Author: James A. Beard

Publisher: Random House (NY)

Published: 1977

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13: 9780394734255

"Think about it : you rarely see a fat Chinese person. Not because the Chinese don't enjoy eating ; they certainly do, and they have developed a cuisine as subtle and refined as the French. They stay slim because the Chinese diet is generally low in starch and fats. They have found that texture, variety, and contrast of flavors please the palate far more than sheer abundance. For diet-conscious Westerners, the Chinese way of cooking lets us have our cake (or rather our shrimp with snow pea pods and mushrooms) and eat it too! This healthful and delicious cuisine came about for a number of historical reasons. There are more Chinese on earth than any other ethnic group, yet only ten percent of their vast land is arable, so food is limited. Added to that, China has always suffered from a desperate lack of fuel. But whatever else they lack, the Chinese are rich in imagination. Centuries ago their ingenious response to scarcity was to evolve a method of cooking that made any bit of available food palatable while using the least possible amount of fuel. And so was born the wok, which means, simply, "cooking vessel." Made of thin metal and shaped like a salad bowl with handles, it fits perfectly into the round opening in the top of the traditional Chinese brazier. Fuel -- kindling, bits of wood, charcoal and even straw -- is fed to the stove through a front opening. Flames leap up to touch the thin metal bottom, diffusing heat through the wok. Oil -- only a little -- is added and rapidly heated ; next comes the food, cut in uniform bits. The food is turned and tossed rapidly against the bottom and flaring sides of the wok, only long enough to sear the cut surfaces. The combination of oil and intense heat allows the small morsels to cook through before their cellular structure breaks down enough for them to release their juices. Flavor and goodness are sealed in. Stir-frying : We call this method of cooking stir-frying, although scooping-tossing-searing describes it more closely. Every surface of each morsel gets equal time against the heated wok ; no surface stays in place long enough to stick and thus begin to steam. One writer calls stir-frying a way to "surprise" food -- he claims it's cooked before it even has time to know it's in the work. Cantonese cooks use both ladle and spatula to stir-fry, agitating the food in a manner akin to tossing a salad at breakneck speed. Steamers : Your wok will double as an excellent vessel for holding a steaming rack or steaming baskets. Steamed foods are among the glories of Oriental cuisines. To steam, the boiling water in a wok should come about an inch below the rack or first basket. Place the rack or baskets in the wok -- they should be 2 inches smaller in diameter than the wok -- an cover with a lid. If you put the food on a plate, necessary in a number of recipes where sauce is used, be sure that the plate is at least an inch smaller that the basket so that the clouds of steam can rise easily to envelope -- and cook -- the food. There's no need for a presentation dish ; the steaming basket goes directly from the stove to the table. Fire pots : The fire pot is a Chinese way of preparing a meal at the table. Perhaps our nearest equivalent is beef fondue -- but fire pot food is cooked in steaming broth or water, not oil. The fire pot is said to have its origins in Mongolia, where nomads on the march dipped chunks of meat into cauldrons of boiling water. When the fire pot was introduced to Southern China, it became a much more elaborate dish, with guests dipping meat, fish and vegetables into simmering broth. As each guest cooks food on a do-it-yourself basis, the broth becomes gloriously enriched. At the end of the meal, it is ladled into bowls with a little dipping sauce ; and that soup is a culinary climax!--