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+Episode: 1946
+Title: HPR1946: Wok Cookery
+Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1946/hpr1946.mp3
+Transcribed: 2025-10-18 11:40:04
+
+---
+
+This is HPR Episode 1946 entitled, What Cookery, It is hosted by Dave Morris and is about 21 minutes long.
+The summary is, I prepare a vegetarian version of Chao Maine for my son's visit.
+This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
+Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
+That's HPR15.
+Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
+Hello everyone, this is Dave Morris. My show today is called, What Cookery.
+And not for the first time, I'm following in the footsteps of Frank Bell,
+who did an HPR episode entitled, A Beginner with a Walk, Episode number 1787 on the 9th of June 2015.
+And he talked about his experiences with stir fry cooking using a wok, which he'd recently
+purchased if I remember correctly. Well Frank got a lot of comments about this.
+I was one of the commenters actually. And there seemed to be an interest in the subject.
+It was discussed on the community news and it seemed that there might be some mileage
+in doing another show on the subject. So that's why I'm doing this.
+I've been interested in Chinese, Indonesian and other far East and cookery styles for quite a
+number of years. And I do a lot of cooking, having been a single parent family for quite a number of
+years. And so I thought I'd record a show about one of the recipes that I use.
+What prompted this was that my son visits about once a week and eats dinner with me.
+He doesn't live in Edinburgh, he lives in Aberdeen, so he comes down to study at Napier University
+here in Edinburgh. And he pops in for his dinner at the end of the week usually.
+He's quite keen on Chinese food as well, but he's vegetarian. So for a change, I offered to cook him
+my version of Chao Ming, which without any meaning. I've done this before and it'd gone down pretty
+well with him and his girlfriend. He both enjoyed it a lot. So I thought I would do that and then I'd
+make a record of what I was doing and set up a show on the subject. So my version of Chao Ming
+is based on Ken Holmes' recipe from his book, Chinese Cookery. If you have a copy of that and it's
+the same as mine, it's page 226. This is quite an old book. I bought this after his show in the 1980s,
+1984, it was a series called Chinese Cookery on the BBC. And I watched and enjoyed this a lot.
+And I actually learned a fair amount of what I know about Chinese cookery from him and from his
+various books. So it's about preparation and the cooking as well. So preparation is quite important.
+I believe. So let's talk about preparation. There's some long notes here in case you haven't spotted
+them with pictures and stuff as well. So I prepared quite a lot. I do quite, I like to cook in large
+batches because if my son visits, he often comes in twice to be fed and so I like to cook plenty
+and often there's enough left over for me to eat for a few days afterwards so it saves me
+any more cooking for a few days. So I'm a bit fussy about cutting things up for a stir fry.
+That's partly because getting everything pretty much the same size and shape to some extent is
+useful from the point of view of cooking. It makes sure that things cook similarly. And also the
+having them similar sizes is nice and more aesthetically pleasing. And it's the way that Chinese
+cookery is done so I like that. Being a geek and being slightly obsessive I do tend to spend a lot
+of time fiddling around this sort of thing. So that's just the way I am I'm afraid. I do enjoy
+chopping up vegetables and preparing things. I use a large cook's knife these days for this purpose
+and it's what I prefer now. I've had a few Chinese cleavours of various sizes over the years.
+I've got a big thin one and a big chunky one and a small one but I'd find that they don't
+sharpen all that spectacularly well. Maybe I haven't bought the right ones. I need to get a
+big steel one, not a stainless steel one. Anyway the cook's knife which is stainless steel does
+really well and takes a very good edge and keeps it for a long time. So the ingredients of my stir
+fry start with carrots. I use about six medium sized ones and what I do with these is I slice them
+diagonally as you can see in the first picture and in the second picture I make slices about five
+millimetres thick and then I cut them into sticks again about five millimeters. So there's a
+sort of julienne style of cutting but it's cut diagonally to expose the fibres better
+so the argument goes anyway. There's lots of pictures about this I hope you're able to see them.
+I also use celery about six or seven sticks of this and I always cut them up by trimming top and
+bottom. If they tend to be a bit stringy which celery often is at least the stuff I buy from
+the supermarkets. I peel the out of the convex surface with a potato peeler to remove the
+the bigger fibres and then I usually cut stalks the sticks into two or three depending on how long
+they are. It's up to you how you do that because it's just the way I do it and if they're big I cut them
+along the way lengthwise to make conveniently convenient pieces as you can see in the pictures
+and then I cut those remaining pieces diagonally to make pieces not too different in size and
+thickness to the carrots that I told you about before. I also added French beans. That's what I
+discovered. That's what they're called in the UK but tend not to be called that much at many other
+places. They think they're referred to as green or stringless beans elsewhere. He can buy them
+trimmed in the supermarket but I never do that because when you look at them they're always browned
+at the ends. Look really nasty. So you'd have to trim them off. You might as well just trim the
+beans themselves. So I top and tail them. I actually do them by cutting them diagonally and then
+rolling them and cutting again. That means you get pieces with the two ends cut at two different
+angles. It's called roll cutting in Chinese cuisine. It's not usually used with these things.
