(Joyful music) (knife tapping) (audience clapping) - Welcome to the Yan Can Cook show.

In China, the rice bowl does more than just hold your dinner.

It symbolizes wealth and security.

In fact, in China, if you have a good, steady job, they say that you have a golden rice bowl.

That means it never breaks.

Now, I want to, because I'm going to show you how to do a number of rice dishes today.

So, the first thing I want to do is to set all the facts straight.

I don't know how many of you know that rice have been popular for billions of people, more than half the world's population, for almost 6,000 years.

And not only that.

Rice has more energy per pound than any, almost any other food.

Anybody knows that?

More energy.

Rice has a wonderful complex, carbohydrate and vitamin.

And also rice is very, very low in fat and sodium.

No cholesterol whatsoever.

Isn't it wonderful?

And not only that.

Each cup of rice only have less than 220 calories.

And not only that.

Rice has 10% of the daily allowance for iron.

So, it's very high in iron.

Not only that.

Rice has all eight essential amino acid.

Better yet!

There's only three to four cents per half a cup of serving.

That's wonderful.

I'm sure a lot of people don't know so much good thing about rice.

And I've been eating rice for 225 years.

(audience laughing) Now, first of all, I want to show you how to make perfect rice because you start from cooking rice first.

Then from rice, you can go on to do a number of other things.

You can use rice in dessert.

You can use rice in rice soup.

You can use rice in sausage.

You can use rice in everything!

Now, here, I want to show you this.

This is how rice look.

Can you see this?

See this?

This is dry.

I have this in my cooking school.

And I showed it to all my students because this is very, very nice.

In fact, I use it for my interior design.

(audience laughing) After you do this, I'm going to sho..

I'm going to put the rice over here.

Now, I'm going to show you how easy it is to cook rice.

A lot of people hesitated to use rice because they think it's a nuisance, it's difficult to cook perfect rice.

And that is not true.

It's actually very, very simple.

You started out with one cup of rice.

And you use half a cup of water, 1 1/2 cup of water.

So, one to 1 1/2.

If you add a tiny bit of butter and salt, you can use one cup of rice to one to 2/3 of a cup of water, okay.

So, one cup of rice to 1 2/3 of a cup, or to cook rice the Chinese style, you use one cup to 1 1/2 cup of water, okay.

Now, the rice you buy from southeast Asia, you got to wash it because they got a lot of foreign mat.. (audience laughing) But the rice you buy in America, it's already added with vitamins, thiamine, and niacin, so don't wash it.

If you wash it, you wash your money away, okay.

So just cook with one cup of rice.

We turn this around, we'll show everybody.

We turn this on.

One cup of rice to 1 1/2 cup of water.

You bring this to a boil over medium-high heat to high heat until you see crater holes.

Most of the water evaporated, okay, which takes about 15 to 18 minutes, depends on whether you use electric or gas.

And also depends on how high you turn it.

But nevertheless, during this cooking process, don't stir it too much, okay.

Otherwise it might turn sticky because when you stirred it, you break up the rice kernel.

You see that?

And then, when it get to a crater hole, okay, then, look at this.

You see the crater hole?

Then you immediately cover this up.

After you get to the point of crater hole, then you cover up and turn it down to simmer, and let it cook for approximately 20 minutes.

Simmer, let it steam to allow the starch to gelatinize and get a nice, good gelatinization of starch.

And I am going to set this aside, okay.

Now, with the rice, I'm going to show you how to do a wonderful dish.

This is going to be rice in lotus leaf.

Now, everybody know.

I'm going to set this up and get re.. Everybody know.

Rice is very versatile.

A lot more versatile than potato.

Rice, people use rice for target practice during weddings.

(audience laughing) You see.

Just like that.

Can you imagine in weddings, you throw to the bride and groom with potato?

(audience laughing) That is terrible.

Now, in this particular dish, is very simple.

First of all, I'm going to use this lotus leaf, okay.

You see how this lotus leaf?

I'm going to soak this in boiling water.

Kind of blanch this in boiling water, and soften it up first, okay.

I want to show you a lotus leaf, see.

Half-moon, whole thing like this, lotus leaf.

See this?

And this is dry.

Everybody knows that in north, in China, in t.. there's no aluminum foil, plastic wraps (audience laughing) and things like that.

So they use whatever is natural to use to .. Aside from that, they also use this bamboo leaves.

