Soy Sauce
To our minds, nothing is so quintessentially redolent of Chinese cookery than soy sauce. The little jars on the table of every Chinese restaurant beckon us to flavour our noodles and rice dishes, our char siu and bang-bang chicken.
Soy sauce is made from fermented soya beans with wheat flour, salt and, sometimes, sugar. While it tends to be the familiar we tend to know the dark soy sauce which we know best, producers also make a heavy soy sauce - almost a paste - and a light soy sauce, sometimes known as white soy sauce.
Here is a charmingly simple stir-fry where in which soy places a key role. It is from a book by Yong Yap Cotterell, The Chinese Kitchen, originally published more than a decade ago. "A favourite fast-cooking family dish," she writes. "The lamb is tender and delicious."
Quick-Fried lamb with Spring Onion
230g (8oz) leg of lamb
4 stalks spring onion whites
Seasoning:
half tablespoon light soy sauce
half teaspoon salt
half teaspoon sugar (optional)
2 teaspoons rice wine
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1. Cut the lamb into thin, bite-size slices. Slice the onion diagonally into 2.5 cm (one-inch pieces. Season both together with the soy sauce, salt and sugar.
2. Heat the oil over high heat till until smoking, and stir fry the meat, onion and juice together till until the meat is cooked. Sprinkle on the rice wine and sesame oil, and serve.