Flavors
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Millie Chan is an exceptional cooking teacher and a creative cook. We first met in a dingy stone basement below a food store on Madison Avenue at 65th Street in Manhattan. Millie was teaching Introduction to Chinese Cooking under some very difficult conditions. In the class of about a dozen women, half were wives of foreign diplomats who spent most of the time gossiping in various languages and the rest of the time asking Millie to repeat her instructions. Their only reason for the taking the class was to get the recipes for their cooks to make. In addition, the "kitchen" consisted of limited facilities including a countertop electric stove that made wok cooking something of a challenge. But, Millie persevered through it all and made my first Chinese cooking class a joy. In fact, I was so intrigued that I followed her suggestion to take classes with Florence Lin at the China Institute and that led to 30 years of learning more about Asian food. Millie went on to write her own cookbook, Millie Chan's Kosher Chinese Cooking, and to teach for many years at the 92nd Street Y. She was also a student of Mrs. Lin's and we often cooked together in her classes. It is not surprising that Millie Chan is one of the experts Grace Young sought out when she wrote The Breath of the Wok. Susanna Foo, Martin Yan, Ken Hom, Ming Tsai and Florence Lin are a few more cooking experts she consulted. But Young went beyond well-known names in her search for the legends and lore created by 2000 years of wok cooking. The result is a textbook of Chinese food history and the mystique behind one of the world's most versatile utensils, the wok. Young's search led her to Hong Kong and to mainland China to find the artisans still hammering iron woks by hand. "We head for the village blacksmith," she writes, "whose hammering I can hear from the end of the street. Upon entering the metal shop, I see the blacksmith, Mr. Wan, is holding a piece of rough-cut iron in a coal forge. He uses a fan to increase the heat of the fire. As he holds the metal in the flames it begins to glow red and then white. He pulls the metal from the fire, tosses it onto an anvil, and pounds it with his hammer. I suddenly realize he is making a wok for me." Her journey also led to wok factories, farm communities, chef
schools, restaurant kitchens, and the home kitchens of outstanding
Chinese cooks. Through it all she went in search of ways to create
that elusive flavor known as wok hay, the breath of the
wok. "My father taught me early in life that there is nothing
quite delicious as the rich, concentrated flavors of a Cantonese
stir-fry," Young recalls, "in which morsels of meat
are cooked just quickly enough to ensure their juicy succulence
and vegetables are rendered crisp and refreshing. It is a far
cry from the oily, overcooked, heavily sauced renditions to which
most Americans are accustomed." We recommend "Millie Chan's Chili Shrimp" for a dish with complex flavors and easy stir-fry. All Chinese ingredients are available at local Asian markets and fresh shrimp is available at local markets and Coastal Seafood. This is one of those dishes that can be served hot from the wok to enjoy its own wok hay or may be served at room temperature allowing the salty, sweet, peppery, and hot flavors to blend with the shrimp. Perhaps the easiest recipe in the book is "Florence Lin's Slow-Fried Red Peppers" with just four ingredients oil, red bell peppers, sugar and salt. Simple and delicious. Or use the wok in its other capacities to deep-fry, boil, steam, or smoke. "Florence Lin's Smoked Chicken and Eggs" is a great way to experience this surprisingly easy and tasty method of cooking. Young reminisces about the food of her childhood and in the chapter "The Family Wok-a-thon" relatives relate stories of the past while they cook their favorite dishes. "Uncle Williams remembers the block on Sacramento Street (San Francisco) in front of the family shrimp store had only three parked cars, two of which were his father's Packard and the family's store truck. . . Auntie Lil tells the story of how her mother made moonshine and she and her nine-year-old sister were the 'runners.'" Auntie Frances talks about cooking in San Francisco in the 1930s. "A wok!" she says, "We didn't even have a refrigerator. We put our food outside the window to stay coolThe kitchens in Chinatown were so small in those days that there was no way a wok could fit.so, I learned to stir-fry in a skillet." The book contains 125 recipes and tips on buying, seasoning,
using, and storing the wok. Grace Young also wrote the award
winning cookbook The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen and
for seventeen years was the Test Kitchen Director and Director
for Food Photography for more than forty cookbooks published
by Time-Life Books. Published this fall by Simon & Schuster
The Breath of the Wok has a hardcover price of $35 and
is available at www.ecookbooks.com for $21. (Reprinted from Asian Pages 12/15/04) |
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