“How to test a Chinese cook“

Peking duck. Often maligned because it’s often cooked poorly

“How to test a Chinese cook“: as in a cook of Chinese food, as opposed to a chef who’s Chinese…
From “Vintage cookbook collects recipes from 1970s China, tells you how to judge a good Chinese chef”.

• Five Treasures of Chinese Cuisine’ assembles recipes from Guangzhou, Fujian, Beijing, Shanghai and Sichuan
• Written by friends Flora Chang and Gaynell Fuchs, it includes recipes for sweet and sour pork and Peking duck

The authors suggest testing the skills of the cook (whether hired or yourself) with three dishes: egg flower soup, steamed pork hash and stir-fried beef.

My comments:
Egg flower soup is easy to make. Italy has a version, adding to the links between Chinese and Italian — the whole “spaghetti v noodles” thing. AKA “Egg drop soup“: so easy even Basil could cook it.

“Ready when you are, boss!”

Steamed pork hash: also easy. Also boring. Yummy. (Having just made a batch)
Stir-fried beef: which version?? There are approximately a million ways to cook “stir-fried” beef. Again, it’s pretty easy to turn out a tasty good looking one.
What I’d add to test a cook of Chinese are:
Peking duck. This a very hard to cook in a home oven. Can de done, but needs time and real skill. The best Peking duck we’ve ever had was at the Beijing Kitchen in Macau last January. The best I’ve had in over forty years in China. The chefs are specialists working at a huge wood fired oven that gets to over 300c.
Ma Po Doufu: the famous “pock-marked granny’s bean curd”. Sichuanese style chilli bean curd. Not difficult, but hard to get it just right.
Dan Dan Mian: another from Sichuan. Chilli noodles, with a dash of pork mince. Widely cooked, rarely well. Me, myself, I, am a bit of an expert in this, if I say so meself.  Having got a secret recipe in Peking in 1976 and perfected it since. I should say “worked at perfecting it”, since, like happiness, it’s a pursuit, never fully achieved.