First up is a fine video Grace Young did for Chow.
I like this video for a couple of reasons. She addresses the primary issues facing a stirfry cook on Western equipment. But also there is some good technique and information to be gleaned in how she handles the beef. Notice that she's getting it all in contact with the heat in a SINGLE layer. She doesn't move the beef around, but lets it cook and pick up the sear you'd get from a hotter heat source in traditional stir frying. Lastly, she manages the cooking so the beef just comes to completion at service.
This is particularly tricky with beef for a home cook in a wok. It's tricky to stir fry beef to an even level of doneness, especially if you want some pink left in the beef.
Most restaurants work around this with oil-blanching or passing through hot oil. Quite often the technique is just referred to as passing. This is the easiest way to produce beef that is evenly cooked and tender. But sloppy passing and draining leads to greasy stir fries.
Grace Young sidesteps these extra hassles with good technique in her video. That technique also includes not overloading the wok. But if you're not getting the results you want, consider passing the meat first next time.
The second video is Jennifer 8 Lee's TED talk that is mostly a summary of her book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles.
This runs a bit over 15 minutes, but covers lots of ground about things we associate with Chinese Restaurants and their food that really have nothing to do with China. The book's a good read too.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Review: China Modern
Another book I got from the library, this one was pretty well done.
Ingredient lists tend to be short, plenty of pretty photos and clearly written.
Recipes are for two servings. I thought this was a pretty limiting decision, though it's not too hard to scale up from there. On the other hand, it was written for a European audience and it does make more sense there.
Most recipes are simplified in ingredient list and specialty ingredients but show a good focus and understanding of the cuisines. This serves to highlight particular flavors simply and well. And also make the dishes easier to cook for many who don't have a deep pantry of exotic ingredients
There are dishes from across Asia and some Fusion cooking going on as well such as the Peking Duck Sushi and even some Chinese style Fish and Chips.
There are dishes from across Asia and some Fusion cooking going on as well such as the Peking Duck Sushi and even some Chinese style Fish and Chips.
Review: New Classic Chinese Cookbook by Mai Leung
This is an update of an older version of her 1987 book, thus the New in the title.
Even then, this edition is 13 years old, from 1998 so not so new now. I discovered it recently at the library and thought it looked worth more than just flipping through. So I checked it out.
A decent effort, covering a good swath of the cuisine, often with stories of the dish from her past. No photos, but enough illustrations where they're useful. I generally prefer cookbooks in this style as they tend to be more substantive in content than relying on fancy food pictures for sales.
She offers a pretty good section on ingredients, recommending specific brands here and there.
As to the writing, the same sort of thing has been done better by other authors specifically Eileen Yin Fei Lo covering life stories with depth and feeling. That's not why we buy cookbooks so I can't hold this against Mai Leung's work.
The food and cooking more importantly are focused on quality and traditional foods, not the American restaurant food. She uses dark soy in ways I've not commonly seen it used in finish sauces. Which is probably why she spends more time calling out different brands of dark soy in the different styles of dark soy than any other author I've seen.
She also discusses the oil blanching or passing through oil technique something I don't see taught very often.
There's a different perspective into Chinese cooking than I've seen before and I like the insightful slant into the food itself. For a fan of the cuisine, this is a book worth familiarizing yourself with. For newcomers to home cooking of traditional Chinese food, I think there are better starting points. I plan on adding a copy to my personal collection.
Even then, this edition is 13 years old, from 1998 so not so new now. I discovered it recently at the library and thought it looked worth more than just flipping through. So I checked it out.
A decent effort, covering a good swath of the cuisine, often with stories of the dish from her past. No photos, but enough illustrations where they're useful. I generally prefer cookbooks in this style as they tend to be more substantive in content than relying on fancy food pictures for sales.
She offers a pretty good section on ingredients, recommending specific brands here and there.
As to the writing, the same sort of thing has been done better by other authors specifically Eileen Yin Fei Lo covering life stories with depth and feeling. That's not why we buy cookbooks so I can't hold this against Mai Leung's work.
The food and cooking more importantly are focused on quality and traditional foods, not the American restaurant food. She uses dark soy in ways I've not commonly seen it used in finish sauces. Which is probably why she spends more time calling out different brands of dark soy in the different styles of dark soy than any other author I've seen.
