CHINESE COOKING: To cook meat and fowl in a "lo/soy" solution is a very traditional Chinese cooking method. Squabs cooked this way are tender and tasty, and the "lo/soy" solution can be kept frozen and reused over and over again.

SQUABs COOKED IN “LO/SOY” SAUCE:



2 squabs

red food colouring, optional

2 oz dark rich Chinese rice wine


“lo/soy” sauce marinade:****

3 cups light soy sauce
½ cup dark soy sauce
½ lb. rock sugar or to taste
1 pkg. of store-bought “lo” sauce ingredients, or
a bouquet garni containing--3 star anise, 1 piece of dry tangerine peel, 4 slices ginger
water if needed



Bring a large pot of water to a boil and immerse squab in water for 30 seconds. Remove and rinse squab under running water. Drain well. Rub with a little food colouring if preferred.

Put soy/lo sauce marinade ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Simmer 30 minutes and adjust for sweetness or saltiness, adding more rock sugar or more soy sauce according to taste. Add rice wine and mix in well.

Add squab into simmering soy/ lo sauce solution. Turn heat to low so it is barely simmering. Cover pot and let soak for 15 minutes. Check for doneness by piercing thigh with a skewer. If juices run clear, squab is cooked.

Carve each squab into serving size and pour a little of the lo-sauce on top to serve.



****”Lo/soy” sauce braising is a traditional method in cooking a variety of meat. The meat is usually pre-cooked, then added into the ‘lo/soy solution”. After bringing back the solution to a boil, heat is turned off, so that the meat absorbs the taste and colour of the sauce without being cooked any further. Chicken and squabs are not precooked, and are added into the “lo solution” as raw meat. After bringing solution back to the boil, heat is reduced to barely shimmering so that the chicken or fowl is slowly being cooked without boiling, while absorbing the flavour and taking on the colour of the lo solution. It usually takes 1 to 1.5 hours to cook a chicken in this way. Half way through the cooking, turn chicken over. After 1 hour of cooking, check for doneness by inserting a skewer into the thigh, if juices run clear, chicken is cooked

After using, the “lo/soy solution” is carefully strained to remove impurities, and then cooled. It is kept frozen until being used the next time to flavour meat and fowl. When re-using the lo solution, bring it to a fast boiling first, then adjust seasoning and colour by adding more soy sauce and sugar and water as needed to adjust for sweetness and saltiness, before adding the meat to be cooked. ****