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

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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.
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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
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