332: The Woks of Life

0:00This episode is brought to you by Rezzy and American Express. Resi is a digital platform that connects restaurants to restaurant lovers by elevating dining experiences, providing original industry content, and helping to fill some of the country's most exciting dining rooms. Because restaurants have always been more than just places to eat. The amazing world of restaurants is just a few taps away in the Resi app and at resi.com. Also, like, when it's like, oh, MSG is bad, it kind of just, like, contributes to, like, this, like, weird junk food perception of Chinese food. And it's like, OK, we're all moving past that.

0:35Like, you know, Chinese food is like so much more varied and it's not just like a greasy late night thing.

0:46You're listening to The Taste Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Rodbar.

0:59Caitlin and Sarah Leung join me in the studio to talk about their long-running online food blog, The Walks of Life, which is now a cookbook. Oh my gosh, I've been waiting for this for a long time. Now, for anybody who has ever held a walk over high heat, The Walks of Life has likely helped you along the way. They've been a go-to resource for recipes and techniques and really answering your questions about Chinese cooking. I really love catching up with Caitlin and Sarah and hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:34Sarah and Caitlin Leung, welcome to Taste Podcast. Hi, thank you so much for having us. I love having two guests. This is rare. Thank you for coming in. Yeah, we're a package deal. You are. Well, you have two more that aren't here. Oh, that's right. Technically, we're only a half representation today. Well, it's rare. And I want to get into the structure of the book and how you devised it. Four authors, your parents, the four of you. Yes. Against all the odds, we have come out the other side with a book and our family bond somehow intact. So the four of you wrote this book. How do you divide the labor?

2:12How do you have four authors and when two of the authors actually are your parents? How does that work?

2:21So there are first and foremost, I feel like the gorilla in the room is that we do argue and squabble a lot. Right. So I think that there's like an upteenth amount of communication that goes on in our family. But honestly, like it wouldn't really work any other way. Like we all bring really unique contributions that are all very complementary. So I think like that goes for how we run our blog, Box of Life. It's about how we actually develop recipes and sort of the expertise that we bring into the kitchen and into the cooking techniques and different kinds of dishes that we like to cook. So my dad is very much more technical.

3:09Like he had a restaurant kitchen background. So he comes from a long line of Chinese chefs and he really brings the he brings the heat on like Chinese American classic dishes and kind of those restaurant secrets. And then my mom is really more, you know, she grew up in China, actually. So she is a first generation immigrant to America. So she really has that strong connection to back to China and more of that cultural, nuanced cultural knowledge of, you know, the different provinces and different styles of cooking and, you know, that deep respect for tradition as well. And then me and Farrah. Where do you guys land?

3:51They seem like your parents have a lot of information, a lot of knowledge. And then like them, the two are you. Right. It's a huge wind up. I feel like we're partially like the trans. I mean, part of our job is to translate that, right? This like sort of a little of this, a little of that style of cooking that my parents employed growing up. You know, like I remember like in our cabinet, we have this little sugar dish. And like in a lot of Chinese dishes, you'll see like a little like a dash of sugar just at the end just to kind of like give that like bit of contrast. And it was like a plastic spoon with a handle broken off in the sugar.

4:28And it's like, oh, I'm like, how much sugar? And my mom was like, eh, just like roughly half of the spoon. And so that kind of cooking by feel approach is really how my parents cooked for us growing up. And when it came time to figure out, okay, how do we make those dishes? How do we reproduce those dishes? it really became about my sister and I sort of like translating that generation's knowledge into recipes that felt like we could that were clear and that we could follow and we could reproduce over and over. And as like as my sister and I have gotten have become recipe developers or developers of Chinese recipes ourselves, I feel like, you know, sometimes we're looking for sort of like maybe the shortcuts or like, oh, like this is like quicker and easier version.

5:21Or can we do this in an instant pot or ideas like that that I feel like maybe just like bring sort of a modern, slightly modern variation into dishes. But then also like we've learned so much over the last like almost 10 years of blogging that my sister and I too like will dig really deep into traditional recipes and techniques now as well. Yeah, absolutely. You have a historical background and backbone in your writing and talking about some of the recipes that you do, the fusion, like Cantonese roast turkey and Chinese Italian feast of seven fishes, right? Yes. You've done those. Yes. Those are fun.

