Chinese Food

Char kway teow, literally "stir-fried ricecake strips", is a popular noodle dish in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore. The dish was (and still is in some places in Malaysia) typically prepared at a hawker stall.

It is made from flat rice noodles (河粉 hé fěn in Mandarin Chinese) of approximately 1 cm or (in the north of Malaysia) about 0.5 cm in width, stir-fried over very high heat with light and dark soy sauce, chilli, a small quantity of belachan, tamarind juice, whole prawns, deshelled cockles, bean sprouts and chopped Chinese chives. The dish may commonly be stir-fried with egg, slices ofChinese sausage and fishcake, and less commonly with other ingredients. Char koay teow is traditionally stir-fried in pork fat, with crisp croutons of pork lard, and commonly served on a piece of banana leaf on a plate.

Char kway teow has a reputation of being unhealthy due to its high saturated fat content. However, when the dish was first invented, it was mainly served to labourers. The high fat content and low cost of the dish made it attractive to these people as it was a cheap source of energy and nutrients. When the dish was first served, it was often sold by fishermen, farmers and cockle-gatherers who doubled up as char kway teow pedlars in the evening to supplement their income.

Hainanese chicken rice is a dish of Chinese origin most commonly associated with Malaysian cuisine and Singaporean cuisine, although it is also commonly sold in neighbouring Thailand, and found in Hainan, China itself. It is based on the well-known Hainanese dish called Wenchang chicken (文昌雞). So-called due to its roots in Hainan cuisine and its adoption by the Hainaneseoverseas Chinese population in the Nanyang area (present-day Southeast Asia), the version found in the Malaysia region combines elements of Hainanese and Cantonese cuisines along with culinary preferences in the Southeast Asian region.

The jiaozi 饺子 is a common Chinese dumpling which generally consists of minced meat and finely chopped vegetables wrapped into a thin and elastic piece of dough skin. Popular meat fillings include ground pork, ground beef, ground chicken, shrimp, and even fish. Popular mixtures include pork with Chinese cabbage, pork with garlic chives, pork and shrimp with veggies, pork with spring onion, garlic chives with scrambled eggs. Filling mixtures vary depending on personal tastes and region. Jiaozi are usually boiled or steamed. Jiaozi is a traditional dish eaten on Chinese New Year's Eve, the 5th day of Chinese New Year, and special family reunions. Extended family members gather together to make dumplings. It is also eaten for farewell to family members or friends. In North China, dumplings are eaten with a dipping sauce made of vinegar and chilli oil or paste, and occasionally with some soy sauce added in.

If dumplings are laid flatly on a pan, first steamed with lid on with a thin layer of water, then fried in oil after the water has been evaporated, they are called guotie 锅贴 or potstickers after their crispy skin on the bottom.

Wontons wonton 云吞 are another kind of dumplings. They are typically boiled in a light broth or soup and made with a meatier filling. The skin wrapping for wontons is different -- thinner and less elastic -- than that used for jiaozi^{[citation needed]}. Wontons are more popular in Southern China (Shanghai, Guangdong, Hong Kong etc.) whereas in Northern China, people usually have jiaozi. Jiaozi, wonton and potstickers are all wrapped differently.

Another type of Chinese dumpling is made with glutinous rice. Usually, the glutinous rice dumplings 粽子 zongzi are triangle or cone shaped, can be filled with red bean paste, Chinese dates or cured meat depending on region. Glutinous rice dumplings are traditionally eaten during the Duanwu Festival.

Chinese cuisine includes sweet dumplings. Tangyuan are smaller dumplings made with glutinous rice flour and filled with sweet sesame, peanut, red bean paste. Tangyuan may also be served without a filling. Tangyuan are eaten on the 15th day of Chinese New Year, or the Lantern Festival. There are also other kinds of dumplings such as har kao, siew mai, small cage-steamed bun (xiaolongbao), pork bun and crystal dumpling.

