Chinese Cooking

I got the most wonderful early Christmas present. An electric Wok (Breville EW30XL Electric Gourmet Wok)and a good beginning Chinese cookbook "Wok Fast". We have an electric cooktop so I have not been able to cook Chinese food at home. Well, I could, but it is always soggy. Plus I lack the knowledge to make those great marinades and sauces that are so essential to good Chinese food.

So we (the kids and I) spent 2 hours in the Hong Kong Market today, trying to find all the stuff needed to make those sauces. Wok Fast is a good book because it actually tells you the name brands that are good. Hopefully I won't have to spend that much time shopping again. I have never seen so many different kinds of soy sauce or chili sauce.

We decided to try a simple dish, Ma Po Tofu. It is spicy! The kids loved it and I even liked it myself. I decided to serve some fresh rice noodles with it instead of rice. That was a mistake. The directions for cooking the noodles, if there were any, were in Chinese. So I boiled the noodles. I think I should only have poured boiling water over them because they cooked way too mushy. Oh, well. I'll know better next time.

Weilong was so thrilled over my cooking that he nearly cried. I think it must have brought back memories of his Chinese family.

You have never seen four children more thrilled over something. They cheered for me and praised me over and over til I was a bit ashamed of not trying to cook more food like this for them. I have tried, but it just looked like soup before.

One thing that shocked me is the relative low cost of cooking fresh Chinese food. I used 1/2 lb of ground beef, 1 block of tofu, and a tablespoon or two of the different spices/sauces. The recipe didn't call for veggies, but I added some bean sprouts and a couple of zuchini. Also lots of garlic and some green onions. This was a very inexpensive meal for 6 people!

The kids are looking at Wok Fast, deciding what they want me to cook tomorrow. And I'm wondering how I'm going to get that garlic-y, hot peppery smell out of my house. It has permeated every nook and cranny.