Tigers and Strawberries–A Probable Change of Focus

I’ll just spit it out.

I have been ill–for a while, although for the past few weeks, it has been worse. And, luckily, my doctor has probably figured out what is wrong with me and has narrowed our focus down to three possibilities, all of them necessitating diet and lifestyle changes.

One, that we know for certain is that I am allergic to wheat, and likely have been my entire life. It is only recently, however, that my digestive system has started acting out every time I eat wheat, so most of the symptoms I have had which can be caused by sheat allergy, I have only assumed were nothing more than general environmental allergies and malaise related to my sleep disorder.

The truth is, it is probably the wheat allergy that is causing the chronic severe joint aches and pains, the constant sinus problems, and the new in ability to digest much of anything involving wheat.

The other possibility is that it isn’t just a wheat allergy–which was diagnosed with a skin test that had a very dramatic positive result.

It could be celiac disease, which is gluten intolerance that causes specific antibodies to attack the small intestine and essentially reduce the body’s ability to absorb nutrients from food. Today, I just had a blood test to see if those antibodies are present in my blood. The final, definitive diagnosis would come from a biopsy of tissue from the small intestine. If it is celiac, then I have to avoid barley and rye as well as wheat, and I will have to become very aware of what I am eating, because the only way to return the small intestine to health is to stop eating all gluten, to allow the villi to grow back so that nutrients can be absorbed again.

Celiac disease would explain why I am losing weight even though I am still eating well, and in fact, am hungry all the time. (When I first started losing weight, I thought it was the Welbutrin, as did my doctor. Then, I started exercising, and so that could explain why I was losing weight. Then, I stopped exercising and still lost a lot of weight. I am just glad I was overweight to start out with, because if I hadn’t been, I probably would look really ill right about now.)

The third possibility, which I think is the most serious, and is also a strong one, is type II diabetes. My Mom’s family is riddled with diabetics, so there is precedent. I will say that I have had glucose tolerance tests several times over my life, including when I was pregnant with Kat, and I have not shown any sign of having high blood sugar, so it is likely that this is not the culprit. However, to be sure, I had another glucose tolerance test done this morning.

So, we will see. If I am going to be living wheat or gluten free, I am going to have to change what I cook at home, and perforce, this blog will change somewhat. I don’t mind it–I can learn stuff that will help other people with their cooking, just within a narrower context than before. And if it is diabetes, then I will share with readers whatever it is I learn to cook in order to keep myself healthy.

I will come back to the blog soon–it is ironic–I had actually almost given up on writing Tigers & Strawberries, because I felt like I had said all I needed to say, and I was more interested in doing rather than writing. But now, if I am going to be doing kitchen experimentation for special diets–well, I have a reason to keep on writing.

More Pasta, More Local: Penne Verdante

Even though there was a snowstorm last week, spring marches forward, washing Appalachian Ohio in an ever-brightening wave of green dotted with yellow, violet, pink, white and rose as trees, flowers and grasses burst from the slowly warming earth.

The gardens, solar greenhouses and farms surrounding Athens are fertile with early spring delights: scallions, sweet radishes, rhubarb, lettuces, kale, chard, collards, tatsoi, bok choy and cilantro are all piled at tables in the farmer’s market among the still-delicious winter storage vegetables and fruits: garlic, potatoes, apples, parsnips, beets, turnips and pears. Cultivated oyster and shiitake mushrooms are plentiful, as are fresh eggs, milk and cream, chevre and feta cheese, and various meats. Even this early in the season, it is possible to make many delicious meals from mostly local ingredients here in Athens.

One spring delicacy I look forward to every year is green garlic–new shoots of garlic which look for all the world like flat-leaved scallions. Sold in bundles like scallions, green garlic is wholly edible, barring the little root cluster at the bottom. Slice that away and then wash the stalk and leaves carefully, and you can slice, chop or mince the whole plant and use it in any way you would use scallions or garlic–you can saute green garlic, use it in salads, to top pizza, or you can do as I did–use it as one of the main ingredients in a pasta sauce along with other local ingredients such as kale, spinach, mushrooms, feta, cream and sweet Italian sausage.