You see this?

Beautiful bamboo leaves.

This is 5,000 years old.

Now, this particular dish is very easy to do.

First, you start with the rice, which I have already cooked some rice, set it aside.

And then, I'm going to cut up some sausage.

(knife tapping) One, two, three, this Chinese pork sausage.

The Chinese call lap cheong.

Everybody say lap cheong.

Everybody.

- [Audience] Lap cheong.

- Yeah, that means Chinese sausage, okay.

And then, we're going to saute this a little bit with a tiny bit of oil.

This all I need, approximately two teaspoon, wow!

And put tiny bit of this here, one Chinese sausage.

And then, do a tiny bit of celery.

(knife tapping) Fun.

(audience clapping) Now, set it aside, and put it over here.

Saute this, and also put some dry mushroom, two to three dry mushroom.

And about quarter of a cup of ham, quarter of a cup of dry shrimp.

And if you want, you can even use a tiny, tiny bit of shallot.

(knife tapping) This is optional.

Shallot is very, very popular in northern part of China.

And if you want to make it more unique, you can chop up some cilantro, you see.

(knife tapping) You notice that I never raise my knife higher than my knuckle.

That's why I can never get hurt.

It doesn't matter how excited I get.

(audience laughing) And then, you stir all of these.

And then, put a tiny bit of sesame seed oil.

This is sesame see oil.

About half a teaspoon to a teaspoon about.

Two tablespoon, or one to two tablespoon of soya sauce.

And then, we'll remove these, okay.

Remove these.

And then put the rice in here.

This is already cooked.

And I want to show you how easy it is to cook this dish.

After you mix them all up, because the rice is already cooked, and everything is already stirred.

And when it's done, you take it out.

Look at this, how beautiful.

I'm going to show you this, very, very simple, okay.

Here, this is the lotus leaf.

Shake them up a little bit.

Or you can pat dry, it takes about three years.

(audience laughing) This is much more efficient.

And then, you open it up like this.

Look at this, nice and round.

It's nice and round!

So you can put it this or this way or this way.

(audience laughing) It is all the same!

The Chinese call this the lotus position.

(audience laughing) Now, when you put on to this, let me show you how easy.

You put this over here.

Now, in Mexican cuisine, they use corn husk.

In Hawaiian cooking, they use tea leaf.

In Greek cooking, they use grape leaf.

Thank you.

(audience laughing) somebody just remind me, grape leaf!

And Chinese, they use lotus leaf and also bamboo leaf.

In North America, we use plastic (audience laughing) to hold rice.

Let me show you, hold on to this.

Beautiful, look at this.

Hold on to this.

Hold on to this.

Hold on to this.

You wrap it up like this.

And after you do this, look at how beautiful.

Now, it will stay closed like this.

So you do not have to use one of this dumb thing to staple the dumb thing up.

(audience laughing) And then you put it into this bamboo steamer.

Look at this beautiful bamboo steamer.

And steam it, and whenever you're ready, look at this beautiful.

I want to show you how it actually look after it is steamed, when you open this up.

(audience clapping) Look at this, beautiful.

How do you like the rice?

Put it in the lotus position.

That's one of my favorite.

It's also my mother's favorite.

Rice is just like snowflake.

There's no two grains look exactly the same.

(audience laughing) That's what I mean.

I'm going to show you some of the rice.. that you have never seen before.

Here, is regular long-grain rice, okay.

Long-grain rice are grown all over the world.

But recently, also in California, we have the wonderful long-grain rice.

And then also, this medium-grain rice, also well-known grown in California.

This is the brown rice!

And this is sweet rice, or they call short-grain or glutinous rice.

And here, is the rice powder, made from long-grain rice that uses for a lot of dumplings.

And this is rice powder make with glutinous sweet rice or short-grain rice.

And this rice make into noodle.

This is rice stick noodle.

And they even use rice to make into rice sheet like this in Vietnamese cooking.

They can fold it like a egg roll.

They're very fragile.

Let me show you.

They're very, very brittle.

You see this?

It breaks very easily.

So when you use it, you got to soak .. And even this is actually fresh rice noodle, nice and soft.

This made from long-grain rice flour.

And not only that.

This is the, when you go out to have sizzling rice ..

This is the rice crust.

This is the burned rice in the bottom of the pot.

