How I Got Started
Hey there! Welcome to Wok Meets Oven.
Growing up in an Asian household, food has always been a big part of my life.
Both of my parents worked in the food industry, so naturally, I got to enjoy all of the wonders of food. My father’s side of the family ran a BBQ food business specializing in making Chinese BBQ like roasted pork, BBQ pork, roasted duck, etc, while my mother’s side of the family ran a Pho restaurant which was well known in her area for making delicious Vietnamese beef balls (bò viên), a recipe my grandfather had perfected through years of practice and dedication to his craft of making Phở noodles and passed down through the generations.
Not surprisingly, it was through this union surrounding food that produced me 😁
Despite living in Southeast Asia his whole life, my father soon decided that life would be better abroad and so ventured off into the unknown (*cough cough Canada) followed shortly by me and my mother.
Life was tough growing up abroad, my parents didn’t have a lot of money and had to share the second floor of an old run-down 2-story house with my 2 uncles and 1 aunt in Chinatown. I remember the living room of our modest home being overly cramped and crowded and the wooden floors making creaking sounds like crazy due to the worn out rotting wooden planks underneath the floor.
My father continued working in the food industry mainly in the kitchen helping cook up some delicious Chinese food before eventually shifting to factory work which promised better wages and more stable work, while my mother went straight into becoming a wage slave at a factory soon after stepping food into this country.
Meanwhile, I was shipped off to kindergarten along with dozens of other kids while balling my eyes out and screaming and yelling, begging my mother not to abandon me here, while she was busy trying to pry her wrist off of my hands and yelling at me that I was going to make her late for work 😂
Eventually, the dust settled, and I calmed down after being given some treats and toys to play with by the teacher.
Oh, how easily kids can be manipulated to forget everything 🤦♂️
I was eventually picked up by my father at the end of the school day and taken around Chinatown to have lunch.
I still remember to this day, the restaurants and bakeries my parents would take me to when I was a child.
Now as much as I love to eat food, I’ve never really been taught how to cook or bake by my parents nor was I a big fan of it growing up despite both of my parents having a background in the food industry.
In fact, I hardly cooked at all up until the last few years, unless of course, you consider making instant noodles on the regular, frying eggs or nuking microwavable frozen foods in the microwave “cooking”. I also practically gave up on baking as well after botching one too many recipes trying to bake some simple chocolate chip cookies.
How difficult can it be to bake some cookies I thought?
You just pop some round cookie dough balls into the oven, hit a few buttons, and then the magic happens.
Oh, so I thought…
But little did I know, that this would soon change.
Back when the worldwide pandemic hit hard, all across the globe, restaurants and bakeries were forced to close their doors, not to mention employees having to work from home.
Naturally, this meant that I was no longer able to get the delicious food that I’ve become accustomed to getting, forcing me instead to learn how to cook and bake in order to continue enjoying the food that I love while expanding my waistline in the process (Getting that coveted visible six-pack abs seems like a dream now 😭).
Thus, I kind of stumbled upon my way of learning how to cook and bake seriously during the pandemic.
It’s funny how life works, huh?
Or perhaps it was always destined to be this way since I come from a family involved in the food industry.
Once I stepped into the kitchen and cooked up my first few successful meals and baked goods that was it. I couldn’t stop!
I literally became addicted to cooking and baking.
In fact, I’ve become so addicted to cooking and baking that I can’t stop thinking about it on a regular basis.
Come across an interesting dish while out and about?
Return home and quickly try to reverse-engineer how to make it.
Videos, books, blogs, you name it, I’m probably consuming some sort of media related to cooking and baking every 24 hours.
Some people might even call this an obsession!
Hey, it could be worse, right?
Food has always been a big part of my life, and now even more so which is why I’d like to share some of that with you through the recipes you’ll find on my site.
Here at Wok Meets Oven, you’ll find a large assortment (hopefully when I have more time 😫) of Asian recipes, mainly Cantonese & Vietnamese dishes as they are a part of my heritage.
All of the recipes have been personally tested by me multiple times (to the detriment of my waistline 😥) to ensure they hopefully are at least edible lol.
Well, that’s all I’m comfortable sharing about myself so far so thanks for reading and joining me on my cooking journey.
Now let’s get cooking! (or baking)
Gary