This sauce, which I named for the glorious plethora of green vegetables used in it, can be made vegetarian quite easily and deliciously–leave out the sausage, and add more mushrooms, and instead of chicken broth or stock, use vegetable broth or stock, or even better–mushroom broth! I cheated and used a double handful of non-local fresh basil, but any fresh herb could be used–I nearly used the fresh local cilantro I bought along with all the other ingredients at the market this Saturday, but instead, I saved that to make Cilantro Chicken later in the week. The next time I make it, in fact, I intend to make it vegetarian–and I will probably change it enough to post the vegetarian version as a separate recipe–because, surprisingly, Zak and Morganna, both meat-lovers, said it would taste just as lovely without sausage as it did with it.

I’d say that this particular pasta dish is more than halfway local–which is really good for April in southeastern Ohio. The list of local ingredients used in this dish is long: spinach, kale, green garlic, Italian sausage, cream, chicken broth, goat feta, fresh shiitake mushrooms. The non-local ingredients are: penne, sherry, balsamic vinegar. Aleppo pepper, salt, olive oil, onions and fresh basil. You notice that most of the non-local ingredients are flavorings–sherry, vinegar, pepper, salt and basil.

Oh, and it tastes REALLY, REALLY good, too. The green garlic is where it’s at–and I used three whole bunches of it in the sauce. The white stalks, I sliced thinly and sauteed after the onions were halfway caramelized. I let the garlic get nice and golden, then added the mushrooms and sausage, and cooked everything all together. This way the garlic and caramelized onion flavor permeated the mushrooms and meat. The green tops–which are the bulk of green garlic, by the way, I added right after the meat was finished cooking in two stages–half right after the meat was cooked, but before I added the cream and other greens, and the other half after the cream was added and reduced. At that point I added the green garlic along with the kale and spinach. This wilted the greens nicely, and put three layers of garlic flavor in place which really makes the sauce pop.

At the end, I add the feta and a tiny splash of balsamic vinegar, just to give a little ting of acidity. It cuts the richness of the cream and sausage a bit, and it also really goes nicely with all the greens in the sauce. The feta is just amazing–it barely melts into the sauce, forming little chunks of salty, goaty goodness that really goes perfectly with the green garlic and the other springtime leafy vegetables.

I will be making this one again, though this time without the sausage, just as Zak and Morganna requested, though I might well add some rapini to it as well, just because I can and I think it would taste really, really good that way.

And some ramps, too. Because green garlic isn’t enough–I need wild garlic, too.

Penne Verdante
Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups thinly sliced yellow onions
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup thinly sliced white parts of green garlic
1/2 tablespoon Aleppo pepper flakes (or black pepper to taste)
1/4 cup dry sherry
1/2-1 cup thinly sliced fresh shiitake mushroom caps
1/2 pound sweet Italian sausage, removed from casings and crumbled (optional)
1/2 cup chicken broth or stock
2 1/2 cups green garlic tops (the light and dark green parts) sliced thinly, divided
3/4 cup cream
3 cups kale leaves, tough veins removed and sliced thinly
2 cups spinach leaves, tough veins removed and sliced thinly
2 cups fresh basil leaves roughly chopped
3 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
salt to taste
1 pound penne pasta, cooked al dente and drained

Method:

Heat the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed, deep skillet. Add the onions, sprinkle with salt and cook, stirring constantly, until the onions are a deep golden color. Add the white green garlic stalks, and Aleppo pepper flakes and cook, stirring, until the garlic turns golden and the onions are browned. Deglaze the pan with sherry, and allow the alcohol to boil off.

Add the mushrooms and sausage if you are using it, and cook, stirring, until the sausage is cooked through and the onions are brown.

Add the chicken broth, deglaze the pan and add 2/3 of the green garlic tops. Cook until the chicken broth is reduced, then add the cream and bring it to a simmer. Add the kale and spinach, and let the cream reduce until it coats the back of a spoon. Add the basil and feta cheese, stir well until the basil is wilted and the feta is partially melted. Add balsamic vinegar, stir to combine, taste for salt and adjust seasoning.

