(Joyful music) (clapping) - Hi!

Welcome to the Yan Can Cook show.

Today's show, I should call Mom Can Cook.

When I was a little handsome kid, growing up in China, my mother did all the cooking.

She never let me into the kitchen.

But with that wok, I was a rebel.

So I jumped right in anyway, see, that's me!

I have such a good time with my wok, that I still have the same wok.

That was about 65 years ago.

Today, I want to share with you a few of my mother's favorite dishes.

Her first favorite dish I call braised cabbage, and cellophane noodle, or you can call it bean thread noodle, or you can call it fensi.

Nobody really cares.

(crowd laughing) Flavor with dry shrimp.

Okay, it's very easy to do.

Here, I remember when I was a little kid growing up, my mother always said, eat your vegetable!

Of course, many of you, always when you're growing up, your mother always used to tell you, eat your vegetable.

But my mom, in a true sense didn't have to tell me, because I loved vegetables.

Besides, when I was a little kid growing up, I never heard of cabbage patch dough.

So, I play with the real thing.

I love it, it's wonderful.

Not only you can play with the darn thing, you can get rid of your frustration, and also you can eat the darn thing.

They call it Napa cabbage.

But in China, they actually call it: (speaking foreign language) Tianjin cabbage.

It's grown a lot in a city called Tianjin, very close to Beijing, China.

Here, I have cut up some cabbage, I want to show you here.

I've cut up some cabbage, and I have four mushrooms.

This is dry mushroom, the Japanese cuisine call it shiitake mushroom.

The Chinese call it donggu.

Anybody know how to say it?

- [Crowd] Donggu!

- Perfect, unbelievable.

And then you soak it in water for approximately half an hour.

Then you remove the stem, and then you can cut it up, cut it up.

Put it over here.

Do it very slowly.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Transfer it like that, put it right here.

Also, in this particular dish, I also use about one clove of garlic.

So we'll cut it up, and we'll mash this and go, (chopping to musical beat) (crowd laughing) See how easy?

Nothing to it.

You put it aside, and then I want to introduce you, this is fensi.

In Chinese, we call fensi.

See?

Looks like this.

You buy in the packages like this, can you see this?

You can buy them in packages like t.. in most oriental grocery stores, some department stores also carry this.

Some of the department store, deli, or supermarket, will also carry this.

And then also, another thing I have is, I want to show everybody here, it's a package of dry shrimp.

You see?

You start with a gigantic medium p.. And you shred it, and you get a ladder, get up your ceiling, get up to the roof, and you line them all up.

You let it sit there for two months, then they all shrink, to little baby shrimp like this!

(crowd laughing) They buy in packages like this, after you open it up, make sure you put it in, put it in a little air-tight container, put it in the fridge, it will last you for approximately six to.. up to a year.

If you freeze them, it'll last you for 246 years.

Now, in the meantime, I want to heat up this little clay pot.

Let's heat it up, put a tiny bit of broth or oil over there, put a tiny bit of oil.

Put a tiny bit of oil, let me get some oil.

Tiny bit of oil, set it aside.

And then, make sure you also put a tiny, tiny bit of fensi.

This is, soak them.

When you use the fensi bean thread noodle, a lot of time people don't understand why they call it fensi.

You soak the darn thing, you move them around, all directions.

It's kind of fun to see, that's why they call it fensi.

(crowd laughing) I apologize.

You see.

And then, when it's hot, all you have to do is put the cabbage and the mushroom, okay?

The cabbage and the mushroom, this particular dish you have to cook it for a few minutes, see?

Put it over there, stir fried it, and also put a tiny bit of dry shrimp.

Put a tiny bit of dry shrimp.

Let it sautee for a few minutes.

Stir, sautee for a few minutes.

Medium-high heat.

When you use this, you should not use very high heat, because you might crack this clay pot.

You might even want to use a diffuser, so stir it, move around, and then you put the fensi right on top, you see this?

Never put on the bottom, because it soaks up a lot of liquid, okay?

Let's put them all back, put a tiny bit of sesame seed oil, about two tables soy sauce, and then we'll cover up and let it simmer.

This particular dish, it takes approximately anywhere from 20-25 minutes to simmer.

So we're gonna set it aside, we're gonna remove these and put it aside, and then, because the magic of television, and because we don't have time to show you and wait for 25 minutes, I have done ahead of time one of these.

Look at how gorgeous these look, look, a beautiful dish.

