Chinese

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Auspiciously, deliciously ring in the Year of the Dragon with these outstanding Chinese cookbooks

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By Leslie Brenner

With Lunar New Year right around the bend — New Year’s Eve is Friday, Feb. 9 — you may be planning a celebratory feast. And of course the 15-day spring festival that begins on New Year’s Day, Feb. 10 is a great time to focus on Chinese cooking.

We’ve rounded up our favorite Chinese cookbooks to serve as inspiration and guide you with great technique — with a selection of recipes from them that are perfect for the holiday season.

The Breath of a Wok

Grace Young's award-winning 2004 book approaches cooking as a poet might, looking deeply into the soul of the cuisine. For Young, it all starts with the wok, and she walks readers through everything about it, from how to choose one to purchase, to "opening" the wok, to seasoning it with dishes early in its life. She then teaches us to stir-fry with wok hay — that ineffable "breath of a wok" that distinguishes the best Chinese cooking.

The book is also extremely useful if you’re cooking for Lunar New Year, as it includes — buried way back in the index — a list of 66 recipes appropriate for the holiday.

There’s also a helpful section about New Year’s menus, with four suggested menus — all of which are made up of dishes that can be made in advance. The lead-off recipe is Jean Yueh’s Shanghai-Style Shrimp, which is auspicious because shrimp represent happiness. Sweet and savory, with ginger and scallions, it’s also quick and easy.

RECIPE: Jean Yueh’s Shanghai-Style Shrimp

The Breath of a Wok, by Grace Young and Alan Richardson, 2004, Simon & Schuster, $38.50

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Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking

The books of trail-blazing author Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, who died in late 2022, were my first teaching manuals when I began exploring Chinese cooking 17 years ago. Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking, which was published in 2009, is structured like a Chinese cooking school — as a series of lessons, all centered around the Chinese market. With more than 150 recipes and beautiful photos throughout, it's a classic.

It includes a chapter called “Creating Menus in the Chinese Manner,” in which there’s a wonderful page outlining a Lunar New Year banquet.

Among the New Year’s dishes are Clams Stir-Fried with Black Beans, auspicious because “When clams open, they symbolize prosperity.”

RECIPE: Clams Stir-Fried with Black Beans

Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, photographs by susie cushner, 2009, Chronicle Books

BUY ‘Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking’ at Amazon

Every Grain of Rice

If you could purchase only one Chinese cookbook, this would be my recommendation. Author Fuchsia Dunlop, who was the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Central China, is a wonderful teacher. Her well selected recipes have always worked brilliantly for me (she’s a careful writer, and the book is well edited); she has a terrific palate, so everything’s delicious. You’ll pick up lots of sound technique along the way. [Read our review.]

In fact, all of Dunlop’s books are outstanding — including The Land of Fish and Rice; The Food of Sichuan and her latest title — which is not a cookbook — Invitation to a Banquet.

For New Year’s, try the Every Grain of Rice’s Yangzhou Fried Rice.

RECIPE: Yangzhou Fried Rice

EVERY GRAIN OF RICE: SIMPLE CHINESE HOME COOKING, BY FUCHSIA DUNLOP, PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRIS TERRY, 2012, W.W. NORTON & CO., $35.

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The Woks of Life

Fun, approachable, relatable and highly user-friendly, the cookbook spun out of the Leung Family’s popular cooking website is another great primer. A whole fish is a must for Chinese New Year feasts, and The Woks of Life’s Cantonese Steamed Fish — with ginger, scallions, cilantro and soy sauce — is a great choice. [Read our review of the book.]

There’s also a splendid recipe for jiaozi (dumplings), which are traditionally enjoyed in the north of China for New Year’s. They’re filled with pork, mushroom and cabbage.

RECIPE: Woks of Life Pork, Cabbage and Mushroom Dumplings

THE WOKS OF LIFE: RECIPES TO KNOW AND LOVE FROM A CHINESE AMERICAN FAMILY BY BILL, JUDY, SARAH AND KAITLIN LEUNG, CLARKSON POTTER, $35

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The Vegan Chinese Kitchen

This 2022 book from Hannah Che, creator of the excellent blog The Plant-Based Wok, is inspiring and beautiful — and a real gift for vegans and vegetarian.

Now based in Portland, Oregon, Che studied in Guangzhou, at the only vegetarian cooking school in China. There she immersed herself in zhai cai, the plant-based cuisine with centuries-old Buddhist roots that emphasizes umami-rich ingredients.

Leafy greens symbolize wealth, and Che’s Blanched Lettuce with Ginger Sauce is deliciously auspicious for the holiday. [Read our review of the book.]

RECIPE: Hannah Che’s Blanched Lettuce with Ginger Sauce

THE VEGAN CHINESE KITCHEN: RECIPES AND MODERN STORIES FROM A THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD TRADITION, BY HANNAH CHE, CLARKSON POTTER, 2022, $35

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My Shanghai

Betty Liu has a lovely page about Lunar New Year in her 2020 book, My Shanghai, which we wrote about two years ago.

Pork dishes are big for the holiday, and you can’t do better than Liu’s Shanghai-style red-braised pork belly.

RECIPE: Betty Liu’s Mom’s Shanghai Red-Braised Pork Belly

My Shanghai: Recipes and Stories from a City on the Water, by Betty Liu, 2020, Harper Design, $35

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Cookbooks We Love: Hannah Che's 'The Vegan Chinese Kitchen' is gorgeous and inspiring

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By Leslie Brenner

The Vegan Chinese Kitchen: Recipes and Modern Stories from a Thousand-Year-Old Tradition, by Hannah Che, Clarkson Potter, 2022, $35

Last year, we included Hannah Che’s The Vegan Chinese Kitchen in our Best Books of 2022 roundup, having pored through its recipes, read Che’s story, marveled at her exquisite photos (yes, she does them herself!) and tested one of the recipes. Since then, The New York Times chose the book as one of its 10 best cookbooks of the year (the Washington Post had already done the same); a few months later, the James Beard Foundation honored it with a Best Cookbook Award nomination for Vegetable-Focused Cooking.

I’ve finally had a chance to test three more of the recipes, and continue to be thoroughly impressed. The Vegan Chinese Kitchen is a thoroughly wonderful book — one that anyone seriously interested in Chinese cooking and food culture, or vegan cooking (or both) would do well to explore.

Backgrounder

Che, the Portland, Oregon-based creator of the excellent blog The Plant-Based Wok, was raised in Detroit, Michigan, by Chinese immigrant parents; she founded the blog when she was in college at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Having fallen in love with plant-based cooking, she worried that her vegan lifestyle was at odds with her Chinese culture, but in time she came to understand much of Chinese cooking is “inherently plant-based,” and in fact offered her a way to connect in a deeply meaningful way with her heritage. After graduate school (in piano) she left for China, where she studied at the only vegetarian cooking school in the country, in Guangzhou. China. There she immersed herself in zhai cai, the plant-based cuisine with centuries-old Buddhist roots that emphasizes umami-rich ingredients. She had been to China before (with her family), and has returned since; along the way she interned at a renowned tofu restaurant and taught English in Taiwan — soaking up foodways everywhere she went.

Why We Love It

The Vegan Chinese Kitchen is a beautiful book in every way, and Che is a wonderful story-teller. Even if you’re tempted to skip the intro, don’t — in the course of its six or seven pages, Che manages to convey a life-lesson about mindful cooking and the Chinese spirit that’s truly inspiring.

Following that is a useful roadmap about how to create a vegan (or really any) Chinese meal: “you serve enough rice for everyone to eat their fill, along with a spread of accompanying dishes.” The rule is to plan one dish per person, plus one extra, and “aim for a variety of textures, tastes and colors” — and cooking methods. Noodle dishes or other one-pot meals are the standalone exceptions.

If, like me, you’re attracted to cookbooks that open up cultures from within and help you better understand something deep about that culture, The Vegan Chinese Kitchen delivers.

