Genghis Khan beef

This colorful stir-fry adapted from Grace Young's cookbook packs a nice spicy punch. I've found that trimmed chuck steak turns out excellently in stir-fries. Commonly used in braising, this inexpensive cut has enough intramuscular fat to stay tender in the hot wok.

1. Cut 12-16 ounces of beef into 1-inch cubes. In a medium bowl, combine 1 tsp. each of dark soy sauce and light soy sauce. Add the beef, stir to coat, and marinate while you prepare the other ingredients.

2. Thinly slice a bunch of garlic cloves and pull the stems off 6 red Thai chillis. Slice the whites of 8-10 scallions into 2-inch pieces and cut a few of the green sections into slivers for garnish.

3. In a small bowl, combine 2 T. hoisin sauce, 1 T. sambal olek, and 1 tsp. sesame oil.

4. Heat a wok over high and swirl in a bit of oil. Add the beef, spreading it evenly in the wok, and let it cook undisturbed for a minute to begin to brown. Then stir-fry the beef 1-2 minutes until just browned all over and transfer to a plate.

5. Wipe the wok with a paper towel and swirl in a bit more oil. Add the garlic and chillis and stir-fry a few seconds until fragrant. Add the scallion whites and stir-fry another minute. Return the beef to the wok, add the hoisin mixture and stir-fry 30 seconds. Turn onto a plate, garnish with the scallion greens, and serve with steamed rice.

Drumsticks with caramelized onions

This was the dinner I made the night we got our cat. He was still a little shy, but kept trying to jump into my lap during dinner. I didn't give him any because onions are bad for cats. He jumps in my lap all the time now, so I'll never know if it was because he smelled chicken.

Adapted from Grace Young's Breath of a Wok:

1. Slice one onion and a few scallions. Thinly slice a few garlic cloves and mince a piece of ginger.

2. Heat a wok until smoking, then swirl in a bit of oil. Add the garlic, ginger and onion, season with salt and white pepper, and stir-fry over medium heat 4-5 minutes until light golden. Transfer to a plate.

3. Add a little more oil to the wok, then add 6 or so chicken drumsticks, spreading them evenly in the wok. Pan-fry 20-25 minutes over medium heat, turning the drumsticks until browned on all sides and the chicken is cooked through.

4. Add the cooked onions, the scallions, 2 T. oyster sauce, and a drizzle of sesame oil, stirring over low heat until well combined. Serve with white rice.

Tofu with black bean sauce

If I ever fell on hard times, I would probably eat this dish at at least 3 times a week.

Block of tofu: $1

1/4 lb. pork: $1

Chicken broth: $.50

Small quantities of beans, garlic, scallions, sauce, rice: ~$1

We're talking less than $4 for a rich, delicious, fast and, as far as I can tell, healthy dinner for two. Go on, try it.

Adapted from Grace Young's The Breath of a Wok:

1. Cut a 14 oz. block of firm tofu into 12 pieces. Put them on paper towels to drain and sprinkle with a little salt.

2. Whisk 2/3 cup chicken stock with 1 T. oyster sauce, 1 tsp. cornstarch and a pinch of sugar. Slice 2 scallions thinly.

3. Rinse and drain 2-3 T. Chinese fermented black beans. Mince 3-4 garlic cloves. In a bowl, combine the beans, garlic, 1 T. soy sauce and 1 tsp. Shaoxing rice wine. Mash with a fork.

4. Heat a wok on high and swirl in a little oil. Add 4 ounces ground pork, stir-frying just until cooked. Remove the meat to a bowl, keeping its juices in the wok.

5. Add the tofu to the wok, cooking a couple minutes until browned. Stir in the bean mixture and stir-fry 30 seconds until fragrant. Now stir the broth mixture and add it to the wok, stirring until the sauce thickens. Add the pork and scallions and simmer another minute. Serve with white rice.

Fried rice two ways

Whenever John and I made too much rice, we used to stupidly throw away the leftover bits at the bottom of the pot. Now we save them up for fried rice, which must be cooked with cold rice or it comes out mushy. Fried rice is beautiful — it's quick, delicious, colorful and can be made with whatever meat or vegetables you've got.

