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.
Okay 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 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 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 and it's 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 and you usually have sushi with soy sauce.
Exactly so Japanese food use a lot of this too.
All right and the other sauce that's not very common in in our countries is oyster sauce.
Okay an oyster is a 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 but stinky but when you mix it with food and you cook it it smells it adds a very very good flavor.
Absolutely.
All right 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 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 and it's it has it's not like the other pans where it's 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 and well the guy compared his stir-fry to a fajita.
Now fajita that's a that's not Chinese.
And it's not English.
Okay well it is English now it's actually the name of 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.
The tortilla is like very thin corn or flour pancake.
Yeah so that that's a fajita it's kind of you've probably seen it a fajita or a 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 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 mmm 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 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 okay one cup of chopped onion but here's 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 mmm so that means he wants some stir-fry I would die for is a good thing it's it's a way to say I really want some it's an exaggeration it's not like you 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 alright 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 a 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 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're embarrassing they're embarrassing to us okay so it's a 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 right if you say somebody's a disgrace it's 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 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 so talking about Chinese food there are a lot of American inventions around around Chinese food as well not only Mexican food for example it's very popular this dish chop suey that's right chopped suey and I think I read somewhere that chop suey is actually might have been a Cantonese dish that came from all of the leftovers and kind of garbage in the kitchen we would just fry it together and it was a cheap easy meal so chop 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 meat chunks mixed with some vegetables and you have some chop suey exactly and there are 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 one of my biggest disappointments so fortune cookie is a small cookie with a message message inside so you have a piece of paper so you be careful when you're eating these you don't want to have a 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 you wear of Wales so but that's also an American invention that doesn't exist in China it doesn't really come from China right exactly all right so if you have any other information about food or 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 you