How to Kick Off a Chinese Vegan Meal

Two recipes that Che characterizes as popular appetizers in restaurants in China caught my eye. One is Blanched Spinach with Sesame Sauce — I’ll make that soon. Another is Smashed Cucumber Salad, which Che calls “one of the most ubiquitous Chinese starter dishes.” About a decade ago, the dish was super trendy stateside. I hadn’t made it in some years, and Che’s version (a particularly good one) is a reminder of why it’s so appealing: It’s craveable, crunchy, vinegary, delicious and quick to achieve.

Let Us Cook the Salad, Shall We?

Che’s photo of Blanched Lettuce with Ginger Soy Sauce was the image that first grabbed me hard when I cracked open the book: I had to make it. (Her photo is a lot nicer than mine.)

Skeptical about cooked lettuce? Che was, until she learned that “Chinese cooks treat lettuces like any other leafy green” and tried dishes like this one.

Once you blanch the romaine leaves, the sauce comes together in a flash. Put them together, and you’ve got something simple and fabulous.

You Want This in Your Fridge

Here’s another crave-able, zingy one. Che writes in her headnote that she often makes a big batch of Napa Cabbage and Vermicelli Salad to enjoy for weekday lunches. I’ve taken her suggestion and wholeheartedly recommend it.

RECIPE: Napa Cabbage and Vermicelli Salad.

One of Che’s Personal Faves

Che’s chapters on Tofu and Tofu Skin are particularly compelling, not only for the recipes, but also for the history and discussion of the culture around it. Before living in China and learning how it’s traditionally made, Che had viewed tofu — as many Chinese people do — as an inferior food. “It’s a cheap, common food in China,” she reflects, “not as refined or exalted in tradition as it is in Japan, where tofu, brought over by monks, first entered as a temple delicacy for the samurai class.” That all turned around for her the more she dove into the culture — including her internship with a tofu master.

I swooped in on one of the humbler recipes because Che wrote in her headnote that she makes it probably three or four times a week. “The easiest way to cook tofu,” she writes in the headnote, “is to quickly blanch it, then season with salt and sesame oil and fold in a handful of finely chopped scallions or fresh herbs.” It’s a preparation known as liangban. This was very good as written, and I’ll definitely be riffing on it for years to come.

RECIPE: Hannah Che’s Fragrant Dressed Tofu

Still Wanna Make

So many dishes! Blanched Sweet Potato Greens (which Che says are available in many Asian supermarkets, though I’ve never noticed them) with Crispy Shallots. Stir-Fried Diced Choy Sum and Tofu. Stir-Fried Water Spinach with Fermented Tofu (Che calls fermented tofu “the vegan chef’s secret ingredient”). Slivered Celtuce with Sesame Oil. Stir-Fried Garlic Chives with Pressed Tofu. Clay Pot-Braised Eggplant with Basil. Stir-Fried Potato Threads with Fragrant Chiles. Soft Tofu with Black Bean Sauce. Steamed Tofu Skin with Ginger, Black Beans & Frizzled Scallions. Braised Tofu Skins in Chili Bean Sauce.

So much tofu, so little time, right?!

Oh, more more thing. Only after I my last spate of cooking from the book did I realize that many of the dishes are served room temperature or cold — which means that not only are the great for do-ahead entertaining, but also that they’re great for summer picnics and potlucks. Just in the nick of time!

Go ahead and take the recipes for a spin. If you like them as much as I do, treat yourself to the book. I think you’ll be glad you did.

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Cookbooks We Love: ‘The Woks of Life’ brims with outstanding Chinese and Chinese American recipes

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By Leslie Brenner

The Woks of Life: Recipes to Know and Love from a Chinese American Family by Bill, Judy, Sarah and Kaitlin Leung, Clarkson Potter, $35

“The best dumplings I’ve ever had.” That’s how my son Wylie described the Pork, Mushroom and Cabbage dumplings from The Woks of Life — the debut cookbook from the Leung family behind the website of the same name. I’d made the dumplings last month and frozen most of a batch, anticipating he’d enjoy them when he visited from Southern California for the holidays.

That’s right — Wylie lives in California, which means he has access to the best Chinese restaurant scenes in the U.S., and one of the best outside of China. He loves dumplings, and eats a lot of them. That his favorite so far came from The Woks of Life is a meaningful endorsement.

Want great Chinese food? You don’t have to live on the West Coast or restaurant-rich New York to get it. Whether it’s Chinese American restaurant classics you’re after, home-style Cantonese or Shanghainese dishes or many other regional styles, you can make it at home. The Woks of Life is a great guide: fun, approachable, relatable and highly user-friendly.

Backgrounder

In 2013, the Leungs — a Chinese American family living in New Jersey — created their blog to document their family history through recipes. It grew an impressive following and evolved into the preeminent United States-based Chinese cooking site. We spotlighted The Woks of Life in a story two years ago, then featured the eldest Leung daughter, Sarah, on our first Makers, Shakers & Mavens live video event. After we finished the live event, Sarah told me she and her family were working on a cookbook, and I waited eagerly for it for nearly two years; it was published in early November, quickly became a best-seller and garnered a ton of press. The New York Times, Bon Appétit and the San Francisco Chronicle all wrote wonderful stories about it.

Why we love it

The book distills the winning personality of the site into a tangible, approachable, delightful and eminently useful volume. A good part of the fun is getting to know the family: Judy, a native of Shanghai; Bill, a Chinese-American whose parents owned a Chinese restaurant in New Jersey called Sun Hing; and daughters Sarah and Kaitlin, who bring contemporary sensibility, curiosity and enthusiasm to the family’s life-project.

I particularly enjoyed an essay by Bill depicting “The Friday Night Rush at Sun Hing,” which segues into a recipe for Beef and Broccoli — one of the “Special House Dishes” on the Sun Hing menu reproduced in the essay.

Organized by type of dish (dim sum; starters; noodles; rice; poultry & eggs; pork, beef & lamb; etc.), the book is an enticing mix of those Chinese-American restaurant dishes I’m constantly craving, plus regional Chinese specialties and Chinese home cooking as practiced by the Leungs.

Throughout the book, there’s plenty of helpful hand-holding, including things like the Leungs’ preferred brand of light soy sauce (Pearl River Bridge) and how to prevent food from sticking to your wok (before adding oil, heat it till it just starts to smoke).

Mastering technique

I also like the fact that when a video is most useful, QR codes lead you to instructions on the website — such as “How to Fold a Chinese Dumpling (4 Techniques!).” I doubt I could have achieved all those pleats without watching.

So, yes, back to those dumplings!

The filling is easy to achieve: Vigorously stir together ground pork and seasonings, then stir in dried shiitakes that you’ve rehydrated, chopped and stir-fried, plus chopped napa cabbage (which you’ve salted, rested and squeezed).

Put a spoonful of the filling in the center of a round, Shanghai-style dumpling wrapper, moisten the edges, fold it in half and make pleats as you seal it at the top. But even if you seal them simply without pleating, they’re delicious. The book gives directions on how to steam, boil or pan-fry them; our adaptation calls for steaming.

The recipe makes about 6 dozen dumplings, which (again) freeze very well; pack and stash in the freezer before they’re cooked. Steam and enjoy some right away; freeze the rest for another day. Ten or 11 minutes takes them straight from frozen to hot, tender and enticing.

Assembling the dumplings is a great cold-weather project — one that’s perfect for Lunar New Year, which will be here before you know it. (The year of the rabbit begins on Sunday, January 22.) Traditional for the holiday, dumplings represent wealth, as they’re shaped like Chinese silver or gold ingots. Making them at home is also said to be good for chopping away bad luck.

Next time I make them, I’ll try fashioning homemade wrappers. Complete instructions are included in the book, but basically it’s 1 1/3 cups of tepid water slowly stirred into 4 cups of all-purpose flour, kneaded about 10 minutes until it’s smooth, rested 1 hour, then rolled into 18-gram rounds. (If you’re that level of cooking geek, you’ll surely want to purchase the book.) Not quite there yet? Making these dumplings — or one of the recipes that follows — may well hook you.

