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Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge: The Ultimate Guide to Mastery, with Authentic Recipes and Stories Hardcover – November 1, 2011
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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, James Beard 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.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherTaunton Press
- Publication dateNovember 1, 2011
- Dimensions7.75 x 1.1 x 10 inches
- ISBN-101416580573
- ISBN-13978-1416580577
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Review
--James Oseland, editor-in-chief of Saveur and author of Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Sipce Islands of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore
“For Grace Young, poet-laureate of the wok, a way of cooking is a way of life. Through stories, practical kitchen advice, and eminently doable recipes, Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge takes the art of stir-frying to a new level."
--Betty Fussell, author of Raising Steaks: The Life & Times of American Beef
“Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge is the essential cookbook for anyone who wants to stir-fry with confidence, even mastery. Grace Young has interviewed exceptional Chinese cooks from all over the world to document their stories and recipes and to reveal the many ways in which stir-frying has sustained the Chinese in cultures as far-flung as India, Trinidad, Jamaica, Cuba, Peru, France, and America. Whether you are seeking a practical and inspiring Chinese cookbook or a beautiful culinary history, look no further."
--Paula Wolfert, author of Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking
"Trying to flip quickly through this book is impossible. Nearly every page turn caught me up with something I had to read. Grace Young brings us the entire being of the wok. Yes, she’s a gifted recipe writer, hand holding through each step, so success comes pretty effortlessly. But the revelation with Grace goes further. The wok is probably the most underrated (and underpriced) piece of equipment we have. Grace knows its life, its place not solely in China, but in the world. The wok is immediacy, tradition and maybe even an instrument of life force. Did I get carried away? Maybe, but that’s where Grace can take you. Follow her, you’ll love the trip."
--Lynne Rossetto Kasper, host of Public Radio’s national food show, The Splendid Table®, from American Public Media
"Grace Young's masterful book reveals stir-frying as 'a cooking method of great subtlety and sophistication.' She provides a sense of spirit, of excitement, that makes stir-frying delicious fun. Recipes are clearly written and detailed; you'll get the requisite hand-holding to stir-fry your way to a delicious dinner....Young has done an admirable job showing how this ancient technique can be deliciously new and cool."
--Bill Daley, Chicago Tribune
"Young, whose expertise in wok technique has already enlightened American cooks, has now gathered recipes for stir-frying reflecting culinary traditions as far-flung as Indonesia and Peru.For the novice, Young offers lots of basic yet learned advice on shopping for unfamiliar ingredients and on assembling a Chinese pantry. Photographs and step-by-step instructions make fundamental wok tools and techniques accessible to even the least experienced. Her sidebars featuring talented stir-frying masters from all over the world add human dimension to the recipes."
— Mark Knoblauch, Booklist
"If you've ever spent much time with the award-winning The Breath of a Wok, you know that Grace Young's cookbooks feel as personal as they are practical. Her latest is no exception. And if you're expecting food a la Panda Express, this book will be a revelation. Stir-fries, it turns out, can come from almost every continent, and a good one is no slapdash affair. Young reveals the many small techniques that add up to excellence."
--Katherine Miller Fran Walden, The Oregonian
"Grace Young is one of the very best cookbook authors writing today. Her newest book, Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge: The Ultimate Guide to Mastery, With Authentic Recipes and Stories is essential reading for anyone interested in Chinese cooking."
--Erica Marcus, Newsday
"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
About the Author
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 Kitchenfeels 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 Edgeconcentrates 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.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A Stir-Fry Odyssey
Chinese cooking is a cooking of scarcity. Whatever the emperors and warlords may have had, the vast majority of Chinese spent their lives short of fuel, cooking oil, utensils, and even water.
—E. N. Anderson, The Food of China
I consider stir-frying a form of culinary magic in which ingredients are transformed. Their textures are enhanced, their flavors intensified and caramelized. The alchemy of stir-frying brings a blush of color to raw shrimp and a radiance to vegetables. Meats grow plump and fragrant from browning. The stir-fry dish brings food to life.