She also discusses the oil blanching or passing through oil technique something I don't see taught very often.
There's a different perspective into Chinese cooking than I've seen before and I like the insightful slant into the food itself. For a fan of the cuisine, this is a book worth familiarizing yourself with. For newcomers to home cooking of traditional Chinese food, I think there are better starting points. I plan on adding a copy to my personal collection.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Aromatics
Garlic and Ginger are what we normally think of for aromatics in Chinese cooking.
The grocery store is full of convenience items for managing these as many people think they're tedious ingredients. Jars of pre-peeled garlic cloves, even jars of minced garlic and another of minced ginger. But they're both pretty easy to cook with from fresh garlic and ginger.
For ginger, I prefer to cut off what I need and then further prepare it.
If it's just a "coin"--a US Quarter sized slice--I'll cut it off, then trim away the peel.
For larger amounts, I prefer to cut off a chunk, or knob and peel it with the edge of a spoon.
I'm still figuring out this camera and my lighting so you'll see some color shifts in the following. I apologize.
From there I can cut rounds of the appropriate thickness.
For a small amount of minced ginger, an easy technique is to smack the rounds of ginger with the flat of the blade.
This breaks up their structure. If you smack it at a slight angle so it also drags across the ginger, it breaks up the ginger even more. If needed, you can run the knife through it in some quick chops.
If I need more ginger, or strips or a lot of minced ginger, I prefer to slice the knob of ginger into thin planks as the first step.
Stack them, or if the stack isn't stable orient them lengthwise and overlapping in a shingled manner. Then it's easy to slice them into thin strips.
For a mince, orient the strands all in the same direction, then cut across the strips in small steps to form the fine dice or mince further as needed.
For garlic, the steps are pretty similar. Smack the garlic clove at a slight angle with the flat of the knife to break it up and free it from its skin. Pick out the skin.
Chop through the garlic a couple of times to form the rough mince.
Once:
Twice:
If you need a finer mince, drag the edge of the knife across the garlic while pressing on the knife with one hand.
Scoop it up and place it with your ginger.
From there I can cut rounds of the appropriate thickness.
For a small amount of minced ginger, an easy technique is to smack the rounds of ginger with the flat of the blade.
This breaks up their structure. If you smack it at a slight angle so it also drags across the ginger, it breaks up the ginger even more. If needed, you can run the knife through it in some quick chops.
If I need more ginger, or strips or a lot of minced ginger, I prefer to slice the knob of ginger into thin planks as the first step.
Stack them, or if the stack isn't stable orient them lengthwise and overlapping in a shingled manner. Then it's easy to slice them into thin strips.
For a mince, orient the strands all in the same direction, then cut across the strips in small steps to form the fine dice or mince further as needed.
For garlic, the steps are pretty similar. Smack the garlic clove at a slight angle with the flat of the knife to break it up and free it from its skin. Pick out the skin.
Chop through the garlic a couple of times to form the rough mince.
Once:
Twice:
If you need a finer mince, drag the edge of the knife across the garlic while pressing on the knife with one hand.
Scoop it up and place it with your ginger.
For a stock or soup, you usually want to add some aromatics too. But it you usually don't want to leave them in the stock or soup with the other ingredients.
I like to us a teaball to convert a western stock into Chinese stock. I load the teaball with crushed garlic, ginger, and sometimes some star anise. The teaball makes it easy to remove all the aromatics in one step.
Here I'm using some low sodium chicken base to form the basis for the chinese soup in the earlier post. It's there on the spoon, and the teaball and some dried mushrooms
On a related note, i use a big teaball when I'm pressure cooking beans. The onion normall falls apart, but the big teaball makes it easy to remove from the beans.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
So it's Time for some Food
What's a food blog without food? I made this meal today and over the next few blog posts will share the recipes and techniques for making these dishes.
Going clockwise from the top, there is chicken and broccoli, long grain steamed rice, Onion Pepper Beef and a bowl of soup using up various odds and ends in my fridge.
Friday, October 28, 2011
The Wok: Part IV
Accessories
There are some important tools you need for cooking in your wok. There are three important ones and some other optional ones.
Lid You really need a lid for cooking in a Wok. Yes, even for stir fries. If your wok didn't come with a lid you should get one that is 1 inch smaller in diameter than your wok. For the common 14" woks, this means a 13 inch lid.
