I am wokless. La la la, I don't care. I'm making a stir fry anyway.
* White rice steamed in the usual way. Rinsed. Slightly less than double the amount of water brought to a boil, temperature cut to low, covered and steamed for 25 minutes, heat cut off, continued to steam another 10 minutes. The whole time of steaming the cover remains ON. No peeking, or this puppy here get's it ! To mold the cooked rice, moisten the inside of a small bowl by swirling water in it and dumping it out, then lightly pack in the rice, invert the bowl of rice over a plate and lift off the bowl, the rice will slip out but still hold the shape of the bowl, if you cooked sticky rice as above, if you used Uncle Ben's™ reconstituted, reconstructed, resurrected rice, then, well, pfffft, you're on your own. Converted. That's what it is. Converted. What? Did it used to be Protestant and now it's Jewish? Converted from what to what?
* A sauce is prepared in advance, 3/4 Cup chicken broth, in this case, turkey broth, 1 Tablespoon corn starch for thickener, can be flour of nearly any type but that would be a nearly intolerable deviation and most unAsian, your karma would suffer, soy sauce, Hoisin sauce, ginger and garlic, powdered forms are OK if you're slumming it, scant teaspoon sesame seed oil. This oil burns at lower temperature than plain vegetable oil so it's not that great of an idea to include it with the oil but rather added it at the end with the sauce. Sesame seed oil is more of a flavor thing than a cooking oil thing.
The vegetables and protein are all cut in advance and ready to go, mise en place, as pictured below, because the actual frying goes quickly, especially with a flat pan, and you don't want to be messing around dicing things and mixing sauces once the action starts. Because of the increased surface area of the flat pan, and because it is a non-non-stick pan, meaning things stick, I kept handy a jar of water to control the temperature, to steam vegetables quickly as I'm layering them, and to lift the fond off the pan to mix with the frying/steaming vegetables. Were you to observe this in action, you'd be convinced I'm a pro, or in the very least probably did this before. I recently saw Paula Dean do this with a wok and she was risibly, ridiculously, woefully unprepared, chopping as she went along, mixing up a sauce while things were frying. She was clearly out of her element. And this makes me laugh. It makes me laugh a sinister, malevolent and unsympathetic, ridiculing laugh, one that goes, Buaaaa haaa haaa haaaa hooo hooo snort hooo hoo heh heh heh, and then I roll my eyes in disgust, and then I imitate the way she talks exaggerating her foibles which I'm convinced are contrived, so I add that too, the self-awareness of what I'm doing, subtracting syllables from multi-syllabic words like "oil" and "boil" and adding syllables to words like "flour," but I say that's what I'm doing in her accent and her speech pattern and her volume, which is unnecessarily and obnoxiously LOUD. If you were here you'd either crack up laughing or punch me in the face. I'm especially annoyed with her substituting the phoneme "tuh" for the word "to." George Bush does that too. That's why these two people often go directly to mute.
But I forgive her for all that because she was so considerate to her dog, Gracie.
The dog was sleeping on a rug right in front of the sink and when Paula Dean went to dump a heavy pot of water into the sink she struggled with the heavy pot, more so for not disturbing the dog, risking throwing out her back by extending the pot over the dog exceedingly unergonomically instead of kicking the dog out of the way, or pushing it with her foot, or verbally shooing it off. That made me love her, and it forces me to forgive her verbal annoyances which are considerable.
But I'm talking about Asian chicken. Turn on a fan aimed at the smoke alarm because it's going to go off. Heat the pan to high. Add oil. It should shimmer immediately. Protein first. If the protein is really tender, and if you have vegetables that take a long time, consider removing the protein after it fries, then add it back after the vegetables, otherwise, begin layering vegetables before the protein is finished, that way it won't be overcooked by the time you get to the end. Help the vegetables along with steam if you think it's necessary, as I did here with the broccoli, it was screwing up my timing so I added a little water to quick-steam them off, otherwise simply continue to add the vegetables in increments, most durable first, most tender last. You can see in the photos how I added mine, celery and onion first, mushrooms and spinach last. Your combination of vegetables will differ. The heat was cut when the sauce mixture was added because Hoisin contains sugar and I didn't want that to burn onto the pan. Also, I used some of the reserve water to rinse out the jar with the sauce mixture and added that too. The flat pan guaranteed excess moisture would evaporate quickly. A wok will act differently.
The vegetables and protein are all cut in advance and ready to go, mise en place, as pictured below, because the actual frying goes quickly, especially with a flat pan, and you don't want to be messing around dicing things and mixing sauces once the action starts. Because of the increased surface area of the flat pan, and because it is a non-non-stick pan, meaning things stick, I kept handy a jar of water to control the temperature, to steam vegetables quickly as I'm layering them, and to lift the fond off the pan to mix with the frying/steaming vegetables. Were you to observe this in action, you'd be convinced I'm a pro, or in the very least probably did this before. I recently saw Paula Dean do this with a wok and she was risibly, ridiculously, woefully unprepared, chopping as she went along, mixing up a sauce while things were frying. She was clearly out of her element. And this makes me laugh. It makes me laugh a sinister, malevolent and unsympathetic, ridiculing laugh, one that goes, Buaaaa haaa haaa haaaa hooo hooo snort hooo hoo heh heh heh, and then I roll my eyes in disgust, and then I imitate the way she talks exaggerating her foibles which I'm convinced are contrived, so I add that too, the self-awareness of what I'm doing, subtracting syllables from multi-syllabic words like "oil" and "boil" and adding syllables to words like "flour," but I say that's what I'm doing in her accent and her speech pattern and her volume, which is unnecessarily and obnoxiously LOUD. If you were here you'd either crack up laughing or punch me in the face. I'm especially annoyed with her substituting the phoneme "tuh" for the word "to." George Bush does that too. That's why these two people often go directly to mute.
But I forgive her for all that because she was so considerate to her dog, Gracie.
The dog was sleeping on a rug right in front of the sink and when Paula Dean went to dump a heavy pot of water into the sink she struggled with the heavy pot, more so for not disturbing the dog, risking throwing out her back by extending the pot over the dog exceedingly unergonomically instead of kicking the dog out of the way, or pushing it with her foot, or verbally shooing it off. That made me love her, and it forces me to forgive her verbal annoyances which are considerable.
But I'm talking about Asian chicken. Turn on a fan aimed at the smoke alarm because it's going to go off. Heat the pan to high. Add oil. It should shimmer immediately. Protein first. If the protein is really tender, and if you have vegetables that take a long time, consider removing the protein after it fries, then add it back after the vegetables, otherwise, begin layering vegetables before the protein is finished, that way it won't be overcooked by the time you get to the end. Help the vegetables along with steam if you think it's necessary, as I did here with the broccoli, it was screwing up my timing so I added a little water to quick-steam them off, otherwise simply continue to add the vegetables in increments, most durable first, most tender last. You can see in the photos how I added mine, celery and onion first, mushrooms and spinach last. Your combination of vegetables will differ. The heat was cut when the sauce mixture was added because Hoisin contains sugar and I didn't want that to burn onto the pan. Also, I used some of the reserve water to rinse out the jar with the sauce mixture and added that too. The flat pan guaranteed excess moisture would evaporate quickly. A wok will act differently.
The white stuff in the bowl with the mushrooms is asparagus.
No comments:
Post a Comment