I grew up observing my father’s passion for stir-fries, developed from years of frequenting the best restaurants and knowing many of the great chefs in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Later, I developed my own more consuming infatuation, because it wasn’t enough for me to appreciate the pleasures of a delicious stir-fry: I needed to know how it was made.
Over time my esteem for stir-frying has only grown. I see it as a way of life, both timeless and timely. As I’ve observed rising food and fuel prices, I cannot think of another cooking technique that makes less seem like more, and by which small amounts of food feed many. And what could be healthier than cooking with a minimum of meat and fat and emphasizing vegetables of every kind?
This book is about a “universal longing for home” and a cooking technique that traveled the globe satisfying that desire. The story of stir-frying is one of cultural perseverance and healthy, flavorful cooking, of universality and subtle distinction, of the Chinese diaspora and local character. Each of the many cooks I interviewed lends a human face and personal technique to the vast stir-fry tradition. In the hot, tropical Malaysian village of Dungun, stir-frying enabled Mei Chau, a young girl entrusted with feeding her family, to produce flavorful dishes while being mercifully delivered quickly from the intense heat of the kitchen. In the Caribbean, Winnie Lee Lum continues the culinary traditions her parents brought with them in the 1930s when they emigrated from China to Jamaica, as well as integrating the local ingredients and techniques she has learned from living in Trinidad for over forty years. In Redwood City, California, Fah Liong stir-fries the same simple Hakka dishes her mother taught her in Indonesia, substituting American vegetables for the Asian produce she once used. The common theme of all the stories and recipes in this book is the transformation of humble ingredients into rich, delectable, healthful meals using precious little food and cooking fuel. Regardless of whether it is a ten-year-old child who learns to stir-fry when her mother falls ill, or a ninety-year-old woman who partners with her son-in-law to stir-fry, each cook demonstrates how, if you have only tasted a stir-fry in a restaurant or cooked from a recipe taken off the Internet, you have missed the humanity of stir-frying.
I grew up in a very traditional Chinese home in San Francisco where my parents cooked the same Cantonese dishes they had eaten in their youth in China. My ideas of Chinese food were based on a strict adherence to classic food combinations that left no possibility of improvisation. For example, my mother would always stir-fry ginger with Chinese broccoli (page 190), never garlic. One of my favorite dishes she stir-fried was ginger tomato beef (page 80), a recipe she never considered making with chicken or pork. In our household, Chinese recipes were carved in stone.
Imagine my revelation at Henrica’s, a Chinese Jamaican restaurant in Rosedale, Queens, which is part of New York City. When perusing the menu of unremarkable Chinese American dishes, my eyes fell upon a listing for Jamaican jerk chicken fried rice (page 262) and then one for jerk pork fried rice and for jerk chicken chow mein. Jerk chicken in a Chinese stir-fry? To my great surprise, the dish was wonderful—the spicy, robust jerk chicken was beautifully suited to the rice flavored with soy sauce and speckled with chopped onions, scallions, and finely diced carrots. I asked to meet the chef and was led into the kitchen where, side by side, a Chinese and a Jamaican chef worked at the stove. When I asked the Cantonese chef how he made the jerk chicken, he shrugged his shoulders and nodded to the Jamaican chef who, it turned out, cooked the chicken that he then turned over to the Chinese chef to stir-fry with the rice.
Not long after my visit to Henrica’s, I was introduced to a Chinese Guyanese restaurant called Happy Garden in Jamaica, New York, where jerk chicken fried rice appeared alongside Guyanese dishes and typical Chinese American ones. Then I heard about a Chinese Indian restaurant in New York City called Chinese Mirch. There I sampled wildly spicy Sichuan vegetarian fried rice (page 265), made with basmati rice, and Chicken Manchurian (page 142), a scrumptious stir-fry generously spiced with fresh chilies. The Indian American owner brought me into the kitchen to meet his Cantonese chefs. He explained to me his cooks were trained to use the Chinese stir-fry technique, but with ingredients suited to the Indian palate and without the pork, beef, rice wine, or alcohol that are prohibited, in accordance with Muslim and Hindu dietary laws.
