Book description
The stir-fry is all things: refined, improvisational, adaptable, and
inventive. It is the rare culinary practice that makes less seem like
more, and by which small amounts of food feed many.
For centuries the Chinese have carried their woks to all corners of
the earth and re-created stir-fry dishes, using local and sometimes
nontraditional ingredients. The old expression: "One wok runs to
the sky's edge" means "one who uses the wok becomes master
of the cooking world." And as the wok user becomes master of the
cooking world, so does he become master of the stir-fry, one of the
greatest techniques of Chinese cookery.
The technique and tradition of stir-frying, which is at once simple
yet subtly complex, is as vital today as it has been for hundreds of
years. In Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge, award-winning author
Grace Young shares more than 100 classic stir-fry recipes that sizzle
with heat and pop with flavor, from the great Cantonese stir-fry
masters to the culinary customs of Sichuan, Hunan, Shanghai, Beijing,
Fujian, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, as well as
other countries around the world. With more than 80 stunning
full-color photographs, Young's definitive work illustrates the
innumerable, easy-to-learn possibilities the technique offers-dry
stir-fries, moist stir-fries, clear stir-fries, velvet stir-fries-and
weaves the insights of Chinese cooking philosophy into the preparation
of such beloved dishes as Kung Pao Chicken, Stir-Fried Beef and
Broccoli, Chicken Lo Mein with Ginger Mushrooms, and Dry-Fried Sichuan
Beans. In honoring the traditions of her cultural ancestors who
traveled the globe, Young offers delectable crossover recipes for
Chinese Jamaican Jerk Chicken Fried Rice, Chinese Trinidadian
Stir-Fried Shrimp with Rum, Chinese Burmese Chili Chicken, and Chinese
American Shrimp with Lobster Sauce.
Expert home cooks and professional chefs teach you the foundations of
stir-fry mastery in the modern kitchen-everything from how to choose,
season, and care for a wok and the best skillet alternative; the
importance of marinades and the proper technique for slicing meat and
poultry for optimum tenderness; to how to select and handle Asian
vegetables; ways to shortcut labor-intensive preparations; and tips on
how to control heat and choose the best cooking oil.
Fascinating personal portraits illustrate how stir-frying is not just
a cooking technique but a vital element of China's rich culture. With
this book, Grace Young has created the authoritative guide to
stir-frying, a work that is at once rewarding and beautiful, much like
the technique of stir-frying itself.
"The new cookbook by Grace Young is an extended
love poem to the wok. It has more than 100 fab recipes, from classics
such as Stir-Fried Beef and Broccoli to delicious hybrids like Chinese
Jamaican Jerk Chicken Fried Rice and Chinese Trinidadian Stir-Fried
Shrimp and Rum. Young's travels take her around the globe and along
the way, fortunate readers will learn how to rock the wok."
--Matt Schaffer, The Boston Herald
I grew up in San Francisco surrounded, on the one hand,
by the immigrant Chinese traditions of my family and relatives, and,
on the other, by an innovative American culinary culture. My earliest
memories of food are of the extraordinary meals my mother and father
prepared for us (my brother and me) and of the efforts they made to
ensure that we ate well. Their care was not only a matter of selecting
the freshest ingredients, but also for the authenticity with which
they replicated the traditional Cantonese dishes of their youth in
China during the 1930s and forties. This connection to the cooking of
old-world China coupled with the discovery of Julia Child on
television (and her “exotic” dishes) shaped my lifelong affair with
food and cooking. At the age of thirteen I began an apprenticeship
with Josephine Araldo, a French cooking teacher. Those lessons
initiated an exploration of other cuisines and led me, eventually, to
my career in food.