An easy, healthy, delicious stir-fry

Looking for something much simpler to achieve? This quick stir-fry has been in the Leung family’s rotation for as long as they can remember, according to the headnote in the book, so I had to try it. For me there was a bonus: I love pickled mustard greens; I’m always picking up plastic containers of it when I go to Chinese supermarkets. I never know what to do with it, so I usually wind up just eating it straight out of the container. This dish makes great use of them.

The stir-fry starts with frozen edamame — another fine thing to keep in your freezer. Stir-fry it for two or three minutes, then stir-fry ginger, chiles, pickled mustard greens, garlic and cubes of pressed tofu, add back in the edamame and a quickly stirred-together seasoning sauce. Done! Heathy! Delicious!

Another Leung family favorite: Cantonese Steamed Fish

“No fish preparation has played a bigger role on our dinner table than Cantonese steamed fish,” writes Bill Leung in the book’s headnote for this recipe. The flavor profile is a classic Cantonese combo of ginger, scallions, cilantro and soy sauce. It’s one I’ve been improvising my entire cooking life; the Leung’s recipe finally gave me the right technique: sizzling the ginger, scallion and herbs in hot oil and pouring it over the fish only after it has been steamed. It also gave me the idea of using branzino, which means I can find it — along with all the other ingredients — in my neighborhood supermarket.

Oh, and whole steamed fish is also traditional for lunar new year –– new year’s eve in particular.

You’ve gotta try this

My favorite recipe in The Woks of Life cookbook (so far!) is what I reach for when I’m craving American Chinese restaurant comfort food: Shrimp in Lobster Sauce. To achieve it, start by blanching ground pork, then rinsing it; that gives depth and texture to the sauce you’ll build on it, but keeps it clean. Stir-fry that with shrimp and garlic, add Shaoxing wine, then chicken broth, peas and seasonings. Simmer, add a cornstarch slurry to thicken, then add, without mixing it in just yet, beaten egg and chopped scallions. Let the egg set briefly on top, then quickly fold in the egg so it forms ribbons in the dish rather than dissipating.

The dish — one of our favorites made from cookbooks last year — is delightful and rewarding. The book recommends serving it with pork fried rice, a dreamy combo to be sure (you could make this fabulous and simpler Yangzhou Fried Rice if you don’t want to go to the effort of making char siu pork). Steamed white rice is lovely as well; I happen to also love the dish with plain old steamed brown rice — a dear, old friend I’ll be spending quality time with as I try to eat as healthy as possible this month.

RECIPE: Woks of Life Shrimp in Lobster Sauce

Still wanna make

So many things! Starting with Garlic Chive and Shrimp Dumplings. I’ve spent some time on this classic har gow variation before; it requires a challenging handmade wrapper made from tapioca starch. I’m hoping The Woks of Life’s hand-holding will make me a champ. Also Classic Scallion Pancakes, Chili Oil Wontons, Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup, Shanghai Cold Noodles, Special Golden Fried Rice (where the grains are coated in egg yolk before cooking), Chinese Crispy Salted Duck, Beef and Broccoli, Shanghai Street-Stall Wonton Soup, Hot & Sour Soup.

Yep, it’s a keeper

The Woks of Life has already found a permanent spot on the Chinese essentials area of my shelf. Congratulations to the Leung family on a fabulous achievement, and thank you for giving us lovers of Chinese American cooking such a valuable and delightful volume!

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Cookbooks We Love: Exploring Chinese cooking? ‘Every Grain of Rice’ is the first book you should buy

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‘Every Grain of Rice’ by Fuchsia Dunlop

Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking, by Fuchsia Dunlop, photographs by Chris Terry, 2012, W.W. Norton & Co., $35.

Backgrounder: If you think a British woman shouldn’t be writing Chinese cookbooks, you haven’t read — or cooked from — Fuchsia Dunlop’s books. Dunlop was the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Central China; she’s fluent in Mandarin and has traveled, eaten and cooked all over China. Cambridge-educated, she has been called the best writer in the West on Chinese food. “The recipes in this book are a tribute to China’s rich tradition of frugal, healthy and delicious home cooking,” Dunlop writes in the introduction. “They include meat, poultry and fish dishes, but this is primarily a book about how to make vegetables taste divine with very little expense or effort, and how to make a little meat go a long way.”

Why we love it: Dunlop has a fabulous palate, and though the recipes in this book are generally simple — it is, after all, about home cooking — everything I’ve cooked from it has been nuanced and gorgeous-flavored, as well as beautiful to behold. Hers is a finely tuned and delicious aesthetic that runs through all her books, and her recipes work magnificently.

When you cook with Dunlop, she holds your hand in the nicest way, and you wind up learning a whole lot about technique without even realizing you’re being taught. Dunlop makes it feel easy and natural.

Yangzhou Fried Rice.jpg

Her Yangzhou Fried Rice is a great example. It includes pork fillet, ham, cooked chicken, shrimp, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, scallions, egg and peas, but she gives you permission to change it up according to what you have; “the key is to have a tempting selection of colors and tastes amid the rice.” You can make it a meal on its own, or serve it as part of a special meal, such as a Chinese New Year’s celebration.

Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce, prepared from a recipe in ‘Every Grain of Rice’ by Fuchsia Dunlop

Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce, prepared from a recipe in ‘Every Grain of Rice’ by Fuchsia Dunlop

Simple yet elegant: One example of a simple dish that’s way more impressive than you’d imagine is Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce (Xiao Cong Ban Dou Fu). It couldn’t be more basic: It’s just sliced scallions scattered over silken tofu with hot oil poured over to make the scallions sizzle, quickly followed by soy sauce and sesame oil. The result is stunning.

Other simple recipes I’ve loved are Bok Choy with Fresh Shiitake and Chinese Broccoli in Ginger Sauce.

Pa Pa Cai — Tender Boiled Vegetables with a Spicy Dip

Pa Pa Cai — Tender Boiled Vegetables with a Spicy Dip

You also can get a keen sense, with many of the recipes, of what it’s like to eat like a regular person in a Chinese home, so if you’re interested in understanding the culture, this book is a treasure. One recipe that really did that for me was Tender Boiled Vegetables with a Spicy Dip — Pa Pa Cai in Chinese. In her headnote, Dunlop writes that it’s a “staple of the rural Sichuanese supper table” that she likes to make after “a day or two of eating rich food.”

It’s so plain, I’m going to skip giving you a formal recipe; it’s just boiled vegetables (without even salt added) set out, with some of the cooking liquid, in a serving bowl. On the table are small bowls of ground chiles, ground roasted Sichuan pepper, finely sliced scallion greens and toasted sesame seeds. Everyone serves themselves some of the vegetables, an in a separate small bowl mixes the condiments to their own taste, adding in a bit of the cooking liquid, as a dipping sauce.

You’ve gotta try this: Dunlop calls her Cold Chicken with a Spicy Sichuanese Sauce “one of the most marvellous of all Sichuanese culinary ideas.” I call the dish Fuchsia Dunlop’s Spicy Sichuanese Chicken Salad. It’s basically slivered cold poached or leftover chicken dressed with scallions, sesame seeds and a sauce of soy, Chinkiang vinegar, chile oil, Sichuan pepper and sesame oil. It’s so good.

Fuchsia Dunlop’s Spicy Sichuanese Chicken Salad

Still wanna cook: Oh, so many things. Silken Tofu with Pickled Mustard Greens. Sour-and-Hot Mushroom Soup. Stir-Fried Chopped Choy Sum. Sichuanese Wontons in Chilli Oil Sauce. Steamed Sea Bass with Ginger and Spring Onion. That last one would be just the thing for a Chinese New Year celebration.

I also love Dunlop’s Land of Fish and Rice. But if I could have only one Chinese cookbook in my library, it would be this one.