The lid lets you steam some ingredients that don't cook to the proper stage in stir frying, particularly Brocolli as we know it in the west. When I'm cooking broccoli as part of a stir fry, I give them about 90 seconds of steaming time with a little Shao Hsing wine while covered with the lid. This cooks the broccoli to the proper point, flavors it a bit and is quick. Otherwise, you need to take the time to blanch the broccoli and the quick steam trick is much simpler and faster and happens right in the wok. When the wine evaporates, the wok quickly comes back up to stir fry temps. You might need to adapt your technique some depending on your heat source, perhaps with an empty wok for a few 10s of seconds to get back up to heat.
Some other wok cooking techniques such as steaming or smoking require a lid.
I'm partial to the full dome lid rather than the flat topped lids. I like having some extra space for larger objects in the wok, such as the breast on a whole chicken or duck.
Spatula or Shovel (Chuan) This is slightly round lipped tool for turning and mixing ingredients in the wok. The spatula is shaped for your wok so check that it matches your size of wok. This is both in length so you have the right reach and also the right rounding of the edge to match your wok. Generally it should be close the same length as the diameter of your wok. I think this tool is still preferable to a flat edged spatula in a flat bottom wok as the round edge is useful where the flat wok transitions into the sides. And it's flat enough to do a good job in the flat part as well.
Wok Ring If you're using a flat bottom wok this isn't necessary but for a gas stove they're important for safety and convenience. I prefer the solid walled types with holes rather than the wire types because you can trim them down for a custom fit on your stove and even cut notches to fit just right over your cooking grate.
Optional Accessories
Spider This is handy for removals of ingredient from a frying or blanching process. I use this more than a wok ring personally, but there are other tools to achieve the same result. An 8 inch spider is my preference. I also use it for clearing ingredients from a pot of stock. And, on occasion, for sifting the powder from the bottom of a box of Captain Crunch to get to the last good sized pieces.
Ladle This is a ladle with a curved lip to match the curvature of your wok. It should be about the same length as the diameter of your wok. You'll often see professional cooks stir frying with a ladle instead of the spatula. They dip the ladle into different ingredients and seasonings, add it to the wok and keep on going. That's great if you're set up like a pro but it's not practical for the home cook in my opinion. I never used the one that came with my first wok and ended up giving the ladle away.
There are still other things you can get that I see serving even less purpose so don't get them. But for completeness:
Draining Rack I have one and never use it. Too small and really in the way more than helpful particularly if cooking for more than one or two people.
Cooking Chopsticks These are dirt cheap and dramatic. Warp easily and most people don't have the skill to make them work usefully, including me. You might occasionally see Martin Yan use them on his show. I have a pair of these too. I mostly use them to separate meat that I'm oil blanching or velveting. But many other tools or even the cheap bamboo chopsticks for table use will do the job as well.
There are some important tools you need for cooking in your wok. There are three important ones and some other optional ones.
Lid You really need a lid for cooking in a Wok. Yes, even for stir fries. If your wok didn't come with a lid you should get one that is 1 inch smaller in diameter than your wok. For the common 14" woks, this means a 13 inch lid.
The lid lets you steam some ingredients that don't cook to the proper stage in stir frying, particularly Brocolli as we know it in the west. When I'm cooking broccoli as part of a stir fry, I give them about 90 seconds of steaming time with a little Shao Hsing wine while covered with the lid. This cooks the broccoli to the proper point, flavors it a bit and is quick. Otherwise, you need to take the time to blanch the broccoli and the quick steam trick is much simpler and faster and happens right in the wok. When the wine evaporates, the wok quickly comes back up to stir fry temps. You might need to adapt your technique some depending on your heat source, perhaps with an empty wok for a few 10s of seconds to get back up to heat.
Some other wok cooking techniques such as steaming or smoking require a lid.
I'm partial to the full dome lid rather than the flat topped lids. I like having some extra space for larger objects in the wok, such as the breast on a whole chicken or duck.
