Friday, August 11, 2023

Yan Can Cook - Sweet and Sour Pork!

If you ever watched the PBS TV show “Yan Can Cook”, you should already know Martin Yan Can Cook. This dish is one of the reasons I know that statement to be an unquestionable fact.

 

For a ten-year segment of my work career, I was VP of Quality for a process equipment manufacturer in Chicago. We fabricated stainless steel equipment for the pharmaceutical, chemical and food processing industries. Also, high end commercial cooking equipment for factories, restaurants and institutions. Not that it matters, but we made the equipment that is used to make Crackerjacks, Fiddle Faddel and most of the candy bars you might eat to get the chocolate monkey off your back. A part of my duties in that job included serving as the technical representative for the company at conventions and equipment shows where we marketed our products and design services.

These included multiple weeks on the team representing the company during the national restaurant show (NRA) in Chicago, Las Vegas and a few other places. The NRA show in Chicago is where I met and enjoyed time discussing business and equipment design with Martin Yan, the chef who hosted "Yan Can Cook" on Public Television in the 1990s. I believe Martin still has a show on food network, or one of those cable channels. During my time in the business, I also met and became friends with Chef Paul Prudhomme, Gram Kerr - The Galloping Gourmet, more than one of the chefs at Commander's Palace, Jaques Pepin and others.

Not that its important, but I also spent an hour or two chatting with Kareem Abdull-Jabar who was working as a celebrity guest in the booth across the aisle from our booth one year in Chicago, talking about basketball and being tall, because he claimed to know nothing about building or using commercial cooking equipment. He was particularly impressed with the number of folks stopping by our booth and how nice and thick our carpet was under his tired feet (Carpet and padding thickness might be the biggest secret to holding folks in your booth at a trade show).

Kareem was a great athlete I am happy to say I met and had a chance to talk to. Martin was a very knowledgeable food professional, but more importantly to me, he was a very nice person. His job for a several year NRA runs was to cook various Chinese dishes for various big vendors at the show. With his personality, he was always well received. He drew big crowds, and I am sure was worth whatever they paid him. The first year, I sought him out and shook his hand, then talked for a while when he dropped by our booth toward the end of the show. The next year, he called me by name when he saw me in the booth as we were setting up for the show. He was that kind of guy. I have several of his cookbooks; all autographed and owe most of what I know about cooking Chinese food from watching him on TV several years before we met when his “Yan Can Cook” show played on Texas PBS, (during a QA/Regulatory Manager job in the medical device business) and later, from carefully following his recipes in those books.

My offering this week is an old Chinese buffet special – Sweet and Sour Pork, with mention of Sweet and Sour Chicken thrown in at the end because “Man cannot live by Sweet and Sour Pork alone” in spite of my effort over the years to prove that statement wrong. Where does Martin fit in? The Sweet and Sour Sauce is his recipe and one I have used several many times over the years.

The protein used in this dish can be fried pork, chicken, or shrimp, depending on what you have in the fridge and what you want for dinner.

Here is how I do this dish.


Ingredients (for two nice servings):

Maybe a quarter pound of pork. I have used almost every cut of pork, Chops, Loin, Butt, Shoulder, whatever. If they are tough, I tenderize them.
1/4 cup milk for pork marinade
1 egg for pork marinade
1/2 teaspoon black pepper for pork marinade
1/2 cup AP flour, plus one heaping Tablespoon corn starch, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper and 1/2 teaspoon salt for coating pork pieces
1/2 cup oil, for frying the pork
1 carrot, thin sliced on bias 1/16 to 1/8 inch thick
1/3 of a large green bell pepper, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 small onion, cut into 1 inch pieces
1/3 cup rice (I like the flavor of basmati, so I usually go with it. Any long grain is fine)
2 teaspoons finely minced ginger
A small can of chunk pineapple – separate the juice and fruit
recipe for Sweet and Sour Sauce (below)


Directions:

Cook the rice and set aside. I use whatever measure of rice is needed for the dish I am making, then two times the measure of water as rice. For two servings I would use 1/3 cup (dry measure) rice, 2/3 cup water, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a Tablespoon of butter or vegetable oil.

To cook the rice, place the ingredients in a microwave proof bowl with a lid. Bring to a boil in the microwave; being careful as it is heating up, because quickly after it comes to a boil, it will boil over. The butter slows the quickness of the boiling over and any oil will do this. As soon as boiling is noted, reduce the microwave power to 20% and set the time for 15 minutes. It will not boil over during this reduced heat period, only simmer, and at 15 minutes, you will have perfect rice, with all of the liquid gone. Take it out and fluff with a fork.





