The King of Pointland

A Wok on The Wild Side

This past Sunday it was again my turn to host a dinner party for FatCampDC. FatCampDC is an informal club to which I belong. What we do is, we take turns hosting dinner parties. It's great fun because other people cook, while you get to eat and drink and talk and burp, and then you leave. Fun, that is, until December 12th — a far-off date that had been future-David's problem, not yours — rolls around.

Now that it's over, I can happily report that the dinner was a great success. Everybody had seconds, until all the food was gone, and to the best of my knowledge nobody threw up.

Hosting by myself was quite stressful and helped me understand why it would be nice to have a girlfriend. Girlfriends are good for helping you host dinner parties. Also, they will have sex with you. I did get significant assistance from my sou chef posse — Glen, Eileen, John, and Maggie — and Maggie brought salad with the goat cheese, and Kate made ice cream, and others brought wine, and oh my God, so much wine, please come to my house and drink wine because there is too much wine!

What did I make? Potato latkes, Kung Pao! chicken, and not one, but two homemade velvet spice cakes. In the process of preparing for and cooking this meal I have traveled far and learned much. Allow me to share the wisdom gained in the journey, won't you?

Lesson Zero: Deh-ta Hsiung's The Chinese Kitchen is an outstanding cookbook, organized by ingredient, with many beautiful pictures. Should you feel too lazy to cook some evening, just sit back and eat a bag of potato chips while you thumb through the striking photographs of Chinese herbs, spices, vegetables, rural and urban scenes, people, decapitated ducks, and so on.

In addition to describing the ingredients, Hsiung is pretty clear about the basic cooking utensils: "The main items needed are listed below, but the two unique necessities are the wok and the Chinese kitchen knife commonly known as the the Chinese cleaver. Unfortunately any Western counterparts to these will prove expensive and ineffective." In particular, you want to get a carbon steel wok, which must be seasoned before use. Only a carbon steel wok can handle the intense heat required for authentic stir-fry. If you are unsure of where to find these utensils, ask a knowledgeable source, such as your Chinese co-worker.

Lesson One: If your Chinese co-worker tells you to go to Masim, the Chinese grocery store in Silver Spring, call the store first. In that way you will learn that they have been closed for two months, and save yourself a trip.

Lesson Two: Jin Shan, the Chinese grocery store in Rockville that she next recommends will be much better: it is still in business. Here you can find all the ingredients you need, as well as shelf after shelf stocked with undecipherable mystery jars. The old man who works there won't be able to tell you what is in these jars, because he doesn't speak English. He will laugh appreciatively when you try to say "Sheh Shyeh" ("thanks") though, and you'll eventually figure out what's what (Sheh Shyeh, FDA!), including "Soy" sauce, which is just the Chinese word for good old American soy sauce.

What the grocery store won't have are those essential cooking utensils. Cleavers? Forget it. Woks? Well, yes, but most are covered in Teflon. How disappointing. There are a few non-non-stick woks, with welded metal handles that become too hot to hold without oven mitts. If you buy one, and try to season it, it will turn a strange shade of pink, with flecks of peeling metal. Have the good sense to get another wok.

Lesson Three: Take the Green Line to Gallery Place/Chinatown and walk one block to Da Hsin Trading Co. There they sell exactly the wok you want, for ten dollars, and exactly the cleaver you want, dangerously sharp and with a pleasing heft, also for ten dollars. Before you head home, stop by Fado's, get drunk, and threaten people with the wok (but not with the cleaver — there's nothing amusing about that, apparently.)

Lesson Four: If you turn the burner on your electric stove all the way to high, let your wok get nice and hot, and then add a little peanut oil, it will bubble, then smoke, and then burst into flames. If you were careful to add only a little oil, the fire will burn out before burning down the house (shout out to Shizzannon). Still, your trial batch of Kung Pao! chicken will be a little sootier than is usual.

Lesson Five: Making a cake from scratch, especially a butter-based cake, takes much more time and effort than making a Duncan Hines-based cake. It is also more fun. Be careful, though. After you whip the stick and a half of room-temperature butter you may be very tempted to grab a spoon and eat it right there, so creamy and buttery it will be. What you want to do is eat the remaining half-stick of butter beforehand, to help sate your butter jones.

After whipping in the sugar, the mixture should be light in both color and texture. More temptation. Again, resist. When you beat in the egg yolks, but before they are thoroughly mixed, the butter will turn a beautiful, intense, mesmerizing yellow-orange, and you might get the urge to smear it all over your head and sit under a table. Don't.

Lesson Six: Cream of Tartar is actually a powder! What's that all about? Shouldn't they call it Powder of Cream of Tartar?

Lesson Seven: Nothing is quite so delightful as beating clear, gooey egg whites into light, fluffy egg whites with stiff peaks. It's magic! Be sure to use a big bowl: those whites increase in volume many-fold.

Lesson Eight: The basic Potato Latke recipe in Joan Nathan's Jewish Cooking in America leaves something to be desired. True, your latkes will be crisp and tasty, but they will have little structural integrity, falling apart like nobody's business. I guess the "in America" means screwing up basic recipes so that they no longer work. Next time, try adding more eggs. By the way, if you plan to keep your latkes warm in the oven while you make your stir-fry, 200 °F is a bit too warm: the latkes will continue to cook.

Lesson Nine: Your awesome dinner guests will insist on washing dishes. You will force them not to, but they will sneak off and start washing again. Even so, prepare to clean for hours and hours after everybody leaves, and keep in mind that the re-airing of the Sunday morning talk shows on C-SPAN radio will be a poor distraction since you listened to them that afternoon while baking and cleaning.

Just remember to follow these ten easy lessons, and your next Asian-themed Hanukkah dinner party is sure to be a success!

Posted by cradle at December 14, 2004 12:59 AM