(crowd clapping) Now all you have to do is garnish it like this, and then you are ready to go.

Now we're gonna put this over here, and we are going to do another very simple dish.

While I'm doing that, I'm gonna heat up my wok with the b..

I'm gonna show you how to do my mother's next very popular favorite dish, it's called steamed pork patty.

Here, I have all these ingredients here.

Pork, freshwater chestnut, I want you to see the freshwater chestnut.

I grown this in my little pond.

And then I also, I want to put it over here so everybody can see.

When it's peeled, it looks like this, okay?

Then you ground your pork.

Now, in China, you do not buy the pork like we have here, you can buy hamburger patty, and you have to ground your own.

So when you ground it, you use this.

The idea of it achieves two purposes.

First, you ground the darn thing, second, you burn six million calories.

(crowd laughing) (crowd clapping) Now, this is done.

And then, after that, you're gonna put this in a bowl, you see?

And then put up some minced chopped water chestnut, some mushroom, chopped mushroom, put it over here.

And then, you have also some chopped green onion.

Now if you don't have enough, all you have to do is do some more.

(chopping to musical beat) And then, put them all together, and season it with a tiny, tiny bit of wine, Shaoxing wine, sesame seed oil, and then the corn starch, and then egg white, see this?

And then you're gonna mix it up with this.

Look at this.

I'm gonna use a heat-proof container.

I also want to remove this, so we don't have to waste any space.

In the meantime, my bamboo steamer is coming along r..

Put it over here, mix them all up nice homogenized, well-seasoned, okay?

Also, you can put a tiny bit of salt and white pepper.

Mix it up, and then put it right over here, into this heat-proof plate.

And then, all you have to do is make it into a patty.

This is how the Chinese play the patty cake!

How nice.

And then you're gonna steam this for approximately, when you steam it, make sure to remember this steam is coming up really high, otherwise it takes six years to steam the darn thing.

Steam it over high heat.

When it's done, it will look like this.

Wow, look at this!

How gorgeous this looks!

(crowd clapping) One of my mother's favorite dishes, is this cured Chinese sausage.

Earlier, I went down to Guangzhou Chinese Sausage Shop in Chinatown, and this is what I found.

I would like you to meet lap op, cured or preserved duck.

Lap yuk, cured or preserved side pork.

Or this, my favorite, this is Chinese sausage.

I call it lap cheong.

I remember, when I was growing up, my mother fixed this everyday, can you imagine you eat this everyday?

Most of these are Chinese sausage, all lap cheong made from pork, pork fat, and sometimes duck liver.

In this particular store, they even have beef sausage, it's delici..

Most of these come in pairs like this, with a string attached, when you buy Chinese sausage in this form.

You've got to make sure you buy the sausage with the string attached, otherwise it's not as good.

Most of these Chinese sausages are preserved with salt, sugar, soy sauce, and Chinese rice wine.

Of course, 80 proof Chinese rice wine.

That's why it's preserved so well.

You can keep this in the refrigerator for several weeks up to a month, or you can actually keep it in the freezer for up to several months, or six months, even.

When you prepare this, all you have to do is, when you cook rice, steam the rice.

Just like my grandmother has been doing for 200 years.

Today, I am going to show you how to make lap cheong, Chinese sausage.

(crowd clapping) I hope I brought enough for everybody here.

With about 6,000 of these, we can feed about 5,000,000 people.

In fact, I hope we have leftovers to send it to you, watching at home!

We're gonna put it over here because if you keep it in the refrigerator, as I said, you can keep it for a couple of months.

If you keep it in the freezer, you can keep it much, much longer.

One of these guys, most of these guys are much older than me.

(crowd laughing) Not really, nothing is older than me.

Even my mother, not older than me.

Now I would like to once again show you and teach you how to say this particular Chinese sausage.

They say lap cheong.

Please.

- [Crowd] Lap cheong.

- Perfect Cantonese, you have made it.

Now this particular dish is very, very easy to do.

I'm gonna do chicken in clay pot with lap cheong.

First of all, I'm gonna slice this.

This darn thing is so old!

I'm gonna slice it up, steam so the flavor will come out.

This is a slice of history.

Slice, slice, coming up, coming up, coming up, coming up, cut them all up, set it aside, and put it over here.

And then, also, do some chicken.

If I were you, I would remove the skin, but when my mother always loved to keep the skin, because in China, you do not have to have, in your diet, don't have too much saturated fat.

