Chinese food, the Pakistani way
The Chinese food served in Pakistan wouldn’t be recognised in Beijing, and nobody minds. It grew out of the Chinese families who settled in Karachi and Lahore in the twentieth century and opened restaurants, then adjusted their cooking for local tastes: more chili, more garlic, thicker sauces and plenty of chicken. Today a “Chinese” dinner, with soup to start, then Manchurian, chowmein and egg fried rice, is a standard family treat and a fixture at weddings.
The pantry you need
Desi Chinese needs only a handful of extra bottles: light soy sauce, white vinegar, chili sauce, ketchup and cornflour. Add white pepper, a little sugar and fresh garlic, ginger, capsicum and spring onions, and you can cook almost everything in this section. A wide does the job of a wok perfectly well.
Three rules for restaurant results
High heat, quick cooking. Vegetables should stay crisp and bright, so they go in at the end for a minute or two. Velvet the chicken. A short coating of egg white, cornflour and a pinch of salt keeps boneless chicken soft and juicy, the way restaurants serve it. Thicken at the end. Cornflour slurry goes in last, a little at a time, while the sauce bubbles; add too much and the sauce turns gluey.
Building a full Chinese meal
A typical spread starts with chicken corn soup or hot and sour soup, then one saucy dish (Manchurian, chilli chicken or Szechuan chicken), one dry dish such as chicken shashlik, and a plate of fried rice or chowmein. Spring rolls make a good starter. Keep the sauces different, one sweet, one hot, one garlicky, so the meal doesn’t taste the same from start to finish.