Chinese cuisine

Chinese cooking is not one cuisine but eight traditions, and Sichuan differs from Cantonese by more than Italian differs from German.

The central technical idea in Chinese cooking is wok hei, the breath of the wok: a flavour only a fierce flame and constant movement produce. It cannot be reproduced at home in full, but small batches in a screaming-hot pan come close.

The second is order. In a wok there is no time to finish chopping: everything is cut, measured and lined up in the sequence it goes in before the heat is turned on.