I’m often asked how to buy the famous Cen brothers hand-hammered wok that’s on the cover of The Breath of a Wok. Unfortunately the woks are no longer available. As I wrote in my blog post at the end of 2016, the Cen brothers closed their Shanghai workshop for good after 80 years in business. Now there is a unique opportunity to win a coveted Cen wok…
My wok-stir-fry group Wok Wednesdays has been cooking two recipes per month from The Breath of a Wok, since September, 2016. Members post photos of their recipes with a special hashtag (e.g., #BreathJanuary2018) on our FB page and every month we do a giveaway. The winner is chosen from the posted photos from each month’s recipes. Now on top of those monthly giveaways, thanks to the generosity of Jennifer Thomas, (our go to source for Kitchen Gods), we will be offering a Cen brothers hand-hammered wok.
The famous Cen fire-iron wok is a work of art. The wok was hand-hammered for at least 5 hours to create the beautiful pebbled finish. Unlike factory-made woks, artisanal woks are more durable.
This giveaway requires a commitment to the Wok Wednesdays recipe schedule. The Cen brothers wok is now a collector’s item that’s unsurpassed for cooking, so it deserves some extra effort to win. On January 31, 2019, the ten people with the most photo posts (of the monthly recipes from January 2018 to January 2019) will be automatically entered into the drawing. Don’t forget to add a second hashtag to your photo post: #Cengiveaway (see the photo below). Any other recipes from The Breath of a Wok posted during this 12 month period won’t be included in the “most made” total (but certainly are encouraged!). The contest begins this month with Amy Tan’s Family Jiao-zi recipe from The Breath of a Wok, page 194. Normally we do two recipes per month but there are some months where we only cook one recipe.
If you’re not a member of Wok Wednesdays, go to the FB page and join. It’s a special community of wok enthusiasts with over 2600 members. We were founded in 2011 by Matt Lardie. All of our interaction is on FB where members post photos of their dishes or ask questions about woks or Chinese cooking. To learn more about Wok Wednesdays read the pinned post at the top of the Wok Wednesdays FB page. Even if you don’t win the Cen wok you’ll have a fun and delicious time cooking with your wok! Good luck to all!
Please note: the giveaway can only be mailed to an address in the U.S.
The Special Cen InCENtive: If you’re like me and often doing things in the eleventh hour, this giveaway provides a little flexibility. You can technically join Wok Wednesdays as late as January 2019, as long as your posts are all in by January 31, 2019. And if you’re already a member of Wok Wednesdays, and miss some monthly recipes due to circumstances beyond your control, you can easily “catch up” for the Cen giveaway. If your posts are from the recipe schedule, it counts, no matter what month it was made! It “uncouples” the Cen giveaway from the monthly giveaways timing-wise, and makes the Cen giveaway its own entity, even though it uses the monthly recipes as qualifiers. Of course, we’d prefer to see the posts every month rather than being jammed up at the end but they would all still count. Just make sure all your posts have the hashtag #Cengiveaway
Sample of what the hashtags looks like for this month’s recipe, Amy Tan’s Jiao-zi.
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