Menu: A Home-Cooked Chinese Meal

At Andrea Sun's childhood home in Las Vegas, the dinner table was always full of platters from her mother's native Shanghai, which she shares in her story Nothing Better Than A Home Cooked Meal. Gather your own family to the table and enjoy a feast of Chinese dishes with this sumptuous menu featuring crunchy fresh salads, spicy stir-fries, tart pickles and more. Finish off the meal with a purifying pot of hot Chinese tea and a cold bite of ginger ice cream.

Credit: Todd Coleman

The Menu

More About This Menu

Dividing and conquering this menu over a period of several days will make prep easier. Start the pickles and the ice cream several days ahead (the pickled mustard greens need at least 3 days in the fridge, and the ice cream needs at least two to churn and harden properly). The day before, you can take care of the sauces and things like sautéeing the leeks, so that the day of your dinner you're simply assembling and cooking from your mise en place.
Linger over tea after the meal�it's commonly believed in China that each type of tea is best brewed with water from its place of origin. We won't go quite that far, but we do have a detailed guide on How to Make a Pot of Chinese Tea with some tips for getting the best flavor, as well as a guide to infusing green tea.
For the several stir-fried dishes in this menu, a few techniques are key: see A Stir-Fry Education for more about the history and technique of this classic dish, plus Bring on the Heat for a few tricks to turn out great stir-fries in your home kitchen.
Cabbage is a classic ingredient in all kinds of Chinese dishes. For more on cooking with it, see our guide to using Chinese cabbage.