Cookbook: Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge—The Ultimate Guide to Mastery, with Authentic Recipes and Stories

the appetizer:

Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge: The Ultimate Guide to Mastery, with Authentic Recipes and Stories by Grace Young, includes recipes like The Simple Stir-Fry; Stir-Fried Squid with Black Bean Sauce; Stir-Fried Lotus Root with Bacon and Vegetables; and Wok-Seared Vegetables.

Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge:
The Ultimate Guide to Mastery,
with Authentic Recipes and Stories

by Grace Young

Click to buy Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge

Grace Young's new book Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge: The Ultimate Guide to Mastery, with Authentic Recipes and Stories, demystifies and celebrates the art of stir-frying with instruction, stories of home cooks and professionals, and recipes from across the world.

Stir-frying is one of the world's oldest cooking traditions, beloved for creating simple, healthful, delectable meals using minimal energy. Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge is a comprehensive guide to the art of stir-frying that offers detailed instructions for making all the classic stir-fries—dry, moist, clear, and velvet. Like Young's previous cookbooks, this book is crafted with spectacular photographs and elegant writing, Filled with a wealth of instruction, cultural history, personal experiences, and hard-earned advice, this the first and only Chinese cookbook to describe the optimal approaches for stir-frying meat poultry, fish, shellfish, vegetables, rice, and noodles. Young advises, for example, that when stir-frying meat, poultry, or shellfish the ingredients must be spread around the wok and seared briefly before stir-frying. She explains why a wok is preferable to a skillet for stir-frying rice and noodles and describes the distinctions among different types of woks and skillets and how they affect results. She categorizes vegetables by texture and instructs on their different cooking times. This expert guidance will benefit novice and experienced cooks alike.

Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge offers over 100 recipes, with classic dishes from Guangzhou (Canton), Shanghai, Fujian, Sichuan, Hunan, Beijing, and Hong Kong, such as the revered Kung Pao Chicken, Stir-Fried Ginger Beef, and Dry Fried Sichuan Beans. Further enriching the book is Young's fascinating history of stir-frying's place in the Chinese Diaspora. She shares innovative crossover recipes that illustrate the adaptability of the stir-fry technique for fusing the traditions of numerous cultures including surprises such as Chinese Trinidadian Stir-Fried Shrimp with Rum, Chinese-Jamaican Jerk Chicken Fried Rice, and Stir-Fried Bok Choy with Pancetta from France.

The book's recipes are interspersed with culinary lessons and detailed sidebars. They offer essential advice on:

Wok selection, seasoning, and care
Selecting the best cooking oil for stir-frying
Why and how to marinate meats and poultry
Tips for handling and stir-frying vegetables that include "drying" vegetables to prevent excess moisture from turning a stir-fry into a soggy braise
Short cuts for labor intensive preparations

Plus:

Over 80 full-color photographs of Asian ingredients and finished dishes in addition to step-by-step technique photos
A set of fundamental stir-frying principles that will allow home cooks to create their own recipes with a limited selection of Asian ingredients
Recipes written for the skillet as well as the wok
Strategies for successful stir-frying on American stoves and solutions for common stir-fry mistakes

Beyond the lessons and recipes Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge so generously provides are the human stories of how this simple cooking technique enabled generations of Chinese around the world to eat well and with exquisite economy. Young's research extended to such unexpected countries as Trinidad, Holland, Germany and Canada. She also interviewed Chinese who grew up in Peru, Jamaica, Burma, Malaysian, Singapore, Vietnam, Macau, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Libya, and the Mississippi Delta. With tales that illuminate the Chinese philosophy of cooking and examine the Chinese experience through the lens of stir-frying, it is an invitation to understand stir-frying as an expression of cultural continuity.

There is an age-old Chinese expression: "One wok runs to the sky's edge," which means one who uses the wok becomes master of the cooking world. As the wok user becomes master of the cooking world, so does the user of Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge become master of the stir-fry.

About the Author

Grace Young is a food writer and the author of Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen (winner of the IACP Le Cordon Bleu International Cookbook Award) and The Breath of a Wok (winner of the IACP Le Cordon Bleu International Cookbook Award, The Jane Grigson Award for distinguished scholarship, and the World Food Media Awards' Best Food Book in Australia). In 2008, Grace received the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters Culinary Journalist Scholarship for research for Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge. Young's work has appeared in Bon Appetit, Food and Wine, Gourmet, Gastronomica, and Saveur magazine where she is also a contributing editor. She teaches Chinese cooking and always travels with her own wok. For seventeen years, Young was the Test Kitchen Director and Director for Food Photography for over forty cookbooks published by Time-Life Books. She lives in New York City with her husband.

Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge:
The Ultimate Guide to Mastery, with Authentic Recipes and Stories
by Grace Young
Photographs by Steven Mark Needham
Simon & Schuster 2010
Hardcover; $35.00
ISBN-10: 1416580573
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-8057-7
Information provided by the publisher.

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