Fast and furious Chinese cooking style may take a hit

Nagpur: The street-side Chinese food stalls that emit the spicy aroma of soya sauce, chillies and garlic bristling in hot oil may have to take a forced break because this style of cooking uses the most amount of LPG. Chinese food, or rather the Indianised version of Chinese food, is cooked on an extremely high flame in vessels called woks that are designed to absorb the smouldering flames and give the noodles and rice that unique ‘burnt' flavour.Woks are extremely thin versions of ‘kadhais', and the gas burner is almost always blasting away in full glory. That is the reason that, at Chinese food stalls, the cooks are seen lifting the wok multiple times, tossing the rice or noodles, and even banging the edges with the ladle. This ‘fast and furious' style of cooking consumes a lot of gas, something which is now in limited supply.While roadside stalls are often guilty of using domestic ‘red' cylinders, it is not an option any more because of vigilant public and aggressive surprise raids by authorities.TOI spoke to two Chinese roadside vendors and they claimed that the remaining stock should last them for a couple of days. "We all used domestic cylinders only but had a commercial connection too. That cylinder was with us and it is being used now, but depending on the crowd we get, it will be over soon," said the food stall owner.Asked if it is not possible to cook without a high flame, he said, "Technically, everything is possible, but then it loses that flavour which people are used to. It is like rotis made over a wood-fired chulha taste amazing, but now we can cook them on gas too. So yes, it can be done, but then the charm is gone."