'Taste of home' in Beijing

Han Ping, 56, teamed up with a hotel restaurant to showcase "home cooking" in Beijing. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

To cater to their needs, most of the recipes Han designs for them are easy to complete. Duck, pork belly and chicken wings are common foods that don’t cost much.

Even the "top" dish on the menu, a braised sparerib with fresh abalone, does not cost much to make at home. Apart from that, the hotel menu of the food event offered other typical foods at home—braised pork skin, steamed pork bun, noodle with sauce, and a dessert of hawthorn fruit with lotus root to help with digestion.

Typical for Chinese food, there is a consistent health concept in the design of the menu.

Duck is known not to give "extra heat" to the body. Pork skin has collagen with a beautifying function. Dried bamboo shoot contains a lot of coarse fiber, which is good for digestion.

She also prepared a dessert of steamed pumpkin with rice wine, which is believed to replenish qi, or energy. To make one of the cold dishes — a sweet, sour and spicy tasting grapefruit peel — Han scalds slices of the fruit peel in hot water for 5 minutes and then soaks it in cold water, before squeezing out the water, to take out the bitterness.

Then she tosses pieces of the peel with salt, sugar, vinegar, garlic and chopped chili, creating a delicious appetizer. The grapefruit peel, which is usually dumped into the rubbish can, is thus turned into a delicious dish.

Years of cooking have taught the Beijing woman plenty of ways to preparing great-tasting food. But that also challenged the hotel restaurant’s kitchen. When she makes fried egg with tomato sauce, for example, she never adds water, which can speed up the cooking process but will dilute the taste.

Then she always turns down the fire to cook the egg in a whole piece, instead of scrambling it from the beginning. She says that makes the egg taste better. She also refuses to use chicken essence or broth to give the dishes flavor.

For seasoning she only uses common sugar, salt, vinegar and soy sauce, because she believes that helps preserve the original taste.

"Home foods can be simple, but they also should be high-quality," she says. Therefore, all the dishes she prepares take longer to be served. "To produce good taste, you need to give it time, and respect the ingredients."

Some of Han’s dishes can still be prepared at the Oriental Chinese restaurant by ordering through a reservation.

IF YOU GO

The Oriental 1/F Traders Hotel, Jiangoumenwai Dajie (street), Chaoyang district, Beijing.

010-6505-2277 Ext 34.