(cheerful upbeat music) (knife chopping) (audience cheering) (audience applauding) - [Announcer] And now, Martin Yan, The Chinese Chef.

(Martin speaking in foreign language) - That's the way we say how are you in Mandarin.

That is the official Chinese dialect.

Today, we're all going to get shanghaied.

We're going to be taken to a visit to that mysterious city and sample the whole sweet and sour fish, pineapple honey ham, and sweet date filled crepes.

Here I want to start our first wonderful dish.

The reason why this is so wonderful is because fish is healthy.

It's low calorie and it's wonderfully delicious and a lot of you worry about weight, fish is wonderful to try.

How many of you love fish?

Raise your hand.

Oh, practically everybody, all of everybody.

I love fish, but I also love other type of meat, so the great thing about fish is give the balance of diet.

Here I'm gonna show you, we start it out with one whole fish.

This is a rock cod.

You can use red snapper, you can use brown snapper.

This happen to be brown it's not red, so you can use a rock cod.

This is approximately one and a half to two pounds, okay.

And also, I have shredded about half of a carrot, julienne, shredded, match stick shred.

And also green onion.

One whole green onion.

You can use two or you can use three, nobody cares.

And then also use a tiny bit, that is true, and also use a tiny bit of this is bamboo shoot, okay.

And also, julienne green pepper.

You can use red pepper.

And also, mushroom.

We call shiitake mushroom or (speaks foreign language).

And also, two egg beaten.

And also, approximately one cup or half a cup of flour.

You can use corn starch, you can use flour, okay.

Start, now how can you tell a fish is nice and fresh?

Because a lot of people when they go out, they can't tell.

First of all, when you smell it, it does not have that overwhelming stink.

Besides, you look at the eye.

Look at her right in the eye and say, how about it (laughs)?

Because it should be clear, it should not be opaque.

And also, you open this and check the gill.

The gill should be pinkish red.

It should not be dark.

If it's dark, it has been in the fish store since 1946.

(audience laughing) Now I show, I have one here, that in my closet since 1645 (laughs).

(audience laughs) You definitely don't want to hold on to something like this and try to cook a Shanghai whole sweet and sour fish because you drive all your guests away.

This is actually salted fish.

Now, step number one.

Now also, you should kind of press the meat and make sure the scales are firm.

If the scales is mushy, that means the fish is not too fresh, so look at all these elements, okay.

Now, step number one.

Because this particular dish, I want to deep fry in such a way that it will sit there.

It will not stand or fall sideways.

Step number one, I have a little cut right here.

Okay, secondly, I have a little cut right here.

Okay, cut it right in the middle so when I put this it will open up like this, look.

It's just like the darn thing is looking right at you.

Stay.

Now when this is done, I am gonna use this is serious fishy business.

When it's done, I am going to show you you can score the .. Now you can score it, the reason why scoring the fish, one, two, three, and turn it to the other side.

One, two, three.

When you score the fish, it serve a number of purpose.

One, the seasoning can get through the fish.

Secondly, it doesn't take too long to cook because the heat can penetrate close to the bone, so it can have more uniform cooking, okay.

And the next thing is, I am going to slightly coat this with egg, beaten egg, okay.

You have to beat this up a little bit.

Put this around.

Put this around.

Put this around.

And then also sprinkle some corn starch or flour.

Sprinkle.

Sprinkle.

Put it inside here too.

This is messy.

It's a messy, fishy job.

You should do it at home.

Close the kitchen door, don't like let anybody know what's going on.

And then, after that, let me show you.

Let me clean up my hand.

In the meantime, this is a gigantic fish, so I use a gigantic wok.

For small, baby fish, you use a baby wok.

Now when you put it in there's a little trick here, okay.

When you put it in, you put it in like this.

Hold onto it.

Darn thing is moving!

Swim away!

You hold onto it, you can walk around, no problem (laughs).

(audience laughing) Have a good time.

Cooking should be fun.

Now if you have a gigantic fish, you use a gigantic strainer.

And you can even ladle this.

Wow, look at this.

Look at this, look at this.

Look at how, when it's done, how it looks.

Look at this.

You should cook it for approximately-- (audience cheering) Now in the meantime, we are going to have a little pot here, and use approximately two teaspoons of oil to make this nice sweet and sour sauce.

Now, you can have this all sweet or you can have all sour.

The trick is to make it just sweet and sour.

Not too much sweet, not too much sour.

Put this here.

Oh, bring it to a quick boil and also, let's come back here and put all these ingredients right in here.

If you notice that while I'm boiling this, I can also go back there and do one more thing.

And notice that this is a big fish, that's why I use a little more oil.

In fact there are more oil here than the OPEC.

Except this is much cheaper.

The problem is, you can only use this in your kitchen and not in your car.

Now, let us do this.

When it's done, let me show you how simple it is.

We're going to put this dish here and bring this to a boil and thicken this up a little bit, and then you pour the whole thing right on the fish.

This how beautiful.

While I'm pouring this, Frieda, over there, has a question for us.

- Yes, I do.