Popiah (Hokkien: poh-piáⁿ) is a Fujian/Chaozhou-style fresh spring roll common in Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. Popiah is often eaten in the Fujian province of China (usually in Xiamen) and its neighboring Chaoshan on the Qingming Festival. It is sometimes referred to as runbing (潤餅) or baobing (薄饼) in Mandarin. In the Teochew (Chaozhou) dialect, popiah is pronounced as "Bo-BEE-a",^[1] which means "thin wafer" (also in the Hokkien dialect).

A popiah "skin" is a soft, thin paper-like crepe or pancake made from wheat flour which is eaten in accompaniment with a sweet sauce (often a bean sauce, a blended soy sauce or hoisin sauce or a shrimp paste sauce (hae-ko, POJ: hê-ko), and optionally with hot chilli sauce before it is filled. The filling is mainly finely grated and steamed or stir-fried turnip, jicama (known locally as bangkuang), which has been cooked with a combination of other ingredients such as bean sprouts, French beans, and lettuce leaves, depending on the individual vendor, along with grated carrots, slices of Chinese sausage, thinly sliced fried tofu, chopped peanuts or peanut powder, fried shallots, and shredded omelette. Other common variations of popiah include include pork (lightly seasoned and stir-fried), shrimp or crab meat. Seaweed is often included in the Xiamen versions. Some hawkers in Malaysia and Singapore, especially in non-halal settings, will add fried pork lard. As a fresh spring roll, the popiah skin itself is not fried.

In mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan there are "popiah parties" at home, where the ingredients are laid out and guests make their own popiah with proportions of ingredients to their own personal liking.

Similar foods in other cuisines include the Filipino/Indonesian variant referred to as Lumpiang Sariwa, fried spring rolls and fajitas (Tex-Mex). In Vietnam, bò bía is the Vietnamese variant of popiah, introduced by Teochew immigrants. It is common to see an old Teochew man or woman selling bò bía at their roadside stand.

Yong tau foo ( also spelled yong tao foo,yong tau fu, oryong tau hu yong tofu) is a Chinese soup dish with Hakka origins commonly found in China, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. There are also Teochew and Hokkien variations.

In Malaysia, the Ampang region of Kuala Lumpur is particularly famous for this dish. It is ubiquitous in Singapore food courts, too. Essentially the dish originated in the early 1960s in a restaurant called "Chew Kuan" as tofu stuffed with a meat paste of fish and pork, thereby earning the dish its name "Yong Tau Foo," which means "stuffed bean curd." Since then all variety of vegetables and even fried fritters have been similarly stuffed, and the name Yong Tau Foo has thus been used liberally to apply to foods prepared in this manner.

Yong tau foo is essentially a clear consomme soup containing a varied selection of food items including fish balls, crab sticks, bittergourds, cuttlefish, lettuce, ladies fingers, as well as chilis, and various forms of fresh produce, seafood and meats common in Chinese cuisine. Some of these items, such as bittergourd and chili, are usually filled with fish paste (surimi). The foods are then sliced into bite-size pieces, cooked briefly in boiling broth and then served either in the broth as soup or with the broth in a separate bowl. The dish is eaten with chopsticks and a soup spoon and can be eaten by itself (served with a bowl of steamed rice) or with any choice of egg or rice noodles, or bee hoon (rice vermicelli). Another variation of this dish is to serve it with laksa gravy or curry sauce. Essential accompaniments are spicy, vinegary chili sauce, similar to Indonesian sambal oelek, and a distinctive brown sweet bean sauce or hoisin sauce for dipping.

In Malaysia, the Malay Muslims have taken to yong tau foo in a big way. As pork consumption is prohibited for Muslims, halal yong tau foo is generally soy based or stuffed vegetable fritters or steamed bean curd with fish paste stuffing. To prepare the dish, these, a steamed rice-flour roll (similar to that used for chee cheong fun) and a vegetable called kangkong are boiled to heat and soften them. The food items are drained and eaten with sprinkled toasted sesame seeds, chili sauce and a hoisin based sauce. Another version commonly found in Perak state is the soup type where the food items are served in a broth and provided with chili sauce and hoisin based sauce dipping. Halal yong tau foo is normally sold by Malay vendors at night markets (pasar malam) and at halal food courts by non-Muslim vendors.