[Sca-cooks] OP: stir fry question

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jun 7, 2007, at 11:03 AM, Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise wrote:

> We get Wegman's Menu magazine at home, presumably because it's food
> pictures and it's free, though if you want to actually use any of the
> recipes, you have to guess what they put in the "Food You Feel Good
> About" allegedly-fresh packages that they encorporate into every  
> recipe.
>
> My roomate who does the cooking is just beginning to do stir- 
> frying, so
> I was interested to see a bunch of stir-fry recipes in the issue
> currently living in our bathroom.
>
> However, I was shocked to see that the recipes recommended  
> blanching the
> stir-fry veggies before stir-frying. My mom learned to stir-fry  
> from one
> of those half-size wok cookbooks in the 1970s and she taught me, so  
> what
> do I know? Still, I've never blanched a stirfry veg in my life.
>
> Is this really common practice, or is this some wierd survival of the
> 1950s pre-blanching of everything by trained chefs that Elizabeth  
> David
> complains about in _An Omlette and a Glass of Wine_?

Actually, it's fairly common, depending on the veg and the size it's  
cut to, but definitely not universal. You often have things like  
larger broccoli florets very quickly blanched, so they cook through  
before the hot pan/oil can brown them.

Now that I think about it, it seems like the most common usage of the  
technique is when Chinese cooks are cooking American-type vegetables,  
things like broccoli or string beans.

Adamantius