Since my husband's-- - Beautiful, look.

- Become diabetic, I have problems preparing sweet and sour d.. which we both like.

What would you suggest we use as a substitute for sugar?

- First of all, if you cannot take sweet and sour dish, all you have to do is take him to Italian restaurant.

(audience laughing) Or better yet, develop a lot of dishes called sour and sour dish, so once you develop that taste, you have no problem.

You don't have to worry about swee.. Now basically, what I would suggest is either use sugar substitute or try to develop dishes that use natural ingredient and give that sweetness and, you know, cut down on it because not every single dish has to be sweet and ..

It's ridiculous.

But I do want to answer somebody else's question that mentioned it to me, how do you make an average, common sweet and sour sauce just like the one I just did?

It's very easy.

Normally, you use one portion of r.. or regular apple cider vinegar, to one portion of sugar.

And then you use about, a little bit more, about one portion to one and a quarter portion of water, just mix them all up.

If you want, you can also put ketchup.

Normally I don't like to use hot and sour type of thing, but if you want, you can put a tiny bit of chili.

Some sweet and sour sauce have a little bit of chili and of course, sometimes you see bloody red sweet .. That's because they add a tiny bit of red food coloring.

Normally, I just add ketchup, okay?

- [Frieda] Thank you.

- My pleasure.

Now, this dish is called pineapple honey ham.

Very simple to do.

It's a wonderful dish to serve to your honored guests.

You start it out with approximately one and a half pound of Virginia ham.

This is a ham from Virginia, not Pocatello, Idaho.

And also, we use approximately half a cup of lotus seed, okay.

This is lotus seed.

This one with the skin, this one with no skin.

You can tell the difference.

And also use half a can of about eight ounce can of pineapple ring.

And also use approximately two tablespoon of dry sherry, one tablespoon of honey and about half a teaspoon of soy sauce and a tiny bit of sugar or rock sugar.

This is rock sugar.

I want to introduce, if you want to make this dish exotic, I'm gonna show you what do you mean by rock sugar.

This is how.

(metal clangs) Wow, this can be dangerous.

Now, all you really want to do is start with slicing this Virginia ham.

Cut it up, thin slices like this, and you put it here.

And you cut it, and you put it here.

Okay.

And then after you do that, after you sliced them all up, I wanna show you, I am going to lay this up like this.

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

When you put them all together, you can put this mixture of honey, soy sauce, right in here.

Okay, wow.

And also, the rock sugar or regular sugar, put it here, and you are going to steam it and after you steam it, you can invert it out.

And then you can garnish it.

Let's put this in.

Because we got so many people here, everything we cook we'll have to double the recipe.

See, now you're looking at television set.

You can see what's happening right there.

In the meantime, I'm going to cook this lotus seed.

Most of these are either from China or from Hawaii.

If you visit Hawaii you can see a lot of these.

Now, I cook this in a syrup.

I want to show you.

Right here, I cook this in a syrup,..

Right now, you gotta steam it over medium low heat for approximately half an hour to 45 minutes, medium to medium low heat.

And in the meantime, another thing I want to show you, this is how it would look.

Isn't that beautiful?

Now-- (audience applauds) You might notice, I have some garnish with pineapple and cucumber.

I want to show you how easy it is to garnish with cucumber.

You cut a little piece of cucumber, you make little slices, like this.

Okay, thin slices like this.

Okay, and then you can tell, can you see that?

You can make it into a fan like this.

Isn't that beautiful?

(audience applauds) And then you can put every other one like this.

Every other one.

Can you see that?

Every other one.

Then you end up having something like this.

Isn't it beautiful?

Everybody can do it.

I learned this 25 years ago.

I haven't forgot (laughs).

So you can garnish it.

This is very easy to do.

Now, while we are doing all of this, I understand we have a question over there.

- Martin, can you tell us a way to preserve ginger and how long it might be kept?

- First of all, when you go out to the store, when you buy ginger, don't buy too big a piece.

Because if you buy too big a piece, it lasts you two and a half centuries.

You buy a piece, just enough to last for about a week or so, okay.

The best way to store the ginger is peel it and slice it up and you put it in dry sherry in a air tight container and you put it in the fridge.

It'll last you for a while.

Another way is peel it and mince it up or julienne it and put it in oil because when you cook, you can scoop out the oil and the ginger simultaneously.

That's another way to do it, okay.

I understand that Jacque over there also has a question for us.

- What is the best way to prepare dried whole anchovies?

- Well, I'm quite sure you know that anchovy are very aromatic, pungent, and very, very tasty.

They've got a nice aromatic flavor, so the best thing is to use it for steaming.

In Chinese style, you use it for steaming because you can use it as a flavoring agent or you can put in salad.

You can do it any way you want.

A lot of time, they're also used in stew dishes just to give that nice touch of exotic aroma because there are all different kind of anchovy.

Some are very strong, some are mild, some are tasteless, and you want the good ones that give that nice exotic touch to your dish.

So you can do it any way you want.

Just use in different ways.

Now, thank you for wonderful question.

