Culinary Transparency

The best thing about Chinese takeout, at least the kind found on almost every street corner in New York City, is that you're never more than 15 feet from your food, usually in a direct line of sight with it, as it's being cooked. It's the pure transparency of the thing that gets to me - restaurants with open kitchens are a comparatively new and trendy thing in the world of haute cuisine, but it's old hat to me. I'm not sure what does it, but food tastes better when you can watch it being prepared.

I've always been fascinated by how so few ingredients can make something so incredibly tasty as, say, fried rice, to the point where I sometimes get a craving that can be sated by four hours on a bus and nothing else.

I haven't done it on a whim yet, but don't tempt me.

At home, you can't beat a quick stir-fry for ease of preparation, but my only real problem with throwing a bunch of stuff into a wok and dizzying it up with a wooden spoon is how tired I get of the finishing sauces after awhile - most of the Chinese takeout sauces the American palette is typically familiar with and have easy access to fall into the rather generic collection of Sweet, Hot, Garlicky or (for lack of a better descriptor) White. It makes selecting from a menu easy (you identify a craving and run with it) but it doesn't do much if you're looking for a little subtlety, though to be fair I guess that's what I get for being cheap.

The sauce this recipe creates is a bit confusing until you get used to it - it's hot enough to clear out your sinuses, then garlicky at the back of the mouth before rounding out as sweet. I've included directions for this:
...a generic chicken stir-fry, but the sauce is the point. It's truly wonderful in its versatility - apart from being wonderful in a wok, it's great as a salmon glaze, as a chicken wing sauce (I can't recommend this enough, particularly if the wings are tossed lightly in sesame seeds as a finish) or as a salad dressing.

Sauce Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp Huy Fong-brand hot chili sauce for spicy, 1 tsp for hot
  
• 1/2 tsp brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 3 dashes black pepper
• 2 dashes paprika
• 1/2 dash white pepper
• chopped scallions
  

Stir-Fry Ingredients:

• base ingredients - I used a chicken breast, a handful of snow peas and a quarter onion
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• Heavy dash of soy sauce
  

The Gist:

Combine the sauce ingredients in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring occasionally, until it bubbles.

Heat the oil in a slope-sided pan until spitting hot. Add the stir-fry ingredients and stir constantly until cooked through. Take off the heat when finished, drain any excess liquids and return it to the pan over medium heat.

Pour the sauce over the stir-fry and toss to combine (don't burn the sauce). Serve over rice.

Considerations:

• Huy Fong-brand Thai chili sauce is a truly amazing sauce that I'd recommend you keep a bottle of on-hand, but tolerances for it vary by the individual; try it out before you commit, and add it slowly.