I wanna Wok with you

One of the best parts about cooking is doing it with a friend. Especially if that friend owns a Wok. Of course, I don't need an excuse to hang out with my best gal and cookie partner Nicole, but last Friday when she invited me over for dinner, I immediately said sure, as long as we can use your Wok. She got the Wok a while ago and we've only used it less than a handful of times, but there's just something about the way it cooks the food that makes it better than any take-out Chinese food around.

According to eHow.com...A wok is shaped like a large bowl and usually made out of carbon steel, with some alternatives being aluminum and cast iron. The stove top wok's rounded bottom nestles into the grates of a gas range. This projects the flames' heat into a hot spot on the wok's bottom. A wok's main advantage is that you can create healthy meals in a relatively short amount of time. Little oil is used in preparing vegetables, meats or seafood. Due to the concentrated heat, food cooks quickly and vegetables retain a crisp, crunchy texture, while the meats and seafood do not absorb large amounts of oil.

We've cooked several different meals in the Wok. This time we did a tangerine/orange beef. We didn't really follow a recipe, instead using several recipes Nicole had researched to come up with the basis for our sauce. In addition to orange peels, we added broccoli, water chestnuts and scallions. We served it over brown rice.

The finished dish was so delicious we forgot to take a picture.