Toss with penne, and serve immediately in warmed bowls.

Leftover Makeover: Got Extra Stir-Fry? Make Fried Rice

Leftover stir-fried dishes in my house usually don’t last long enough to be turned into anything else. Usually they go home with people–Morganna takes some back to her dorm room for lunch the next day, or I send some home with Dan or Amy for meals the next day. Or, if it is a chicken dish that Kat particularly likes, I leave some to go with rice for her lunch the next day or for dinner, or what have you.

But sometimes, I seriously mess up and make too much of something or another.

And then it is time to make Leftover Fried Rice.

Which is just what it sounds like it is–it is a vehicle to use not only leftover rice–which is what the Chinese invented the stuff to do–you make too much rice, which is the staff of life and is thus not to be wasted, so you let it get cold and dried out a bit and you fry it the next day with some aromatics, some vegetables and bits of tofu or meat or seafood and eggs and wham! You have a quick lunch or snack, and your rice goes to a far better place than the compost pile or the slop bucket for the pigs.

At my house, when I have too much stir-fry leftovers to use up within a few days, I plan on making fried rice. I save up rice in the fridge, and in the past, I have saved up tidbits from two and sometimes three different stir-fries. I always have eggs around, and there are always a sad handful of carrots, some dried or fresh mushrooms, maybe a half a bunch of broccoli or asparagus or a tiny handful of snow peas and one or two scallions, and these get cut up to go into the fried rice as well.

In the case of this batch of Leftover Fried Rice, henceforth to be known as LFR, I had about 2/3 of a quart container of Chicken with Bacon and Bok Choy, as well as the handful of carrots, some chopped cilantro that didn’t get used to garnish tacos earlier this week and some sliced scallion tops that didn’t make it into the quesadillas from Monday. I also had some frozen peas thawed out for Kat to eat and she didn’t eat many of them, so I used those, and a half a bunch of asparagus that didn’t get stir-fried on Saturday. With the four fresh shiitakes leftover from a pasta dish on Sunday and the last couple of eggs in the fridge, I had plenty of goodness to go into the fried rice.

Making LFR is ridiculously simple.

All you need to do is to cut up some aromatics–scallions or onions, some fresh ginger and garlic and maybe add some fermented black beans, and have them ready. Then, whatever vegetables you have, cut them up in about the same size and shape as the ones in the stir-fry that you are using up in the LFR. This keeps it all pretty.

Then, you gather the condiments you are going to use in your fried rice.

If you want your rice to be brown, you need to use either thick soy sauce or dark soy sauce mixed with a little bit of ground bean sauce. I am beginning to prefer doing the latter because it has more flavor–the thick soy sauce that comes in a jar is really sweet because of the molasses in it. The combination of dark soy sauce and ground bean sauce is much more tasty, I think, in large part because of the natural glutamates in both condiments, which gives that savory umami taste that everyone likes so well.

You can add some chili garlic sauce or paste or some sesame oil if you want for extra flavor.

Once everything is cut up, you need to put everything into the order it is going into the wok in your workspace. Aromatics go first, with onions or scallions first, then fermented black beans if you use them or ginger and garlic. Then, if you have any raw meats, they go in next, or mushrooms can go in here, or tofu. Then, your cold leftover stir fries go in, with uncooked vegetables next, going in the order of which one takes longer to cook. Carrots always win this contest, with green beans next, then broccoli, and so on. Then, the rice goes in, and the condiments, then the eggs and the garnishes and that is it.

There are a few tricks to it.

One–always start with cold, fairly dry rice, and always break it out of its clumps before you cook it. If you start with it hot, you will end up with mushy rice that sticks to your wok, and no one likes that, least of all your wok. If you don’t break up the clumps before it goes in the wok, you have to do it after it goes in the wok and that can get messy, what with rice flying out of the wok in all directions as you chop at it madly with your wok shovel. So, take my advice and just lightly oil your hands and squish up any clumps you have by hand, getting as many grains of rice separated as possible from each other.

