Love a Chinese but hail the homemade? Kwoklyn Wan offers the answers in his ‘Chinese Takeaway Cookbook’

Here’s a review of Kwoklyn Wan (yes, Gok Wan’s brother’s) recipes for your takeaway favourites, with no MSG in sight. 

Flipping through the pages of this cookbook you spot the absolute classics of everyone’s favourite takeaway (Chinese right?) and its iconic pamphlet style menu. Queue recipes for prawn toasts, beef and green pepper in black bean sauce and multiple variations on your fried rice and chow meins. There is even a recipe for crispy seaweed and BREAKING NEWS: it is not made of seaweed but Savoy cabbage. The very thing I say I love and have blogged about yet I had no idea of its versatility. Mic drop and mind blown or any similar expression can be used to describe my absolute gobsmackedness at this discovery (almost as flabbergasting as the discovery that WILL.I.AM spells William). 

I love cooking homemade Chinese food but do not let the long sprawling list of ingredients deter you because most are store cupboard fillers like soy sauce or any kind of oil like peanut or sesame. This long list of seemingly endless ingredients usually indicates a couple or very few short and simple steps to serving up your dish piping hot. 

This Saturday I chose to cook what can only be called a veritable feast of homemade Chinese takeaway dishes. While there was fried rice and prawn toasts these were from different sources (the fried rice a sacred Lawler family recipe and the prawn toasts an old family favourite). Other items on the menu included Singapore rice noodles, char siu pork chow mein, sweet and sour chicken balls (how cool) and shredded crispy chilli beef. Here is my take on these recipes from Kwoklyn Wan’s Chinese Takeaway Cookbook.

Firstly, for the noodles. The Singapore rice noodles recipe really did have the classic sprawling list of ingredients, not least because there was the option to make your own curry powder (well worth it if you have a spice grinder to hand, as you do). However, even with the amount of ingredients quite a bit of adjusting was needed. As with most stir fry recipes they underestimate the amount of time needed to cook the vegetables. One minute was recommended and then another two with the noodles but some common cooking sense is needed here to get them to your desired texture. Further adjustment was needed when it came to the wet ingredients as it would have been dry and lacking in flavour had I not added extra fish and soy sauce (and I mean extra, extra, read all about it kind of extra). 

The char siu pork chow mein recipe was far more reliable with cooking times and measurements more accurate. This recipe included making the Chinese roast BBQ pork which really was a great recipe and tasted absolutely delicious with the aniseed flavour of the pork crust. After cooking the pork you obviously want to use it, hence why I was far more liberal when adding it to the dish and went for more than the stated 60g. Again, more soy sauce was needed, the recipe called for 2 tbsp of dark soy sauce but this didn’t season well enough so a dash of light was added. Apparently, a balance of the Force was necessary for this pretty delicious recipe. 

Now, for the belle of the ball, or rather the ball itself: sweet and sour chicken balls. This recipe was a tale of two halves: the chicken balls were perfect but the sweet and sour sauce was unfortunately far from. The batter was great and cutting the chicken into 3cm cubes makes the balls the perfect size. The batter stayed soft when cooking and not doughy in the centre, which happens quite often with the takeaway offering, and it must act as some kind of moisture insulator as the chicken cooked through but stayed insanely soft and moist. Unfortunately, the sweet and sour sauce was a bit of a let-down. After following the recipe and simmering the sauce for 5 minutes we added the cornflour mixture (3tbsp cornflour with 6 tbsp water) and it transformed into a thick kind of bland paste rather than a sticky tart sauce. Thank goodness mum was on hand with prior sweet and sour sauce knowledge to save the day with the juice from a tin of pineapple and lashings of soy sauce. 

Now, the takeaway classic of shredded crispy chilli beef which I have to say was a pretty perfect recipe. I followed each step with each measurement stated and it came out super tasty and reminiscent of what would be delivered to your door, but arguably far less greasy. 

This recipe book all in all has very exciting and interesting recipes, totally reminiscent of the classic Friday night Chinese takeaway. The recipes will need some adjusting with soy sauce for seasoning or varying the cooking times but if you can use your common cooking sense then you will have a tasty meal and an empty plate at the end of the night.