Wok Guilt
I have wok guilt.
During a vacation at home during the summer of ’05, I resolved to learn some basic techniques of Chinese cooking. I got a pile of books from the library and soon realized that the core of the cuisine was wok cooking-which involves heating the implement in question to extremely high temperatures. Teaching myself Chinese cooking suddenly seemed like a wintertime project.
Then we discovered we had to move. Winter ‘05-06 was given over to apartment hunting and moving prep. Now that we are well ensconced our fresh nest and the cold weather once more approaches, I got back on the case. I’d go to the nearby Chinatown neighborhood, buy a wok, get those books from the library again, and I’d be off to the races.
Turns out I did that in the wrong order.
Shoulda got the books, then bought the wok. Because, although few of the books I’d seen before went into much detail on the wok itself. Not so with Grace Young’s The Breath Of a Wok, which neatly balances the mystical and the practical. Well, oops, the round-bottomed wok I bought at Tap Fong’s is only for restaurant use. For a home range, especially the electric we have now in the new digs, anything but a flat-bottom model is not only difficult but extremely dangerous. Hmm. I went online and ordered the right item.
That leaves me with the original purchase, glowering at me in its dull, carbon-steel way from its perch beneath the microwave. Granted, I only spent twenty five bucks, tax-included, for the thing. But it’s a brand new hunk of serious metal and wood, and I don’t know anyone who runs a Chinese restaurant. So I guess I just have to chuck it, so it rusts forever in a landfill somewhere in Michigan. Well-trained in the ethics of frugality by my late Grandma Hannaford, I acutely feel the reproach due to me for my coming wastefulness.
Returning it to the store is not an option. Tap Fong’s has a no-refund, no-returns policy. I almost feel like I should sneak the wok into the store and furtively leave it behind, so at least it will find a good home. But that would be crazy. Plus I can imagine it leading to a humiliatingly Kafkaesque arrest scenario. Reverse shoplifting is not something I can envision myself effectively explaining to a police constable.
At the same time as I probe the mysteries of Chinese cooking, I am also pursuing another, not entirely unrelated foodie ambition, which is to figure out seafood. To go beyond the occasional catfish filet and salmon steak, perhaps one day getting to the point where I feel confident enough to personally shank a bunch of lobsters.
Naturally, this will result in fish guilt.