Page:The Chinese cook book.djvu/29



A Chinese dish consists of three parts: (a) meat; (b) secondary vegetables, such as Chinese water chestnut, bamboo shoot, celery, Chinese mushroom, and sometimes other vegetables according to the season; (c) the garnish on the top of each dish, consisting of Chinese ham, chicken, or roast pork cut up into small dice or into small bars about one inch long, and enough parsley to aid the taste as well as to ornament the dish.

The amount of meat, in accordance with the hygienic law of Confucius, is about one-third that of the secondary vegetables.

The meat should be the same size and shape as the vegetables and must be uniform. It may be cut into dice, into bars, or into fragments; judgment must be used as to this when the size of the vegetable is limited.

There are three methods employed in Chinese cooking; steaming, frying, and boiling.