Newsweek

The Art of Chinese Cooking

I stood before the electric stove, poised to crack an egg on the side of a frying pan and into a mound of steamed rice. Fried rice—what could be easier? It was a dish I had eaten hundreds, maybe thousands of times, a dish my grandmother cooked with bits of chopped ham and peas, a dish my siblings and I ate when we were disgusted by Chinese banquet courses of jellyfish or sea cucumber, a dish I assumed would be simple to make when, after graduating from college, I was forced to feed myself for the first time. (23/06) More