Two–beat your eggs well. You want them to be a nice uniform yellow in color and lightly thickened.

Three–you have to use more oil in the cooking of fried rice than you do in any of my regular stir-fry recipes, but you don’t have to use as much as they do in restaurants–I usually use no more than a third of a cup of oil and usually, I can get by with four tablespoons. Use as little as you can at first, and later, when the rice goes into the wok, if it sticks, you can add a bit more.

Four–if you can, bring your leftover stir fried bits to room temperature before cooking them. It keeps you from over cooking them the second time around and it keeps you from cooking down the wok overmuch. Bring your rice to room temperature, too, if you can.

That is about it.

Oh, and you can use any kind of stir-fried stuff in here you want. I’ve used leftover stir-fried Thai dry curries before in LFR, and I have also used leftover Ma Po Tofu which isn’t even stir-fried–it is braised. I have also used leftover Red-Cooked Beef–which is also braised, and leftover Dry-Fried String Beans and Steamed Chinese Sausages–and they all went fine in :LFR.

And the truth is–I have sneaked leftover andouille sausage and ham and bits of vegetables from non-Asian dishes in LFR, and it all turned out pretty darned tasty.

So, go for it–be wild, be free, and use up the little bits of this and that you have in your fridge. Food is too precious and expensive to waste.

Oh–and one more thing. LFR is great cold, but you can also use it to stuff in vegetables before roasting them. If you do that, just be sure and roast the stuffing veggies halfway before you stuff them, and then drizzle the stuffing after it is inside the veggies with some broth to keep it moist. Cover them tightly with foil so there is no drying out and then serve when the vegetables are tender and steamy.

Very tasty way to serve larger zucchini, for example.

Leftover Fried Rice–A General Guideline
Ingredients–Everything Except the Rice, the Leftovers, Some Aromatics and the Eggs is Optional:

4 tablespoons to 1/3 cup canola or peanut oil
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced onions or 2 bunches of scallions, white and light green parts sliced thinly on the diagonal
2 tablespoons fermented black beans, optional
1/4 cup minced fresh ginger
5-8 cloves garlic, minced
2-4 cups leftover stir-fried stuff–or braised meats or tofu or whatever you think will taste good together with the rice and other stuff you have gleaned from your fridge
1-2 cups fresh, uncooked vegetables cut up so they are in pieces similar to your leftover stir fry bits, optional
4-6 cups cooked cold long-grain rice–clumps broken up
1 1/2 tablespoons thick soy sauce or 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce and 1 1/2 tablespoons ground bean sauce
2 eggs very well beaten
1 cup thinly sliced scallion tops, and/or chopped cilantro leaves, and/or thawed frozen peas–all are optional
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil–you guessed it–optional
salt to taste–yes, this is optional, too–I bet you are surprised

Method:

First, clean out your refrigerator of anything that is edible and that will taste good in your LFR. Use your judgment here, but don’t be afraid to experiment. Leftover grilled corn on the cob, so long as you remove it from the cob before it goes into the wok -will- taste great in this–even if it isn’t anywhere near traditional. Remember, the point if this dish is not authenticity to any preconceived notion of what you think of as fried rice–the point is to use up leftovers in a tasty, non-wasteful fashion. So clean out your fridge, and cut and prep all of your ingredients. Lay them out in the order in which they will go into the wok, as outlined in the post above and in the ingredient list.

Heat your wok on high heat until a thin ribbon of smoke drifts up from it. Add the oil–add a smaller amount first–you can add the rest later. Heat one minute, until it shimmers and moves with convection currents in the wok.

Add the onions or scallions. Cook, stirring until they brown lightly and soften–this takes longer with the onions. If you are using fermented black beans, add them when the onions or scallions are halfway cooked.

Add the ginger and garlic and cook one more minute.

Add the leftover stir fry or cooked whatevers. Stir and cook for about a minute before you start adding raw vegetables, remembering to add the ones that take longer to cook, such as carrots or mushrooms, first. Use your common sense here. Big broccoli stalks will take longer to cook than skinny green beans or asparagus, though big stalks of asparagus will take longer, unless you cut them in thin diagonal slices or blanch them first. So, after the leftover bits cook for a minute to warm up, start adding the raw vegetables.

