10-minute recipes to the test
Writers test recipes from Kwoklyn Wan’s new speedy cookbook
It’s that time of year when New Year’s resolutions start slipping. Maybe you wanted to eat more healthily or do more home cooking – but as we race through the month of January, ordering takeaways might be looking increasingly enticing.
That’s why Kwoklyn Wan’s latest cookbook, 10-Minute Chinese Takeaway, couldn’t have come at a better time. If you are tempted to order dinner via an app, whipping up one of these meals will only take 10 minutes, and it will most likely be a healthier than ordering in.
But do the recipes really only take 10 minutes to make? And can you pack in enough flavour in such a short period of time? We tried three recipes from the new book to find out…
Lisa Salmon tested: Eight treasure tofu
The problem with this easy, veggie-packed stir-fry was I couldn’t find one of the essential ingredients: the fermented chilli bean paste, or doubanjiang. But, undeterred, I
did a little internet searching and tried my best to make my own version. Never having tasted real doubanjiang, I can’t tell you how far my attempt was from the authentic paste, but it contained beans (although not fermented ones), chillies and salt, so it must at least have borne some similarity. I hope.
To be honest, making the paste was the only hard-ish part – the rest was just chopping carrots, mushrooms and onions, opening cans of bamboo shoots and water chestnuts, and packets of peanuts, and throwing them all in the wok with the tofu and sauce (also just a load of thrown-in-and-stirred ingredients).
The end result was tasty, and I loved the peanuts with the tofu. I added more soy sauce, wine vinegar and sugar – and quite a lot more of my paste.
Noreen Barr tested: Beef and onion with mixed peppers
Kwoklyn Wan is already a firm favourite in our house – his previous Chinese Takeaway Cookbook offers speedy, easy to make dishes that have persuaded even our sceptical nine-yearold daughter that stir-fries can bring joy. The idea of being able to conjure up the same kind of deliciousness in 10 minutes really appealed but, truth be told, I didn’t come close to pulling it off within that time.
As I was making a double portion to feed four people rather than two, I expected to go over the four minute designated prep time, but it took me a good 20 minutes to thinly slice the (expensive) beef fillet, peppers and onions, puree the garlic and ginger and sort the simple sauce. Knowing the recipe better, a sharper blade and much improved knife skills would bring that time down, and the stir-frying part was fast and trouble-free.
My finished dish, served up in a big dish as part of a takeaway-themed spread, looked pretty close to the target, with generous amounts of meat and colourful peppers, but the beef should probably have been more charred. The sauce was tasty and aromatic, and the background heat from the ground black pepper went down well.
l10-Minute Chinese Takeaway by Kwoklyn Wan is published by Quadrille, priced £16.