Wok's up? A lazy cook's best friend

Every lazy cook should have one, and I've been making the most of mine of late.

It's a genuine hammered steel, rough wooden-handled one that I picked up, decades ago now, in a Chinese provisions shop in Soho, London.

It's the kind they use on the street foodstalls across Asia, whipping up those brilliantly tasty meals in five minutes flat.

The thing is that anyone with a wok can do it here, too.

Some time back when we got the kitchen overhauled we opted for a gas hob, which in my view is the best way to go for oven-top cooking and practically a must for woks - though they say the electric varieties can be pretty good.

In any case our hob has a large central gas ring designed precisely for woks.

It allows a significant area of direct contact between the gas flame and the base and sides of the wok - which means that it gets very hot, very quickly.

And this is the secret of wok cooking - hot and fast.

The other day, running late for lunch and wanting to pack a dinner for work, I deployed the old beaten metal beast to make a chicken and vegetable stir-fry in 10 minutes flat.

I had, the previous day, thrown together a marinade for some boneless chicken thighs that needed to be eaten.

This is a very simple bog-standard concoction which at its most basic consists of a few tablespoons of soy sauce, a couple of sweet Thai chilli sauce and a good dollop of honey.

To this you might want to add some finely chopped fresh garlic, and likewise, fresh root ginger, possibly some coriander - improvise whichever way you want to go flavour-wise, but the basic mix will do just fine.

So I sliced the chicken into strips, at most a couple of centimetres thick, and put back in the marinade, cut up a few mushrooms and finely diced half a red onion.

I opened a pack (OK, you could say this is cheating) of a kind of ranchslaw purchased at the supermarket in place of stir-fry veg that had sold out.

The slaw was basically a roughly sliced mix of red and green cabbage and carrots.

Into the wok I sloshed a bit of peanut oil, I suppose a tablespoon or so, waited a couple of minutes for it to heat up, swirled it round to moisten the sides, then began with the mushrooms and onion.

One of the tricks of wok cooking is to keep the food moving and tossed around so that all sides of the small bits and pieces come into contact with the hot metal of the wok.

You are not deep frying, so you just need enough oil to keep the bottom and sides of the wok moist and stop the food from either burning or sticking.

After a couple of minutes, I tossed in the chicken pieces a handful or so at a time, stirred around and browned, followed by the next lot until it was all in.

Try not to get too much of the marinade in at this stage or your ingredients may tend to "boil" rather than "fry".

After a few more minutes of tossing, say four or five, with the chicken pieces looking nicely browned and nearly cooked through (if you are not certain, simply take out a piece and cut it through the thickest part), throw in the finely cut vegetables - in this case the ranchslaw - and toss for a further couple of minutes until the veges reach that stage of being heated right through but are still crisp and tasty, rather than soggy.

On this occasion I had some bean sprouts to throw on top.

A couple more whirls, a bit of chopped up coriander as a garnish, and two or three tablespoons of the marinade added as moistening and flavour, and voila! Season and serve while steaming hot.

A respectable and healthy meal in 10 minutes flat (to which rice could easily have been added) - and the reason why a wok is a lazy cook's best friend.

Being lunchtime, and with an afternoon's and night's work ahead, I didn't avail myself of an alcoholic lubricant, but a chilled gewurtztraminer or a medium-dry riesling (of which more anon) would have done the trick nicely.