Wok Fast

True story: Frustrated by a lack of quality Chinese cuisine in my new neighborhood, I ordered this book. I read through it on a Saturday afternoon, and by early that evening, after a quick trip to the supermarket's international section (the book includes detailed instructions on the key spices and such to buy), was home cooking dinner for ten people. The three recipes I selected (one shrimp, one beef, one chicken) were fast and easy to prepare, and were loved by all. And the food was fresher and higher quality than any of the restaurants I'll never return to.

I just received this book today and already made one recipe: spicy tofu with the szechuan sauce. It was great restaurant quality Chinese food! I was so amazed with myself! I have always tried to get that 'correct' flavor and never succeeded....until now. The way the book is layed out is brilliant: great tips on preparing the food, how to 'wok' properly (very high heat people!), and numerous, very tasty pages of different sauces for your wok food. The key is also to get the highest quality ingredients as you can - especially for the sauces - to get that great flavor. I was able to find almost everything I needed at Byerly's. Get this book. It is money extremely well spent! I am so pleased. Thank you to the authors!

I love the approach taken by the authors of this book -- here are the key techniques, here are the ingredients needed, here are the key flavorings (marinades, sauces), and here are some recipes to try. The authors then encourage you to experiment with these basics to suit your own taste. Very refreshing.If you are brand new to wok cooking, you may want to follow the recipes closely at first. But after your confidence builds (and these excellent recipes help that process along brilliantly) you are free (encouraged in fact) to try your own combinations. Don't like the sound of black bean sauce with a chicken stir-fry? Great, use the tangerine sauce instead. Once you understand how ingredients cook in a wok (shrimp take almost no time, chicken takes x amount of time, etc.), you will be able to substitute and interchange ingredients in no time. This freedom should be one of the goals of a good cookbook -- to stimulate not only your taste buds, but also your imagination. Sadly, not many authors take this approach. All too often cookbook authors offer the "my way or no way" approach. Do you know someone (maybe even yourself) who is afraid to vary from the ingredients in a recipe? Fortunately, not too many people are that timid, but it is rare to see substitution and experimentation encouraged in a cookbook.I also appreciate the courage of the authors to "name names" in terms of ingredient brand names. If you are new to Asian food and have no concept of which company produces the best soy or oyster sauce, where pray tell do you learn? The authors actually give you several brand names that they use and recommend. Most ingredients have two brands listed in fact. I learned the hard way how important this information can be. Once I prepared a hoisin-based sauce with whatever brand was available at the local market and it tasted so vile that I could not serve it! Thanks to a few brave souls on the Internet and the authors of this book I now have some brands to purchase that are of a high quality and flavor. I have lost my fear of hoisin!The recipes in this book are simple and tasty. My favorite sauces so far (there are many to choose from) include the tangerine and basic veggie stir-fry. They are full of flavor but do not overwhelm the meat, fish, or vegetables in the stir-fry. The authors cover quite a few main ingredient groupings (seafood, poultry, vegetables, etc.) in this fairly slim book, but it is not a comprehensive list of recipes by main ingredient. You won't find twelve chicken dishes and fourteen beef dishes in this book for example. However, with the basics mastered you can easily imagine your own perfect dish involving your favorite ingredients.If I had one desire it would be that the authors would have included a section on salads and salad dressings. What you say, but this is a wok cookbook! Of course it is, but a lovely salad with your stir-fry is a nice accompaniment. Oh well, perhaps this prolific cookbook team will produce another Asian c

I've gobbled up Barbara Tropp and Gloria Bley Miller's books, which I find thoroughly pedagogic and comprehensive if you want to become a smarty pants in Chinese cooking, but in the end I always fell back on Ken Hom's "Quick Wok" because it seemed to me more practical for whipping up tasty weeknighters in a wink without much fuss or ceremony. That was before "Wok fast" came my way and became as indispensable in my kitchen as the stove itself. As with Ken Hom, the dishes presented in "Wok fast" are delicious and so fast they won't take up more of your precious private time than you're willing to spend cooking dinner after a tiring day at the office or juggling household and/or kids. This fabulous primer explains all the ins and the outs of Chinese cooking in a clear, easy way, and the over hundred recipes can be prepared hours ahead to fit into any schedule. But what I love the most about this book are the recipes for marinades and sauces galore that can be interchangeably used in any of the recipes, a useful section which is missing or incomplete in other books, and which will definitely soup up the simplest, run-of-the-mill stir-fry combination. If you must have just one book on Chinese cooking, let it be "Wok fast." If you can have two, add Ken Hom's "Quick Wok." The others you can dust once in a while for the sake of reference only.

This book gave me a great appreciation of the versatility of the wok. Each recipe follows a flexible formula of carefully cutting the meat and vegetables, marinating the meat, making a flavorful sauce and then pulling it all together in a delicious dish. For me, the marinades and sauces in Wok Fast transformed good stir fry dishes into delicious meals. The book also well describes how to cut and prepare your food before cooking. With dozens of beautiful pictures, you'll recognize some of your favorite Thai and Chinese dishes and will be able to cook them better than most restaurants (and with better ingredients). I wholeheartedly recommend a wok and Wok Fast to anyone who enjoys asian food and great creative easy cooking.