(audience laughing) And then, you can also use rice to ..

These a little candy, rice puff.

Of course, aside from all these, you can also use rice to make rice wine.

(audience laughing) And also, uses to make rice vinegar.

You can use rice for a number of things!

I'm going to save this rice wine for myself.

(audience laughing) I'm going to put it here.

The rest of them, we're going to r.. Now, a lot of people ask me, "Martin, I just want to have perfect cooked rice."

If you want perfect cooked rice just like many of the Oriental household in the kitchen.

They always have a rice cooker, look at this.

Perfect rice cooker.

All you have to do is plug the dumb thing up, put the rice in, and then you have perfect rice.

So use this rice cooker if you don't want to bother.

I have three of these.

I sent one to my mother.

And she used two of them at the same time.

(audience laughing) The next one I want to show you is..

I call this seafood combination rice congee because a lot of people said, "What am I going to do if I have leftover rice?"

Of course, you can make fried rice or you can make rice congee.

But you can also start it out with fresh raw rice.

You can use one to 1 1/4 cup to 1 1/2 cup of raw cooked rice with about 12 cup of either water or chicken broth or beef broth to cook this up.

Now the important thing is while you're cooking this, make sure you use a little wooden spoon to stir it, okay.

Now, idea of stirring it is, make sure they would not get stuck to allow the rice to gelatinize, to cook.

And not only that.

You don't want the dumb thing to get burned.

Otherwise you end up having stuff for your rice paper!

(audience laughing) Or for your wall paper.

So make sure you do not forget to occasionally stir a little bit, and use medium to medium-low heat to gelatinize the cornstarch.

Cook into a pot like this, okay.

I have about 13 cups of rice congee here.

And the Chinese call juk.

Anybody, can anybody say juk?

One, two, three.

- [Martin And Audience] Juk.

- Juk means Chinese rice congee.

They're also called porridge.

They're also called juk.

By now, everybody know I am a joker.

(audience laughing) Now, I love juk because the good thing about it, you can serve it in the afternoon.

It's so nutritious.

It's just as good as a bowl of cereal because you can add anything.

I'm going to show you.

When this rice is done, let me turn it up a ..

When this is done, we're going to use a quarter of a pound of scal.. already marinate, a quarter pound of shrimp, a quarter po.. You can tell this is squid.

Can you see this?

Ooh, if I were you, I wouldn't put this in.

(audience laughing) But since I'm not eating anything I..

I will put everything in.

Now, I marinate it with about half a teaspoon for all of these, I marinate with about half a teaspoon to 3/4 teaspoon of salt.

Put them all in because they don't take that long ..

The rice congee is all done.

I'm putting all this seafood combo.

You can use shrimp and crab if you happen to be in a crabby mood.

(audience laughing) You can use anything.

Now, aside from that, I want to show you, we are going to show you a variety of congee that you can make.

Now, first of all, let me put this aside so we're going to serve our congee in this fish bowl because this wonderful seafood, so we will serve in the fish bowl.

Aside from the scallop, shrimp, and squid, you can also use, this is pork kidney.

This is pig's stomach.

I just show you for this plate.

I haven't touched this for 20 years.

(audience laughing) And this is pork liver.

And this pig skin, and this is pork bone.

That means you can have a variety of congee or rice porgy, porridge or juk.

We go to Chinese restaurant, you can have a great variety.

Aside from this, when the congee is nice and done, I want to show you the condiment that you can put it on, okay.

Look at this.

You have this Chinese cruller, Chinese elongated donut, okay.

We want to cut this up and put it over here.

Some parsley, some nice, roasted peanut with the skin, some ginger, and some citron pickle, and also a tiny bit of sesame seed oil.

So this are the condiments.

Also, we have some deep-fried wonton skin, and also cellophane noodle.

So, by the time I put this whole thing together, it looks marvelous.

Now this is nice and done.

You don't want to overcook this.

When it's done, all you have to do is scoop this out.

Look at this.

Scoop this out.

This is beautiful.

I wonder how many of you have ever tried this.

You go to Chinese restaurant, you can actually order this.

This is, I want to show you how to do this, okay.

Let me remove these so everybody can see better.

First, I want to cut a couple piece of these Chinese cruller.

One, two, three.

Put it over here.

See this?

And then sprinkle a tiny bit of gree.. And then, a little piece of parsley condiment.