So you don't really have to worry about it, okay?

I'm gonna set it up, also, I'm gonna cut up a couple of these mushrooms.

In the meantime, I want to heat up my nice clay pot here, with a tiny, tiny bit of oil.

I'm gonna go and get some oil, right here.

Put a tiny bit of oil.

Don't have to use too much, because if you use too much, you're gonna be in trouble, because, let's put it over here, the reason is the sausage already have enough pork fat, so you don't want to use too much.

It's very, very important not to do that.

Cut into quarters, set it aside, put it here.

Put this stem, remove the stem.

Put them all here.

And then, also, a little garlic.

Look at how easy, please come out, don't embarrass me.

See?

(crowd laughing) (chopping to musical beat) (crowd laughing) Put them all over here, put the garlic and a tiny bit of ginger.

This particular way you do it is, you don't even have to slice it.

All you have to do is press the darn thing, put it over here.

This way, you can pick the whole th.. it's no big deal.

And then, the first thing I do is, put some Chinese sausage, about one sausage.

Stir.

The great thing about this kind of clay pot is not only can you use it as a cooking utensil, when it's done, you can serve the whole clay pot right on top of your dining table.

See, everybody know it in China, there's no dishwasher.

(crowd laughing) But they do!

I mean, electric dishwasher.

But they do have manual dishwasher.

This digital dishwasher.

We'll put this over here, chicken, might as well.

Some of you in the audience, when I talk about food, you get all excited!

So might as well cook a little bit more.

What do you think, more?

And also, I want to use about 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of bamboo chute, okay?

And some green onion.

You can put them all together.

Of course, you don't want to put this bamboo and mushroom stem.

Might as well, put them all in.

Might as well put the whole thing in!

Stir, stir, can you hear the sizzling sound?

Use medium-high heat, so if you want to cook it for a long time, simmer, you might want to put a little diffuser so it won't crack, very important.

We're gonna let it sit.

Seasoning!

I'm gonna put it in very simple.

Two teaspoons to a tablespoon of soy sauce, a tiny bit of Shaoxing wine, wow, look at this!

And also, this is very exotic.

This is fermented soya bean curd.

Red soya bean curd.

I crush this a little bit, and then I mix them all in.

And I put it right over here.

And then I also want to show you, we're gonna put a tiny, tiny bit of sugar, and white pepper, about half a teaspoon of sugar, a dash of white pepper.

And then, we will cover this up by putting about 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup of this wonderful, nice chicken broth.

And we will cover this up, and let it cook, okay?

Why I am cooking this?

I want to show you some of the things that you have probably have never seen.

Many of you have never, never used, or are familiar with clay pot.

So today I'm gonna show you what they are, how to choose them, how to take care of them.

How many of you have ever seen this before?

This is a Chinese clay pot tea kettle.

This is a kettle!

You put the water inside here, and you hold on to the darn thing, and you pour the water out like this.

The most important thing is don't drop the darn thing on the floor.

And then, you have little baby clay pot like this, with one handle.

Inside that, it's got like enamel, a glaze like this is lead-free, so the food does not react with it.

And then, you also have this one, about the same size, but with two handles.

So you can have one handle, two handle, this is a bigger one.

This is medium size, and then you can open it up like this.

And it looks different color, okay?

And then you can have another handle, but with, you can open up like this!

Look at this, it looks like this, can everybody see?

It looks quite interesting.

Particularly, when it's empty.

This is the granddaddy.

This is for soup, or for casserole, particularly for when you have a big family.

This is perfect, this is a soup pot.

They're made from clay and sand, so that's why they're sometimes called clay pots, sometimes they're also called sandy pots.

When you go to a Chinese store in China, when you buy this, the way that you want to test it, you put it in a bucket of water, to see if there's any leakage.

Another way, to put the water here, to see, no water seeping out.

This is how you test it.

And also, make sure when you use this, soak this in water overnight, okay?

So they're saturated with water.

And then when you use it for cooking, make sure you start with medium heat or low heat, and then gradually increase it.

If you are doing something large portion, if you want to cook a little bit faster, I rather you cook longer rather than use high temperature.

If you're not quite sure, whether it will break or not, make sure to play it safe.

Put a little diffuser on top of the stove.

Now, we're gonna take a look at how gorgeous, you've gotta check this!

It looks marvelous, look at this!

(crowd laughing and clapping) This is beautiful!

