Six Amazing Wok Dishes for Wok Wednesdays

For this Wok Wednesdays post, I'm sharing six amazing stir-fries and braises.

"What is Wok Wednesdays?" you ask! It's a Facebook group of folks dedicated to wokking our way through Grace Young's book, The Breath of a Wok.... after stir-frying our way through Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge. It's a delicious education in Chinese cooking, and we have a lot of fun along the way.

Here are the last six recipes we all made. 

This One Wok Curry Chicken pretty much blew me away. In the book, the author recommends using yellow curry paste, which I could not find. Instead, I used this brand of curry powder, and was super happy with the results. In fact, I wanted to drink the sauce. I took leftovers to work the next day, and the entire office wanted to know what smelled so good when I reheated my lunch.

P.S. This recipe includes potatoes. While the recipe calls for peeling the potatoes, I used white potatoes and skipped this step. The potatoes held up nicely, and I did not notice the skins in the final dish.

I also cut up a whole chicken myself for the first time for this dish, following this video. I even made my own stock from the backbone. How domestic is that! 

You can find the recipe here on Epicurious. 

Stir-fried watercress! According to Grace Young, "stir-fried watercress is often served at dim sum restaurants. I love that it includes one of my favorite ingredients, shallots. This is a delicious and refreshing vegetable dish. Be sure your watercress dries thoroughly after washing. My entire kitchen peninsula was covered in towels with drying watercress! Watercress, soy sauce, salt, sugar, and shallots. That's it. This is a simple and quick recipe, and takes only about three minutes from start to finish.

You can find the recipe on page 138 of The Breath of a Wok.

This Stir-Fried Pork with Scallions is so easy to make. It's made with pork butt plus a few easy to find ingredients such as soy sauce, sesame oil, and ginger, and scallions. Grace says that you can substitute Chinese chives for the scallions to elevate the dish. This stir-fry is delicious with rice.

This recipe is on page 81 of the book.

This is Uncle Lang's Three Teacup Chicken. It got its name by Grace's uncle's method of measuring ingredients by using a small teacup. The secret ingredients in this recipe are whole star anise, as well as toasted and ground Sichuan peppercorns, which add an amazing "zing" to the dish.

You can find the recipe on Serious Eats.

The next dish is Stir-Fried Garlic Lettuce. Did you know you can stir fry lettuce? According to Grace Young, stir-fried lettuce is one of the key vegetables to prepare for the Lunar New Year. This recipe in the book calls for hearts of romaine, but I decided to use the darker leaves as well. Again, this is an easy and delicious dish which will have you scarfing down the veggies.

The recipe can be found here on Epicurious, as well as page 139 of the book.

Finally, around the Lunar New Year, I made Lee Wan Ching's Stir-Fried Clams in Bean Sauce with Chilies. These were so good.

Clams are often served for the Chinese New Year because they are believed to symbolize good fortune and wealth. This clam dish is salty and slightly spicy. While the dish is supposed to serve 4 as part of a multi-course meal, I pretty much ate the whole thing myself.

I'm still a little intimidated by cooking with live shellfish, so I prepped all of the ingredients and set up my mis en place even before buying and bringing home the clams, just like I did a year ago with this clam stir fry. Once I brought them home, I washed the clams and began preparing the stir-fry. I'm excited to report that every single clam opened, revealing their amazing morsels.

This recipe can be found on page 104 of The Breath of a Wok.

Here's how I'd rank these dishes:

1. One Wok Curry Chicken
2. Stir-Fried Clams
3. Tie: Everything else

I'd make every single one of these recipes again.

If you are interested in participating in Wok Wednesdays, you should definitely join our Facebook group. Sometimes prizes for participating are involved, and the community is supportive and a lot of fun.