And also, a couple piece of peanut.

Look at, beautiful, huh?

And then, also, a tiny bit of ginger.

And also, a tiny bit of, don't worry, we're having fun.

(audience laughing) Am I having fun or what?

And then also, put a tiny, tiny bit of these, right over here.

Look at this.

This gives some texture to it.

Now, you have something absolutely wonderful.

You have a complete meal, by itself.

(audience clapping) How do you like my juk?

I have this every morning for breakfast.

Of course, you can serve it breakfast, lunch, midnight snack.

I went out to the restaurant to have it two o'clock in the morning, have all kind of stuff.

That's why I love juk.

The next one I want to show you is something everybody love, fried rice.

Everybody love fried rice.

But I'm going to show you how to do beef and tomato fried ri..

Many, not too many people have tried this, but it's wonderful.

All you need is four cup cooked rice.

And about quarter of a pound to half a pound of chuck steak or any nice tender steak.

You can chop it up, you can use just ground beef.

And one medium sized tomato.

The first thing you want to do is, let's do the tomato.

Very, very simple.

Slice this up 'cause I want to cut into chunks.

This is how I do it.

One, two, three.

See that?

Isn't that simple?

And then I stack them all up.

And I go one, two, three, four, five, and then turn them around.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Now the knife have to be sharp, otherwise you going to end up making tomato paste!

(audience laughing) Put it over here.

You can see how fast it is.

And then, I also want to show you a technique.

While I'm getting everything ready, I'm going to heat up my wok.

Now, first of all, let's heat this up.

So, get ready for fried rice.

And now I'm going to show you how easy it is to cut this up.

First, I'm going to cut this up into strips, set it aside.

Cut on top into strips, set it aside.

One, two, three, four strips.

Set this aside, beef, okay.

And then, cut into chunks.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

And then, after this, this is the Chinese food processor.

(knife clanging) (knives tapping) (audience clapping) The good thing about this is not only you can achieve your objective.

Also, dual objective because you're going to burn out at least two and a half million calorie.

(audience laughing) (knives tapping) (audience clapping) Now this is done.

You put this back.

The beef is done.

And the wok is hot.

And I'm going to show you we are ready to cook.

I'm going to set this aside.

Let us add about two teaspoon of oil right here.

Hot wok, okay.

And then, put some more aromatic ingredient, onion.

Brown the onion.

And also, chop up some green onion, okay.

(knife tapping) Nothing to a piece of cake.

(audience laughing) Okay.

And then, you put it over here these are nice, wonderful, aromatic, and toss around, okay.

And then, you put the beef, which .. for approximately one tablespoon of soya sauce, and about half a teaspoon of sesame seed oil, and a tiny, little of white pepper, and cornstarch.

Toss it around, very easy to do.

Okay.

And then, put some egg, about two .. Oh, look at this.

Turn the whole thing, turn the whole thing.

And then, put the rice.

Look at this.

Four cups of rice, okay.

(fried rice sizzling) Stir.

Then, tomato, one tomato, and green peas.

Then, the next thing is salt, about half a teaspoon of salt, and a tiny bit of soya sauce.

One tablespoon, two tablespoon or so, (audience laughing) that's all you need.

And then, look how beautiful this is it.

Can you see how nice and beautiful?

And then, if you want, final touch, a tiny bit of ketchup, and also a tiny, tiny bit of sesame seed oil.

This way, beautiful.

Why I'm stir-frying?

Now, the great thing about this is,..

It's a high-energy dish.

The secret is in the motion.

I just hope that somebody would eventually develop a wok can shake itself.

(audience laughing) Now aside from this, I want to show you with rice you can also do.. A mandarin orange rice mold, which you use custard and egg white, mix them all up.

Mix with mandarin orange, pineapple, and rice.

And then, you'll chill the darn thing for approximately five, four to five hours until they're wonderful.

Look at how beautiful this looks.

Look at this.

And then, all you have to do is one of these beautiful things.

And then, I have the dish right here, which is already done.

Wow, look at this beautiful.

Tomato fried rice!

With mandarin orange rice mold.

See, what wonderful dishes (audience clapping) you can make.

So, add rice to your daily diet.

You'll look and feel just as good as me.

I've been doing this for the past 75 years.

(audience laughing) If Yan can cook, so can you!

“Goodbye!” (##!)

(audience clapping) (Joyful music)