The Smoky Taste of Wok Hei, Without a Wok
The New York Times
Keeping culinary traditions going sometimes requires adapting to the realities of daily life.
My youngest child recently said to me, “I wish I was more Chinese.” We were eating mooncakes, trying to catch the bits of salted preserved egg yolk crumbling from the sticky-sweet lotus-seed filling. When I asked whether that sentiment applied to how we eat at home, I already knew the answer.
We have carbonara as often as we do dumplings, cereal for breakfast and P.B. and J. for lunch. In only a generation and a half, it feels as though our ties to our heritage are slipping. I was born in California to parents who had immigrated from Hong Kong and who fed us Cantonese food most nights. When I began cooking for myself, I started with the dishes I grew up eating.
But then I had three kids in three years while juggling multiple jobs and struggling to build a career. The demands of real life dictated mealtime, and roasting ingredients on a sheet pan felt easier than stir-frying and steaming. Part of what kept me from reflexively cooking Chinese each night was the belief that I had to stick to the way it had been done, to be “authentic.” In short, to use a wok.
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