Ching’s Chinese Food in Minutes

When I was little I often stayed with my grandmother in Taiwan, and I have many memories of her cooking up a meal in minutes when we were hungry, and of my mother cooking several dishes with speed and teaching me in no time. I was always impressed that delicious, healthy food could be prepared and cooked easily and quickly.

These days life is so frenetic and busy that after a day’s work the last thing you may want to do is slave over a hot stove. I know the feeling. There have been extremely demanding periods throughout my working life when I didn’t have time to cook and it left me incredibly unhappy. So now, no matter how busy I am, I always find the time to prepare food, because it lifts my spirits, and there is no doubt that my collection of quick dishes has been my lifesaver throughout the years. Friends are always asking me for the quickest recipes or meal solutions to feed their families and so I wanted to share them with you.

I love experimenting and so, as well as including in this book all my reliable recipes that have served me well in the past, I have also created new ones. My cuisine is, of course, Chinese and I must admit that we have a head start in terms of cooking at speed. There is nothing faster than cooking a stir-fry in minutes in a wok over high heat—and nothing is more pleasurable and satisfying. However, I think ‘cooking in minutes’ doesn’t just imply literally ‘in minutes’; for me it is about the whole ‘time’, that is how you spend time and the process of it. Therefore, not all of the recipes may seem fast in terms of speed, but I hope you will enjoy the ‘time’ cooking them because they are designed to be relaxing and fulfilling.

I didn’t always enjoy cooking when I was growing up in my teens. I had to cook for my father because my mum was away a lot, and she would teach me several dishes at a time before she went abroad to work. Often, when my friends went out at the weekends and stayed out, I would have to go home to cook the evening meal for my father because, bless him, he is not a very good cook (sorry, Dad). Cooking was a necessity but it was something I grew to love. Now, I cannot function if I don’t have ‘my time’ in the kitchen and when I travel for very long periods, I often find myself craving my kitchen—there is only so much eating out one can do, with all the rich food, and it can be too heavy on the body.

When I cook I reconnect with myself and feel sane again. It lifts my spirits and it is as if I am feeding my soul too. If you are an established cook, you will no doubt understand what I mean, but if you are a beginner I hope you will experience that innate pleasure as you start on your cooking journey. I am under no illusion that we all live such stressful lives, juggling work and family life with little time to cook, so I hope that these recipes will come in handy when you need to keep an eye on the clock and base your food decisions around the time available. But if you find yourself with more time on hand, I have also included some dishes that you can really plough your love and attention into with reckless abandon!

Many of the recipes in this book are inspired by Chinese classics and some have been handed down from my family. I am proud to be able to share many of my late grandmother’s favourites. I took for granted that she would always be here to see me progress through my career and I am sad that she will not see this book published. I am dedicating this book to her and to her timeless recipes—which will carry me through the rest of my life.

She was my teacher and source of inspiration. My earliest childhood food memory is of sitting on her knee while she worked tirelessly and happily wrapping hundreds of parcels of meaty-rice dumplings to share with all her family and friends (nearly a hundred of them) for the Dragon Boat festival in Taiwan. She was an incredible woman: beautiful, strong and vocal (when she didn’t get her way with my grandfather). She was an extremely talented cook who could always whip up something to be on the table in a matter of minutes. But she was also hard to please, with high standards. Whenever I cooked for her, I always expected the criticism, and so the few compliments came as delicious surprises.

Her lessons have been invaluable, from watching her gutting fish and killing live birds, to picking vegetables and rinsing her large wok on the wooden stove…she groomed me to be a cook without realising. All the visual sights and smells of her traditional Chinese kitchen are always there in my mind when I am cooking and those years were the happiest of my life; of course, I took them for granted because I was a child. She showered us with love through her cooking, through the time she took to prepare all those delicious dishes for us—the labour of her love.