When I came across Chinese Restaurants, a fifteen-part documentary series produced by Cheuk Kwan, a Chinese Canadian documentary filmmaker, I was fascinated to follow Kwan’s exploration of Chinese restaurants in such unlikely places as Mauritius, Turkey, Argentina, Trinidad, and Israel. In my naiveté it had never occurred to me that the Chinese had immigrated to such disparate countries. In fact, seven and a half million Chinese left southern China at the beginning of the nineteenth century because of economic poverty, with the vast majority remaining in Southeast Asia. Chinese migration continues to this day to the far corners of the globe. I began to ponder whether Chinese immigrants living abroad learned to adapt their cooking to local tastes and if they always continued the traditions of stir-frying. Were there other stir-fries like jerk chicken fried rice, invented when the tastes of two cultures merged?
My search for stir-fry recipes ultimately evolved into an almost anthropological examination of the Chinese immigrant experience worldwide as expressed through the stir-fry. I visited restaurants that served Chinese Peruvian, Chinese Mexican, Chinese Dutch, Chinese Guyanese, Chinese Indian, Chinese German, Chinese Vietnamese, Chinese Jamaican, Chinese Cuban, and, of course, Chinese American food, observing that these unique Chinese restaurants had learned to adjust their cooking to cater to the mainstream tastes of their clientele. I located Chinese whose families had immigrated to Peru, Trinidad, New Zealand, Fiji, Indonesia, Jamaica, Libya, Holland, India, South Africa, Burma, and Germany. I conducted cooking interviews and tasted stir-fries that fused various culinary traditions. These interviews often revealed the unimaginable hardships experienced by Chinese immigrants living without Chinese communities. Many of the people I met recounted how a stir-fry’s aromas and tastes eased their sense of displacement, providing comfort as they adapted to foreign customs, language, and climate. Often cooks had to simplify classic dishes; at other times they substituted, embellished, or combined local ingredients and the popular tastes of their new culture with intriguing and mixed results. Some families even learned to grow Chinese vegetables and make their own tofu.
I even became fascinated by the language of stir-frying. The distinct tossing and turning action of stir-frying captures the notion of quick change and is used in several Cantonese terms for speculation, as in “stir-frying stocks” and “stir-frying real estate,” the buying and selling of stocks and real estate for quick financial gain. Surprisingly, “stir-fry” even appears in a number of colloquial expressions that have nothing to do with change or quick movement—such as “to stir-fry a person,” a slang term for firing an employee. The Cantonese obsession with stir-frying inevitably leads to a discourse on wok hay, the Cantonese term that refers to the distinct vitality exuded when super-fresh ingredients are stir-fried so perfectly they possess wok fragrance.
I interviewed Chinese whose families were among the first to settle in towns in Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arkansas, and Tennessee. For many, their only means of earning a living was to open a restaurant serving Chinese American fare that included chop suey, the crude “non-Chinese” stir-fry improvisation that became a staple for Americans and provided for Chinese economic survival. Eventually I interviewed Chinese who had been raised in the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s and ’40s. The story of the Chinese of the Mississippi Delta is one of the most remarkable testaments to the tenacity of Chinese immigrants anywhere. Brought to the South as laborers in the 1870s, and often living in towns in which they were the only Chinese residents, these immigrants gradually began running grocery stores throughout Mississippi that serviced impoverished sharecroppers. Without a wok and with limited Chinese ingredients, these Chinese used local produce, such as rutabagas or turnip greens, plus a little salted pork and a frying pan to re-create their longed-for stir-fries.
Stir-frying has been a continuous comfort to the Chinese diaspora. Even when deprived of Chinese produce, condiments, and the wok, the Chinese have always managed to find a way to stir-fry.