5:56I mean those are absolutely like maybe not what your parents are thinking about but you're thinking about them. Yeah. And I think it's also just like, you know, our family, right? Like our my aunt, my dad's sister married an Italian. And so like that my our cousins do like a feast of the seven fishes, like Italian American Christmas Eve dinner. And when they come over for Christmas, that's what we do. And like maybe sometimes there's like a little bit of like a Chinese like a salt and pepper squid in there or something. And, yeah, I feel like, you know, that's what makes the walks of life kind of unique is, you know, with the four or the two generations speaking together and not just two generations, but also to like, you know, my dad is grew up in upstate New York and my mom grew up in Hubei and Shanghai.

6:49high and so to have those different perspectives um all sort of wrapped up into one blog it's special sauce it's super unique and why i think a lot of readers and fans love your your newsletter and your website caitlin tell me when you launched the website like back 10 years ago was there a strategy did you have content strategy in mind did you did or were you doing the basic food blogging thing where you're just like putting up stuff and seeing if it worked like what because Because I ask this because clearly right now you have a really great strategy. Like there's really amazing cadence. And, you know, coming from the world that we share, the food media world, it's great.

7:27Like it's really, really, really, really well done. So, like, tell me about the origins. Yeah. I think in today's, like, world of food media, like the pace really is so intense. And there's so much, like, stuff, content creation going on. So like from where we started, it was – I'll say that there was always this like core DNA of like making sure that it was a family project because we followed, you know, food blogs back in the day. Like we loved Smitten Kitchen. We were like Pioneer Woman fans before she like had her Food Network show. So we were definitely like, you know, we would log into our favorite food blogs every day and see if they posted something new.

8:09But, you know, at the time, there really wasn't a clear resource that was for Chinese-American-born, like, kids like us, basically, who wanted to learn how to cook Chinese food, traditional Chinese food, but sort of have it be a little bit more well-packaged than, like, just my mom being like, oh, it's just a little this and a little that. And, you know, here's what you do and you'll know when it's ready. No, you can't do that as like a recipe developer. Like as a beginner, it's very difficult. So that was, you know, kind of where we started in terms of seeing like, all right, this is kind of something that potentially we could step into.

8:51And I think that the unique aspect of it always was that we were interested in doing it with our entire family because so, you know, my two parents and me and my sister. because at the time, actually, we were always really close growing up, but we had kind of gotten split up because my parents moved to China for my dad's job. So it was kind of this really weird time in our lives where we previously, like, saw each other every day and were, like, super close, but, you know, being separated by, you know— Twelve hours. Yeah, exactly, was an adjustment. So we kind of really we were like, OK, we miss the food from home.

9:34We have no idea how to cook this food. So like how can we, number one, stay connected and number two, kind of also like translate this knowledge and like kind of. Yeah. And Sarah begin to like learn how to cook Chinese food. Right. And I think to answer your question more pointedly, there was no strategy. Like I think that when we started it, like if you go back to the sort of like earlier version of like the earliest blog posts, they read a lot more like sort of like an early 2000s kind of blog. Like where you're just kind of sharing your thoughts. They read like diary entries. And for me, starting the blog from a place of like I just graduated college.

10:21I didn't have a job. I wasn't sure what I was going to do next. And for me, I used it as like a creative outlet. And I think as we started to sort of realize like, oh, there's actually an audience here who's like asking us questions and like, oh, do you have this recipe? Or my grandma used to make this. Like, do you know what that is? Like as we started getting those sorts of questions, we realized like, OK, like we we actually have an audience that trusts our opinion about, you know, our version of a certain dish. And I think that that's when we started sort of taking it more, a little bit more seriously and more like, okay, we're systematically recording some of these classics.

