Cloud ears and lily buds are on my shopping list

The first chef I remember seeing on television – before television exploded with cooking shows and chefs became celebrities – was Martin Yan. His show was called Yan Can Cook and his catch-phrase was "If Yan can cook, so can you!"

I found him very likable and appealing although he was somewhat manic and told really corny jokes. He was cute though.

And of course, I loved his cooking. He was a master with the chopping knife – a showman, in fact. He would give a flirty signal when he was going to start and he'd flick his wrist and then his hand would become a blur as the onion fell in slices so thin, you could read the recipe through them.

His style of cooking – and his ingredients – were foreign to me and I mean that completely literally. But I was enthralled and his was the first cookbook I had that I felt was authentically of another culture. (It probably wasn't but it seemed so to me at that time.)

I've taken the book off the shelf for the first time in ages and it makes me think I must get back to it. The first recipe I saw when I opened it was for "porcupine meatballs" – definitely Martin's kind of humour. The meatballs are tasty spicy ground pork, rolled in broken cellophane noodles and fried in hot oil. You can see where the "porcupine" reference comes from. He has "remarks" at the end of each recipe and yes, they're often funny or corny – and sometimes both.

The second book I got around the same time is called Chinese Cooking at the Academy – California Culinary Academy.

I found a shopping list inside it just now: bamboo shoots, black beans, black mushrooms dried, cloud ears, 5-spice powder, lily buds, dried tofu, water chestnuts. Except for the 5-spice powder and the rice, these are ingredients I don't have right now. They sound good though, especially the cloud ears and lily buds.

This book has glossy pages and coloured photos unlike Martin's which is much plainer. Both books are instructional though and go further than simply providing recipes. I realize flipping through them that there are some very complex – some really hard – recipes. They appear so challenging that I think I'm going to have to confront them – after a visit to an Asian grocery.

Here's a nice description of a menu for a "winter supper":

A whole chicken simmering in a fragrant mixture of soy sauce, wine, fresh ginger and spices gives its perfume to the whole house. Warm Green Onion Cakes and a garlicky cabbage stew also help ward off the chill. In true Chinese fashion, the soup is not served as a separate course, but is sipped throughout the meal.

I love the idea of sipping the soup throughout the meal because I like soup but I find if I have it as a first course, it's too filling and it takes away the full appeal of the main course.

I use a carbon steel wok for my Chinese cooking. It was a gift from good friends, right around the time I started to enjoy this kind of cooking. It needs to be "seasoned" as cast-iron does and never washed with soap and water. Looks something like this:

I quite often do a stir-fry, always with lots of veg and maybe some chicken or shrimp or pork. My marinade uses any combination of vegetable oil, rice vinegar, fresh ginger, minced garlic, sesame oil, chili oil, oyster sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce, maybe a little honey. My vegetables are pretty much always carrots, celery, onions, mushrooms, broccoli, whatever green leaves I might have, and some thin long noodles – vermicelli. We have it with sticky rice.

It's good but I'm always complaining about being in a cooking rut so I think I'll go back to the excitement I felt when I first owned these books.

Crispy chicken wings with lemon dip sounds good.