I have tasted my share of mediocre stir-fries. It is easy to produce uninspired dishes when stir-frying is approached with the attitude that it is merely the quick cooking of bite-sized pieces of meat and vegetables in oil with no sense of its refined artistry. In this cookbook I share with you all the stir-fry principles and knowledge I have learned from home cooks, master chefs, and cooking teachers from around the world. I offer detailed recommendations on all aspects of stir-frying at home, focusing on the challenge facing most cooks: working with stoves that do not produce the ideal amount of heat for stir-frying.
In truth, stir-frying is a cooking method of great subtlety and sophistication. In Chinese cuisine a system of classifications exists to distinguish “dry” from “moist” stir-fries (depending on whether broths, sauces, or liquids of any kind are added). The term “clear stir-fries” is reserved for ingredients that have been stir-fried in a little oil and deftly seasoned, thus enhancing the pure essence and character of the main ingredient. “Velvet stir-fries” involve the coating of an ingredient, such as chicken breast, in an egg white and cornstarch mixture, which is then blanched in hot oil or water and stir-fried until the texture becomes silky and succulent.
Stir-frying is a technique of tradition and innovation. This cookbook mainly comprises classic stir-fry dishes from the traditions of Guangzhou (Canton), Hong Kong, Shanghai, Fujian, Sichuan, Hunan, and Beijing. These recipes are the essentials for any stir-fry repertoire. In addition, there is a small selection of recipes from the Chinese diaspora in India, Trinidad, Jamaica, Cuba, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, Vietnam, Macau, Peru, France, and America, reflecting the borrowings of another cuisine. The subject of the diaspora and their experiences with stir-frying is vast and deserves its own study. These singular recipes give you a sense of how the stir-fry, the supreme culinary chameleon, can bring together the tastes of one culture through the ingredients of another. For cooks who feel they cannot stir-fry because they lack Asian ingredients, these resourceful, clever combinations are living proof that with ingenuity the improvisational possibilities are infinite.
Stir-frying can be enjoyed both for its time-honored recipes and its innovative modern ones, and for the promise it offers to create new classics. The Chinese stir-fry is all things: refined, improvisational, adaptable, and inventive. There is an old Cantonese expression, “Yad wok jao tin ngaai,” or “one wok runs to the sky’s edge,” meaning “one who uses the wok becomes master of the cooking world.” For centuries the Chinese have carried their woks to all corners of the earth, continuously re-creating stir-fry traditions. Today, the sky’s edge extends beyond geographic borders into cultures newly integrated with all manner of popular and ancient ways. Stir-frying’s innumerable possibilities for creating simple, nourishing, and wholly satisfying meals that feed the body and nourish the soul await.
© 2010 Grace Young
Product details
- Publisher : Taunton Press; First Edition (November 1, 2011)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1416580573
- ISBN-13 : 978-1416580577
- Item Weight : 2.9 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.75 x 1.1 x 10 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #78,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22 in Wok Cookery (Books)
- #36 in Chinese Cooking, Food & Wine
- #102 in Gastronomy Essays (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

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 in 1999. The book was awarded the IACP Le Cordon Bleu Best International Cookbook Award, in addition to being a finalist for an IACP First Cookbook Award, and a James Beard 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. It was also featured in the New York Times, on NPR’s All Things Considered and was selected as one of the best cookbooks of the year by Food & Wine, Fine Cooking, Bon Appétit, and Epicurious.
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 to teach the art of wok cooking. I published further articles on Chinese cooking in Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Eating Well, and Saveur, where I am a contributing editor. The book also brought me speaking engagements at the Culinary Institute at Greystone, China Institute, New York University Asian/Pacific/American Institute, the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, The French Culinary Institute, and the Chinese Historical Society of America.
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. I was awarded an IACP Culinary Trust 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.
