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> The thing I still miss the most is Oriental food. Can you suggest a cook book
> that would teach the basics? Do you have any recipes that you could share? I
> most like fried rice, and fried wanton.

I can't recommend a cookbook, but maybe I can give you some tips on the
basics.

First, get a wok or a non-stick skillet, and a good sharp knife.

Second, get some basic spices and flavorings: sesame oil, rice vinegar,
rice wine, soy sauce (I use San-J Tamari), garlic, ground ginger, anise seed,
cinnamon, pepper, cloves, chili powder.  For some dishes curry powder is
nice, but I don't use it nearly as often as the others.

You can save yourself a lot of trouble by buying pre-prepared stir fry
vegetables from the frozen food section...such mixes usually include
bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, snow peas, and maybe some mushrooms
and bean sprouts
   The trader joe's mixture is very good (trader
joe's is an inexpensive gourmet food chain in california--and, if
I may digress, they're fantastic for celiacs; they carry GF
mayonnaise, mustard, brownie mix, and lots of other neat stuff).

The chinese recipes I'm good at are basic stir-fry dishes (szechuan
chicken with snow peas, beef with broccoli, etc), and fried rice.  I'll
try to cover both.

Generally in making stir-fry dishes, I saute some chopped onions and
sliced mushrooms with whatever meat I'm using until they're fully cooked,
and while I'm doing that I steam the rice and make the sauce in a separate
pan (more on that later).  When the meat, onions and mushrooms are ready,
I set them aside and stir-fry the vegetables--which might be a stir-fry
mixture from the store, but more likely it's snow peas, chopped broccoli,
or whatever--in a bit of sesame oil.  The vegetables shouldn't be
overcooked--they should be hot, but still crisp--and then you mix the
meat mixture back in, and pour the sauce over the final result.  Stir
fry that for a few moments more, and then serve it over rice.

I usually use one of two sauces, either a szechuan sauce or a peanut
sauce.  Both are made rather haphazardly, but I'll try to convey the
idea:

For szechuan sauce:  You put a good-sized splash of soy sauce and a
roughly equal splash of water into a saucepan--perhaps a quarter of
a cup of each--and then a tablespoon or so of sesame oil, and enough
rice wine and rice vinegar to make maybe another quarter of a cup,
and a nice squeeze of honey--maybe two tablespoons.  Heat that, mix
in a few tbsp of chili powder, about half that much garlic powder,
and pepper to taste.  When it comes to a boil, thicken it with
cornstarch, and it's ready to pour over the meat and vegetables.

For peanut sauce:  Everything's pretty much the same, except you
don't use sesame oil, and you don't have thicken it at the end,
because along with the honey you put in a sizeable portion--I
dunno, maybe a third of a cup--of creamy peanut butter.

Another nice sauce, for chicken dishes, is a kind of savory
chicken-broth gravy.  I haven't perfected it yet but it involves
soy sauce, sesame oil and broth, thickened with cornstarch.  You
can experiment if you like.

Now, fried rice:  before I learned to make it myself, I always figured
that this was made all at once, from uncooked rice, meat and vegetables,
and that the brown color came from the frying.  All wrong:  In the first
place, the brown comes from soy sauce, and in the second, the dish was
originally invented in china as a way to get rid of leftover cooked
rice.

You start by saute'ing your chosen meat, and some onions and mushrooms,
just as I described above, but this time you cook veggies at the same time
so they're fully cooked.  Good veggies are peas and finely diced carrots,
or stir-fry mix from the store, or both.  Spice this mixture with (in
descending order of quantity) garlic, cinammon, ginger, cloves, and
pepper.  When they're just about done, if you want, you can add an egg
and scramble it in with everything else.  Set the final result aside.

In the wok or skillet, put a few more tablespoons of sesame oil, and
start frying some already-cooked rice (this recipe was originally invented
by the chinese as a way to get rid of leftover rice, so it doesn't even
have to be fresh).  As you fry the rice, sprinkle it with soy sauce and
stir it until it has the right color, then keep stirring it for another
minute or so.  Finally, mix in the meat/vegetable mixture you already
made, keep stirring for a bit longer, and serve.

Sorry if this is inadequately clear--I never use exact quantities in
chinese cooking; you just have to get used to the way things should look
and taste.  I hope I've given enough information for you to start
experimenting.
                                                eh