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Chinese-American culinary culture finds delicious, multi-generational expression at The Woks of Life

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Woks of Life cover.png

By Leslie Brenner

[Updated Dec. 27, 2022.]

I was shopping at our local 99 Ranch Market last week with my son’s girlfriend, Nathalie, and somewhere in the giant freezer case, arrayed attractively next to the frozen fish balls, Nathalie spotted frozen tofu.

“Frozen tofu?” she wondered.

Not something I was familiar with! Frozen tofu? Why would tofu be sold frozen? Was frozen tofu a thing? Item no. 4,727 of things to look into!

The answer to the question floated — unbidden — into my email inbox on Tuesday. Subject line: “How to Make Frozen Tofu (and Why You Should!).”

Sender: The Woks of Life.

In case you’re not familiar with the 8-year-old website run by the delightful Leung family, it is a wealth of rich information, culinary inspiration, first-rate recipes and wonderful stories about Chinese and Chinese-American cooking and culture. Want to know how to buy a wok, season it, wash it or easily prevent food from sticking to it? Dive into its Complete Wok Guide. Wondering about the difference between light soy sauce and dark? Check its guide to Chinese Sauces, Wines, Vinegars and Oils. Need to know the difference between gai lan and choy sum? Check its compendium of Chinese vegetables.

All four members of the New Jersey-based family — Bill (father/husband), Judy (mother/wife), Sarah (elder daughter) and Kaitlin (younger daughter) — contribute recipes and stories. Sarah, a 30-year-old Vassar graduate, founded the site in 2013, with the support of her parents and sister.

The Leung family behind The Woks of Life (from left): Bill, Judy, Kaitlin and Sarah / Photo by Sarah Yeoman, courtesy of The Woks of Life

The Leung family behind The Woks of Life (from left): Bill, Judy, Kaitlin and Sarah / Photo by Sarah Yeoman, courtesy of The Woks of Life

“We began to get the idea for The Woks of Life, when my family — once together every night for dinner while we were growing up — found ourselves living across two time zones,” Sarah says. That was in 2011, when her father Bill (born and raised in upstate New York to immigrant Cantonese parents) and mother Judy (a native of Shanghai who immigrated to the U.S. when she was 16), were relocated to Beijing for work. (They have since moved back to New Jersey.)

“We realized that though we, the younger generation, loved to cook, we didn’t know how to make many of the traditional Chinese dishes my parents had made for us growing up,” Sarah explains.

Two years later, when Kaitlin was in college at the University of Pennsylvania and Sarah, who had recently graduated from Vassar in Media Studies, was dividing her time between New Jersey and Beijing, the site was launched. Says Sarah: “The blog became the place to record those recipes for ourselves, and — as it turns out — many others who also didn’t know how to make their childhood favorites.”

Part of The Woks of Life’s charm is that it’s so personal. Bill, who cooked in his youth at his family’s Chinese restaurant where his father was chef, recently shared a photo of his 101-year-old grandmother putting up preserves in a story about making pickled mustard greens (haam choy). Kaitlin might write about making home-made chili oil, the hot condiment of the moment. Sarah not only writes stories and recipes, but handles the business side and makes the beautiful photos. Judy, who’s fluent in three Chinese dialects, in addition to English, might send an email, seemingly out of the blue, about frozen tofu — linking to a story from which you’ll learn that freezing changes its texture, making it hold up better in soups and hot pots.

I’ve cooked quite a few of the recipes on the site, always with very good results. Some are Cantonese or Sichuanese as might be cooked in China, while others are Chinese-American, reflective of the rich and Chinese-American restaurant culture Bill grew up in. I love that there’s a section of “Chinese Take-Out” recipes.

Egg Drop Soup is a good example. It’s something you can whip up on short notice with few ingredients on hand. I tried the version in The Woks of Life Top 25 Recipes e-cookbook you get when you sign up for their newsletter; I skipped the optional yellow food coloring — a nod to Chinese-American popular restaurant culture. The version on the website calls instead for turmeric, which sounds like a better idea. Both teach a useful mini-lesson: Decent (or better, home-made) chicken broth, a pinch of white pepper and a splash of sesame oil equals a legit-tasting Chinese soup base.

Turnip Cake lede.jpg

My favorite recipe so far is The Woks of Life’s Turnip Cake — Lo Bak Go. The steamed-then-usually-pan-fried treat, a dim-sum favorite, is made not with turnip, but with lo bak — which Bill, though unsure, believes is the same as daikon. (All the other recipes I’ve seen call for daikon.) I’d looked far and wide for a workable recipe, and even tried (in despearation!) developing my own, before finding this one, which is superb. We have adapted it with very slight changes, most notably cooking the filling ingredients a bit less than the original calls for.

Bill writes that most Chinese restaurants “skimp on the filling ingredients,” namely shiitakes, Chinese sausage and dried shrimp, as well as the lo bak. “Most of what you get is rice flour and starch.” He’s right. We love the fact that you can now make one at home that’s even better than what we get in our favorite local dim-sum place.

The dish is traditional for Lunar New Year, as the word for daikon is a homophone for "good fortune" in the Hokkien language spoken in Fujian province — so keep it in mind for the holiday next month.

Stir-fried bok choy, prepared from a recipe from The Woks of Life

I also tried The Woks of Life’s Basic Stir-Fried Bok Choy Recipe, which turned out very well. I skipped the optional MSG; next time I’ll add a little more salt and stir-fry a minute or two longer. It’s definitely super-useful as a basic blueprint for stir-frying bok choy and similar greens.

Char siu, prepared from a recipe in The Woks of Life Top 25 Recipes

I love the fact that Bill first encountered char siu — Chinese barbecue pork — at the Catskills Holiday Inn where his father was chef when he was a kid. His recipe is one of the best I’ve found — mostly because the marinade (Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, hoisin, molasses and spices) is so good. Also because Bill has you roast the marinated pork shoulder slabs on a rack in a roasting pan with water under the rack, to make clean-up easier. (That marinade would otherwise drip down and burn, as I can attest having tried other recipes that don’t suggest the water trick.) Min char siu (pictured above) doesn’t look as rosy-red as what you find in most American Chinese restaurants, because I skipped the red food coloring.

Juliet, our Cooks Without Borders designer and partner, has cooked The Woks of Life Stir-Fried Mustard Greens and Pork Larb, and loved both. (Yes, there are also recipes from other Asian countries besides China on the site.)

Juliet and I have both bookmarked The Woks of Life, and plan to continue visiting it — and cooking from it — often.

In the meantime, we’re excited to announce that in preparation for Lunar New Year, which will usher in The Year of the Ox beginning February 12, we’ll be featuring Sarah Leung in a live video Q&A on Thursday, January 28 from 5 to 6 p.m. Central Time. Registration for the event is available to Cooks Without Borders Premium Members.

We’ll also be spotlighting Chinese cooking this month. If that sounds enticing, bookmark Cooks Without Borders Latest Stories and sign up for our free newsletter (if you haven’t already, to receive our stories and recipes directly to your inbox). And watch this space!

Did you enjoy this story? Read about who we are and what we do.

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Cookbooks We Love: Shanghai and its Jiangnan region shine in 'Land of Fish and Rice'

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Land of Fish and Rice: Recipes from the Culinary Heart of China, by Fuchsia Dunlop, photographs by Yuki Sugiura, 2016, W.W. Norton & Company, $35

Backgrounder: The British, Cambridge-educated cookbook author Fuchsia Dunlop was the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Central China; she has four James Beard Awards. Land of Fish and Rice — which won the Andre Simon Food Book of the Year Award — is her fifth book; in 2019 she published a sixth, The Food of Sichuan. Land of Fish and Rice explores China’s Lower Yangtze (Jiangnan) region, of which Shanghai is the gateway. It’s a region “known for delicacy and balance,” Dunlop writes in the introduction. This is the book we look in first when we happen upon beautiful bunches of tong hao – chrysanthemum leaves – or giant bunches of flowering chives in a Chinese supermarket and wonder how to show them to their best advantage.

