that is in shell.

What is the difference doing in the shell as compared to already shelled?

- Well, cooking shrimp in the shell tends to keep them a little bit moister.

- [Martin] Moister.

- But then you have to deal with how to eat.

You have to peel it then before you can eat it, so it's a sort of a trade off.

For convenience-sake, it's probably better to peel them, but I wanna show how, in fact, you can grill shrimp in the shell and they come out looking especially nice because you've a lot of that bright pink shell.

Okay, and I think our first ones are just about ready to come off the grill.

- Oh, looks wonderful let's remove this.

- And we'll set that right on the, on the rice.

- Right on the rice, served over rice or noodle, we happen to have rice.

Look at how beautiful.

Isn't it nice?

(grill sizzling) This is wonderful because this is like a one dish meal.

You have prawn, you have sweet and sour pineapple, you have a tiny bit of vegetable, and by the time you, show us the easiest way to pull the whole thing out.

- Okay, then when it's time to serve, you can use your fingers if you're being informal, or you can use a fork and just slide them right off of there and you're ready to peel and eat some shrimp.

- Taste one.

(audience applauding) Thank you so much for joining our party today.

As you can see, I especially want to thank my good friend, Chef Jay Harlow for sharing his expertise in seafood.

(audience applauding) We would like to say if Yan can cook, so can you.

- So can you.

“Goodbye!” (##!)

Goodbye.

(audience applauding) (Joyful music)