EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: Wind chimes and titles announce today's recipe, Beef and Vegetables.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: Fade-in on Joyce Chen at the kitchen counter.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: She declares it great that she and the viewer share the same "hobby" (her word) of cooking.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: Today she will make beef with vegetables.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: 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.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: But since Chinese pea pods are not readily available everywhere in America.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: 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.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: 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.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: 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.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: 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).
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: 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.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: "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.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: An overhead shot (filmed with a mirror) allows the viewer to see the vegetables cook away.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: She removes the results from the wok and sets them aside.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: Now she begins the preparation of the beef.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: 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.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: The slices of beef need to be marinated, and she uses a mixture of sherry, soy, cornstarch, sugar, and MSG.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: 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).
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: She then mixes the vegetables with the stir-fried beef and blends everything together.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: 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).
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: Chen plates up the stir fry.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: Perhaps because there is little more than a minute left to the show, she doesn't leave the kitchen for the dining area.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: 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.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: "See you again," she announces and the camera pulls back until the wind chimes come into view.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: Note: there are two differences at the end from the previous episode.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION: 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.