+I just did it because I've just liked the idea of it. Usually done with larger vegetables
+like carrots and courgettes. Having done that I just bought a standard pack. I don't remember
+how many there were but this is all sort of it's not measured. It's just sort of how much looks good
+I guess. It's hard to convey so apologies if it's not really much of a recipe to follow but
+hopefully you'll get the general idea. You always look at a proper recipe book to get a better idea
+of quantities. I also use mange too which you probably know is French for eat all because it's
+type of pea that you can eat all of. It doesn't have the hard fibrous bit in the middle of the pods.
+They're known as mange too in in Scotland probably in the rest of the UK too but they're probably
+snow peas biologically butanically and I think that's the way they're called in many other parts of
+the world. These are snow peas and pretty certain because they're very very flat. They're very
+nice so. I just top and tail them and cut them diagonally into reasonable sized pieces. No
+point in cutting them small I reckon for this meal because they're edible just as they are and
+they don't need much cooking so just keep them fairly big. I used I think maybe a couple of
+peppers, red peppers in this case. I've shown one being cut up. I cut them vertically into quarters
+and cut the seeds and the core bit out of them and then I cut each individual quarter across
+horizontally across the the pepper and then slice the remaining piece downwards so I get sort of
+reasonably short similar sort of length pieces to the carrots and the celery and so on
+and not too thick. I just do it for this type of stir fry because it just seems to fit
+better with the sort of general size. People do cut peppers into all sorts of different shapes.
+Sometimes they're quite big chunks if you eat other sorts of Chinese food and a Chinese restaurant
+and stuff but that's the way I do it. Onions I had I think a couple of medium-sized onions in here
+and with them I peel them, top and tail them, take the the the root piece out of the bottom,
+the base of the bowl actually. Is it a bowl? Yeah, I think so. And then I halve them, lay them flat
+side down on a board and then cut them vertically into quite thin slices. Maybe about the five
+mil, maybe less similarly. So they end up being sort of similar lengths that they're sort of
+long strips, similar lengths to the carrots and the celery etc. Pictures to show this again.
+Garlic, I always use a lot of garlic. I'm a great garlic fan, so are my kids. I'd probably
+force them to be there as they grow up anyway. So I just I use an entire bulb of garlic,
+head of garlic, however you like to call it and I obviously trim the bases off all of the individual
+cloves and peel them and then I just slice them whichever way is most convenient. So I ended up
+end up with quite a number of slices. I find that that works well with stir fry. I had mushrooms
+as well. I use chestnut mushrooms here. These are a brown colored ones. I think they're the same
+species as the white but different variant or something, different variety. I've cut them in half,
+wash them first, cut them in half and then put flat side down on the chopping board and cut
+them vertically to get reasonably sized pieces. I also use bean sprouts in this recipe and I just
+got I think it's a 400 gram pack of them. That's a definite necessary. Some of the other stuff is
+not always in charming but it is in live version. In the notes I've shown the meat substitute that
+I'm using which is called Quorn QU-O-R-N and this particular one is formed into chunks that look
+like pieces of chicken breast. I think I got a special deal on 300 gram bags that particular time
+so I got two of them. Certainly enough for about six people I think there's quite a lot still.
+So you have to prepare that one it's frozen and so you just add it to a wok or a frying pan
+and you stir fry it in a little bit of oil which is what I did from frozen over a medium heat.
+I think it takes about eight minutes and it thaws and browns slowly on the on the outside and
+looks nicer and flavors up a bit as a consequence. It's fairly bland but it picks up flavors from
+the other things it's cooked with. It's actually really nice as a meat substitute.
+Charming needs noodles. I use medium egg noodles. These are a common branch you can find in the
+supermarket. You can also get lots of other varieties from the Chinese supermarket I find but
+in this particular case I'd grabbed this brand, Charwoods and you get enough for I think six people
+in a pack and I can't remember how many chunks of noodles are out there. There's sort of
+blocks of noodles inside there. I think I used four for this. That might be the whole lot I
+can't honestly remember now. Didn't note it down. You have to cook these by putting them in boiling
+water and simmering them for four minutes and then draining them. At that point I added soy sauce
+to the result and then a little bit of sesame oil and that was really done to flavor them and to
+stop them from sticking. It's a picture of the pack and of the resulting noodles. I've also shown
+the various sources and things that I've added to stuff. I use rice wine a bit later on when I get
+to the cooking and I use soy sauce which like I said goes in the noodles and gets added to the stir
+fry and they're sesame oil as well for flavor. You don't cook with sesame oil because it burns but
+it's great flavoring. So let's get on with the cooking. I've got a large two handled walk. I think
+somebody gave this to me. I can't remember where I got it from. It's one of the three that I have
+though one of them is actually a tempura walk. I meant to fill it with oil and fry stuff in it
+in batter Japanese way. The big one is 18 and a half inches in diameter which is about 47
+centimeters. It's round bottom but it's quite shallow. It's made of stainless steel. The
+shallow shape allows it to balance on my gas hob. It takes up almost the entire hob. It's so big
+and I've got a small one which is more rounded but it's got a flat bottom. That one it's much
+deeper than this one but it if it was rounded it would fall over I've found. So I needed the flat
+one in the in the smaller version but this one seems to work fine as it is. It's some I said a
+two handled walk so it's not quite so easy to maneuver on the stove. If you can get a large walk
+with a single handle it's better and if you can actually flip it to make things to flip over
+and move about in the pan then you become a very professional walk user. I have not reached that
+stage yet. He's a walk spatula to stir everything up. It's a stainless steel one. You can get him in
+all the Chinese supermarkets I find they're not very much. It's stainless steel. It's got a
+wooden handle on the end or as it gets quite hot but I quite like it for the shoveling action.
