EXTENDED DESCRIPTION:
Wind chimes and titles announce today's recipe, Beef and
Vegetables. Fade-in on Joyce Chen at the kitchen counter. She declares it
great that she and the viewer share the same "hobby" (her word) of cooking.
Today she will make beef with vegetables. One typical vegetable for this
dish is Chinese pea pods (otherwise known, she notes, as snow peas) and in
close-up she shows how they differ from American pea pods. But since Chinese
pea pods are not readily available everywhere in America. she offers ideas
for other, more attainable American vegetables: for instance, green peppers
(found, she observes, in every American supermarket) or mushrooms or celery
or broccoli. Here, she notes that American broccoli differs from the more
flowery Chinese broccoli but that doing a stir-fry will enable one to serve
"American broccoli [the] Chinese way" -- an example again of how Chen works
to mediate Chinese cuisine for American audiences. She shows how to cut
broccoli to preserve most of the vegetable and then demonstrates how to add
a "Chinese touch" (her phrase) to the dish by including canned bamboo shoots
and water chestnuts and, if this can be located in one's local markets or
stores, dried black mushrooms. To clarify just how dry the dried mushrooms
are when purchased, she whacks one down on the table so the viewer hears the
dryness (a typical use of the auditory dimension to get across a sensation
-- here, touch -- that a television viewer cannot typically
experience). Whatever vegetable or vegetables one chooses for the stir
fry (most vegetables can be combined although she recommends against two
green vegetables together) will then be stir fried in oil with a slice of
ginger root. "Let's go to cook," she announces and the camera pans left to
follow her along the kitchen counter to a wok on the stove. An overhead shot
(filmed with a mirror) allows the viewer to see the vegetables cook away.
She removes the results from the wok and sets them aside. Now she begins the preparation of the beef. She prefers, she
tells the viewer, to use flank steak as it is relatively inexpensive and
easy to cut, although more expensive cuts like sirloin would work too. The slices of beef need to be marinated, and she uses a
mixture of sherry, soy, cornstarch, sugar, and MSG. She uses the same wok
she cooked the vegetables in and recommends not washing it between the two
stir fries as this saves clean-up time (where cooking is fun, washing
dishes, in contrast, is a hard, unenjoyable job, so she tells us). She then mixes the vegetables with the stir-fried beef and
blends everything together. Verbally, she begins to remind the viewer of the
ingredients for today's recipe, and there is a dissolve to the Chinese
figurines each with a label indicating an ingredient (as the camera pans
over these, Chen also enumerates the items in voice-over). Chen plates up the stir fry. Perhaps because there is little
more than a minute left to the show, she doesn't leave the kitchen for the
dining area. Instead, she displays the dish on the kitchen counter and
declares this to be a "proud moment for a cook." She shows how the Chinese
cook typically calls family or guests to dinner: namely, by clanging on the
wok with the spatula. "See you again," she announces and the camera pulls
back until the wind chimes come into view. Note: there are two differences at the end from the previous
episode. First, the end title tells us "Joyce Chen Cooks" rather than "Joyce
Chen Cooked." Second, there is no voice-over that specifies she is the
author of a published cookbook.