Shanghai-Style Shrimp, Sweet and Sour Cabbage, and Slow Stir-Fried Red Peppers | Wok Wednesdays

For the months of November and December, the Wok Wednesdays group made three recipes from the book The Breath of a Wok. The recipes include Sweet and Sour Cabbage, Shanghai-Style Shrimp, and Slow Stir-Fried Red Peppers. 

This dish is Florence Lin's Slow Stir-Fried Red Peppers. This recipe is so simple, and so delicious. Other than oil and a little bit of salt and sugar, there is just one ingredient, red bell peppers.

Two meaty red peppers cut into 1 inch squares are stir fried in your wok for eight to 10 minutes over medium to medium low heat in just a little bit of oil. That is a long time for stir-frying. At the end, you sprinkle the peppers with a small amount of sugar and salt and give them a final stir. That is it! While the recipe calls for 2 to 3 tablespoons of oil, I only needed 1 1/2 tablespoons. The peppers develop a nice char over time while still retaining their firm texture. They are so sweet and flavorful. This is a side dish that I will be making over and over again.

This dish is Jean Yueh's Shanghai-Style Shrimp. For optimal flavor, the shrimp are cooked in their shells. While this can make for messy eating, it's so worth it.

The sauce for this shrimp dish is outrageous. I pretty much wanted to drink it. Instead, I served it over rice. The sauce consists of soy sauce, red wine vinegar, ginger, sherry, sugar, and sesame oil. The only other ingredient in this dish is green onions, and so much of the flavor comes from the shrimp.

The shrimp is also wonderful served the next day after spending some time absorbing the flavors of the sauce. I recommend trying it both ways.

Grace Young, the author of the book, The Breath of a Wok, writes more about this recipe and Jean Yueh here.

You can find the recipe for the shrimp here.

This stir-fry is Sweet and Sour Cabbage. It's really easy to make, and can be served warm or chilled.

The recipe consists of lots of fresh ginger, shredded Napa cabbage, thinly cut carrots, and scallions, all stir-fried in a sauce of rice wine, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, sugar, salt, and cornstarch. It's pretty remarkable.

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The recipes are from the book, The Breath of a Wok: Unlocking the Spirit of Chinese Wok Cooking Through Recipes and Lore, by Grace Young.

"Written with the intimacy of a memoir and the immediacy of a travelogue, this recipe-rich volume is a celebration of cultural and culinary delights."