Our cookbook, The Woks of Life: Recipes to Know & Love from a Chinese American Family, is almost here! In just ONE WEEK on November 1, it will hit bookshelves and start landing on your doorsteps if you pre-ordered!
If you’re in the NYC area, we have some upcoming live cookbook events next week. Grab tickets (or come to a free book signing) to see us in person and get your book signed!
Book Launch & Panels Next Week in NYC
Here is our event schedule!
November 2: FREE public book signing at Yu & Me Books
Location: Yu & Me Books, 44 Mulberry St, NYC
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT on Wednesday, November 2, 2022
Event Description: Free and open to the public, all four of us will be signing books for 1 hour at Yu & Me Books in Chinatown, a female and Asian-owned community bookstore that amplifies immigrant stories! Copies will be available for purchase in-store, and you can immediately get them signed.
NOTE: If you can’t make this signing, we’ll be having another signing at Pearl River Mart (Chelsea Market location) from 4-5 PM—see below, before our official book launch from 6-8 PM!
November 2: FREE public book signing at Pearl River Mart
Location: Pearl River Mart, Chelsea Market – 75 9th Ave, NYC
Time: 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT on Wednesday, November 2, 2022
Event Description: Free and open to the public, all four of us will be signing books for 1 hour at NYC institution, Pearl River Mart. Copies will be available for purchase in-store, and you can immediately get them signed! We don’t have any other signing events like this (and the one at Yu & Me Books earlier this day) on the calendar as of now, so it’s a rare opportunity to get your cookbook signed by the whole family!
*November 2: Official cookbook Launch*
Location: Maker’s Studio, Chelsea Market – 75 9th Ave, NYC
Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT on Wednesday, November 2, 2022
Event Description: Come meet us at our one and only official cookbook launch, the day after publication day! Hosted by Pearl River Mart in Chelsea Market’s Makers’ Studio space, we’ll have a panel discussion to share how we developed the recipes for the book (i.e. family drama), how the blog started, and more! Grab a taste of one of our favorite recipes from the book (hint: noodles are involved) as well as other refreshments (Asian inspired sparkling waters and herbal teas sponsored by Sanzo and Bo-yi!). Pearl River Mart is also setting up a table with some of our favorite ingredients and cooking essentials, so you can grab what you need to start cooking. We’ll all be armed with fresh sharpies, so you can get your book signed at this event as well! (Copies will be available for purchase in-store at Pearl River Mart, or you can also purchase a book along with your ticket.
Space is limited, so click the link below to snap up your tickets!
November 5: Panel – A Celebration of the Wok, cherry bombe Cooks & Books Event
Location: Ace Hotel Brooklyn, 252 Schermerhorn St, Brooklyn, NY
Time: 10:00 – 11:00 AM EDT on Saturday, November 5, 2022
Event Description: Women Wok Warriors unite (credit goes to Grace Young for this awesome potential band name)! Sarah & Kaitlin will be on a panel along with Grace Young, author of The Breath of a Wok, The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, and Stir-frying to the Sky’s Edge, and Amelie Kang of MáLà Project restaurants. Hetty McKinnon, author of To Asia with Love, will be moderating! You can purchase a combo ticket which includes a signed cookbook, or just a ticket to the event. This is part of Cherry Bombe’s annual Cooks & Books 2-day event, so you can also grab an all-access pass.
NOT IN NYC?
Order a signed copy of our cookbook from Omnivore Books in San Francisco or Yu & Me Books in NYC!
Recap: The New York City Wine and Food Festival
Now for a recap of another cookbook event that already happened about a week ago. Earlier this month, we were fortunate enough to hold a master class for the New York City Wine and Food Festival!
Us? Teach? Sure we share advice and cooking tips from behind the screen, but the idea of us walking into the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) as instructors made us feel a little sheepish, but also very cool!
The Walkthrough
To prep for the class, we visited ICE a few weeks ahead of time to scope out the kitchen spaces and take a look at the prep areas and equipment (e.g., steamers for our siu mai!). We saw the school’s hydroponic gardens, student fermentation experiments, and the cooking library!
The school didn’t have woks with lids, so we had to pool our collective wok collection to make sure we’d have enough coverage for the class—Sarah and Kaitlin each brought one from their apartments, and Bill & Judy dusted off some older ones in their basement.
The night before the class, we seasoned them back to a high shine so they’d be ready for our students!
Day-of Prep
We arrived at ICE a couple of hours before our class, armed with woks and ample amounts of our homemade chili oil—to prepare and lay out all of our ingredients: deboning chicken thighs, chopping scallions, measuring sauces and chopping garlic—lots and lots of garlic.
Each station would have to have everything pretty much ready to go so that there would be more time for hands on cooking.
When we arrived, there was already a class in progress—it was Duff of Ace of Cakes!
We were fans of the show—gentle Geoff discussing the mechanics of slowly rotating towers of cake…Mary Alice painting on intricate designs. Let’s not forget they baked the cake for the L.A. premiere of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS. We were tickled that Duff Goldman was casually teaching his cookie class in the kitchen before us while we prepped our ingredients across the hallway.
Things were a little hectic in prep, but we still had time to fry up some homemade dumplings (which Sarah had assembled at home using a recipe from the cookbook). Soon, the students started filing in and were enjoying the crispy dumplings we prepared to kick off class!
The Woks of Life master class IN FULL SWING!
It was a small and intimate group of 20 students, broken up into four stations, each with its own recipe taught by a Woks family member.
Sarah was leading Team Siu Mai, Judy was Team Three Cup Chicken, Bill was team Eggplant with Garlic Sauce, and Kaitlin was at the helm of Team Dan Dan Noodles!
Soon everyone was absorbed in their dishes, and there were tasty smells from all over!
Our hour or so of cooking time flew by, and soon the dishes were hitting the table. Everyone had a chance to dig in to the food! People were piling their plates high, which we always love to see.
The food was super tasty, and there was even extra for people to take home!
Everyone grabbed a cookbook, and we did our first ever in person book signing!
We all had so much fun meeting some of our readers as well as folks new to The Woks of Life. We also loved hearing everyone’s cooking questions and stories of hunting down ingredients and recipe triumphs.
The best part? The ICE volunteers did allllll the cleaning up at the end. We could get used to that!
Be sure to grab your tickets to Next WEek’s NYC Cookbook Events! We’d love to meet you!
