wok!

[freckles_and_doubt]

I have a new wok. This makes me happy, but confused: why should it be that stir-fry cooked in a wok, although containing precisely the same ingredients I always use, tastes much better than stir-fry cooked in any other form of pan? (And by "much better", of course I mean "closer to the Platonic ideal that is stir-fry cooked by stv.")

(Somewhere in the mists of time is an extended joke that was wandering around a select portion of my social circle, entailing a punchline about happy herds of wok, grazing the grass. I am totally unable to remember either the origin or the context, although I associate it vaguely with bumpycat.)

Woks aside, yesterday I read Iain Banks's Dead Air, in an enormous extended gollup while not actually moving from the couch. (a) It's, as usual, very good, and (b) my butt hurts. The book has a fascinating protagonist: a flawed, hyperactive, exhibitionist and occasionally weak and nasty person who's also an idealist of extreme political integrity. The writing style, which is about two thirds fragmented dialogue, works brilliantly to convey the multiplicity and frequent fast-moving confusion of the contemporary world. There was also pleasing serendipity in reading it on the same day as Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which if you squint a bit turns out to have a curiously similar theme. Autism is not only a perfectly logical development in response to a world whose complexities are so extreme as to defy anything but the most superficial and momentary assimilation, it's a perfect metaphor for such a world.

Comments

Yay wokkage.

[maxbarners.livejournal.com]

Re tastes much better: I assume because you've had it certified by the ministry of funny woks?

Btw, don't trust that stv character.
Probably cheats with the cooking - uses Unicorn tears or distilled essence of Evil or summat...

Re: Yay wokkage.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I don't think he cheats, I watch him very narrowly when he's cooking. (Occasionally he refers to me as "Grasshopper"). If he's sneaking weird ingredients in there, it's very sneakily.

[bumpycat.livejournal.com]

I too vaguely recall the epic, vast migration of the wok herds across the dusty plains.

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

Dead Air - I did enjoy the protagonist's response to the Holocaust denier.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Yes, although it was also a bit frustrating - a perfectly wonderful potential stunt that didn't really come off. It would have been enormously satisfying if it had.

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

In terms of the story, yes. But the concept alone (simple as it was) was delightful enough for me.