Embrace the wok and let it fry

My first wok came from a Chinese market. It was forged of nonstainless steel, had a wooden handle and cost about $10. After going through a messy process of seasoning it with oil, I made one of those stupid neophyte stir-fries. You know the one: snow peas, bell peppers and little strips of chewy meat, as pretty as it was bland. It looked like an ad placed by the pork producers council in Cooking Light.

The wok ended up on top of my fridge, where it promptly rusted. Years later, I threw it away.

My next wok was an ostensible improvement on the first: It had a flat bottom and a nonstick coating, which required no seasoning. Better for the home kitchen, it promised.

Out came the snow peas and the strips of meat. After producing four or five healthful, colorful stir-fries, this wok assumed its new role as the vessel in which I boiled pasta, set up a steamer and occasionally fried rice.

Getting it all wrong

Years later I read an article that said home cooks were getting it all wrong with stir-fries. Woks are built to fit over flaming gas rings. At home we don't have big enough gas lines coming into the kitchen, and so we could never achieve the B.T.U. levels necessary for proper stir-frying. The better choice was to take a good cast- iron skillet, let it get really hot over a high home kitchen flame, and then stir-fry in small batches, keeping all the ingredients dancing on the surface of the skillet.

I made a few more stir-fries, marginally better than my previous efforts but still marred by that faint taste of good intention.

It then occurred to me what I wanted wasn't a healthy and oil-less dish of crunchy vegetables but fried pieces of meat in some kind of tasty, gloppy sauce. I didn't want to learn the fine art of Chinese cuisine but instead indulge in the guilty pleasure of Chinese takeout.

I realized that the only way to get the meat both texturally appealing and imbued with the flavors of the sauce is to pre-fry it and then let it braise (yes, braise) briefly in the sauce.

Frying takes a little longer, is messier and definitely ups the calories. But it's not hard, your loved ones will love you even more, and you will be broken once and for all of the ersatz-stir-fry habit.

Herewith I offer a very simple recipe for almond chicken that does away with all the subtlety and healthfulness of authentic Chinese cooking but somehow zeroes in on the yum factor.

By the way, this recipe calls for mirin, which is the sweetened cooking sake that Japanese cooks always pair with soy sauce for that sweet-salty Japanese flavor axis. If this recipe sends you to the market, good. It's a great ingredient to have around. If not, you can sweeten it with a little wine or white vermouth with a big pinch of brown sugar.

Recipes

Almond Chicken