Category: Chinese

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Lessons Learned From a Lifetime of Cooking #14

I never knew there were so many different kinds of soy sauce.

Lesson #13 is : know your ingredients. This can be why a dish, despite following the recipe exactly, tastes better than yours.

6 Types of Soy Sauce Everyone Should Know – https://thewoksoflife.com/6-types-of-soy-sauce-everyone-should-know/

Memo to Self – Don’t be discouraged to learn there are Chinese Americans out there more Chinese than you who know their ingredients much better than you ever will. My favorite soy sauce is Thai. No wonder then why my Chinese dishes don’t taste Chinese.

Thai Soy Sauce – https://thewoksoflife.com/thai-soy-sauce/

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Lessons Learned From a Lifetime of Cooking #13

Over the years when I invited friends over for dinner they got pretty excited. One day I asked a guest what’s with all the excitement?

Chinese food! They were expecting something I really sucked at making. To this day I don’t make much Chinese/Asian stuff. I’d rather go out and eat something someone actually knows how to make.

So Lesson #13 is this: technique. This is the how and why a dish, despite following the recipe exactly, tastes better than yours.

I found this video and I now know why my Chicken and Broccoli never tastes as good as the restaurant versions.

Who says you can’t teach an old trick new dogs?

Memo to Self – Don’t be discouraged to learn there are Chinese Americans out there more Chinese than you.

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Lessons I Wish I Had Learned From a Lifetime of Cooking #4

How to Use Chopsticks – the article https://thewoksoflife.com/how-to-use-chopsticks/

The video:

Lesson #4. You can always get better at something.

Back in my East Coast days I would take a bunch of guys into NY Chinatown for some authentic Chinese food. The restaurant was a classic hole in the wall, one of the places that didn’t cater to non-Chinese diners. All the menus were in Chinese and the family banquet style menus were posted near the ceiling on the wall. The group would get seated, tea was served, and I would point to the menu on the wall for our table. Sometimes I pointed to a menu I thought I had ordered in the past and the food was different from the last visit. Didn’t matter. It was all good.

My friends all got forks, spoons, and knives. The waiter would remove my silverware and return with a pair of chopsticks and one of those awkward soup spoons. I always had to ask for a fork and regular spoon because I was really bad at using chopsticks.

I still can’t use chopsticks very well. Too bad we didn’t have the internet or YouTube back then. At least I now have instructions and a video to watch.

Time to practice!

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Wok and Roll

But I have to tell you that if you’ve never traveled with your wok, you have not truly experienced TSA. They’re putting on gloves and they’re unzipping the bag. They basically just treat me like I’m a criminal and tell me not to talk. Then they pull it out and they go, “Oh, it’s a wok,” and then everybody’s like smiling and laughing. One time this guy said to me, “What’s the secret to fried rice?” So yeah, it is pretty hilarious.

Grace Young

I own and use two unseasoned woks.

I have never traveled with either wok.

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Memories Hidden From View

The past is merely fragmented memories woven into a story that changes according to how you tell it. You can alter the impact your past has on you by changing your story about it…You live in whatever story you tell yourself.

Jarl Forsman and Steve Sekhon – Bite Size Happiness: Volume 1

Taking time off from work is both a blessing and a curse. I’ve taken long weekends where by the final day I am ready to head back to the office and get back to work. This compulsive urge of needing to work has been with me my entire life. My parents’ generation of immigrants, my ethnic heritage, my upbringing all contributed to my strong work ethic. I was quite surprised when recently all of this changed. It’s not that I’ve lost my work ethic or anything like that. I still work hard but I’ve also found other things to do with my time. One of the projects on this extended weekend was to de-clutter  and the target was my collection of saved recipes. Like any other household item the strategy was brutally simple: keep or toss. It didn’t take long to determine that most of the recipes I’d been keeping for possible future meals would be tossed.  Here’s some of the things that you learn about yourself while de-cluttering your recipe collection:

  1. I had saved recipes and old newspaper clippings since 1976.
  2. I never used any of those recipes.
  3. I’ve known for a long time that what I cook and eat currently is a lot different than what I used to cook and eat.  Most of the saved recipes are dishes that I would not cook now.
  4. An entire folder of pork and lamb recipes got tossed.  I eat pork on rare occasions and can’t even remember the last time I had lamb.
  5. Groupings of old newspaper articles eventually became cookbooks for their authors.  I have these same recipes in the cookbooks from the same authors in my cookbook collection.  Why did I keep the old clippings?
  6. Thinning out the cookbook collection is next on the de-clutter list.

I was literally tossing out everything until I found this:

 

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At first I didn’t recognize what I was holding in my hand.  It took a few minutes to realize I was holding an old recipe that was written in my Father’s handwriting.  After this discovery the pace of my purge slowed.  I didn’t want to accidentally discard a cherished memory.

Memories hidden from view that were here with me waiting to be uncovered and woven back into my story.  Have I ever mentioned my Father was one hell of a cook?

 

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