First up is Mandarin fried rice, adapted from Grace Young's Breath of a Wok. This dish uses lap xuong, the sweet, fatty Chinese sausage found in any Asian grocery. Lap xuong evokes major childhood nostalgia for me. My grandmother sliced it, fried it up and served it to me over sticky rice, the hot fragrant grease sinking through the rice to permeate every grain. As an adult, I noticed that the second ingredient is pork fat. To save our arteries, I bought the "extra lean" kind.

1. Thinly slice 1 Chinese sausage. Mince a few cloves of garlic and an equal amount of ginger. Slice 2-3 scallions thinly.

2. Beat 2 eggs. Heat a wok until smoking, then swirl in 1 T. peanut oil and 1 tsp. sesame oil. Tip in the eggs and tilt the wok so that the eggs cover the surface as thinly as possible to make a pancake. When the pancake is just set, turn it onto a cutting board and slice it into shreds.

3. Reheat the wok with another T. of peanut oil. Add the garlic and ginger and stir-fry 30 seconds. Add the sausage and stir-fry 1 minute. Add the scallions and 2-3 cups of cold cooked rice, breaking up large chunks of rice. Add a splash of Shaoxing rice wine and stir-fry 2-3 minutes until heated through. Season with soy sauce and white pepper, add the egg shreds, and toss to combine. Feeds 2.

The second version is Thai basil fried rice, very loosely adapted from Kasma Loha-Unchit's recipe.

1. Cut 1/2 lb. chicken or pork into small pieces and sprinkle with fish sauce. Chop 6 cloves of garlic and 2 Thai chillis. Thinly slice 3-4 shallots.

2. Heat a wok until smoking and swirl in 1 T. peanut oil. Add the meat, leaving undisturbed for a minute to brown, then add the garlic, chillis and shallots. Stir-fry a couple minutes until meat is cooked and vegetables slightly browned.

3. Add 2-3 cups cold cooked rice and stir-fry until rice is softened and has begun to brown. Add 2 T. black soy sauce and toss to coat the rice. Season with fish sauce, then remove from heat, stir in a cup of Thai basil leaves and sprinkle liberally with white pepper. Serve with a wedge of lime. Feeds 2.

Farm-style omelets

In her book Breath of a Wok, Grace Young devotes about three pages of buildup and a full page of description to the following recipe, made for her by a rice farmer when Young visited the southern Chinese city of Yangshuo to research the book. These delicate yet piquant little omelets use dried shitake mushrooms, prized in Chinese cooking for their strong and meaty flavor. The omelets are wok-fried and then braised briefly in the soaking liquid used to rehydrate the mushrooms. These were the best omelets I ever had, bursting with fresh herbs and a little hotness and delicious with white rice. If either the cooking time or the heat is increased, the omelets become dry and tough, so be sure your pork is not icy cold or the omelets will require more time to cook.

Adapted from Young's recipe:

1. In a small bowl, soak a small handful of dried shitake mushrooms in 1/2 cup cold water 30 minutes or until soft. Meanwhile, finely mince 1/4 cup cilantro, a couple scallions, a few cloves of garlic and a couple hot fresh chillis. When the mushrooms are ready, squeeze them dry, reserving the soaking liquid. Discard the stems and finely mince the caps.

2. In a bowl, combine the cilantro, scallions, garlic, chillis and mushrooms with 4 ounces ground pork and a pinch of salt. In another bowl, beat 5-6 large eggs.

3. Heat the wok over high and swirl in a bit of oil, then using a measuring cup, pour a 1/4 cup of egg into the wok like pancake batter. (Young says to do two at once, but I had trouble keeping them separate in the rounded bottom of the wok). Cook on medium 20 seconds until bubbles form around the edges. Spoon some pork mixture onto the pancake and fold it in half. Then fold it in half again to form a flat cigar shape and cook 1-2 minutes until golden. Transfer to a plate. (Or push the omelets up the side of the wok to keep cooking at a lower temperature, but I would only do this if you are working very quickly).

4. Continue forming little omelets with the remaining eggs and pork mixture (you should end up with about 8). When all the eggs are cooked, return the omelets to the wok, increase the heat to high, and add the reserved mushroom liquid. Cover, reduce the heat to medium, and cook 2 minutes. Turn the omelets, cover, and cook 2 minutes or just until the pork is no longer pink. Feeds 2.

