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Cooking Up History: Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge: Chinese Americans and the Power of Stir-Frying
Sept. 30; 6:45 p.m.
Virtual demonstration
Tickets available for purchase here: https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/stir-frying-to-skys-edge-chinese-americans-and-power-of-stir-frying
In Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge, culinary historian and award-winning cookbook author Grace Young writes of how the ancient technique of stir-frying played an important role in the culinary lives of Chinese migrants. In the United States, many families used their culinary skills to open businesses, including chop suey parlors, where that bland, made-up dish gained popularity. Young—known as “the stir-fry guru” and “wok therapist”—demonstrates her stir-fry expertise and shares tips on wok mastery for home cooks as she prepares a savory stir-fry of garlicky cabbage and bacon—a dish improvised in the 1940s by immigrant Lin Ong who used two common American ingredients to feed her nine children. Young recounts her own San Francisco family’s unlikely wok story and her work to document COVID’s impact on Manhattan’s Chinatown and to support the Asian American Pacific Islander community nationwide.
