![]() I never would have guessed that yogurt salad might harmonize with Chinese food, and I can’t stop thinking about the way the two worked together. Ironically, the recipe I love most from this book appears in a chapter on “simple, no-cook sides” and doesn’t require a wok at all: a cucumber salad showered in fresh dill and chili oil, served on a bed of Greek yogurt, that made a spectacular accompaniment to stir-fried beef. After that, for a while I wanted to cook everything in my beloved wok, and the 200 recipes in López-Alt’s book made that easy. The dish had wok hei, the faint smoky flavor you get when flames from a blazing stove mingle with aerosolized particles from the food. I was right, but is “just fine” all I aspire to? The first batch of López-Alt’s pepper steak that I whipped up in my new $20 wok was far superior to anything I’d ever stir-fried before. I’m embarrassed to admit that before I read “The Wok,” I thought I could cook anything just fine in my cast-iron skillet. This five-pound slab of a book grew out of a planned chapter in López-Alt’s 2015 “ The Food Lab” and covers all things wok, from why you need one to what to look for (carbon steel and a flat bottom) when you buy it and, of course, how to stir-fry meats, deep-fry tofu, pan-fry dumplings and simmer any number of savory Asian soups in your favorite new pan. ![]() First and foremost: THE WOK: Recipes and Techniques (Norton, 658 pp., $50), by J. Of the many intriguing cookbooks published thus far in 2022, eight held my attention. ![]() As long as I have eyes, I’ll want to read new cookbooks, and as long as I can hobble to the stove, I’ll try new recipes.īut unless you live in a warehouse, hard choices must be made. Then I open one and happily remember: There are as many ways to cook as there are cooks. As someone with an already unmanageable collection of cookbooks, I see a stack of new titles and wonder what they could possibly offer that I can’t already find on my sagging shelves.
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