11:10And we're just, you know, going to sort of start taking it from like a, like, I mean, not to get it too in the weeds, but like from a keyword perspective, it's like, what is somebody going to search for in order to find this dish? Right, like feathering, like feathering, right? Or velveting. Or velveting. I call it feathering, which makes no sense. But velveting, okay, so that's my version. But velveting is how I found you. I was Googling that. I remember Kenji had some recipe in his first book, and I was like, I don't quite understand it. So I Googled it, and he found you guys. That's awesome.

11:43That's great to hear. Yeah, I mean, I think that we take the questions that our readers ask us, and they get directly translated into content. Yeah. You know, where it's like somebody's like, oh, I don't really get that. And then we're like, oh, yeah, we really should explain that. Like, let's write an article about that. Like just that. That's good. Yeah. But one quick thing is like I feel like, you know, going back to this idea of like it's all four of us, I think that we were kind of surprised, honestly, when people did kind of have that inherent trust in us because – but I do think it partially is because of it's that family aspect.

12:18Like we started out just wanting to like document our family's favorite recipes and like our go-to recipes. And I think like that's a very relatable thing. And like a lot of people saw themselves in that. And, you know, part of that also is like, OK, we're we're trying to make this as easy to understand as possible, like for me and Sarah, too. So like that's also something of like when we're explaining velveting, like it's it's all in service of like someone who's cooking at home who's like, oh, crap, like, did I do this wrong or like something going wrong? And like we try to like bake that into like how we write our recipes.

12:51One more question about the actual business of walks of life. So first off, is it a business? Is this, do you have full-time jobs in addition to it or is it your job? And like backing up, the first part of the question is, when did you know it was a hit? Yeah. So we definitely treat it as a business now. It's just gotten so big and it's taken up so much of our time. My sister and I now both work on it full-time. Sweet. For several years, we were holding down the fort on full-time jobs and also doing this like on the weekends, which was challenging. It was a lot. Yeah. So, yeah, we're definitely like in it now.

13:27And that's great. And I think that for me, when I first realized that it was like something was when I started to notice people in the comments like talking to each other. Yeah. Like they would ask each other questions or like a commenter would be like, oh, like check out this recipe that they have. Like it's really similar. Like, you know, they would answer questions for us. And that was a moment where I was like, there's like a community. Like we have like a community here. Absolutely. Who's like, you know, who's on our blog, knows who we are and like trusts our recipes enough to like suggest them to other people.

14:02That's when I felt like. They call that hashtag engagement. Yeah, exactly. Not to get too. Not to get all wonky, but yeah. Too businessy. But clearly. And then so this is your full time job. And we'll get to the cookbook. Obviously, you're here to talk about your debut cookbook, which I love. But I want to know, is the business growing in other directions outside of the cookbook? Television, podcasts, any of that stuff. I'm just curious because, I mean, it's really – I respect it so much, running your own food media business. Hard to do. You're making it look easy. Well, that's a big compliment.

14:33I think that – yeah, I mean the cookbook is obviously such a huge kind of like sigh of relief now that it's actually like done and it's, you know, about to come out. But I think that we're all sort of, you know, it's kind of a tricky thing because it is the four of us that we kind of like there are different things that like me and my sister could do. And then there are things that we could all do as a family. I think we're trying to get more into like video content. It's not like we're like, you know, we're not inking a deal with Food Network or anything like that. Soon, like six months from now.

15:08Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's in the works. It's in the works. But I think just like make – like people today just like want to see more in action of like how a recipe comes together. So there's just been such a big demand for that in general. So I think that's something that we're trying to branch more into. But yeah, I think honestly like we were – I think we're – like we put so much into the cookbook that we're just like having a little breathing period. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you should, and you should celebrate when you can, because these things don't come around every day. So celebrate.

15:43Okay, so I actually didn't find you from that velveting SEO moment. I actually found you from my friend Judith. My friend Judith is like the biggest fan. Shout out to Judith. And I texted her last night. I said, like, I got the walks of life here. She's like, oh, shit, I love the walks of life. I love their site. I'm like reading it, the text right here. She has a couple questions. So I wanted to jump into Judith's questions before I get into a few of mine. Okay, fill in the blank. Like everyone in the U.S. would be better off food-wise if blank were as widely available in the supermarket as milk and eggs and people knew how to cook with them.