Why We Love It: There’s an easy elegance to Dunlop’s writing and cooking, an aesthetic we find super-appealing; Yuki Sugiura’s lovely photos capture it all perfectly. We happen to love the quiet charms of the cooking of Shanghai and the Jiangnan region, and Dunlop is a trustworthy guide who tells engaging stories of her experiences in the region along the way. Her recipes are easy to follow, they work, they showcase great ingredients and Dunlop has a wonderful way of teaching a bit of useful technique in each recipe. Cook a few, and you can’t help but feel you’re just that much farther along in learning. And you’ll certainly have eaten very well.

Slivered Pork with Flowering Chives from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Fish and Rice

Slivered Pork with Flowering Chives from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Fish and Rice

You’ve Gotta Try This: Dunlop’s recipe for Slivered Pork with Flowering Chives is simple and homey, somehow almost poetic. It uses very little meat — just four ounces. After prepping, which is minimal, it comes together in about five minutes; with rice it’s perfect for a light, laid-back supper.

Stir-Fried Shrimp with Dragon Well Tea is the thing to make when you find yourself with fabulous fresh shrimp. You cloak them very lightly in a mixture of potato starch, water and Shaoxing wine, then pre-fry them at a not-sizzling-hot temperature so they come out tender and silky, and then they’re cooked briefly with the tea and its leaves. Though the particular tea, Dragon Well (Long Jing), is one of the most prized in China, you can actually purchase it easily from from my favorite tea outfit, Upton Tea Imports. But any Chinese green tea will do.

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Looking for cocktail nibbles? If you love radishes as much as we do, you’ll enjoy these sweet-and-sour babies — which get smashed and salted as if they were cucumbers, then bathed in Chinkiang vinegar with a little superfine sugar and sesame oil. They are delightful with cocktails.

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Still wanna cook: So many things! Clear-simmered lion’s head meatballs. Hangzhou spiced soy-sauce duck. Scalded tofu slivers — an essential dish of the Yangzhou tea breakfast — with dried shrimp, ginger and Sichuan preserved vegetable. Shanghai fried rice with salt pork and green bok choy. Yangzhou slivered radish buns, plump with pork belly and spring onions.

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Social perk: Dunlop’s Instagram feed — @fuchsiadunlop — mixes Eastern and Western bites. It’s one of our faves.

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Treat yourself: This Chinese-style lacquered roast chicken will add outsized joy to your life

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If you can get a chicken, you can make this smashing dish.

If you can get a chicken, you can make this smashing dish.

We all need something delicious in our lives right now, and the ingredients to make many of our fall-back comfort foods have become, all of a sudden, unattainable. Depending on where you live and how you shop, it may be difficult or impossible to find pasta, eggs, dried beans and flour, for instance. Flour’s elusiveness is particularly annoying, as it stymies bread-baking, cookie making and cake creation.

Where I live, in Dallas, Texas, eggs are hard to come by, but we can get chickens — something my brother in L.A. failed to turn up in his extensive hunt yesterday.

If you live somewhere where you can put your hands on a bird — and you possess (or can get) a little soy sauce and honey — you can, with very little effort, make one of my favorite dishes ever: Chinese-style lacquered roast chicken. (Substitute tamari for the soy sauce, and it’s gluten-free!)

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It comes from Peter Meehan’s 2015 cookbook Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes. Though it requires preparation 12 to 48 hours in advance, that preparation is super quick and easy, requiring only about 15 minutes of active prep: Combine soy sauce and honey, paint the bird with it, wait 15 minutes, paint again, sprinkle salt on, and tuck into the fridge. After 12 hours, or two days later, pop it in the oven to roast, hands-free — no basting or turning over the chicken (no need to flip the bird!).

Serve it with a stir-fried or steamed vegetable; fortunately things like broccoli, asparagus and baby bok choy have not been difficult to obtain. I love this recipe (also adapted from the Lucky Peach book) for stir-fried baby bok choy with whole garlic — and garlic, as we know, is great for boosting our immune systems. The book calls for a choice of baby or regular bok choy — or spinach (Meehan specifies regular, not baby spinach) or pea greens.

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Ideally, you’d also want to serve the glorious chicken and beautiful veg with rice. I did manage to snag a bag of jasmine rice at the online supermarket this morning (I’d been seeking it for a week); otherwise it seems to be all manner of brown rice crowding the real and virtual shelves. With this chicken, and this bok choy, brown rice sounds positively dreamy.

We at Cooks Without Borders and your fellow cooks would love to hear from you in a comment — if you try one of these two dishes, how’d you like them? Any issues? Were you able to find appropriate ingredients?

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Wow your friends with Chinese lacquered duck (or chicken!) to celebrate Lunar New Year

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Lunar New Year celebrations will begin on Saturday, January 25 and continue for 15 days until the Spring Lantern Festival on February 8. If we know you as well as we think we know you, you’ll be looking for some spectacular Chinese dishes that’ll wow your friends and family.

This weekend, the gorgeous lacquered duck pictured here can be yours — and remarkably easily, believe it or not. Though a couple days of preparation are required, there’s very little work involved — basically you just slap a marinade/glaze on the bird, stick it in the fridge, forget about it till the next day, brush on more marinade, then pop it in the oven the next evening.

In other words, bird alert: If you want the amazing lacquered duck on Saturday night, you’ll need to start preparing it on Thursday. We’re telling you now, so you can run out and buy your bird in swift order. In our neck of the woods, ducks disappear out of supermarkets like Whole Foods and Central Market after Western new year, but you can always pick up beautiful ducks (and for a lot less money) at Asian supermarkets.

Here — take a look at the recipe so you can swing by the market later. There are only four ingredients (duck, salt, soy sauce and honey), and you probably already have three in your pantry!

This spectacular lacquered duck can be yours!

This spectacular lacquered duck can be yours!

Or center your Lunar New Year kickoff dinner around a lacquered chicken. Same drill, but the chicken can be achieved in as little as 12 hours advance notice. And oh, baby — it is outstanding as well.

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We are working on some new recipes that would be perfect to serve with either, and hope to get them posted in the next day or two. In the meantime, you’ll find some tasty accompaniments like baby bok choy with whole garlic and two versions of fried rice in our Chinese cooking section.

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Happy Chinese New Year! These 8 recipes will help you celebrate deliciously

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For me, Chinese New Year started early this year – figuratively, at least. All I can think about is Chinese food: dim sum and fried rice and garlicky, gingery greens and succulent, crackly-skinned roast pork. 

Maybe you're headed out for dim sum to celebrate the Year of the Rooster this weekend (or the next one or two – the New Years celebration runs through February 15). If you're an aficionado, you need no help ordering. But if you're a newcomer to dim sum, check out this handy new guide to enjoying dim sum I just put together – including a video. 

But what about dinner? I'll bet you'd love to cook!

Ever wanted to learn to make fried rice? Cook it once or twice, and you'll be amazed at how easy it is to make one that's blow-them-away delicious – better, even, than what you can get in many Chinese restaurants. Seriously.

Last spring I put two popular fried rice recipes to the test:

Lucky Peach's Chinese Sausage Fried Rice

Mission Chinese Food Salt-Cod Fried Rice

The first, as you'll see from Round 1 and Round 2 of the Fried Rice Smackdown is super easy, and the second – while no more technically difficult – requires a lot of advance prep. They're both gobsmackingly wonderful. 

As it turned out, I feel in love with the Lucky Peach cookbook. Linked in my three-wonton review are adaptations of several of the recipes: 

Lucky Peach's Chineasy Cucumber Salad

Author Peter Meehan wasn't kidding when he named this one, which is so simple that Wylie (who was 19 at the time) started making it every few nights. As Wylie is allergic to peanuts, he leaves them out, and also makes it a little spicier, upping the chile flakes. The recipe is infinitely adjustable and tweakable.

For another great starter, consider wontons.