For the sweet and sour sauce, you'll need:

1/4 cup pineapple juice (whatever comes from the can) – part of the sweet element
1/4 cup ketchup – also part of the sweet element
3 Tablespoons brown sugar – also part of the sweet element
1/4 cup Rice wine vinegar – the sour element - start with a tablespoon less than this and adjust after tasting. I use the full 1/4 cup but you may want less.
1 teaspoon finely minced ginger – nice flavor
2 pinches red cayenne pepper – nice flavor
1 1/2 teaspoons Corn Starch – thickener
salt – maybe a pinch, but I never add any salt


Directions for making the sweet and sour sauce:

Add the ingredients to a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook for a couple of minutes until the corn starch thickens. Taste and adjust sour or sweet element if desired. Adding more rice wine vinegar will take it toward sour and adding more brown sugar will take it toward sweet. Add more red pepper if more heat is desired. I have never added salt to this sauce, so be careful to not make it too salty by adding salt. The sauce is complete when it is thick enough to coat a spoon. This recipe makes enough for two servings. Set aside away from heat when the sauce thickens.






Cooking the dish:

Tenderize the pork and marinate in the fridge for an hour in some milk, a whipped egg and the black pepper. Set up the veggies. I like my carrot cut pretty thin, the green peppers cut into 1 inch pieces, and the onion into 1 inch pieces. I use pineapple bits and leave them the size they come from the can.





When the pork has marinated, dredge it in the AP flour, corn starch, salt, and black pepper mixture with and fry in vegetable oil at 350 degrees F. I usually fry on a small pan or wok, don’t use a lot of oil, and don’t overload it.




The final cooking goes really quick, so I make certain everything is ready before starting. 



You can cook the dish in a wok. I have two, but I am lazy and normally use a large sauté pan. Add a bit of the oil used to fry the pork to the pan when it is hot or heat the pan until the oil is hot. The cooking goes very quickly if the oil is hot. Onions go first into the hot oil – maybe 15 -30 seconds. Then the carrots and the peppers – cook these for another 15-30 seconds.



When the carrots begin to change color, add the pork. 



I like to remove as much of the oil as I can, using a paper towel to soak it up before adding the pork. After the pork is in the pan, add the pineapple bits to the dish. You can leave the pineapple out if you like, but you need the juice to make the sauce, so I always add it.



Finally, add the sauce only for as long as it takes for it to get hot 



and plate over the warm cooked rice.



The dish is nice, served with a Japanese beer. Kirin is a nice one and the only beer I drink when I am in Japan.







As I stated earlier, chicken or shrimp can be used in place of the pork if you like. You can also skip the breading the meat for frying, but it won’t be as good.



Thanks for looking at my post.
God Bless you.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool stories! I remember Yan and his corny humor on PBS before the Food Network was even a thing. I think we may still have some of his branded cookware or kitchen utensils. Did you get to watch him cook this dish entirely in a wok - and have you succeeded? Cooking fast with high heat is more than skill - it's intuition. Similar to Prudhomme and his flash-roux.

Anonymous said...

No wonder you know how to cook, with your background! I'm drooling over today's recipe offering. Gonna get the ingredients today and make this tomorrow night. Yum!

Kingfish - thank you for bringing the talented Bear to us.

Stuff About ZeroBear PolyBear said...

11:07 - The times I saw Yan cooking at NRA, he was cooking on a flat top. For what he was, it is strange I never saw him cooking in a wok. Very few companies at NRA were trying to sell woks, although there were range manufacturers who sold gas stoves with built-in wok burners. Maybe the best thing I saw was one time when he made noodles. Amazing skills doing that if you have ever seen a noodle maker pulling noodles with two sticks, stretching anf folding alost too fast to see what they were doing.

Anonymous said...

"Yan can cook, so can you! If Yan can't, don't even try."

Anonymous said...

Woks are also used to hunt wabbits.

Anonymous said...

Great read. Loved that show. Jackson had some decent Chinese food places through the years. And, our own tv celebrity chef, Justin Wilson cooking outdoors at ETV.

Anonymous said...

I have had one of his book for decades, I use his sweet and sour sauce recipe. The absolute best meat for sweet and sour pork is butt. Holy cow, that is the bomb. I am gonna make it this year sometime when I jump, not fall off the wagon for a weekend.

Stuff About ZeroBear PolyBear said...

10:33 I have such good memories of Nancy at Ding How’s on I55 north Kroger lot. Also 5 Happiness in South Jackson. 5Happiness is the place where the cook killed one of the helpers one day during an argument. I always figured the helper told him he wasn’t using enough ginger in the egg drop soup and he took a cleaver to him. I do know the cooking quality suffered after the murder.

Anonymous said...

Awww man, I haven't thought about Ding How in years. They used to serve one of those fishbowl drinks when I was in school. Good times.

Stuff About ZeroBear PolyBear said...

Ding How had such good food. When Nancy (the owner) would see me walk in for lunch, maybe four days a week, she would always get an ear to ear smile and walk over to speak to me as I began my trip down the buffet.

I always figured she was thinking, "Boy that round eyed guy can eat him some Egg Drop Soup, Fried Rice and Sesame Chicken!"

Good place to eat. I miss Nancy a lot.


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