Green bean redux

I've now tried three recipes for Sichuanese green beans. The first, from Bill and Cheryl Jamison's book Around the World in 80 Dinners, was terrible. The Jamisons called the recipe "wok-charred beans" but instructed me to cook the pork first and then add the beans to the wok. The presence of the pork crowded the wok and allowed no opportunity for the charring and wrinkling characteristic of the beans in this dish. That recipe also incorporated large, anise-scented Chinese olives, which I don't much care for. Fuschia Dunlop's recipe is better, and the simplest of the three. But I loved the use of ginger, scallions, Chinkiang black vinegar and chicken stock in the version in Grace Young's Breath of a Wok. (The Jamisons' version used chicken stock and black vinegar as well.) Then I missed the ya cai in Dunlop's recipe, so I added that as well (obviously optional if you don't have any). I believe the directions below employ the best of the three recipes. Young comments that this dish reaches full flavor after sitting for a few hours, which makes it an ideal make-ahead dish for dinner guests.

1. Combine 1/4 chicken broth, 1 T. sugar and 1 tsp. salt in a small bowl.

2. Heat the wok, swirl in 2 T. peanut oil and add 1/2 lb of green beans. Reduce the heat to medium and pan-fry, turning the beans until they are wrinkled with brown spots. Transfer to a plate and repeat with another 1/2 lb. of beans.

3. Add 2 T. minced ginger and 2 ounces of ground pork to the empty wok and stir-fry, breaking up the pork until it has lost almost all its pink color. Add 2 T. ya cai and stir-fry another minute. Swirl in the broth mixture and add the beans, tossing to combine, and cook a couple more minutes until most of the liquid has evaporated. Stir in 1 T. Chinkiang vinegar, 1 tsp. sesame oil and 2 thinly sliced scallions. Remove from heat and serve hot or at room temperature.

Chicken with Sichuan peppercorns

This aromatic dish is from Grace Young's cookbook Breath of a Wok. It uses Sichuan peppercorns, also prominent in dan dan noodles. I probably haven't talked about Sichuan pepper enough. These dark red peppercorns should be roasted in a wok to bring out their flavor — just heat them up dry in the wok until they are slightly brown and fragrant — and then crushed in a mortar or spice grinder. It's a culinary cliche to say something is doing a dance in your mouth, but in the case of Sichuan pepper it is true. It's hard to explain the tingling, numbing sensation to somebody who hasn't tried it. The Mandarin word for Sichuan pepper heat, "ma," is the same word used to describe anesthesia and pins and needles. Far gentler yet in a way more startling than chilli heat, Sichuan pepper spice is intensely pleasurable. Well, to me. John's coworker's Chinese wife hates Sichuan food, says it's like little bombs going off in her mouth.

Notice how in this recipe the chicken is supposed to be cut in small cubes and the garlic, ginger and scallion sliced to match. The Chinese consider it sloppy to serve a stir-fry without uniform cuts (see above), but my chicken thighs were all misshapen, and I have neither the drive nor the knife skills to get too fussed.

1. Cut 12 ounces of chicken thigh meat into 1/2-inch cubes. Combine the chicken, 1 tsp. Shaoxing rice wine, 1 tsp. cornstarch, and a sprinkling of white pepper in a bowl.

2. In a second bowl, mix 2 T. chicken broth, 1 T. Chinkiang black vinegar, 2 tsp. sesame oil, 1 tsp. sugar, 1 tsp. chilli oil, and 2 more tsp. rice wine.

3. Slice some garlic, ginger and scallions all into thin slices. Roast 1/2 tsp. Sichuan peppercorns and grind them to a powder.

4. Heat the wok over high heat, then add a bit of peanut oil, 8 small red dried chillis and the chicken meat. Cook undisturbed for one minute, letting the chicken begin to brown. Then stir-fry 1 to 2 minutes until the chicken is brown. Transfer to a plate.

5. Add the garlic, ginger, scallions and Sichuan pepper to the wok and stir-fry for 15 seconds. Return the chicken to the wok. Stir the sauce mixture and swirl it in. Stir-fry 30 seconds until the sauce thickens slightly and serve over white rice. Feeds 2.