I chose to skip the Chinese American Kung Pao Chicken recipe, as it is a lot of vegetables and a lot them zucchini, which I only really enjoy in a few preparations. The more authentic Gong Bao Ji Ding recipe has the chicken front-and-center.

As planned, I fried eggs for the kids since this is a spicy dish. They did not even want to try a bite of the chicken. My wife and I both really enjoyed the chicken, even though we were all coughing from the aerosolized chilis from the cooking.

I am not confident in the success of my stir fry toss. I feel okay about the tossing itself, but the pan seems to cool down too much in the process (or it is really noisy as it scrapes across the stove grate). Leaving it on the burner with the occasional toss seems to work better. Also, for this recipe, I worked in smaller batches. If the wok looked plenty full, I did not add more food, but let it cook, transferred it out, and then added more. That seemed to work well, and the wok stayed plenty hot.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.