5-Spice Shrimp Stir-Fry at Golden Star Chinese Restaurant in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget
I ordered shrimp vegetable stir-fry from Golden Star Chinese Restaurant in Salinas, California and knew from the wonderful aroma that the restaurant used 5-spice powder to make this dish. Golden Star combines 5-spice powder shrimp with thin, bite-size pieces of broccoli, cabbage, carrots, zucchini, and mushrooms to make this delicious “food as medicine” stir-fry.
5-spice powder appeals to the following Chinese flavor profile:
-sweet
-bitter
-sour
-salty
-savory
The typical 5-spice powder blend is made with the following ingredients. Several of these ingredients contain strong antioxidants that help remove free radicals that can cause cancer from the body:
-star anise
-cloves
-Chinese cinnamon
-Sichuan pepper
-fennel seed
These flavors blend with the usual Chinese seasonings of fresh garlic and fresh ginger that go in with the peanut oil to start a stir-fry. The shrimp is then added and cooked a few minutes and followed by the vegetables. The hot oil draws out moisture from the shrimp and vegetables. The moisture is hot and is perfect to cook seasonings without burning them.
At this point, many Chinese restaurants will add in a mixture of cornstarch and water to give the food a glowing sheen. Golden Star does not appear to do this, which I do not mind. The vegetables in the shrimp vegetable stir-fry I ate were bright and tender as they were.
The nutrient powerhouse in this dish at Golden Star was the broccoli with Vitamin C (an antioxidant), potassium, and vitamin B6 (nutrition information from the USDA – US Department of Agriculture website).
Cabbage has large amounts of vitamin C as well (nutrition information from the USDA – US Department of Agriculture website). Carrots contain large amounts of vitamin A (from the WebMD.com website). Mushrooms contain antioxidants (from the Medical News Today website).
What is nice about this highly nutritious 5-spice powder shrimp vegetable stir-fry is that it is very flavorful without being spicy hot. The Sichuan peppercorns in the 5-spice powder made the dish refreshing without the numbing heat that they are famous for.
People trying Chinese food for the first time might enjoy this shrimp vegetable stir-fry at Golden Star Chinese Restaurant in Salinas, California on South Main Street.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
