Wok With Yan

You can't help but be charmed by master chef Martin Yan. His enthusiasm for cooking, even when beaming through televisions in more than 60 countries, makes you loath to leave him.

Yan taught throughout the Sacramento region while obtaining a master's degree in food science from the University of California at Davis. He has been teaching home cooks the ins and outs of Chinese cuisine since he appeared on a Calgary, Alberta, talk show in 1978.

"If Yan can, so can you," he encourages his audience in a catchphrase that has guided his long-running PBS series, "Yan Can Cook," and his career.

Yan quickly agreed to give a lesson in how to cook a traditional Chinese chicken dish featuring pomelo, a citrus fruit.

"It tastes better than grapefruit. It's not too sour, it's not too sweet. ... It gives a tanginess to my chicken, but not too tangy," he said.

Yan grabbed a red pepper, cut off the top and bottom and in one sweeping maneuver sliced the red pepper into one long strip. He trimmed a quarter of the pepper into

matchstick-size strips. Onion, green onion and ginger got the same treatment, each cut into uniform pieces.

Uniformity, as it happens, is also important when it comes to cutting meat for stir-fry.

Yan butterflied the chicken breast before slicing it into ¼-inch-thick strips, mirroring the size of the vegetables.

Then it was time for the marinade of soy sauce, cornstarch and Tsingtao beer.

"Beer gives it that underlying sweet, bitter taste and creates a very interesting combination," Yan said. "Cornstarch helps you seal in the juice."

When cooking Chinese food, Yan said, always heat the pan before putting anything in it, even oil.

Once the pan is heated and the oil added, Yan says to spread the meat flat in the pan.

"It sears the meat."

We flipped and stirred. A splash of beer was added when the juices started disappearing. Finally, it was time for the finishing touch: sauce.

The tangy, aromatic sauce delicately coated the vegetables and chicken, glistening under the bright lights of the range top.

"A dish should look really beautiful," he said.

Yan encouraged me, just as he's encouraged the generations who have grown up watching his shows, not to be intimidated by Chinese cooking.

"It's a lot easier than you think," he said. "Most of the time, Chinese food does require a lot of prep time. But to solve that, go to the store — they have packages of stir-fry (vegetables) already cut up, or go to the salad bar and pick up a little combination. It's the cutting up that takes time."

This story was originally published March 30, 2010 at 10:06 PM with the headline "Wok With Yan."