Happy Chinese New Year

By Sandy Hu

When I was about 25, I threw my first Chinese New Year dinner party, inviting friends to our New York apartment. I’m not of Chinese heritage, and Steve, who is, didn’t have a tradition of celebrating Chinese New Year, having lost some of the customs along the way as a fourth-generation Chinese-American.

Gathering recipes from cookbooks, I put together an ambitious, multi-course meal that thrilled my friends. But I was exhausted by the effort of trying to get all the dishes – most of which I had never cooked before – to the table in a timely manner.

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A Spa Day for Your Wok

By Katie Barreira

This week in the test kitchen, we were working on recipes that required a wok. Even in professional kitchens, less frequented equipment have a way of hiding best when you need it most. A fly on the wall that day would have heard,

“Do we have a wok?”
“Yeah, I know I’ve used it before, but I haven’t seen it recently.”
“Do you remember packing it? Maybe it got lost in the move.”
“How do you lose a wok?!”

Once unearthed and inspected for quality assurance we concluded that our carbon steel wok had received no love. But that was about to change. A bit of research in our cookbook library uncovered an excellent wok priming primer by Chinese cookbook author and wok connoisseur, Grace Young. Armed with good counsel and some steel wool, we undertook a transformation on par with Michael Caine’s makeover of Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality. Our wok has never looked, or cooked, better.

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