Spatula or Shovel (Chuan) This is slightly round lipped tool for turning and mixing ingredients in the wok. The spatula is shaped for your wok so check that it matches your size of wok. This is both in length so you have the right reach and also the right rounding of the edge to match your wok. Generally it should be close the same length as the diameter of your wok. I think this tool is still preferable to a flat edged spatula in a flat bottom wok as the round edge is useful where the flat wok transitions into the sides. And it's flat enough to do a good job in the flat part as well.
Wok Ring If you're using a flat bottom wok this isn't necessary but for a gas stove they're important for safety and convenience. I prefer the solid walled types with holes rather than the wire types because you can trim them down for a custom fit on your stove and even cut notches to fit just right over your cooking grate.
Optional Accessories
Ladle This is a ladle with a curved lip to match the curvature of your wok. It should be about the same length as the diameter of your wok. You'll often see professional cooks stir frying with a ladle instead of the spatula. They dip the ladle into different ingredients and seasonings, add it to the wok and keep on going. That's great if you're set up like a pro but it's not practical for the home cook in my opinion. I never used the one that came with my first wok and ended up giving the ladle away.
There are still other things you can get that I see serving even less purpose so don't get them. But for completeness:
Draining Rack I have one and never use it. Too small and really in the way more than helpful particularly if cooking for more than one or two people.
Cooking Chopsticks These are dirt cheap and dramatic. Warp easily and most people don't have the skill to make them work usefully, including me. You might occasionally see Martin Yan use them on his show. I have a pair of these too. I mostly use them to separate meat that I'm oil blanching or velveting. But many other tools or even the cheap bamboo chopsticks for table use will do the job as well.
The Wok: Part III
So you're getting a carbon steel wok. Good choice. But there's more to carbon steel woks than just round or flat bottom.
Most of the local purveyors of inexpensive carbon woks have gone to carrying Peking Pans. I don't like these particular pans. They're very thin metal, have an unknown coating on them for low stick, a handle that will get hot. And they're most often flat bottomed as well.
You shouldn't be able to flex the wok when pressing from the sides. Well, an average person shouldn't be able to. This is a surprisingly difficult trait to find in carbon steel wok. It's completely about the thickness of the steel too.
My first wok is a bit flexible. I've had it 19 years now though I've not cooked on in probably 3 or 4 years. If you were watching informercials back then you'd see one about "Hand Hammered Wok" with a British guy telling you all the myths about woks and why they need to be hand hammered. I bought this when the infomercial had run its course and the extra stock was in the discount kitchen stores.
If you click the picture below, you'll see a pattern of overlapping circular marks in the wok. It's really quite a pretty effect in person though a bit hard to photograph with my skills. Has a nice patination to it as well.
My next wok was the cast iron wok This is not in the the traditional Chinese style. It's much thicker and is actually flat on the bottom, though round inside.
I haven't used it a lot, mostly on my 30,000 BTU outdoor stove for some meals where I was stir frying multiple dishes for simultaneous service.
I can't recommend it for indoor cooking unless you're just cooking for one or two people. Yes, it gets quite hot, but it's slow to get to that point. And while it creates an awesome initial sear, it's slow to recover heat as well. So it doesn't hold the right heat level except with fairly small amounts of food.
I mostly keep it because I enjoy cast iron of all types. And you can't flex it.
I didn't think I was in the market for more woks. But one day at Vinh Long, a local asian grocer, I found this one.
Aggressively hammered and called a "Pow" Wok, I couldn't flex it. And if you compare the pictures, you'll see it's thicker steel. The Wok Shop carries these still though I've never again seen one locally. This one too has the handle screws upgraded as they were loose from the start.
Amazon has them too.
Does it cook better than my other woks? I think it does a little. Mostly in that it delivers heat a little more evenly and doesn't flex when I lift a full wok to plate the contents for serving. That always unnerved me about my first wok. And good woks are surprisingly inexpensive so it's not much of a cost to add another one to the collection.
I picked up my most recent wok 9 months ago. This is a 12" flat bottomed wok I picked up at Kim Heang, a Laotian market. It was the only carbon steel flat bottom wok I could find with minimal flex and uncoated at the time. The wok market is definitely changing and not for the better in my opinion.
I bought this one because I was so impressed with the performance of my induction burner. I knew it would be better for Wok cooking than standing outside at my high output stove all through the bad weather as I'd been doing.
Better is probably too strong a word. Preferable. That's the right word.
