Love the wok

A couple months ago, my wonderful family bought me a wok for my birthday. I've been wanting one for a while, though once it arrived, I wasn't really sure what to do with it. How do you cook in a bowl?

The answer is found, like most, in my local public library. I checked out a handful of wok cookbooks, and have used recipes from most of them, but the one that stands out is The Breath of a Wok by Young and Richardson.

Part manual, part history, part travelogue, part cookbook, Breath covers a wide range of wok technique and lore with impressive photography. It went well beyond recipes and made me want to build a custom wok stove and fire it with dried rice stalks.

Realistically, I'm loving my Target wok on my gas-fired stove. We've done some Kung Pao chicken, garlic and snow peas, and some Italian-Chinese wok fusion pasta. All good stuff, tasty and fun.

So I now have two favorite pans, the cast iron skillet and the carbon steel wok. It's good to have variety, I suppose.