Now I thought that since Jacque asked a very interesting exotic question, so we're going to introduce you some exotic ingredients in Chinese cooking.

First, I want to introduce you to something the Chinese love dearly, it's the shark's fin.

This little thing cost me $27.

They're anywhere from $25 to approximately $175 a pound, depends on quality, okay.

And besides, when you clean this up, only about one half of this can be used.

This is preserved duck egg, okay.

This is wonderful for appetizer.

It goes, after you break this up, it looks like this.

The egg white is denatured to a dark brown color and the egg yolk is developed into unbelievably ugly color, and it's very strong aromatic.

It smells like ammonia.

But people love it because it's so exotic.

You can put this and serve with pickled ginger.

Wonderful appetizer, classic.

Here we have salted duck egg.

You put this edge with a tiny bit of salt so it denatured the egg white into a more watery consistency, and then the egg yolk solidify into a little thing like a Chinese red ping pong ball.

And here we have got expensive hair like seaweed that I mentioned earlier.

This in Chinese called fat choi.

This costs anywhere from 50 to $125 a pound.

That's why I always lock this up in my safe.

This one is one of the most exotic thing, they're called sea cucumber.

This is dehydrated.

(sea cucumber tapping) Ah, you can make music out of these.

This, you have to soak this for about three days (laughs) and then you cut it up and it's absolutely tasteless.

(audience laughs) But it got a nice wonderful texture.

You put it in stir fry dishes, in vegetarian dishes, and you put it in soup.

Wonderful.

And this is a dry red date.

You soak this and you de-seed it.

You can use this to make our next dish called sweet date filled crepe.

I'm gonna show you how to do it.

Right over here.

Now, this particular red date, the Chinese use it for a lot of things.

One of the thing they use is they put it in that one that I just did, the eight treasure rice, you see.

Use as a garnish and also you can put it in the syrup.

You can do anything.

This particular dish I'm gonna show you is called sweet date filled crepe.

You are gonna start with one cup of flour mixed with one egg and also one cup of water, okay.

And I also use the date, sweet pitted date, that you find in any supermarket.

And also, to make it even more exotic, I have a tiny bit of chopped peanut.

You can use peanut, you can use cashew nut, you can use walnut, you can use mixed nut, you can use any nut you can find.

A lot of them in Golden Gate Park or Central Park, New York.

(audience laughing) Now, the first thing I would want to do is make that nice crepe.

Okay, very easy to do.

Let me show you how to make this crepe.

You heat up a little pan.

Use nonstick frying pan, it's much easier to do.

Okay, use a tiny bit of oil, not much.

Swirl this around.

Swirl this around.

Hot, hot.

Okay, and then, you use this to put it here.

This particular dish is for the romantic people because it has many dates.

(audience groans) You win some and you lose some.

I'll try better next time.

You make a little crepe, like this.

Do not make it too big.

Do not make it too big.

Move them around, move them around.

I recommend all of you use a nonstick frying pan to do it so it won't get stuck.

I'm not quite sure how many you remember or know that the Chinese invented pasta, but the Italian make them very famous.

The same thing, the Chinese invented crepe.

Okay, but the French make it famous because in China, they don't call it crepe, they call it thin pancake.

That's the reason why the Chinese never get any credit out of it.

Ha, wonderful.

You throw it, ha, wonderful, ha.

(audience applauds) You can make a lot of pancake and I wanna show you, after you make the pancake, you roll it up first, okay.

Let's roll this up and set it aside.

And I put it here.

And I want to show you how you can fill this date.

Fill crepe.

You have gigantic one here.

You can have medium, gigantic one here or you have smaller gigantic one here.

It doesn't matter how big you wanna make it, okay.

Now I use a little knife and put I in about one tablespoon of this right here.

Put in one tablespoon.

Now, it depends on how sweet you want it to be.

Sometimes you want it really sweet, you add some more sugar in the sweet pitted date that you find in supermarket.

Sprinkle.

How many of you like peanut?

Everybody?

Oh, everybody, including myself.

And then, you fold it like this.

One, two, just like you're folding an envelope.

You fold it and you fold it, and you hold onto this and don't let it go and it going look like this.

Okay, and after you finish, you put them all and brown it with a tiny bit of oil.

Not much, just sprinkle.

Any polyunsaturated oil would do.

You don't have to use peanut oil.

You can use any oil.

Do it very, very carefully like this.

Put it right here like that, see?

Right here.

This is a wonderful dessert and I recommend all of you go home and try it.

You gotta brown it until they're nice and brown.

After this is brown, you see, move them around.

Don't let it get stuck.

And then you cut it up into three pieces.

It looks like this, and you put it here.

You stack them all up.

It's very easy to do.

Now basically, when you do the red date paste, all you have to do is start with this type of sweetened pitted date that you can find and put in a food processor.

Make it into a paste.

That's very simple.

Cut it up, cut it up.

Stack them all up, stack them all up, stack them all up.

Then you serve to your guests.

Remember, if Yan can cook, so can you!

(speaks in foreign language) (audience applauds) (cheerful upbe..