+If you watch professional cooks in the far east and wherever where you stand by the
+and watch them cook your food in a in a walk they tend to use a ladle because they can scoop
+stuff into the the walk and then they just stir stuff around. Mostly they're flipping stuff around
+in it but they have a much better heat source than I do here so everything cooks quicker than it
+does for me and they tend not use these these shovels in my experience anyway. So first thing I
+just put peanut oil in the walk and put the gas burner on full and got the oil hot hot enough
+checked in the onions and the garlic and stir them up just for a couple of minutes. It's it's a
+classic thing it flavors the oil and makes everything smell fantastic and starts the the whole cooking.
+Then I added the the tougher ingredients the harder ones the carrots the celery and the beans
+the green beans and they stir they go they fry full blast on my gas stove with a lot of stirring
+they need to be stirred a lot otherwise they they would burn but they start to cook pretty well.
+About five minutes I reckon as they're progressing I put maybe about a tablespoon of rice wine. I
+actually just pour the rice wine into the cap of the bottle and put that much in maybe a couple of
+capables even what that does is add flavor to the to the thing. I also add a fair bit of soy sauce
+again it's not measured I just sort of tip the bottle up and it's got a got to dispense a top
+and you just sort of slap some in there you'll see the professionals they have an open top bottle
+they just put the thumb over the top and shake it in I don't think it's done very scientifically
+it's more experienced than anything else you can see if you start to see the the soy sauce in the food
+if it's very obvious then you're probably putting too much in then in when the the next softer
+ingredients that was the peppers the mushrooms and the corn remember that I've been previously
+cooked so it was it didn't it doesn't need a lot of preparation now and we don't want the peppers to
+to cook right down too much we don't want the mange to to to lose its crunch the mushrooms they
+also don't need a lot of cooking if this had been a classic charming I would have used chicken
+rather than corn here which would have been pre-cooked of course if you look at most of the
+Chinese recipes you'll see this this stage then cooked for about another five minutes I think
+I probably put a bit more soy sauce in at this stage because I imagine that the I must have
+reason that the corn would need a bit more flavor than it had so far anyway once that lot had
+cooked for a bit I could add the noodles now this is the point at which there's a lot of noodles
+you can see the picture there's a lot of noodles has gone in there and these of course are cold
+because I've been sitting around waiting for the rest of the stuff to be started up there's a lot
+you want to mix them thoroughly in now if you do this in a small wok and use the quantity I've used
+you're you're in trouble because it's really hard to mix this is why I use the the biggest wok
+so they get a get a few minutes of stirring mix thoroughly and along the way they're warming up
+then I added the bean sprouts and these also need to be mixed well into the mixture and to warm through
+they don't need a huge amount of cooking though there's some talk of bean sprouts needing more
+cooking than people previously thought because they they're not always as as clean as you would
+hope they were I've never come across that problem myself but reading up about it I was a bit surprised
+to find out that there can be problems with with raw bean sprouts anyway these got a reasonable
+amount of cooking I want them to have a bit of crunch to them and I want them to mix in
+with all the other flavours in in the wok so at this stage the carrot celery and bean should be
+well cooked you can check them and see I like them to have a bit of firmness so that the whole result
+is quite crunchy the bean sprouts should be slightly wilted but not overcooked and the whole thing
+should have been heated through including the noodles so by that point everything should be done
+and there's a picture of what I consider to be the final result lots of lots of colors lots of
+vegetables and and corn noodles bean sprouts etc now both my son and I are very keen on all sorts of
+chili sources daughter hates chili but that's just the way of the world so we get this with
+Chinese chili sauce with the brand name I think it's you pronounce it and forgive me if you speak
+Chinese mandarin or whatever this is Cantonese I think it would be pronounced Laoghanma which means
+old godmother apparently and they're just seems to have a picture of the old godmother it's very
+psychic it may go but rather fierce looking lady I get this from my Chinese local Chinese supermarket
+and there's hardly anything on it to identify as this particular one other than the Chinese symbols
+that I've shown in the picture and I'd recommend this particular one as opposed to some of the
+the others just just my personal taste it does contain peanuts if that's an issue with you so
+that's that's pretty much the tale of making the vegetarian chow mein and there are lots of links
+relating to all the various components and stuff of there of any interest so I hope you found
+this mildly entertaining and possibly informative even okay then cheers now bye bye
+you've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio dot org we are a community
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