I know, right? These shrimp-and-chive wontons from the Lucky Peach book (the book calls them dumplings) are actually pretty easy to make – and they're pretty spectacular. You could drop them into soup, or serve them with a simple dipping sauce. These, I promise, will wow your friends:

Shrimp and Chive Wontons

LUCKY PEACH'S STIR-FRIED ASPARAGUS

Coming into asparagus season (I'm guessing it has probably already arrived in Southern California), this quick and delicious version is a good one to keep handy.

One of the recipes has become my go-to dish when I want an easy, super-quick and stress-free way to stir-fry greens, even on a rushed weeknight:

Baby Bok Choy with Whole Garlic

If you don't try any of the others, do make this one – I think you'll love it.

Of course it's not only vegetables. There's the unforgettable Chinese lacquered roast chicken, which I came to think of as the Chicken that Changed My Life.

Lucky Peach Chinese Lacquered Roast Chicken

Well, after that, one thing led to another. My friend Michalene planted the idea – which I couldn't get out of my head – that this treatment could possibly make a killer duck. Boy, was she ever right. After some months of developing the recipe, I nailed it:

Glorious Chinese Lacquered Roast Duck

So there you have 'em – 8 super Chinese recipes. Do let us know, in a comment, how you like them. Happy Year of the Rooster! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Ta-dah! This glorious roast lacquered duck is a game-changer for duck-lovers

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Ten months ago, a recipe for Chinese lacquered roast chicken from Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes changed my life. It's brilliant and simple, and because it changed my life, I thought that was the end of that, recipe-development-wise. But the first time I wrote about it, my friend Michalene said, provocatively, "Have you tried it on a duck?"

I couldn't wait to give it a go. Unfortunately, it flopped: The duck's skin burned before the meat was cooked enough.

A mission was launched. I felt this duck could work, and I would find a way to make it work – even if I had to roast a hundred ducks. 

The very next try I got incredibly lucky – hitting the timing and temperature exactly right. What I got is what you see here: a gorgeous, shining, crisp-skinned duck whose meat was perfectly seasoned, wonderfully tender and incredibly succulent and flavorful. I couldn't believe something that insanely delicious was that easy to achieve. I made some Chinese steamed buns to go with it, and served it with cilantro, sliced scallions and hoisin sauce from a jar. But the duck needed no accouterments – it was incredible on its own.

Carving this gorgeous duck was almost as fun as eating it.

Carving this gorgeous duck was almost as fun as eating it.

You don't have to give it an Asian spin, though. The duck works beautifully as the centerpiece of a festive European- or American-style feast, surrounded by things like roast potatoes or sweet potato gratin and Brussels sprouts or braised Tuscan kale. 

Here's how easy the killer duck is to achieve.  It takes some time – two days – but very little effort.

Two days before you're going to serve it, you paint the bird with a glaze made from half-honey and half-soy sauce, and scatter salt on it. Slide it (uncovered) on a pan in the fridge. Next day, paint the bird all over again with the leftover glaze, and let it sit uncovered in the fridge overnight again. Next day, roast the bird at 450 for ten minutes, turn the temp down to 325 and let the bird roast for two hours. 

That's it. No flipping the bird or basted or fussing about it in any way. No need to make a sauce to go with it – it's that delicious. It's the perfect dreamy dinner for two or three people.

But here come the holidays, I thought. Wouldn't it be great to make two ducks and make them star of a dinner for four two six? So I invited a couple of friends over, and made glazed two ducks. Into the oven they went, and when my friends arrived, the house was filled with their enchanting aroma.

An hour later, after nibbles and drinks and general optimistic glee, we took our seats at the table. But these two ducks were not as wonderful: Set just next to each other on their rack set in a sheet pan, they crowded each other, preventing even browning. One side of each bird was a wee bit flabby, and I had to turn them and leave them in the oven longer, monkeying with the temperature to brown them properly.

Back to the store I went, seeking more ducks. 

Fresh ducks have a funny way of showing up in stores at exactly the moment I'm not planning on making one. It's just like the hair-dryer in the hotel rule. If you pack a hair dryer, you'll find one in your hotel room when you check in. If you don't pack one, you won't find one.

Serve the lacquered ducks with roasted Brussels sprouts and potatoes or sweet potatoes, and you've got an American-style holiday feast.

Serve the lacquered ducks with roasted Brussels sprouts and potatoes or sweet potatoes, and you've got an American-style holiday feast.

So, with two more friends invited for Saturday night duck dinner, on Wednesday I headed to the Whole Foods Market where I'd recently seen those gorgeous fresh ducks – at a much lower price than the last place I picked up a couple. (They set me back a whopping $45 each at Central Market; at Whole Foods they wanted $30-something each for 4 1/2 to 5 pound ducks.) When I arrived at Whole Foods this time, alas, there were no ducks to be had. I almost called another Whole Foods, when I thought better of it, deciding instead to head to the giant Asian supermarket, Super H-Mart, that's only a 10-minute longer drive from home. 

I thought I'd find fresh ducks at Super H-Mart, but I only found frozen ones. That was the bad news. The great news: The nice-looking Long Island ducks were only $16.50 apiece. Fortunately, they defrosted quickly enough for me to glaze them on Thursday. 

This time I solved the even-browning problem: I set them as far apart on the sheet pan as I could before roasting them. I thought I'd have to rotate the birds halfway through roasting for even browning, but those ducks continued to brown evenly as I looked in in them now and then. The space between them did the trick. Oh, man, they looked good – and they were!

This time I served them more Euro- or American-style: We started dinner with a baby kale and sweet-potato salad, then had the duck with roast potatoes and roasted Brussels sprouts with pancetta. It was a super-easy dinner to put together, as I literally never turned on the stove. (I'm lucky enough to have two ovens, though you could always make the potatoes ahead of time and reheat them and roast the Brussels sprouts while the duck is resting.) 

I'll let you go now. I know you'll want to run off and procure a duck or two. 

Here's the recipe:

Be sure to let us know how you love it! And happy holidays from Cooks Without Borders.

 

 

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Fried rice SMACKDOWN! Lucky Peach vs. Mission Chinese Food - Round Two (Mission Chinese Food)

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After gorging myself on the superb Chinese Sausage Fried Rice from Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes, I rolled up my sleeves the very next evening, put on my apron and pulled out the wok. Time for round two of the smackdown! 

First I made rice – Danny Bowien rejects using day-old rice as an old wive's tale. "How could old rice be better?!" he writes. "Come on. Use fresh warm rice, not a hard puck of cold rice." His recipe calls for 3 cups of rice, "from about 1 1/2 cups raw." Well, 1 1/2 cups raw yielded more than 5 cups; 1 1/4 cups yields more than 3 cups. Just to let you know in case you don't want to waste rice.

Then the prep: I sliced Chinese sausage, iceberg lettuce and scallions (no need to separate the whites and greens on this one), scrambled eggs and chopped cilantro. No need to mince garlic or ginger for this one, which is a plus.  

The salt cod had already been fried (though I neglected to give it a whirr in the food processor – no matter, the pieces were pretty small) and the mackerel confit drained.

Then I made what Bowien calls a rice stack: The rice goes in a bowl with the fried salt cod on top of it and the sausage on top of that. "You want the ingredients to hit the wok in reverse order," he explains, "sausage, fish, rice  – and the stack facilitates this."

Then, in a bowl big enough to toss the whole dish after the rice cooks, I combined the lettuce, cilantro and scallions. 

Then it was showtime! Blazing heat went under the wok and a few "heathy glugs" of oil went in. When it was nearly smoking, I pulled the wok off heat and scrambled the egg together with the mackerel very quickly, just 10 seconds or so and dumping them on a plate. Back on the heat went the wok with a little more oil and in went the rice stack. Bowien's description of how to fry it is clear and easy to follow: "Gently break up the stack and use the spatula to press the rice against the bottom and sides of the hot wok. Wait 10 seconds, then flip and stir the rice. Flatten and press again, and wait 10 seconds. Flip and flatten a last time." 