I spent much of my early professional life as the test kitchen
director for over forty cookbooks published by Time Life Books. In the
early nineties, after growing weary of producing what had become
soulless work with formulaic recipes, I developed a yearning to
reconnect to the tastes and foods of my childhood. Over the next few
years, I made numerous trips back to San Francisco from my home in New
York to cook with my 70-year old mother and 82-year old father. It
took much cajoling and great persistence to convince them to teach me
their recipes. At the beginning, my focus was on a precise recording
of the recipes. Eventually, and to my great surprise, as we cooked my
parents, who had always been reticent about their past, began to share
memories of their lives in China and accounts of their early days in
America. This is how I came to learn a large part of my family's
history. What started as a little recipe project soon blossomed into a
memoir cookbook, The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen,
which was published by Simon & Schuster [simonandschuster. com] in
1999. The book was awarded the IACP [iacp. com] Le Cordon Bleu Best
International Cookbook Award, in addition to being a finalist for an
IACP First Cookbook Award, and a James Beard [jamesbeard. org] World
International Cookbook Award. It was also featured in a special
segment on CBS Sunday Morning. Many of the relatives and friends who
taught me their recipes and shared their stories have since passed
away. The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen feels to me now almost
like a treasured family album.
My second cookbook, The Breath of a Wok, grew out of the
realization that most Chinese Americans know little about their own
culinary traditions, specifically wok cooking. I had become aware also
of how cooks in China were abandoning their classic, well-seasoned
iron woks for inferior nonstick cookware. In a tribute to wok cookery
and out of a desire to reignite its popularity, I partnered with Alan
Richardson to create what the acclaimed food historian and author
Betty Fussell described as, “a bridge between cultures for a
Chinese-American in search of history and destiny. It is a remarkable
collaboration between a writer and a photographer that reveals what
the wok symbolizes---a craft, an art, a container of communal harmony
and balance.” That book won the IACP Le Cordon Bleu Best International
Cookbook Award, the Jane Grigson Award for Distinguished Scholarship,
and the World Food Media Awards' Best Food Book [worldfoodmediaawards.
com]. It was also featured in the New York Times
[http://tinyurl. com/y93gbj], on NPR's All Things Considered
[http://tinyurl. com/ddj2pv] and was selected as one of the best
cookbooks of the year by Food & Wine[foodandwine. com],
Fine Cooking [finecooking. com], Bon Appétit [bonappetit.
com], and Epicurious[epicurious. com].
The Breath of a Wok led me to the adventure of traveling with
my carbon-steel wok (in my hand-carry baggage) on a 25-city tour for
the culinary retailer Sur la Table [surlatable. com] to teach the art
of wok cooking. I published further articles on Chinese cooking in
Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Eating Well [eatingwell. com], and
Saveur [saveur. com], where I am a contributing
editor. The book also brought me speaking engagements at the Culinary
Institute at Greystone [ciachef. edu/California], China Institute
[chinainstitute. org], New York University Asian/Pacific/American
Institute [nyu-apastudies. org/new/index. php], the San Francisco
Asian Art Museum [asianart. org], The French Culinary Institute
[frenchculinary. com], and the Chinese Historical Society of America
[chsa. org].
In 2006 I began work on Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge. This
effort was dedicated to the effort of empowering home cooks to
stir-fry with confidence. It explores everything from the origins and
health benefits of stir-frying to the technique's great economy of
time and fuel. In 2011, the book won a James Beard Foundation Award
for best international cookbook. I was also awarded an IACP Culinary
Trust [theculinarytrust. org] eGullet Society for Culinary Arts &
Letters Culinary Journalist Independent Study Scholarship which funded
my research travel to Trinidad, Germany, Holland, Canada, and the
United States to study the stir-fries of the Chinese diaspora. While
Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge concentrates on traditional
stir-fries, it is also filled with remarkable stories of how this
simple, beloved cooking technique has enabled generations of Chinese
around the world to eat well and with exquisite economy. My interview
subjects include Chinese who grew up in such far-flung locations as
Peru, Jamaica, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, Macau,
India, Indonesia, South Africa, and the Mississippi Delta.
My passion for recording and preserving Chinese culinary traditions
continues to lead me in quest of home cooks who understand and enjoy
the benefits Chinese cooking. If you have a comfort food that is at
risk of being lost or a story to share, it would be my great delight
to learn of them. Please feel free to contact me: www. graceyoung. com.
