Good Eats, a Wok, and a Snuggle Photo

Well, y'all. After decades of stir-frying in a cast iron skillet, I finally broke down and bought a wok. Reasons: The thin, spun steel heats up quickly and cools equally quickly, meaning when the veggies are done, you take it off the heat, and the cooking process stops. The high heat retention of cast iron--such a treasured property for stewing, browning, and braising--is not great for stir-frying. Also, the shape is really amenable to stir-frying. Veggie bits don't go sailing off the edge, the way they do from the skillet. Starbuck and Cricket are perfectly happy to help with cleanup, but I'm not sure it's a great idea to teach them to hover around when I'm cooking with high heat.

So, following advice from Charles Phan's cookbook, I ordered this, and seasoned it outside using a camp stove:


(I wanted so badly to take a selfie with it out in the woods and caption it, "A wok in the woods", but I'm terrible at selfies and none of them came out right...)

The first thing I stir-fried in it was long beans. A perfect accompaniment to teriyaki salmon. Yum, yum!


The second thing was these veggies:


We had them with tasty black cod, which was cooked in black bean sauce:


from our seafood subscription:


Super tasty! Black cod is very rich, like a chicken thigh to the breast that is halibut. Oh my cod!

Mmm-mm!


When we do have halibut, I tend to cook it in a rich sauce to counteract the cardboard-like properties. Such as this halibut tikka masala:


served with asparagus:


I had the leftovers the next day for lunch. As I was nuking it in the office kitchen, an Indian grad student came by. This guy is actually Indian, like, from India, not Indian-American. He said, "That smells good! What is it?" I also know him to be an excellent cook so was ever-so-embarrassed. I don't think they actually eat anything tikka masala in India; it's the Indian equivalent of broccoli beef, or cashew chicken.

I looked at him. "Aaaahhhh... It's halibut mumble-mumble."

Said he, "It's what WHAT?"

"It's halibut hurr-durr-bbmmmm"

"Whaaaa?"

"Halibut murrrnurrr-nnnggg..."

WHAT?!?

It turns out, it was not my bastard curry that was throwing him off. It was HALIBUT! So I got off with explaining what a person-sized flounder was like, then walked away without explaining tikka masala. Phew! It did give me the tremendous pleasure of explaining to a new person that halibut are born like normal, upright, symmetrical fish, and then they start swimming sideways and one eyeball just marches to the other side of their faces. Of all of nature's strange, wonderful, and mysterious tricks, that is still one of my favorites and always will be.

Here is a photo of Roo and Cricket being schnoogly: