Chinese Food Essay

Growing up in New York meant living in a culturally diverse environment. New York can be considered to be one of the melting pots of many countries and cultures; this is no exception for the cuisines that New Yorkers encounter on a daily bases. Many innovations and changes were made to suit the ever-changing desire for taste. Consequently, innovations and altercations have serious effects on the authenticity and originality of the cuisine, losing the major component that makes the food unique to a culture or country. This is especially true to the Chinese food found in New York. However, there is a misconception, when New Yorkers mentions Chinese food, they usually refer to Cantonese cuisines. As Cantonese cuisines is adapted to the match New

Cantonese dish uses a wide variety of ingredients that may or may not be viewed as ethical in New York. When coming across Chinese food, one must of thought of these jokes before, “Did they make this out of cats or dogs ?” or “If it can walk, it can be made into a dish.” These joke aren 't completely jokes. Excluding cows, pigs, and chicken, there are many case where animals such as cats, dogs or snakes were integrated into Cantonese cuisine. According to an article about Cantonese cuisines, “An authentic Cantonese chef 's goal is to preserve the food 's original flavor.”[2] Comparing to New York Cantonese Cuisine, Cantonese cuisines revolves around being out the original taste of the meat, vegetable or seafood; thus, many chefs rarely use any sugar, salt, and oil in their cooking. Even though, spices “like chili peppers, five spice powder, black pepper, and star anise [can be found in cooking], but they 're used sparingly”[3]. Adding on, cantonese people are strict with the freshness of their produce; meats would be freshly butchered, if possible, vegetable freshly picked from the market, and freshly procured fish. for As a result, most of cantonese dish taste mild, fresh and natural.[2] In order to bring out flavor of the ingredients, chefs usually uses garlic, ginger, and scallion. “In Cantonese food, garlic, ginger, and scallion is like the holy

As mentioned before, Cantonese chef try to preserve the flavor of the ingredient while cooking. This resulted in cooking styles that doesn 't heavily alter or modify the ingredients unlike deep frying, which introduces a great about of oil to the ingredients and altering the taste. Beginning of with steaming, it works by constantly heating water and creating steam. The steam is then used to gradually heat the food. The next style of cooking is boiling. Boiling requires a cooking vessel fill with boiling water or cooking stock. Afterward, an ingredient is submerged in the liquid until it is cooked. This style of cooking allows the ingredient to retain its shape, color and aroma. Furthermore, since these two styles of cooking require no oil to cook the dish, it thus making the dish less fatty and oily. The last style of cooking is stir frying, it a cooking technique where ingredients are fried using a very small amount of oil. While frying, the ingredients are stirred in a circular motion to mix them and keep them uniformly heated. Although, Cantonese cuisine chefs do deep fry food, deep frying itself is rarely used since it is considered as unhealthy[4] by chinese people. Looking at both New York Cantonese Cuisine and authentic Cantonese cuisine, they both uses vastly different styles of cooking; while one style of