I'm a big fan of "wokked random" as a meal, the "random" being whatever
I've got in the fridge at the time I'm hungry. But I'm after a few tips
on the wokking process itself.

I have a "real" steel wok (AUD$10, thank you very much) which I
seasoned by stir frying a few cloves of garlic and a bunch of
shallots in lots of oil until the oil went brown and the garlic burnt.
Smoke all through the house. Great fun. But from reading some old
postings in here I gather that other people either a) repeat this
process many times or b) coat their woks in oil and put them in a hot
oven to season them.

Has anyone managed to get a dodgy-local-Chinese-takeaway-authentic
all-over *black* coating on their wok by doing this at home? Or do I
need to go to my local dodgy Chinese takeaway and borrow half an hour on
their fires of hell burners to do this?

Secondly, what does everyone do with garlic? I use lots, top and tail
the cloves, smash them with the flat of the knife to get the skin off,
chop them roughly and throw the bits in with the onion (ie, first). My
girlfriend reckons smashing them against my chopping board will give me
a really flavoursome chopping board but do nothing for the food. Should
I invest in a garlic crusher and crush the cloves right into the wok as
I'm cooking?

Finally (and maybe this is because it's not seasoned properly) when I
wok cook, the food always comes out "dirty". Little bits of food
blackens and charrs and sticks to everything else, leaving my meals
tasty but not picture-perfect. Have I not got everything hot enough and
am I leaving things in too long?

Any advice welcome.

Cheers, Robert.