Can Chinese restaurant food be healthy?

Well, I have been visiting a slew of Chinese restaurants over the past few weeks in the name of food research and am happy to report that several of them do offer delicious yet healthy options.

The entire fish section in the menu is of course high in the health stakes, provided they are not deep-fried. And so is the vegetables section.

Not only that, there is also a plethora of dishes that employ low-fat cooking methods.

Not only will you find that foods are steamed, but also poached, braised (though these sometimes involve rather large quantities of fat) and increasingly, just dressed with flavoursome oil.

And these dishes are not some sad offering reclining in a corner to be trotted out whenever somebody asks for something light and healthy. No, they are attractions in their own right.

I am referring, for example, to that latest craze in high-end restaurants. It is seafood steamed over mee sua (wheat vermicelli) in a light custard.

You get individual portions and the seafood sitting on top could be crayfish, crab or prawn or even an exotic mantis prawn.

What people do not know is that it is also easy to turn out.

At the Shang Palace in Shangri-la Hotel, you can also order a spinach and tofu tower and a seasoned black and white fungus as cold appetisers.

Dramatic and delicious, they are appetising and healthy additions to the dinner table.

I will give you recipes for these dishes over the next three columns as they are all easy to replicate at home. Just half an hour or less, I promise.

No longer need you moan about eating boring healthy food. Why, these dishes are fancy enough to be found on posh Chinese tables in town.

The restaurants use cholesterol rich crustaceans to top their custards, but here I use fish, a cream snapper belly, available at supermarkets. It comes filleted and has a rich flavour.

For those who do not have a problem with cholesterol, you could choose a whole prawn, a piece of crab or even a halved crayfish instead. In this, you may like to know that some nutritionists do not believe that the cholesterol in seafood is harmful as it is low fat food.

They believe that it is not cholesterol but rather saturated fats in food that lead to high fat readings in the body, which is why coconut milk is discouraged. It has no cholesterol, but it does have saturated fat, making it the villain of the piece.

No matter, the fish is delicious cooked this way. All I did to improve the restaurant version was to add a handful of fried ginger shreds on top and some hawthorn berries (kei chi) for colour.

It received many oohs and aahs when it came to the table, the same reception as in the restaurant, I may add.

Sylvia Tan is a freelance writer

FISH CUSTARD SOUP
(For one)

Half a skein of dried mee sua (fine wheat vermicelli, above)
White of 1 egg
1 cup of chicken stock (canned or homemade)
1 tbsp. rice wine
Pinch of salt, if using homemade stock
Pinch of sugar
150g cream snapper fillet cut in 6 pieces

GARNISHES

Fried ginger shreds
Dried hawthorn berries, soaked to plump up

METHOD

Bring a wok a third filled with water to the boil. Keep it simmering.

In the meantime, bring another small pot of water to boil. When boiling, run mee sua through the hot water to soften. Cool under a tap and divide skein into two. Set aside.

Place egg white, chicken stock and rice wine in a small bowl. Season with a pinch of salt or more if you are using unsalted stock and sugar. Stir but do not beat, to amalgamate. Taste to test seasoning and adjust if needed. This is sufficient for one serve.

Rub a pinch of salt over fish. Slice fish into six equal-sized pieces.

Choose a pretty heatproof plate with a shallow bowl. Place mee sua in the centre of the plate, top with fish slice and pour enough custard to cover the mee sua.

Steam covered in the wok over a medium fire, then turn down to low when the steaming water starts to boil. It takes five to seven minutes in all.

Remove, top with ginger shreds and hawthorn berries and serve immediately.

STEAMY PLEASURES

Steaming is the method of cooking used in this seafood custard soup.

An underused mode, it delivers food that is cooked without any addition of oil and yet retains all its sweetness.

Here, egg white is used to make the light custard below the seafood, rather like a chawan mushi, the Japanese version of egg custard soup.

With steaming, timing is critical and yes, you need a gentle fire.

You need just five to seven minutes of cooking to set the custard. Don't worry if it seems still watery after that. It will continue to cook in the residual heat and be set beautifully by the time you serve it.

This article was first published in Mind Your Body, The Straits Times on Mar 27, 2008.

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