Cook until the raw veggies are just starting to look sort of done.

Add the rice. Stir, chop, stir, scrape, stir, chop, stir, scrape. Make sure you don’t need more oil. If you do, clear a spot in the center of the wok and add it there. Stir, scrape, chop. Add the thick soy sauce or the dark soy sauce and ground bean sauce. Stir, scrape, stir, toss–this requires strong forearms. Cook and stir until everything is mixed nicely together, everything smells nice, everything is brownish and there are no clumps of rice stuck together.

Scrape a bare spot in the center of the wok and pour in the egg. Stir until the egg is as done as you like it–I do mine until they are half way done, but most people cook them all the way, then scrape them into eggy bits and stir them in then. I do mine until they are half-cooked and then stir them in and let the heat of the rice finish cooking them–this way they dissolve into the rice and make it lightly sticky so that it is easier to eat with chopsticks and it gives it a rich, delicious flavor. The more traditional way of cooking them all the way and then stirring them in is good, too.

Remove wok from heat. Stir in whatever garnishes you have, if you have any.

Add sesame oil if you want, and stir well.

Serve it forth, eat heartily and happily and be of glad heart for your refrigerator is clean and you have wasted no food this day.

Food in the News: Junk Food, Plain and Simple

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged an article in the New York Times about food manufacturers returning to the use of cane sugar in their foods and then touting these products as being more healthful than foods produced with high fructose corn syrup.

And, in my post, I noted that while high fructose corn syrup -may- be metabolized a little bit differently in our bodies than cane sugar, it doesn’t make cane sugar a health food. Large amounts of any kind of sugar in anyone’s diet is going to cause health problems, including weight gain and metabolic imbalances such as diabetes and hyper or hypoglycemia–not to mention higher levels of tooth decay.

Today a similar article can be found in the Washington Post, outlining how food manufacturers are now advertising products with short ingredient lists–such as Haagan-Daz’s vanilla ice cream–as being somehow more healthful and pure than other foods which have longer ingredient lists that include unpronounceable preservatives, colorings and flavorings.

But when we are talking about ice cream and potato chips, the fact is–the short ingredient list is nice and yes, I would much rather eat something with fewer ingredients which I can identify as being real, live foodstuffs than something that sounds like a Chemistry 101 experiment gone awry, but people–junk food is still junk food. Ice cream is still high in fat, sugar and calories, and potatoes are still high in fat, salt and calories, and both of them are still low on nutritive value, no matter if they are made with artificial flavors and colors or not.

Now don’t get me wrong–I love me some ice cream and potato chips, and I do eat my fair share of both, but not on a daily basis. And I am under no illusion that when I do eat these foods that I am eating anything that is intrinsically healthful. No, when I eat ice cream and potato chips, I am not thinking of my health at all–I am eating them because they taste good and I want to eat them for the pleasure of it.

Both of these items are high-calorie investments, and so when I do eat them and take the caloric hit, I have decided to eat the very tastiest versions of these foods that I can get my hands on. Which means I eat Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream (when I am in Columbus) or Haagan Daz when I am at home and cannot get Jeni’s handmade creations. Both of these ice creams have short ingredient lists–and that is why they have amazing flavors and creamy, velvety textures-because they are not filled with artificial flavors and stabilizers like many other brands do.

And when I eat potato chips, I tend to eat Kettle brand–even their flavored chips have short ingredient lists filled only with stuff I can recognize as food. And they taste great–potatoey-crispy with just the right amount of salt or natural flavorings to enhance the potato flavor.

And the fact that the ice cream and potato chip brands I eat also happen to have short ingredient lists has nothing to do with my belief that I am eating healthier junk food–it has to do with the fact that these high calorie snacks taste better.

I mean, if I am going to eat junk food–let it taste good enough to be worth the extra calories!

So, yeah, I guess it is nice to see manufacturers taking note of the fact that people want to eat more simply and thus are touting their short ingredient lists as proof of the purity of their products. But to lead people to believe that these foods are healthier just because they have a short list of “all natural ingredients” is misdirection at best.