16:14Sarah, you want to take it? Wow, that is a good one. I think vegetables. Just the variety of Asian leafy greens that are available in your average Chinese or Korean or Southeast Asian market. you know when I walk into a regular grocery store or I'm limited to a regular grocery store I'm looking at the vegetable selection and I'm just like man this is like really light like I'm either eating kale or I'm eating broccoli and like that's like those are the options and I you know I think that I'm you know I'm exaggerating but like there's so many just like great way to cook vegetable great ways to cook vegetables and i feel like in here in the u.s like we see them as like this sort of side dish like the thing that goes on the side salad right the side of the main side yeah right and um when you know in chinese cooking they are like the main event they're yeah they're something to be cherished as much as uh you know the protein so i i think i think that like the if everybody just ate more like delicious and could see how tasty but you're right in the book Look, you use the term lip smacking vegetables found throughout China and you're trying to replicate lip smacking vegetables.

17:33And I like hung on that for a bit and I thought about it. And so what makes the vegetables in in China, if you're going to visit your mom's family, what makes them different there? What makes this lip smacking quality? Yeah, I think I think it's high heat cooking is a big part of it. Right. You have that like walk a element. And then part of it is just like because the vegetable is the main event, like there might be meat in the dish. Right. But it's like a small amount that sort of like complement like, you know, a little bit of pork belly. That's just, you know, kind of creating that like little bit of like glistening richness that to like say like a cauliflower.

18:15And then from that, like you're like, wow, this cauliflower is like deliciously savory. but there's you know there's not there's like maybe three ounces of meat exactly it's such a small amount right it's it's but it makes a huge difference and i think also like cutting it into smaller pieces like it's just a more enjoyable like eating experience when you're not like gnawing your way through like a giant piece of broccoli and it's like cut into like a bite-sized piece that you can pick up with your chopstick and you know that like knife like the knife skills and like knowing like, okay, what size am I cutting the vegetables?

18:49If I'm making a stir fry with different vegetables, what size and shape is each vegetable going to be such that when I'm eating this dish, like I'm getting like the ideal textural experience. I think that – Well, and that everything will cook at the same time. And cook it off. It's the cooking – Right. Cooking the wok, right. It's like it needs to cook evenly. Right. Yes. And I think American kitchens tend to go with the big whole head cauliflower. Yeah. Big pieces of – I mean they're so prominent and, you know, love a whole cauliflower head. Yeah. But for stir fry, you got to really spend that time in the kitchen, right?

19:19Chopping. Totally, yeah. And I think that that thoughtfulness of like how am I cutting this vegetable such that it's going to be its best in the final dish. I feel like that's such a huge part of Chinese cooking. There's so many great recipes. And I want to cover some specific recipes. I want to cover some of the chapters and some of the areas that you've focused on. But one recipe that jumps out or more of a combination is cabbage, pork, oyster sauce and wine and aromatics, of course, garlic, ginger. What is so what is it about that combination? Like I love cooked cabbage. I make this myself.

19:56Like if I'm going to stir fry, it's like definitely my go to Napa always. What is it about this combination? I was thinking about this earlier and I feel like okay I'll say for pork at least I feel like pork is just like the king of meats there's just something about pork that is so distinctive and like it's like an irreplaceable flavor like you know there's like vegan beef and there's vegan chicken but like there's no vegan pork so well said Things that like you can't – You can't do it. Like capture that lightning in a bottle. It's just its own thing. But I feel like – I don't know. It is an interesting question because, yeah, like there's like that trinity of like ginger garlic scallion.

20:46And like when those flavors come together, it's just like harmony. And oyster sauce makes everything. Yeah, oyster sauce is like – See, that's the kicker, right? Oyster sauce and pork and then whatever vegetable, leafy vegetable, it could be Chinese broccoli. it could be cabbage it could be even like brussels sprouts if you want to go in that direction something about it oyster sauce is amazing yeah yeah oyster sauce is very underappreciated our our grandfather um our yeah yeah used to say if you want to make it taste better just add oyster sauce yeah that was his like little motto you know sriracha has gotten the press but like let's maybe put sriracha aside yeah just like let's get oyster sauce in the conversation i completely agree I want to talk about dim sum because you have a very extensive dim sum category or sorry chapter.

