Breath of a Wok, by Grace Young

[yakima]

Out of print, but just received an autographed copy from the Mala Market. Lots of good history, gorgeous photography.
Will try to attach a photo of perhaps the first pit barrel cooker.

[STEbbq]

Success on the photo! Looks awesome!

[SheilaAnn]

I can’t stand you yakima

(now I have to find this book)

[yakima]

Ha. I think both Mala Market and The Wok Shop have it.

[yakima]

My Chinese culinary rabbit hole may now be fully stocked.
Chronologically:
The Breath of a Wok, Grace Young, 2004.
Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking, Paula Wolfert, 2009.
The Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan, 2017.
The Food of Sichuan, Fuchsia Dunlop, 2019.
The Woks of Life, the Leung family, 2022.
The Wok, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, 2022.
Invitation to a Banquet, Fuchsia Dunlop, 2023.

Read The Silk Roads first. Per its subtitle, it really is a new history of the world, detailing Chinese, Mediterranean, and European interactions over several thousand years. Food is mixed in throughout.

Next, Invitation to a Banquet. A sweeping history of Chinese cuisine.

Then, jump around. Clay Pot cooking re Chinese sand pots. Food of Sichuan for a deep dive into that region. Woks of Life for modern approachable recipes. Breath of a Wok for history, technique, older recipes. The Wok, for the science and modern techniques. Kenji has good recommendations on outdoor wok burners, and use of indoor gas stoves for woks (remove diffuser over burner, replace grate, round wok sits perfectly, light with a Scripto butane little torch).

The above is a devious, albeit obvious, effort to trick SheilaAnn and her acolytes into supporting the publishing industry.
I believe that her motto is B&B. Books and Beans.

Phil

[FireMan]

To my knowledge Grace Young has written 3 books. Breath of Wok, Stir Fry to the Sky’s Edge and the one that started it all for her, The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen which started her for me about 15 years ago.

[acorgihouse]

I have The Breath of a Wok, and Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge, so now I'm also on a book hunt!

[FireMan]

acorgihouse , you will just fall in love with Grace and her whole family, I promise.

[Troutman]

I love this stuff but find I’m way behind in its knowledge base. Love the Wisdom cover, reminds me of one of my favorite movies, The Joy Luck Club.

[FireMan]

What I have found is that most Chinese/Asian cook books are filled with history. Which, is why I have been drawn to them. You get not only the how to’s & recipes but you get the why and the who behind the art, sometimes taking you back up to and past one thousand years. It is a wonderful wabbit hole to go down as yakima alludes to.

[SheilaAnn]

Here is my Asian collection. The top three aren’t t really cookbooks.

[FireMan]

That Hot Sour Salty Sweet is a treasure.

[SheilaAnn]

Smoke of A Wok is nowhere to be found yakima I checked your recommendations and amazon and the inter webs. Now I’m obsessed.

[yakima]

SheilaAnn, pls accept my apologies. Your problem is due to me using the wrong title in the header. I unknowingly got it right when I dragged all the books out to get print dates.

It can be a control mechanism, to see if you are reading the whole post. Municipal lawyers, when troubled by some council member leaking a privileged memo, sometimes put a unique typo in each member's memo, each different. So when a copy surfaces, they know where it came from. Darned sneaky lawyers!

[yakima]

acorgihouse, see above comment re my title mistake.

[SheilaAnn]

yakima if it is, please show me…

Btw, I did put Breath of a wok in the kindle 🫶🏻

Never mind….. twirling blonde hair!

[FireMan]

SheilaAnn , my Chinese/Asian wabbit hole.

[yakima]

Impressive.

[SheilaAnn]

Love the way the shelf is slightly bowed (sp?).

[yakima]

Huskee, can you, or someone over my pay grade, correct the title here to read: Bresth of a Wok...? I am in dutch with a couple of Pitmistresses, and need rescue. Thank you!

[ofelles]

If it gets corrected to what you wrote above. You would still be in trouble! 😉

[yakima]

I did not see that typo. Glad others did.
I had cataract surgery yesterday; my excuse.!

[yakima]

So, you are saying that there is no escape from a pitmistress scorned, or inadvertently mislead. Based upon personal experience?

[ofelles]

You want the Admins to change the title to "Bresth of a Wok"..........?

[Huskee]

yakima I assume you meant Breath? Done.

[yakima]

Cool. Thank you,

[Histrix]

I thought I had copies of all Grace Youngs books and hadn't heard of "Smoke of the Wok" before. Was that one that came out before "Breath of a Wok" or was it a "sequel"? Spent 15 minutes scouring the web but zip, zilch, nada which intrigued me even more.

So pausing the search I continue reading thru the thread and... all is explained.

I guess it always pays to read thru an entire thread first. 😀

[FireMan]

A little P.S. here, Ol’ Yakima refers to Mala Market a couple of times and The Mala Market out of Nashville. No confusion here cuz there is more than one M M. He IS referring to The Mala Market, and yes it is in Nashville TN. A mother, daughter enterprise leaning towards a specialty of Sechuan cuisine. They have goods that are either hard to get or impossible to get. A very cool place! Check em out.

[yakima]

Thank you. I seem to have sown an unusual amount of confusion here.