Barbara’s Mailbag: Wok, Don’t Run

I get a lot of email from casual and long-time readers, and it is always a joy to read each piece of it. Some of the emails are simply compliments, which is always wonderful, but often readers pose questions to me, hoping for an answer to a culinary puzzle or conundrum.

Probably the one subject I get the most questions about are woks. How to season them, how to clean them, how to cook in them and what to do when they go awry. And while I answer each email personally, whenever I get a certain number of wok questions, I usually make a post outlining the questions along with my answers, because my feeling is this–if one person has a question and actually goes to the trouble of emailing me to ask it, it is likely that several other people are wondering about the same thing, but are too shy to email and ask.

Previous posts in this series include Wok Wonderings, Let’s Talk Woks, Asian Kitchen Equipment Essentials, and Wok Words.

The first of my latest batch of Chinese cooking and wok questions comes from Stefan, who wrote:

I have been trying to cook Chinese stir-fry for some time now. I have a cast iron wok and a gas stove so now i’m going through your Chinese recipes postings trying to pick up some helpful tips to give my dishes much needed “wok-hay” 🙂

I had a couple of questions for you on the stir-fry technique. First, do you always cut up the meat before marinating it or do you sometimes just marinate a whole chicken breast? I remember you posting about using only dry ingredients in your stir-fry. Does that mean you dry off the marinade from your protein before hand? Lastly, when you cook the garlic or onions to season the oil ,do you remove them from the oil before cooking the main dish?

Here are my answers:

You must cut up the meat first–this makes for more surface area for the marinade to penetrate. This flavors and tenderizes the meat more effectively. Also, it only makes sense to cut up the meat before marinating it–you have to cut it up into smaller pieces in order to cook it in the wok in the first place, and it will be much easier to cut the meat without slippery marinade sticking to it and making it slither all over the cutting board.

Add cornstarch to the marinade–enough of it to make the marinade cling to the meat. Then, when you add the meat to the wok, the only liquid that goes into the wok with it is what clings to it. If there is any liquid marinade left in the bowl, you add it later, with the other wet ingredients. The cornstarch marinade will brown when it hits the wok, and will help create wok hay, especially the stuff that clings to the sides and bottom of the wok. When you add liquid–broth, wine or soy sauce, scrape up the browned marinade bits into the sauce–the cornstarch in it will thicken the sauce and the flavor is incomparable.

As for the onions and garlic–I always leave the onions in, then put in the meat. Garlic, you can put in first–or, you can sprinkle it on top of the meat when you put it in the wok. While the meat rests undisturbed on the bottom of the wok for a minute to brown before you start stirring it, oil and juices bubble up and hit the garlic and the intense heat of it draws the flavor from the garlic into the liquid. Then, when you stir the meat, the garlic gets mixed in with it and cooks without burning.

Next up is Dan, who had several complex questions to ask me:

First of all, love the website, keep up the good work. I love cooking Chinese dishes and noticed in the recipes I’ve tried so far you use heavy doses of black pepper, black vinegar and dark soy sauce. In recipes I’ve used in the past I’ve used white pepper but never black pepper. Did Lo and Huy use black pepper that much? I love vinegar but just recently started using black vinegar. The dark soy sauce gives the dishes a nice heavy brown color, but not as much taste? Maybe it’s the brand I use but the thinner soy sauce has more taste to me. I tend to use broths and stocks in my sauces. I’m on a quest to duplicate restaurant quality Chinese dishes and think your recipes are more on the authentic side? One thing I’ve never been able to do is to get that smoky flavor you find in restaurant lo mein. I use a carbon steel wok and turkey fryer burner. I can always adjust recipes to my own taste, less black pepper, substitute half of the dark soy sauce with the thinner version, halve the black vinegar and replace the half with stock. Love all the garlic and ginger though! Thanks again.

