Broke a champagne bottle over Kenji’s wok cookbook on Friday night by trying out the Chinese Fried Sauce Noodles. Also cooked the bok choy that he made on his YouTube channel a few weeks ago, although I didn’t make it in my wok.
Kudos to me for completing my shopping at an H-Mart and not having to ask once for help finding an ingredient. That was super impressive, me.
First step, as always, is to shake up a dirty gin martini:
With that taken care of, it was then acceptable to begin cooking.
Toasting Szechuan peppercorns and star anise:
Simmering ground turkey, garlic, ginger, in sweet bean sauce and tamari:
Add in the noodles, toss, toss, toss, then plate:
Next time, I’ll skip the carrot or purchase pre-shredded. It was a pain in the ass to cut them into matchsticks, and at this point the martini had me feeling dgaf-y. Petite knife work can eat it.
Here is the bok choy:
Both dishes came out great. I followed each recipe exactly, and will make a few minor mods the next time I cook each one. Both the Mrs. and I thought they tasted delicious.
Looks great. I did the chow fun tonight. No picks, because the noodles, despite being home made fresh, still got shredded. Maybe I need to season my wok more.
I think some of the older ones are pretty inefficient, if that kind of thing bothers you. I’m not sure I’d want any actual vintage appliances in my home based on safety and fuel efficiency standards from generations ago.
lol timing. The most recent episode of the Sporkful Podcast was with the consumer testing division that deals with stoves. The takeaway was that expensive luxury home stoves almost all far underperform the more common brands.
This is probably my biggest gripe. Because of the pilot light design, the stove cavities idle at like 200F ambient temperature and the top of the stove where the burners are is too hot to touch. The other night I put my (clean and) wet wok on the stovetop and it was dry in like 5 minutes.
We have a service scheduled for next week with a vintage oven company. Not sure if they’ll be able to calibrate the pilot lights, but I’m going to ask. Am also curious what the re-sale value of it is.