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This book is such a visual treat to begin with. Beautiful, thick, slick type pages with gorgeous decorative elements on the pages, wonderful use of colors, beautiful photos of the food. I went into exploring a renewed fascination with getting a wok and learning the "real" way to do Chinese cooking. This book has it all, but you must have the patience and desire to read all of Grace's wonderful information: the essential cooking tools and what to do with them, how to buy and season a wok, all the various unique ingredients to be used with photos of them, even photos of the cans and jars of various substances so you know exactly what to buy, good information on cooking oils and which to buy for wok cooking, and much more. Everything is beautifully organized and presented. The first 63 pages are devoted to this very necessary background information, and every bit of it is useful and enjoyable. If you want to do this right, every page should be read carefully as you will absorb all the information into your mental databank of knowledge about Chinese wok cooking. None of the recipes is difficult or complex to do, but the prep for wok cooking takes time while the actual cooking does not! If you are looking for superficial, quick and easy, then this isn't the right book for you. If you want to learn, understand and appreciate this type of cuisine, this book is fabulous.
Among the most important things I learned was about the wok, the oil, the heat, how to cut the meat properly, about marinating (very different!). Grace Young gives a world of background details that have been invaluable to me. Now to the recipes: I waited to review until I'd had this book around 4 months and had tried a lot of the recipes. They are fabulous, I've loved every one of the dozen or so I've tried at this point. I have a few that are such favorites I keep doing them over and over. Standouts for me are Stir-Fried Ginger Beef, Cantonese Style Stir Fried Pork with Chinese Broccoli, Hot Pepper Beef, Stir Fried Curried Beef, Stir Fried Mongolian Lamb with Scallions (I used beef), Trinidadian Chicken with Mango Chutney, Spicy Orange Chicken, Hong Kong Style Mango Ginger Chicken, and well, quite a few more. Not a dud among them, all fabulous in my opinion. I've never had a cookbook in which I liked so many of the recipes and kept making them over and over. I use recipes from this book at least twice a week. I'll also mention that there are recipe sections for seafood and vegetarian/tofu type dishes, but I haven't tried any of them yet because I'm less of a fish person, and have simply found the meat and chicken recipes so interesting so I've been stuck within the beef, pork and chicken recipe sections. I'll get to the others eventually.
In addition, interspersed throughout the book are very interesting historical notes and personal profiles for various displaced Chinese cooks that Grace has met, and who have taken their traditional Chinese recipes and added things influenced by the area they emigrated to, such as the Caribbean. The recipe for Trinidadian Chicken with Mango Chutney is an example of this.
I can't recommend this cookbook enough, and it's such a fascinating and pleasurable book to work with. If you have even the slightest interest in Chinese cooking, you'll completely enjoy this book and give it the time and attention it deserves.
After hours of research I found Grace Young's Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge and it's quickly become my favorite and most helpful and used book. It's more than a cookbook; it's a journey through the art of stir-frying. Grace makes learning how to correctly stir fry interesting and fun with stories of the role woks play in the culture of Asian cooking and background information about why technique is important to get the best results from my wok. The book is loaded with color pictures that demonstrate everything from what the bottles of her suggested seasoning brands look like to cutting and cooking techniques to what the prepared meals look like.
I had become overwhelmed with all the contradictory information about which woks are the best without spending a lot of money along with other accessories that are needed. After reading Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge I realized Grace has simplified the whole process for me from first detailed information about the different kinds of woks: what sizes and materials are best, methods to correctly season one, how to properly clean and maintain one, how to cook with one, and so much more. I decided to follow all her step-by-step suggestions exactly. For example, she outlines different ways to season a wok and stated even a preseasoned wok with a factory coating needs proper seasoning to ensure it will be nonstick. I decided to try her favorite way, scrubbing the wok with a Brillo pad (the only time a scrubbing pad should be used!) then stir-fry scallions and fresh ginger in peanut oil. I'd read reviews people have written about their woks discoloring but because of Grace's information I knew this was a good thing and didn't worry.
Like her instructions for seasoning and cleaning my wok all information is explained and precise. What pantry items are part of a Chinese kitchen include suggested brand names she has found have the most authentic taste. What cooking utensils are helpful, including brand names. Sauce and seasonings are explained and again she includes suggested brands. There is so much information in the book's ~300 pages! Also, a really helpful thing is the majority if seasonings and utensils can be found on Amazon although the spices are sometimes less expensive at my local store.
