Inauthentic stir frying

“Stir, stir, stir. That’s how the technique got its name. Rapidly toss and stir the ingredients to expose all their surfaces to the heat. Don’t load the wok with vegetables and meat and just stand there and stare at it. Good stir-fry dishes require plenty of elbow grease. Remember that it’s stir-fry not stare-fry!” Martin Yan

I'm asking myself if what I am proposing to myself to do for dinner is authentic or not. I know it shouldn't actually matter anyway. As I have noted many a time, there probably isn't any such thing as authentic when it comes to food. And inauthentic is possibly even the highest accolade one can achieve as it means you have been innovative and creative.

However, I can't stop myself from feeling that I'm not doing things right if I don't stick to age-old rules. I certainly didn't get this from my mother - well maybe about some things, but not food. Or even my French housewife cooks. I think - oh dear - that I got it from all of my various cookbooks. Some of them are very slapdash and encouraging - the more recent ones perhaps, others, and I suppose Elizabeth David is one of the chief sinners here - are pretty prescriptive. Although maybe not, because she at least, is often so vague. Anyway I am not a confident cook and tonight I am going to make a stir fry with the last of the leftover turkey. Stir fry/leftover - not I think an 'authentic' mix. I believe the key word to associate with stir fries is 'fresh'. I will be putting some fresh vegetables into it, but the basis will not be fresh.

For I guess stir fries can be a bit of a rubbish bin. Throw everything in the wok, stir it around, splash on some soy sauce and you're done.

Historically speaking stir frying began around 200 BC in China - of course China. However, they think that it was not really used for cooking back then, but for drying grains. A few hundred years later they were cooking food that way, but not substantially until the 14th century and then it was probably only the wealthy who did because stir frying required quantities of oil, and fuel - expensive items. The poor mostly used water for cooking. And it continued this way until fuel and oil became more widely available. And to be honest I'm not sure that stir frying is the main technique used by the Chinese even today. Yum Cha for example has very little stir fried components. Indeed, to me it seems that the South East Asians are more into stir fries than the Chinese.

And we Westerners. For we love the speed of it all. And the health junkies love the health of it all. Fresh and vegetable loaded. But what about all that oil? For one thing I have learnt whilst 'researching' this post is that stir fries require a lot of oil or everything will stick to the pan. Which is also why you have to keep the food moving. And oil is not healthy. Well lots of it. Whatever the keto people say.

I wondered what the difference was between stir-frying and sautéeing. Another speedy frying method. The main difference it seems to me is the shape of the pan - although then I read an article - by a Chinese lady - who maintained you were better off doing your stir fries in a non-stick frypan than a wok anyway. So maybe not the implement. What then? Size of pieces? Whether you deglazed the pan with liquid after you had removed what you were frying or whilst that was still in the pan? The heat - mostly they seemed to agree that stir frying required a higher heat than sautéing.

Personally I think it's more to do with the fact that a sauté doesn't usually have many different ingredients - generally just a meat or fish, some flavourings and maybe two at the most vegetables and the sauce is more important. A stir fry on the other hand tends to have several different ingredients and is drier. Mind you there does seem to be a general opinion that you shouldn't have more than four or five main things in there.

So if you cook in a wok, have plenty of oil and quite a few ingredients, is it still a stir fry if, for example, all of those ingredients are the same as you would put into a pasta dish including the pasta? Spaghetti cooked with minced beef, tomatoes, olives, for example. I mean it would taste Italian wouldn't it even though it had been cooked using a Chinese technique? Surely it's not a stir fry even if it was cooked in a wok.

So I'm going to try not to worry and will toss my bits of turkey and ham with a bit of leftover cabbage, carrot and stuffing, with some fresh shredded silver beet from the garden and some fresh celery. But what do I do about the coriander in my fridge which really needs to be used soon? Do I add that too with some soy sauce or do I forget it and go continental by adding some leftover wine or lemon juice as my liquid? Shall I serve it with rice or spaghetti, or even rice noodles?

What I have learnt along the way though is that you must prepare all your ingredients before you begin and line them up ready to be added one by one according to how much cooking you need to do. But then I guess that's a general rule that applies to almost all cooking. And add your flavourings first. Then the meat, then the veggies and finally your liquid. And you use very high heat and keep stirring.

Nigella seemed to think that stir fries didn't really count as fast food even if it did only take a few minutes to cook, because you had to spend so much time beforehand cutting everything up so fine. Which is true of quite a lot of so-called fast food. They never seem to take into account the preparation time.