At that point you season the rice with salt, sugar and fish sauce, give it a stir, add the eggs and mackerel, stir again. Then scoop everything out of the wok and into the big bowl, where it gets tossed with the lettuce, cilantro and scallions. 

Masterpiece finished! 

For the second evening in a row, I was bowled over: This was stupendous.

Honestly, I can hardly believe that a civilian (me!) can make fried rice this good. The previous night, my friend Carol, a self-described rice fanantic who happens to be Italian, had come over to share the Lucky Peach rice with me. But now, with Thierry away in France, I found myself alone with an entire batch of Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice. I'm embarrassed to tell you how much of it I ate all by myself.

OK, Let's just say most of it. Here is the recipe:

So, how do the two fried rices stack up?

Judging the smackdown

Deliciousness: The Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice was more luscious than the Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice, with bits of crunchy fish adding textural interest and serious umami; the Lucky Peach rice was a little drier, more like the classic good-bad Chinese food pork fried rice (PFR) I so fondly remember from childhood (down to the frozen peas), but with Chinese sausage in place of barbecue pork. Both had plenty of fluffy, moist egg. Of course the Mission Chinese entry involved Chinese sausage too, and even more of it; that one was more chock-a-block full of stuff – a bit more egg, plus the two kinds of fish. Both were truly delicious; both were perfectly seasoned. Minced garlic and ginger brought tasty dimension to the Lucky Peach rice, but I didn't miss them in the Mission Chinese Food rice, with all that fish-umami happening, plus the cilantro. The Mission Chinese Food fried rice was maybe just a little more strikingly fabulous. But I would happily eat a giant bowl of either one any day of the week. 

Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice Deliciousness: 10/10

Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice Deliciousness: 9/10

Ease of preparation: No question, the Lucky Peach recipe was much simpler to prepare. Other than cooking the rice in advance, everything was prepped and cooked in about 20 minutes. The Mission Chinese Food recipe was extremely involved, thanks to soaking/water changing then frying and food processing the salt cod, and making the mackerel confit. While I loved eating the mackerel confit on its own (and will definitely make it again), it got a little lost in the rice. Did it add much to the whole? Hard to say. Neither recipe needed significant tweaking (the only issue in either was how much raw rice yields 3 cups cooked in the Mission Chinese recipe, which is really minor); both were clearly explained and very easy to follow – even with the hot wok going. 

Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice Ease of Preparation: 6/10

Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice Ease of Preparation: 9/10

All-around awesomeness and wow factor: Both rate very highly. A steaming bowl of hot fried rice with fluffy egg and chewy, smoky Chinese sausage, excellent texture and flavor that you made yourself in your very own wok is terribly exciting and fabulous.

When Wylie came home for spring break and Thierry returned from France a couple days later, it was the first thing I made them. More on that later. After Wylie goes back to school, I'm thinking a batch of the Lucky Peach rice would be an absolutely dreamy thing to eat when Thierry and I are hunkered down in front of the TV to binge watch House of Cards or election returns. Will I ever make the Mission Chinese Food recipe again? Perhaps. But only if guests who really geek out over Chinese cooking come over. (Sherry and Fred: You are wanted in Dallas!) Otherwise, the Lucky Peach's simplicity-in-preparation quotient makes up for its slight fabulousness deficit in relation to the Mission Chinese Food recipe, creating – ladies and gentlemen – an all-around awesomeness dead heat.

Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice Awesomeness and Wow Factor: 9/10

Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice Awesomeness and Wow Factor: 9/10

Well, after all that, you might think I've had enough fried rice for the time being. You'd be wrong. Now I am consumed with creating the perfect fried rice recipe: one the marries maximum awesomeness and deliciousness with the minimum of effort and time. Interested? Be sure to check back soon!

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Fried Rice SMACKDOWN! Lucky Peach vs. Mission Chinese Food - Round One (Lucky Peach)

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It's the event of the season, the match-up we've all been waiting for: enticing fried rice recipes from two hot new Asian cookbooks. On the left is the Chinese Sausage Fried Rice from Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes by Peter Meehan and the editors of Lucky Peach. On the right is Salt Cod Fried Rice from The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook by Danny Bowien and Chris Ying. 

The Mission Chinese Food fried rice has a cult following and takes more than 24 hours of advance preparation – after a dedicated hunt for ingredients. You'll be required to soak salt cod in several changes of water for 24 hours, make mackerel confit in advance and fry-up the salt cod till it's hard as jerky, then shred it in a food processor. before you start. Are you up to it?

Meehan's recipe is the underdog, with no restaurant pedigree – though Lucky Peach magazine certainly has a cult following. You can put the whole thing together in a half hour, though unlike its opponent, it prefers (though doesn't require) that you use day-old cooked rice.

Both include Chinese sausage, scrambled eggs and scallions, and neither relies on soy sauce, which makes things interesting.

Mission Chinese Food Cookbook's Salt Cod Fried Rice

We'll be judging the fried rice contenders in several areas:

–Taste: how delicious is it?

–Ease of preparation: Is it worth the time and effort?

–All-around awesomeness and wow factor

It's going to be a tough contest, and we have quite a bit of prep ahead of us, so let's get going!

Both require a trip to the Asian supermarket, though the Lucky Peach recipe offers substitutions if you can't come up with things like Chinese sausage (use bacon or pancetta), Shaoxing wine (dry sherry will do) and fish sauce (use soy sauce). For the purpose of this smackdown, I used the Chinese preferred ingredients. If you're thinking of making the Mission Chinese Food fried rice and you don't have access to salt cod, fresh or frozen mackerel fillets, Chinese sausage and fish sauce, just fuggedaboudit. Make the Lucky Peach recipe and call it a day.

Are you ready? 

After gathering all the ingredients, I started two days in advance, cooking jasmine rice beforehand for the Lucky Peach recipe. For the Mission Chinese Food recipe, I submerged the salt cod in cold water.  

A little background on the Mission Chinese Food recipe. "The spirit animal of this dish is the fried rice with salt fish and chicken at R&G Lounge in San Francisco," writes Danny Bowien, the Mission Chinese Food chef. (Wow – that was the site of one of my greatest food memories ever – a Chinese banquet ordered by Melanie Wong, one of the first friends I ever "met" online.) Bowien then riffs on the umami wonderfulness of salt cod: "I love the way it seasons and perfumes rice with a funky, fermented flavor. But I don't particularly love biting into a gnarly chunk of it. The aim of our Salt Cod Fried Rice was to capture that pleasant fishiness without the stank." His solution for his restaurant was to shred salt cod, then fry it. But customers complained there was no visible fish, "so we gilded the lily with chunks of rich mackerel confit."

OK, then – I went to work preparing the mackerel confit, which involved first filleting the mackerel I found in the Asian market. It seemed a little ridiculous to me, but it was really easy and actually quite wonderful.

Mackerel confit

All you do is cover mackerel in vegetable or peanut oil in a saucepan and put it in a 300-degree oven for 25 minutes. Let it cool in the oil, then flake the fish into small chunks and either use it right away or cover it with the oil in a jar and store it in the fridge up to a week. It has a wonderful soft texture and lovely, lightly salty (though no salt was added), delicately fishy flavor, like a cheffy version of canned tuna. The fillet I had yielded more than the 4 ounces the recipe called for, so I'd have to think of a use for the rest of it (an amped-up mackerel-salad sandwich, maybe?). Anyway, it made me feel like confiting every oily fish I can get my hands on.

OK, first up: The Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice. 

As in all Chinese cooking, you definitely want to prep all your ingredients in advance, have them ready and all measured out – your mise en place. The book actually uses a master fried rice recipe, which is great, as it teaches you the technique.

To prep, I sliced Chinese sausage, measured out some frozen peas, whisked together a sauce (Shaoxing wine, fish sauce, sugar and sesame oil), beat two eggs, chopped garlic and ginger and sliced scallions. That was pretty much it – 20 minutes max. 

