Stir Fry

Hello everyone and welcome back to EnglishPod.

My name is Marco.

My name is Catherine and today we're talking about one of our favorite subjects, food.

That's right and on this occasion we are going to talk about Chinese food, specifically

stir fry.

This is a common dish in America and all over the world thanks to the many Cantonese people

who came over from Hong Kong or southern China and brought these delicious foods to our cities.

So this is a very popular dish you'll be learning more about.

So let's jump right in and listen to today's dialogue and don't be worried if you don't

understand everything.

We'll be back in a moment.

Oh man, I had the best supper last night.

My wife made a stir fry and it was amazing.

I love stir fry.

Crispy bite-sized vegetables covered in a mixture of soy sauce and oyster sauce, wilted

greens and fresh bean sprouts.

Throw in some onion and garlic and ginger.

Mmm, it's almost lunch time.

I would die for a plate of stir fry right now.

Well, you can keep the vegetables.

I'll take the meat.

The stir fry my wife made was really hearty with chunks of beef and slivers of bell peppers

and onion.

What?

You call that a stir fry?

More meat than vegetables?

It's the worst insult you could throw at a Chinese stir fry.

What a disgrace to the wok she fried it in.

What you had is equivalent to a fajita without the wrap.

Alright we're back.

So you probably heard a lot of different vegetables and ingredients in this dish.

So why don't we take a look at some of those now in Language Takeaway.

Language Takeaway.

The first two phrases that we have actually, they're not words, they're phrases, are the

names of sauces that are very, very important to Chinese food.

The first one is soy sauce.

Okay, soy sauce.

And it's this black sauce, right?

Very salty.

Very salty.

And it's made from?

Soy beans.

Soy beans, okay.

Soy.

So soy is a bean, a vegetable product.

But soy sauce is a thin, black, salty sauce.

Okay, and it's very, very common to use it with Chinese dishes especially.

It's very related.

You usually have sushi with soy sauce.

Exactly, so Japanese food uses a lot of this too.

Alright and the other sauce that's not very common in our countries is oyster sauce.

Okay, an oyster is an animal that lives in the sea.

It lives in a shell and we often eat oysters as a dish.

But oyster sauce is stinky, thick, dark sauce that is very popular in Southeast Asian, so

Vietnamese food as well, and Chinese food.

Okay, so it's part of the ingredients of Chinese food.

It's really good.

It smells terrible.

It's stinky.

But when you mix it with food and you cook it, it smells, it adds a very, very good flavor.

Absolutely.

Alright, so that's the sauces.

Now apart from sauces, we have some vegetables and some of those are bean sprouts.

Bean sprouts are very common vegetables, especially in Asian food.

So you see a lot of these.

They're usually almost white, almost clear and they're crunchy and they have a little

green part at the end.

Right, so they're like little straws with a little green point at the end.

So usually those go into your dish at the very end because they cook quickly.

Bean sprouts.

Okay.

Now if you're cooking stir-fry, what you need is the correct tools and the main tool that

you need is a wok.

That's right.

So a wok is actually a word that we take from, I think, Cantonese.

I'm not positive.

I don't speak Cantonese.

But in English, we normally say frying pan.

But this is a special Asian frying pan that's very, very large and very thin.

So foods cook quickly in a wok.

Okay.

It's not like the other pans where it has a big flat part.

It's very, very round all over.

That's right.

It's almost like a bowl that sits on your stove and you cook quickly in a wok.

All right.

So that's a wok.

Well, the guy compared his stir-fry to a fajita.

Now fajita, that's not Chinese.

And it's not English.

Okay.

Well, it is English now.

It's actually the name of a food from Latin America.

So South America and Mexico and Central America, I think more Mexican than anything.

And it's like slivers of meat, so thin strips of meat and vegetables that you eat in a tortilla

bread.

Almost.

A tortilla is like very thin corn or flour pancake.

Yeah.

So that's a fajita.

It's kind of, you've probably seen it, a fajita or maybe what's commonly known as well as

a burrito, which actually is also an American invention.

I don't think that exists in Mexico.

No, but they are delicious.

I think the word is Tex-Mex, Texas Mexican.

So Tex-Mex.

All right.

So that's what we have for you on Language Takeaway.

Why don't we go back to our dialogue, listen to it again, and we'll be back shortly.

Oh man, I had the best supper last night.

My wife made a stir-fry and it was amazing.

I love stir-fry, crispy bite-sized vegetables covered in a mixture of soy sauce and oyster

sauce, wilted greens and fresh bean sprouts, throw in some onion and garlic and ginger.

It's almost lunchtime.