21:31And I feel like I have questions about this because like we've got great dim sum in most cities. Am I actually making these dishes at home or is this just a way to like let us appreciate what goes into a dim sum meal and experience? You're making them at home. Like these recipes are doable and you can make them at home. Strong statement. That is something. Sarah, thank you. No, totally. And that is something that we, you know, when we started the blog, we never thought, like, we would be able to replicate some of these dim sum items. Like, we, like, there, it was like, there were, like, in a black box.

22:10And we just, like, had no idea. What are some of them? Like, the tarot puffs. We are really proud of that recipe in this book because they taste spot on. And that recipe was a challenge. It was a big challenge for my dad to develop it. But, you know, he nailed it. And, like, they're delicious. And I think— Well, for people who don't know what they are, they're, like, these wispy fritters of taro. And then inside it's this, like, molten pork filling. And, like, the wispy part is the trick. Right. And that's the part where you kind of get psyched out at home. It's, like— But it requires some alchemy.

22:45For sure. I think that the key to a lot of these recipes is just knowing how to do it. Because, like, for example, you know at Dim Sum, they have those, like, fried sesame balls. They're, like, so. Hard to get that architecture. Hard to get that shape. Yes. And that recipe took my dad maybe four or five years. Yeah. Because he just didn't, he was, like, experimenting. They were exploding in the oil. It was, like, oh, my gosh. Like, why are they exploding? He had to take, like, a two-year hiatus because he needed, like, a break. I love your dad. And it was, like, you know, but then once you have that formula, once you know what you're doing, then it's like oh I can reproduce this every time no problem.

23:24And actually some of the recipes are pretty simple. Like the first recipe in the entire book is my pork and shrimp shumai and it's as easy as mixing a filling in a KitchenAid mixer or you can mix by hand. Putting them, you know, stuffing like thin dumpling wrappers and steaming them. And that's it. And it's super simple. And it tastes really great. And you have wrapper recipes but I think you can say you could substitute. Yeah. Starbot is fine. if you can get it. Sure about it's ideal. Back to fried dough. Because fried dough in Chinese cooking to me, it's like a category, right? I feel like I really want to hear about it through the culture because it seems like it's not just a fritter.

24:05It's like about the texture, right? It's about the explosion of texture and some flavor and oil. Yes. It's about the layering of the dough. Yes. So like it's like how the dough comes together. yes but then it's about like once it's made like how you rest it and how you roll it out how you like put it in a spiral and then roll it out again and like all of those things kind of lead to this like well at least for something like a scallion pancake or like a bing or something that you have i think a bing's right away like that's like its own category yeah like all that stuff is like laminated gloriousness that just like when it hits the oil just like takes on a completely different characteristic and i think like yeah like there's like there's donuts and things like that and like more what you kind of would expect when you think of the word like fried dough or like a yotiao which is like a fried like crawler but i think like getting like the the scallion pancakes and like the the crispy bottom of like a bauzi like it's just it kind of is its own like unique texture and honestly largely because a lot of chinese homes like in china don't have ovens like you're cooking on the walk so like if you're making like if you're in northern china and you have a dough like it's either getting steamed or it's getting pan fried yep so that's kind of i feel like well said i mean it makes sense like a very practical answer yeah why that's a category but obviously delicious and i whenever you go to china like the first thing i want is like fried dough in any form and i'm like breakfast of champions okay dumplings on the on the spot boiled fried or steamed sir first what do you think depends great Thank you for not answering the question.

25:44No, I'm kidding. I would say if gut reaction, like, gone to my head, it's fried. But I will say that it kind of depends on the freshness of the dumpling. If your dumpling is like if you just made them, I would suggest boiling because that's when you really taste the filling. So well said, yeah. You can really taste the juiciness and freshness of the filling. If your dumplings have been sitting in the freezer for, like, a month or two, then, like, fried all the way. Steamed, though, has its own, like, vibe. Like, they're drier. They're a little bit chewier. It has more of, like, that al dente kind of thing going on.