Instructions: Sugar has been used in the cooking of savoury dishes in China for a thousand years. Properly employed it helps balance the various flavours of sauces and other dishes. Chinese sugar comes in several forms: as rock or yellow lump sugar as brown sugar slabs and as maltose or malt sugar. I particularly like to use rock sugar which is rich and has a more subtle flavour than that of refined granulated sugar. It also gives a good lustre or glaze to braised dishes and sauces. You can buy it in Chinese grocers where it is usually sold in packets. You may need to break the lumps into smaller pieces with a wooden mallet or tolling pin. If you cannot find it use white sugar or coffee sugar crystals (the amber chunky kind) instead.

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