Martin Yan Quick & Easy

Saturday mornings Lee and I are often glued to the TV watching cooking shows. We each have our favorites and Lee's is anything with Martin Yan. I can't really blame him. Martin Yan is a real character. He zips around the kitchen like crazy and he never misses an opportunity to whip out the cleaver...chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop!

Lee likes to do Martin Yan impressions. You can too, just try out any one of several catch phrases:

"look at this, look at this, look at this!"

"add a little bit of this and a little bit of that"

"cut it like this, like this, like this, mmm!"

"set it aside and it's done!"

But while I have watched his show for years, I really haven't experimented much in my own kitchen when it comes to Asian cuisine. With so many choices just minutes from my door I'm more likely to choose to go out rather than cook Asian style at home. While Yan is always able to whip up a recipe in no time on the air, I can see a lot of prep is done ahead of time and sometimes he resorts to "the magic of television" to get recipes completed. Finally the lists of ingredients often seem to include a couple of items that I don't have.

I have to admit, I'd never cooked one of his recipes until I got the companion book to the PBS series, Martin Yan Quick & Easy. Quick and easy is my style. Not only quick and easy to prepare, but there are many dishes that make for one-dish meals or need only a simple side dish to make a meal. No 10 course banquets!

The first recipe I tried was Tea-Smoked Salmon and not only did I have all the ingredients but this is a dish that can be prepared in under thirty minutes, start to finish. You marinate the salmon, make a mixture of tea, sugar and rice and smoke the fish in a stir fry or frying pan. Because the smoke mixture sits on a bed of tin foil there is very little clean up. Yan's instructions were easy to follow and the resulting dish was great. If you've enjoyed watching Martin Yan or just always wanted to try cooking some Asian recipes, this book a good place to start. If you'd like see a few of the recipes, click here.