I finally decided to try a meal. I followed Grace's instructions on pages 54-55, Basic Steps for Stir-Frying, and made my first meal, Hot Pepper Beef on page 85. I don't tolerate spicy foods so I adjusted the amount of red pepper flakes, and it was delicious! The beef was tender and the vegetables bright and slightly crisp, and the juice enhanced the flavors rather than coating the food. I then decided to try making fajitas. They weren't as good but I realized that after making a fresh meal of the pepper beef the packaged fajita seasoning tasted thick, muddy, and not as appetizing. The next time I'm going to make my own from scratch.
I could go on but there's so much information that I believe would be helpful for anyone from a novice to seasoned cook that I think before buying a wok a person should read Grace Young's Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge! In her introduction she stated an old expression is "One wok runs to the sky's edge" which means "One who uses the wok becomes master of the cooking world." I doubt I'll become a master but I've realized wok cooking needn't be restricted to Asian cooking and I'll definitely be using my wok in preparing as many meals as possible. I'm seeing a nutritionist and I'm following a DASH/Mediterranean diet and I'm discovering my wok is perfect for stir-frying without the use of oils or butter.
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This book is so easy to read, with very clear 8nstructions on techniques and ingredients, that I am sure I'll be able to add stir fries to my repertoire really quickly
This particular cookbook isn't just a compilation of recipes, but also a collection of stories. Grace Young interviewed people in any area where stir fry can be found. You'd expect stir fry to be popular in China, but it can also be found in some unlikely places. Jamaica? Sure, why not? Through the stories of the people who have settled there, we learn how they adapted to their new environments through the lens of those who continued to stir fry in an effort to hold on to their cultural identity.
In addition to the stories, the book also segues into other topics such as a history of chop suey, or the healthiness of stir fry as a cooking method, and other topics of interest These might be considered fluff by those just looking for good recipes, but I think it would be worth your while to read them. The author has taken the time to not only provide us with stir fry recipes, but also anything that has to do with stir fry: it's history, it's culture, it's people. The non-recipe parts are not only educational, but for me, it invoked almost a sense of romanticism when cooking after I've read through all the book had to offer.
Before getting into the recipes, the author guides you in the necessary preparation: how to purchase and prepare a wok for its upcoming use, and how to identify Asian ingredients that you'll need. If you have an Asian grocery store nearby, you will likely find all that you need to prepare everything in the book. If not, the author suggests some substitutions where appropriate.
The recipes cover what I think is the standard sections: meat, seafood, and vegetables. There's also a section for fried rice and noodles. No dessert section, though. I don't think stir frying quite lends itself to making desserts. I tried about a dozen recipes in all. Some recipes require only ingredients that you would be able to find in any regular grocery store. Others require more specialized ingredients such as lotus root, or straw mushrooms. I personally found the recipes that require special ingredients more interesting: they added a special flavour, and made the dish more authentic. I think it's worth seeking them out if you can. A lot of the recipes do use the same ingredients, so if you can at least obtain the basic ingredients (soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil would be my top three), you'll be ready to tackle a number of recipes.
The recipes all worked as written, though I found some variation in the salt levels. Some seemed to need a bit more saltiness, and some recipes had too much. But the author does advise us in the beginning that some experimentation could be necessary. Some dishes may not look like the greatest thing, but rest assured, they all taste great. I would also take seriously any tips offered in the book: when the author says that once the stir frying starts, there won't be time do more prep work, she's not joking! The prep work may take a little bit of time depending on your knife skills, but the cooking itself is definitely fast and furious.
All in all, I think this is a fabulous book extolling the virtues of stir fry. It's obvious the author is knowledgeable about the subject and is eager to share her passion for stir fry with us. The recipes are delicious and the side stories add a wonderful flavour, making this a really complete book in my eyes. Definitely recommended!


















