Cooking experiments don’t always wok out
When my husband and I were in graduate school almost 30 years ago, we embarked on an ambitious — and brief — series of culinary projects.
First, we decided we were going to make all of our own Chinese food. We went to Caldor’s, bought an inexpensive wok, and seasoned it according to the directions, which, as I remember, involved wiping it with oil and then heating it over the highest possible flame on the stove.
This was either correct or highly dangerous. Perhaps both.
Then we chopped up chicken, garlic, green peppers, scallions and mushrooms in tiny pieces, stir fried it all in stages, tossed in some soy sauce and cornstarch and called it dinner.
We were so proud of our efforts that it took months to admit to one another that, no matter how we varied the ingredients, it all tasted like chalky soy sauce.
Giving up, we stowed the wok in the cabinet behind a couple of boxes of Rice-a-Roni and went out for Kung Pao chicken.
Next came egg rolls.
During our three-year courtship, we alternated between our separate schools, and so I associate the redolence of burning oil with a particular New Year’s Eve we spent in my freezing student barracks in New Jersey.
The wok traveled down from his apartment in upstate New York for this adventure and sat on the back of a stove that probably should have been condemned several decades earlier.
High heat again, but this time with a wok half full of oil. It was a good thing that the pilot light for the equally ancient heater was in the other room.
Egg roll making also turned out to involve a lot of chopping, but at a finer grain. We macerated cabbage, carrots and bits of chicken, threw in some bean sprouts, and mixed it all up with yet more cornstarch and water.
We had started in the late afternoon, and by the time we figured out how to fold the egg roll wrappers around a tablespoon of filling and get the folds to stick, Dick Clark was beginning to rhapsodize about the year just past.
When the ball actually dropped in Times Square, we were still bobbing for egg rolls in the oil, carefully laying the finished products out on greasy paper towels and trying to keep each other awake.
Apparently, we had made enough filling to feed the entire student populations of both institutions.
After sampling these fruits of our labor, we stowed the wok away on a higher shelf, where we wouldn’t be tempted to take it out any time soon, and ordered in combo lo mein and Szechuan beef. Plus actual egg rolls.
Another apartment and a different vat of hot liquid: this one filled with boiling water, for bagels.
At the time, a fresh bagel from the bagel shop a few blocks away cost approximately a quarter, and by the time we were finished, we were certain the bagel maker was grossly undercharging.
Bagels must rise, rest, boil and bake, with stops along the way to be stretched, lathered with egg yolk and water and sprinkled with toppings.
Or at least that’s what the recipe in the Sunset Breads book told us, and who were we to argue?
I was then a decade away from making bread on any kind of regular basis, and so to both of us, the bagel process made the egg roll experience seem speedy.
We were enthusiastic through the mixing and rising part, thrilled that two packages of yeast had created a giant bowlful of dough as predicted.
By the time we were finished rolling and stretching four million balls of dough into circles with holes, however, bagel fatigue had begun to set in.
We grimly dipped each one into boiling water, set them on cornmeal-covered cookie sheets and painted them with egg yolk until we never wanted to see anything else made of flour for the rest of our lives.
It was weeks before we could eat bagels again, but we did have a lifetime supply of doorstops.
Since then, we have prepared a lot of meals, some successful and others unmitigated failures.
Throughout, we’ve held onto exactly what you need when it comes to culinary experimentation: a deep appreciation for takeout.
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