Everybody in my family, my mother, my brother, my uncle.

Everybody in my family, especially my mother, loves seafood.

The wonderful thing is, when you cook seafood, it's very, very good in protein, nutrition, and yet very low in calories, and you can cook it any way you want.

The next dish is my mother's fourth favorite dish.

It's called steam and braise, you can steam or you can braise, this is a braised whole fish with a very unique pork sauce.

As I said, this is my mother's fourth favorite dish.

Here, I have two fish.

Now, it depends on where you are.

You can use any fish.

When I was growing up, we have catfish, we have yellowtail, we have all kinds of fish.

This happens to be trout, because I found this in the local fish market.

So we use trout.

In order to do it and make it cook a lot faster, what you should do is, you could slightly score this, but it's not necessary.

Score this a little bit, score this a little bit.

So, the heat penetration can go through it a little bit faster, so you do not have to take so long to cook it.

This is one, and this is another one.

If you do it for two people, you use one whole fish for four people.

You use two whole fish for six people.

I don't care how many fish you want!

(crowd laughing) Then, the next thing I want to show you, is we are going to slightly sprinkle this with a tiny bit of salt and pepper, you see this?

Salt and pepper, salt and pepper.

Turn them around, salt and pepper, do it all together.

Exercise!

And then, dredge this with this flour.

Now, the quick thing about this is, if you don't have this, like me, I always carry one of these designer dredging bags around.

I always have it in my pocket, so when I need it, I take it out.

Sprinkle a tiny bit, dredge it around, dredge them around.

In the meantime, I'm gonna heat up my frying pan.

I'm gonna introduce you to my pan.

This is Yan's pan.

(crowd laughing) And the next step is, we're gonna use a tiny bit, I'm gonna wipe my hands out to make it nice and cl.. put a tiny bit of oil here, and then we are actually gonna braise these a little bit.

Brown this first.

Now, this is very important.

I'm using a very unique cooking utensil here.

This is a non-stick frying pan, or you can call it skillet.

In the meantime, I'm gonna get ready another frying pan, and I'm gonna do some pork sauce.

Here, I have all the seasoning.

Soy sauce, sesame seed oil, and corn starch, and some green onion, and then some of these... (chopping to musical beat) ginger.

Ah, the fish is getting wonderful!

(crowd laughing) Put them all together, set it aside, because we're gonna make a nice sauce.

Also, with a tiny, tiny bit of this, you can use fish stock or you can use any stock.

Turn them around, make sure you use medium-high heat so you don't burn the darn thing.

And then, otherwise you're gonna have, not only have stuck, but burned stuck fish!

First of all, we will use a tiny bit, let me get a tiny bit of oil.

Put a teeny tiny bit of oil.

Now, this is a very, very unique cooking surface.

You notice that the cooking surface is not perfectly level.

It's got a little groove.

The idea of doing that is, this non-stick cooking surface will last for a long time, because even though the top, the little peak, the little stretch, the bottom will still stay there.

So this lasts a long time.

And then, we'll put the pork.

And we'll put, make sure stir fry.

Stir fry.

And then, in the meantime, I turn this.

Wow, perfect!

Perfect, nice and brown, look at how gorgeous this fish is!

Turn them around, and then put all the seasoning in.

Wow, look at this!

All the seasoning in.

Soy sauce, corn starch, and a tiny bit of, (speaking in foreign language) gorgeous, let's remove all of these.

Make a sauce.

And when the fish is done, the fish is done.

Make sure you cook about 3-3.5 minutes on each side, ..

When the fish is done, you will transfer the fish.

Slide the whole thing right over here.

Look at how beautiful.

One, beautiful.

Two.

And then, the pork sauce is also ready.

When the pork sauce is ready, you transfer this, and you put a tiny bit of pork sauce right over here.

And it is so beautiful!

I think everybody can learn how to do this.

This is my fourth favorite dish from my mother.

Now, I want to remind all of you, all of these dishes are my mother's favorite.

I'm glad all of you today get a chance to share with me, and in fact, for anybody here, if you're interested in getting more of my mother favorite recipe, please, for recipes, write to my mother, Martin's mom, (speaking in foreign language) I hope you read Chinese, because all the recipes you will receive would be in Chinese.

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you so much for coming to the studio, and seeing us, and I will see you again soon!

And if Yan can cook, so can you!

“Goodbye!” (##!)

(crowd clapping) (Joyful music)