Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1913 — ALMOST EVERYTHING IN THIS [ARTICLE]

ALMOST EVERYTHING IN THIS

“Chop Suey” a Wonderful Mixture, Though If Properly Made It Is Palatable Dish. The equivalent for “chop suey” in English is stew or hash —a mixture of various things. Hence there are as many kinds of this dish as cooks, almost The superior sort is made of chicken, with mushrooms, bamboo shoots, etc.; the average, with sliced pork and celery, or celery, if the onion, flavor is not liked, and the other ingredients indicated above. The Chinese way of cooking rice is to put a cupful or more of the washed grains into a dish that may be covered closely. Then an inch or two of cold water is poured in, the dish covered and put over the flames to boil. When the liquid bubbles up and oozes over the side of the dish it is quickly removed from the fire and set on the back of the stove to steam in its own heat. The Chinaman knows instinctively how much water is required to produce this first bubbling over. It must not be enough to cause the rice to turn over soggy. If rightly done-—and. the method is much simpler than it sounds, the cooking, steaming and drying of the rice are performed in one operation. The Chinese import almost everything that goes into chop suey, possibly even the chicken and pork in these cold storage days. At any rate, their dried mushrooms come in huge tin cans, also their wee potatoes, bamboo shoots and all that. The "sauce,” or brown mixture in the shaker, is their salt in liquid form.