[Sca-cooks] Spices

[Mark S. Harris]

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa said:
>> > And I ended up using a flat bottomed
>> > skillet as we didn't have any sort of wok in camp.
>>
>> For the average American, a standard 12" flat-bottomed skillet is BETTER for
>> stir-frying than a wok. An American stove is (a) not hot enough and (b) not
>> designed to provide adequate heat up the sides of the bowl (ever watch them
>> cook in a Chinese restaurant? the woks sit in a ring, which suspends them
>> over a fire - so there's heat all the way up the sides).
>
> It may well be better for some sorts of stir frying. I don't know. I do
> know that I find a wok better for stirfrying than a skillet because you
> can dig out the bottom (where it's more hot) and pull already partially
> cooked ingredients up the sides before adding the next lot of raw
> ingredients to the bottom/middle where they cook faster.

Yes, I thought part of the idea of the wok with its rounded bottom
was that the oil would sit only in the center and you would move the
food down into the oil to fry the outside and then move it out to the
hot edges to continue cooking while you moved other food into the oil.

So, the reason for my comment was that, among other things, in the

dark I hadn't managed to drain off enough of the marinade. So the
food sort of poached and fried on the bottom of the skillet instead
of just frying. With a rounded bottom, I could have moved the food
out of the sauce to cook on the edges of the pan. Or since the pool
would have been deeper, more easily scooped off some of the liquid.

Trying to drain the liquid from the skillet in the dark, without

any kind of strainer, risked dumping the food onto the ground which
would doubtlessly have gone over with much less enthusiasm than
getting poached rather than stir-fried meat.
--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas          stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****