Deng Xiaoping

or Teng Hsiao-p'ing

(born Aug. 22, 1904, Guang'an, Sichuan province, China—died Feb. 19, 1997, Beijing) Chinese communist leader, China's most important figure from the late 1970s until his death. In the 1950s he became a vice-premier of the People's Republic of China and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He fell from favour during the Cultural Revolution but was rehabilitated in 1973 under the sponsorship of Zhou Enlai. Though seen as a likely successor to Zhou as premier, Deng was again ousted, this time by the Gang of Four, when Zhou died in 1976. However, Mao Zedong died later that year, and in the ensuing political struggle the Gang of Four was arrested; Deng was rehabilitated for a second time. His protégés Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang became premier and CCP general secretary, respectively. Both embraced Deng's wide-reaching reform program, which introduced free-enterprise elements into the economy. Hu died in April 1989, and Zhao was dismissed from the government after the Tiananmen Square incident in June. Deng gradually relinquished his official posts but continued to guide China until his death.

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(born April 26, 1917, Guangzhou, China) Chinese-born U.S. architect. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1935 and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. After working for the architectural firm of Webb & Knapp, he formed his own partnership in 1955. Early in his career he created the Mesa Laboratory building for the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo. (1968), which mimics the broken silhouettes of the surrounding peaks. His innovative East Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1978), was hailed as one of his finest achievements. Other works include Boston's John Hancock Tower (1973), Beijing's Fragrant Hill Hotel (1982), a controversial glass pyramid for a courtyard at the Louvre Museum, Paris (1989), and the Suzhou Museum (2006) in China. Pei's designs represent an elaboration on the rectangular forms and irregular silhouettes of the International Style but with a uniquely skillful arrangement of geometric shapes and a dramatic use of varied materials, spaces, and surfaces; in his Miho Museum (1997) in Shiga, Japan, for example, he achieved a harmony between the building, much of it underground, and its mountain environment. In 1983 Pei received the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

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orig. Meyer R. Schkolnick

(born July 4, 1910, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—died Feb. 23, 2003, New York, N.Y.) U.S. sociologist. After receiving a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1936, Merton taught there and at Tulane University before moving to Columbia University, where he was a professor from 1941 to 1979. His diverse interests included deviant behaviour, the sociology of science, and mass communications, and he generally advanced a functionalist approach to the study of society. He was awarded a National Medal of Science in 1994. Among his writings are Mass Persuasion (1946), Social Theory and Social Structure (1949), On the Shoulders of Giants (1965), and The Sociology of Science (1973). Seealso bureaucracy; functionalism.

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or Kuan Han-ch'ing

(born 1241?, Dadu, China—died 1320?, China) Chinese dramatist. He belonged to a writers' guild that provided plays for performing groups. His plays often dealt with everyday events and sympathetically portrayed women of low social standing. He wrote over 60 plays, 14 of which survive, including Injustice to Dou E, Butterfly Dream, and Saving a Prostitute. Guan is often considered the greatest playwright of the Chinese classical theatre.

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or Chiang Ch'ing orig. Li Jinhai

(born 1914?, Zhucheng, Shandong, China—died May 14, 1991, Beijing) Third wife of Mao Zedong and member of the radical Gang of Four. Jiang married Mao in the 1930s but entered politics only in the 1960s. As first deputy head of the Cultural Revolution, Jiang acquired far-reaching powers over China's cultural life and oversaw the total suppression of a wide variety of traditional cultural activities. Arrested after Mao's death and accused of fomenting the widespread civil unrest that characterized the Cultural Revolution, she refused to confess guilt and received a suspended death sentence that was commuted to life imprisonment. Her death was reported as a suicide.

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Sautéing is a method of cooking food that uses a small amount of fat in a shallow pan over relatively high heat. Unlike pan-searing, sautés are often finished with a sauce made from the pan's residual fond. Sauter means "to jump" in French — The method includes flipping the food in the air.

Food that is sautéed is usually cooked for a relatively short period of time over high heat, with the goal of browning the food while preserving its color, moisture and flavor. This is very common with more tender cuts of meat, e.g. tenderloin, pork chops, or filet mignon. Sautéing differs from searing in that the sautéed food is thoroughly cooked in the process. One may sear simply to add flavor and improve appearance before another process is used to finish cooking it.

Olive oil or clarified butter are commonly used for sautéing, but most fats will do. Regular butter will produce more flavor but will burn at a lower temperature and more quickly than other fats due to the presence of milk solids.

Performing a sauté

To sauté, a hot pan is required, large enough to hold all of the food in one layer. A sauté pan is ideal for sautéing; it has a wide flat base and low sides, to maximize the surface area available for heating. The low sides allow quick evaporation and escape of steam. The sides of a sauté pan are rounded, and flare outward, to allow quick turning of ingredients without a spatula, simply using pan movement to turn ingredients. Many cookware manufacturers mislabel what is essentially a low-sided saucepan as a sauté pan. The top photo used in this article, for example, shows a low-sided saucepan. The lower picture shows a sauté pan. Only enough fat to lightly coat the bottom of the pan is needed for sautéing. Using too much fat will cause the sauté to fry rather than to slide. The food is spread across the hot fat in the pan, and left to brown, turning or tossing occasionally for even cooking. When sautéing meat, a fork should not be used for turning as it will pierce the meat and let the juices escape,, which will dry the meat. Tossing or stirring the items in the pan by shaking the pan too often can cause the pan to cool faster, and make the sauté take longer.

The two most important items to watch are that the pan is very hot, and that the food is not crowded into the pan. This ensures that the food browns well without absorbing the fat or stewing in its own juices. Furthermore, the food must be relatively dry in order to keep the pan from cooling and to keep the moisture from building up in the pan; moisture will steam or stew the food. This is particularly significant in the case of food that has been marinated.

The tossing technique is an element that some prefer while sautéing. The act of tossing involves first tightly gripping the handle of the pan, then pushing it forward to the front of the pan and quickly yanking the pan an inch or so backwards, causing the food to slide up the far side of the pan, into the air, and back to the center of the pan. This requires a fairly non-stick pan with rounded edges, so that the food is curled up and back, rather than jettisoned forward.

When sautéing cuts of meat, the surface of the meat should be dry and the meat should be at room temperature. Pat the meat with paper towels or other material to dry the surface. When the meat is first placed in the pan, it should sizzle, and it may stick to a non-stick pan surface. The meat should not be moved while cooking. When the meat 'releases' from the surface, i.e. when the meat becomes easy to move, it is done on that side and should be turned over, preferably with a pair of tongs so that the surface of the meat is not punctured.

When sautéing mushrooms, many of the same rules apply. The mushrooms should not be piled on top of each other in the pan and should not be stirred or turned until they are brown and the cooking is complete on one side. It is helpful to avoid adding salt to the mushrooms until the end of the cooking process since salt draws out moisture.

See also

• Sweating (cooking)
• Cooking
• Cookware

References

External links

• "All About Sautéing" from About.com
• Free Culinary School Podcast Episode 5 A podcast episode that talks about proper sauteing technique as well as equipment needed to saute properly.