I would die for a plate of stir-fry right now.

Well, you can keep the vegetables.

I'll take the meat.

The stir-fry my wife made was really hearty with chunks of beef and slivers of bell peppers

and onion.

What?

You call that a stir-fry?

More meat than vegetables?

That's the worst insult you could throw at a Chinese stir-fry.

What a disgrace to the wok she fried it in.

What you had is equivalent to a fajita without the wrap.

All right, we're back.

So now I think we should take a look at some of those phrases that were used in this dialogue

in Fluency Builder.

Fluency Builder.

The first phrase we have in Fluency Builder is a phrase that you will hear very often

when you watch cooking shows.

So this is a term we say throw in, to throw in.

Okay, so throw in some vegetables or throw in some onion and garlic.

And that means to just put it into the pan, put it into the pot.

That's right, but it's very general or casual or easy.

You just add some.

If you want to be specific, we can say, please add one cup chopped onion.

One cup of chopped onion.

But here, throw in just means add casually.

Okay, add some onion.

So we throw in all these ingredients and it sounds so delicious that the guy says, I would

die for a plate of stir-fry right about now.

So that means he wants some stir-fry.

I would die for is a good thing.

It's a way to say I really want something.

It's an exaggeration.

It's not like you would actually die for it or you are dying to eat it.

It's just that it's an exaggeration means that you really, really want it.

I would die for a new car.

My car is old and it never really works.

All right, so you really want a new car.

Okay, and well, the guy obviously didn't really like what he was talking about and how he

cooked this stir-fry and he said, what a disgrace to the wok she fried it in.

Okay, this is a way to say that something is bad.

It's embarrassing.

So we can say that this food is a disgrace to Chinese food because Chinese food is one

way but this doesn't even look like Chinese food.

So a disgrace, a disgrace.

So the word disgrace, it means that something is bad.

Or embarrassing to something else.

So a parent can say you're a disgrace to this family.

That means this family has a good reputation but what you did, what you do, these are bad

things.

They make us look bad.

They are embarrassing.

They are embarrassing to us.

So it's a very strong phrase.

This is a disgrace.

Okay, a disgrace, very good.

A strong phrase and you can use it if you ever want to talk about someone or something

in this way.

But remember, it is pretty strong.

If you say somebody is a disgrace, it's pretty insulting.

It's hurtful.

Okay, so why don't we listen to our dialogue for one last time and we'll be back.

Oh man, I had the best supper last night.

My wife made a stir fry and it was amazing.

I love stir fry.

Crispy bite-sized vegetables covered in a mixture of soy sauce and oyster sauce.

Wilted greens and fresh bean sprouts.

Throw in some onion and garlic and ginger.

Mmm, it's almost lunch time.

I would die for a plate of stir fry right now.

Well, you can keep the vegetables.

I'll take the meat.

The stir fry my wife made was really hearty with chunks of beef and slivers of bell peppers

and onion.

Meat?

You call that a stir fry?

More meat than vegetables?

That's the worst insult you could throw at a Chinese stir fry.

What a disgrace to the wok she fried it in.

What you had is equivalent to a fajita without the wrap.

Alright so, talking about Chinese food, there are a lot of American inventions around Chinese

food as well, not only Mexican food.

For example, it's very popular this dish, chopped suey.

That's right, chopped suey.

And I think I read somewhere that chopped suey is actually, might have been a Cantonese

dish that came from all of the leftovers and garbage in the kitchen.

You would just fry it together and it was a cheap, easy meal.

So, chopped suey.

It's kind of like an English, it's like a pigeon English.

And well, this dish is basically that, right?

It's just a lot of meat chunks mixed with some vegetables and you have some chopped

suey.

Exactly.

And there's also this other thing that's very common.

People think about fortune cookies.

You think of Chinese restaurants and Chinese food, you think of fortune cookies.

That's right, but they don't have fortune cookies in China.

No, they don't.

One of my biggest disappointments.

So fortune cookie is a small cookie with a message inside.

So you have a piece of paper.

Be careful when you're eating these.

You don't want to eat the paper.

But the paper sometimes says very strange things like, you will have a terrific number

seven.

Right, or something like that.

So that's why they're fortune cookies.

They usually talk about your future or what's going to happen.

Beware of whales.

But that's also an American invention that doesn't exist in China.

It doesn't really come from China, right?

Exactly.

So if you have any other information about food, we're always glad to hear it.

Because we're always hungry.

Or if you have a favorite Chinese food, please let us know.

Our website is EnglishPod.com.

We can't wait to hear from you and we will talk to you next time.

All right, bye.

Woo hoo!