The outdoor stove still beats induction in sheer performance, but the added hassles of cooking outdoors loses out to the convenience and good performance of induction.
And it works really well. But after all those years of stir frying in a round bottom wok, I just couldn't make the adaptation to a flat bottom wok. It takes more oil. The stir fry action is sloppy with more chasing ingredients around to get them all flipped and cooked evenly. It's better than not stir frying but...
And so I monitored the market for an affordable induction wok unit. Last year, all that was available were units costing thousands of dollars. So I was excited to see the Adcraft this fall and be back cooking in a round bottom wok the way it's supposed to be done.
Update 5/16/2013: I recently came across a high-quality flat-bottom carbon-steel wok from IMUSA. Good handles, good steel thickness, seasoned up beautifully. So add yet another wok to my collection.
Most of the local purveyors of inexpensive carbon woks have gone to carrying Peking Pans. I don't like these particular pans. They're very thin metal, have an unknown coating on them for low stick, a handle that will get hot. And they're most often flat bottomed as well.
You shouldn't be able to flex the wok when pressing from the sides. Well, an average person shouldn't be able to. This is a surprisingly difficult trait to find in carbon steel wok. It's completely about the thickness of the steel too.
My first wok is a bit flexible. I've had it 19 years now though I've not cooked on in probably 3 or 4 years. If you were watching informercials back then you'd see one about "Hand Hammered Wok" with a British guy telling you all the myths about woks and why they need to be hand hammered. I bought this when the infomercial had run its course and the extra stock was in the discount kitchen stores.
If you click the picture below, you'll see a pattern of overlapping circular marks in the wok. It's really quite a pretty effect in person though a bit hard to photograph with my skills. Has a nice patination to it as well.
It's OK as a wok. I've had to replace the screws in the handle with the aggressive thread dry wall type screws. Holds much better since that upgrade. Beyond being thin, it's pretty well constructed otherwise.
I haven't used it a lot, mostly on my 30,000 BTU outdoor stove for some meals where I was stir frying multiple dishes for simultaneous service.
I can't recommend it for indoor cooking unless you're just cooking for one or two people. Yes, it gets quite hot, but it's slow to get to that point. And while it creates an awesome initial sear, it's slow to recover heat as well. So it doesn't hold the right heat level except with fairly small amounts of food.
I mostly keep it because I enjoy cast iron of all types. And you can't flex it.
I didn't think I was in the market for more woks. But one day at Vinh Long, a local asian grocer, I found this one.
Aggressively hammered and called a "Pow" Wok, I couldn't flex it. And if you compare the pictures, you'll see it's thicker steel. The Wok Shop carries these still though I've never again seen one locally. This one too has the handle screws upgraded as they were loose from the start.
Amazon has them too.
Does it cook better than my other woks? I think it does a little. Mostly in that it delivers heat a little more evenly and doesn't flex when I lift a full wok to plate the contents for serving. That always unnerved me about my first wok. And good woks are surprisingly inexpensive so it's not much of a cost to add another one to the collection.
I picked up my most recent wok 9 months ago. This is a 12" flat bottomed wok I picked up at Kim Heang, a Laotian market. It was the only carbon steel flat bottom wok I could find with minimal flex and uncoated at the time. The wok market is definitely changing and not for the better in my opinion.
I bought this one because I was so impressed with the performance of my induction burner. I knew it would be better for Wok cooking than standing outside at my high output stove all through the bad weather as I'd been doing.
Better is probably too strong a word. Preferable. That's the right word.
The outdoor stove still beats induction in sheer performance, but the added hassles of cooking outdoors loses out to the convenience and good performance of induction.
And it works really well. But after all those years of stir frying in a round bottom wok, I just couldn't make the adaptation to a flat bottom wok. It takes more oil. The stir fry action is sloppy with more chasing ingredients around to get them all flipped and cooked evenly. It's better than not stir frying but...
And so I monitored the market for an affordable induction wok unit. Last year, all that was available were units costing thousands of dollars. So I was excited to see the Adcraft this fall and be back cooking in a round bottom wok the way it's supposed to be done.
Update 5/16/2013: I recently came across a high-quality flat-bottom carbon-steel wok from IMUSA. Good handles, good steel thickness, seasoned up beautifully. So add yet another wok to my collection.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)