And here is how I answered Dan’s queries:

The dark soy sauce is often used in red meat dishes to give a more appealing color to the meat and the finished sauce. It does have flavor, but because it has some molasses in it, it is not as savory as thin soy sauce. In most of my recipes, you will see that I seldom use dark soy sauce alone; most of the time I combine light and dark soy sauces together. This gives the best color and flavor. The brand I use is premium Pearl River Bridge or Kun Choon Premium. A little more money goes a long way in getting really good tasting soy sauce.

Black pepper is more likely to be used in Sichuan dishes, and since Huy was cooking primarily Sichuan foods, he used black pepper. White pepper is more often used in Cantonese and Shanghainese foods–and since I learned from cooks from Hunan and Sichuan, I don’t tend to use it.

You have the heat necessary to replicate the smoky flavor of the lo mein in restaurants–but you need a VERY seasoned wok–it takes a while to create the patina that makes the wok hay that you are missing in your lo mein. You also need to use a LOT of oil–the unique flavor of Chinese restaurant food comes from three factors, most of which are never replicated by Chinese American and Chinese home cooks. One is a high heat burner–you have that. Two is the very well seasoned wok. Three is a lot of oil–most Chinese and Chinese American home cooks do not use as much oil in cooking as is used in restaurants, but it is the third factor in creating the flavor you seek. The oil picks up the flavor created by a hot wok with a heavy seasoned patina, and this flavor inundates the entire dish.

Restaurants use this much oil for several reasons–the super high heat of their stoves calls for extra oil to keep stuff from burning–it also makes delicious food, and it cooks food faster. Most meats, for example, in Chinese restaurants–are oil-blanched–which means they are cooked in at least 1/4 cup to 1 cup of boiling oil. Then they are removed from the wok, the extra oil is poured out, leaving about five or six tablespoons, and the aromatics are added, the meat is put back in, sauces and vegetables go in, and in a flash of time, the food is done. It is also very oily.

But it sure tastes good!

I don’t cook that way at home, and if and when I open a restaurant, I wouldn’t cook that way there, either. Chinese food doesn’t have to be laden with calories and fat.

So, there we are–my recipes are a combination of what I learned in the restaurant business and what I have learned from home cooks–and my own experimentation.

And finally, I have this very technical wok question involving seasoning from John:

I’m a long-time reader of you blog. Big fan! I finally got an outdoor wok burner and a carbon steel wok from the wok shop in san francisco. Following your seasoning steps, I achieved a very nice starting patina and made several lovely vegetable stir-frys. I was holding off on stickier items such as cornstarch-marinated meats to let the patina develop further, but I couldn’t hold back and tried your thai-inspired pork and gai lan stir-fry last night. First thing first – OMG it was SO delicious my friends who were over just sat at the table in silence scarfing like pigs. It was was shameful. So thanks for the wonderful recipe. Second question though has to do with post-starch patina. Before this dish the surface of the wok was extremely smooth and glossy. In cooking last night, the food did not stick at all, BUT the patina is definitely rougher and patchy in spots. Is this normal? Did I not scrub with the bamboo brush hard enough? Before going medieval on it, I wanted to get your advice.

Here is what I could tell John:

John, first of all, I am glad you liked the recipe so much. I get the silent treatment at my table a lot–which is how I gauge how well people like my food. If all talk stops and all I can hear is scarfing noises, then I did it right. 😉

The patchyness is normal. If your wok’s patina is still a bit new, the cornstarch marinade that makes your food so good does give the wok a workout. Scrubbing a little harder will make it smoother again, but I wouldn’t worry overmuch about it. The more you use the wok, the smoother and darker the patina will become until it is black and shiny all the time.

If you want to smooth it out and give your wok’s patina a boost, deep fry something in the wok! That will speed the process up a bit, and will help smooth out what the cornstarch did to your wok.

That’s it for Barbara’s mailbag today. Remember, if you have any questions at all pertaining to Chinese cookery or woks, or Indian cooking and spices, or just cooking in general, or you have a special recipe you want me to present, or a book you want me to review, just send me an email flying across the aether, and I will be glad to do my utmost to help you out. I love hearing from my readers and I want to do my best to help everyone cook tastier, healthier food in their very own kitchens.