A magical moment in the kitchen

For some reason, I’ve never quite managed to master stir-frying. In fact, I’d go far as to call stir-frying my culinary nemesis. I love the idea of stir-frying and I know how to do it in theory but in practice, even when I follow a recipe to the letter, it seems I’m not cut out to be a wok star. The aromatics burn and stick, or I add the liquid before the veggies are cooked through so that everything starts to stew, or there’s too much liquid and not enough flavour.

Last night the cooking fairies smiled on me – the salmon and asparagus stir fry I have been trying to perfect for a while now was breathtakingly good. The fish didn’t break up, the veggies were perfectly cooked, all the flavours were in harmony… Sensational.

My problem now is that since I don’t know what I did differently last night to the other few times I’ve cooked this dish, I’m not sure I’ll be able to repeat the magic another day…

Hmmm, do they run cooking classes at Hogwarts?