Wok ritual

In 2006 I went to an exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco featuring artworks made by African slaves in America.

There were exquisite quilts with repeating patterns (similar to the one above) and also recordings of songs with lots of repetition. Something about the rhythmic-ness of it all suddenly struck me as being not particularly African but instead fundamentally about suffering.

When people are in deep emotional pain they sometimes keen, or rock back and forth, to comfort themselves. There is a way in which rhythm and predictability are soothing.

I wondered, Would people from a different continent have turned to the rhythms and patterns from their culture to cope as well? The patterns were clearly African patterns, but the fact that the art work was patterned or rhythmic may have had more to do with the *circumstances* than with the slaves' ethnicity. Maybe.

What does this have to do with Chinese food?

Last week I bought a wok and E asked me, "So, are you becoming Chinese?"

Of course not. One does not become Chinese. Neither is my desire to use a wok motivated by Sinophilia. A wok is simply the best tool for cooking the freshest produce available to me. There are many more (Chinese) stir-fry recipes for angled loofas and bitter melons than there are Western ones. Does the analogy make sense? I'm not trying to be Chinese, I'm trying to cook fresh food (while in China).

So, I bought a beautiful Japanese (ha!) carbon steel wok. At least I think I did -- had to count on the 20-something shop attendant to translate for me. If you can read the label below, please let me know what it says...





As soon as I saw the wok I felt deep affection for it. I love the idea of a wok. You may already know, but...you don't get a good wok by spending lots of money. A good wok is like a cast-iron pan: the initial product is cheap ($6-$40 USD), but what makes it a fantastic tool is years of regular use.

Eventually the surface takes on a brown-black patina that is naturally non-stick (or low-stick) and imparts a recognizable wok-flavor to food. It also gives off a little wisp of smoke when it is hot. Grace Young (from SF, by the way) has written extensively about woks in her Breath of a Wok and Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge cookbooks. A picture of Young's wok (next to two other young woks) below, courtesy of Culinate:



So, you season a wok by either baking oil onto its surface in a hot oven or over a hot flame. When this is done, traditionalists (ahem) "open the wok" by stir-frying Chinese chives, spring onions, or yellow onions, and ginger, and sometimes pork fat, in order to remove the "metal" taste from of the wok.







I love this ritual. It's like you are baptizing the wok or breathing life into it with these foundational seasonings. Teaching it a few basic words before it learns to speak. Out of respect for my wok, I didn't use the wilted spring onions and shriveled ginger hunkered down in my refrigerator. Instead I went out to the markets and bought a beautiful, robust chunk of ginger and some feisty spring onions. Then I opened my wok...