The recipe calls for 3 cups of cooked long-grain rice, which you can get by cooking about 1 1/4 cups of raw rice. You put the rice in a bowl, break up the clumps with your fingers and make sure your mise is next to the stove. 

First you get your wok very hot, cook the eggs very quickly in a little oil and get them out of the pan. Add more oil, then add garlic, ginger and scallion whites (we kept white and green parts separate), cook just a few seconds, add the peas and sausage, and cook just till heated through. 

Now's the fun part. Dump the rice into the wok, toss it to mix, and use a spatula to spread the rice up against the sides and bottom of the wok, maximizing contact.

"Stir and fold once a minute" for 3 minutes, till the rice is hot and "a little charred in spots." Now pour on the sauce, toss it and continue the spreading, searing, tossing routine "until the rice is evenly colored and looks pleasantly dry." Now add the eggs back in, chopping them up and toss in the scallion greens. 

Ding-ding-ding! Finished!

Oh, man . . . heavenly! The egg is tender, and the dish is perfectly balanced, absolutely satisfying and fun. And it's big fun to make – I can't wait to do it again. Here's the recipe:

Next it'll be Mission Chinese Food's turn. Stay tuned for Fried Rice SMACKDOWN Round Two!

 

 

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The Chinese lacquered roast chicken that changed my life

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Now and then, a recipe comes along that feels truly life-changing. The short crust pastry for the lemon-raspberry tart I wrote about earlier this week was one for me. It wasn't a new recipe when I discovered it a few years ago – it had been right under my nose in the Chez Panisse Desserts cookbook forever, but it was new to me when my friend Michalene pointed me to it. Today it's my go-to recipe for tart crust.

Now a Chinese lacquered roast chicken has changed my life.

There's nothing more delicious than roast chicken, and every cook should have a favorite recipe for it (at least one!) in his or her repertoire. For years, my go-to roast chicken has been the Judy bird – that is the Zuni Roast Chicken from Judy Rodger's The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. It's the spectacularly flavorful, crisp-skinned chicken you have swooned over if you've ever gone to San Francisco's Zuni Cafe and ordered roast chicken for two. I will write about the Zuni chicken soon here on the blog and give the recipe, but the technique is basically this: Tuck fresh herbs under the chicken's skin, rub it all over with a lot of kosher salt, and let it sit in the fridge like that for one or two days. When you're ready to roast, wipe the chicken dry, heat a skillet on the stove, plop in the chicken, transfer it immediately to a very hot oven, and let it roast. No basting, but you  have to flip the chicken a couple times and fiddle with temperature. It always results in a fabulous bird.

When I don't plan ahead, I've used the Judy technique without the advance salting, and sometimes even without tucking herbs under the skin. It's still always excellent. I thought my abbreviated version was the simplest great roast chicken possible without a rotisserie.

So when I read about author Peter Meehan's roast chicken approach in the new cookbook Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes, I sat up and took note. "We are advocates of a hot-and-lazy approach: one high temperature, one pan, one position, one great result." He talked about how seasoning a bird ahead of time and letting it sit uncovered in the fridge lets him have an easy dinner to pop in the oven anytime in the next three days, and now I was really sitting up straight. This man is sensible! When he wrote, "I started doing this after I fell under the spell of Judy Rodger's Zuni Cafe Cookbook," I dropped the book and ran out to buy a chicken. Invoking Judy's name confers instant credibility.

In the Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes cookbook, Meehan offers three roast chicken recipes. For me, it was a no-brainer: Lacquered Roast Chicken.

Irresistible, right?

Here's the deal. This is the easiest roast chicken recipe in the universe, and the result is magnificent. 

All you do is this: Paint a chicken with a mixture of half-honey, half soy sauce, then sprinkle it with salt. Let it sit uncovered in the fridge for one or two days, then roast it in a 400 degree F. oven for 50 minutes. That's it. No basting, no flipping, no lowering and raising temperatures. Let it rest 15 minutes, then carve it and here's what you get:

I kid you not. The skin was wonderfully crisp, the meat super-flavorful and both dark meat and white meat were perfectly cooked. The white meat was moist, juicy and delicious as the dark meat. A miracle!  I can't wait to try it again.

Here's the recipe:

Want something smashing this weekend? Pick up a chicken tonight or tomorrow, paint it with lacquer and it'll be ready to pop in the oven Friday or Saturday evening. Or paint a bird with the lacquer on Sunday afternoon and leave it in the fridge so you can roast it for an easy weeknight dinner next week. And please let us know – in a comment here – how you love it!

Meanwhile, I told Michalene about it, and what she said glued me to the ceiling: "Have you tried it on a duck?" Oh, man.

NOTE: I later made the chicken again, and it required ten minutes longer to cook – about an hour total roasting time. When it's done, the skin will be mahogany, and the legs will wiggle freely at the joints "like you could almost tear them off," as Meehan writes. The internal temperature should be 165 degrees F at the thickest part of the breast and where the thigh meets the breast. Also, when you're preparing the bird, don't worry if some of the glaze falls off the bird – it doesn't matter. That's why we have foil lining the pan.

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Dreaming of spring, I cook – and eat – an entire bunch of stir-fried asparagus

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My friends will tell you I'm a little bit crazy. 

OK, maybe more than a little. This day and evening are a case in point. At 8 a.m. I was at my home computer, fiddling with a story I was trying to post online for work. I made coffee. I launched into writing a review, fearing I'd be late for my noon deadline. At some point I made a salad (with Thousand Island dressing, which I deserved, as I was on deadline) and then at three thirty or four I filed, apologizing profusely to everyone involved. Caught up with emails. Jumped into another story I'm writing, this one for Palate magazine, which I'm editing and which has to be completely finished a week from today. (Insane!)

After a while, I looked at my watch and was stunned that it was 7:30. I got up from my desk and turned lights on in the other rooms. Thierry was out, and the house was empty. What would I do for dinner? Some people might just make some pasta or something else they had around, but I wanted something green. I've been craving asparagus. And I'd been eyeing a new cookbook I thought would be fun to review: Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes. I flipped through to see if there was a recipe involving asparagus. Bingo! Stir-fried asparagus! I got in the car and headed to the market to buy a bunch.

Oh, but wait – as long as I was headed to the store, maybe I should see if there was something else I wanted to make. I went back inside. Flipping through the book again, I landed on something irresistible: lacquered roast chicken. "Lacquered" is like a magic word for me, no way not to succumb. Further, this looks like the easiest roast chicken recipe in maybe all of history. Four ingredients, including salt (a bird, some honey and soy sauce). You paint the bird with half-honey, half-soy, sprinkle with salt. Let it sit, uncovered in the fridge, 12 hours to 2 days. Pop it in the oven, roast 50 minutes, let rest 15, and carve. Had to try! 

Bought the chicken, bought the asparagus. The recipe called for one large bunch. Drove back home.

Stir-frying asparagus

 

I brought a large pot of water to a boil, added salt, dropped in cut-up veg, blanched briefly and drained. Heated oil in the wok, added garlic, then asparagus, then chopped Thai chiles, and stir-fried. Then oyster sauce, sugar, white pepper. Stir-fried. Then chicken stock, and cooked till sauce thickened a little.

"Serve on a large platter," it said, and so I did. It should have said a small platter – not a whole lot of asparagus here. The recipe said it made four servings, but I'd say two or three. OK, maybe my bunch of asparagus wasn't that big, but it was the biggest one I saw. 

I took a few picture of it, then sat at the table, poured a glass of white wine, pulled out some chopsticks, and ate the asparagus. All of it. It was very good. Try it. See for yourself.

But wait. There was more: the chicken. Spring chicken! I mixed together two tablespoons of honey and two tablespoons of soy sauce, then painted a thin, even layer on the chicken. Set the time for 15 minutes, during which I did the dishes. Ding! I painted the chicken with the rest of the marinade, then sprinkled it with two teaspoons of kosher salt and put it in the fridge, uncovered. Tomorrow or Saturday (who can think that far ahead!?) I'll zip it into the oven. 

To all a good night.