by Ken Hom
MY uncle Paul was among the throng of observers who packed themselves into our little apartment on that evening, to witness my performance of the embarrassing tea-bearing rites. I was not related to Paul Lee, but to Chinese children close family friends are also known as uncles and aunts.
He was, however, a relative of Uncle Yook Lam, and he was many things to me. He was inspirational mentor to me, the fatherless child in the wild jungle of an American city. He was a surrogate father, too. And Uncle Paul was also about to become my employer. He owned the restaurant King Wah, the kitchen of which would become my workplace.
I poured the tea for my mother, and she accepted it and then drank. There was an audible sigh of relief from the mass of witnesses, and then Uncle Paul spoke to my mother. ‘I’ll give him a job. I’ll do something for him, and keep an eye on him. He’s got plenty of energy. He can use it by working for me in the restaurant.’ I looked at my uncle as he talked, unaware of precisely how much energy I would need for the job.
‘He’ll be able to make some money so that he can buy whatever he wants.’ The implication being, he can buy rather than steal. And not really whatever I wanted, but mostly whatever my mother wanted, as he knew I would hand over the wages to her. I do not remember if I accepted the job, or if my mother accepted on my behalf.
But that was it. As I turned eleven, I began my first job and, as for the shoplifting, it was never mentioned again. My mother and I did not have the sort of relationship in which we reflected on the low points of our lives. We did not analyse or dissect human nature, be it our own or that of others. Crucially, there was a lesson to learn – don’t steal – and I’d learnt it. She did her bit as the caring mother. I did my bit as the obedient Chinese son.
Then she cooked for the audience – family and curious neighbours – and our apartment was filled with the delicious aromas of Chinese food, stirred and fried and served from the wok.
I loved the smells of my mother’s cooking, though I am reminded of an episode many years later, when a company came to me with an idea for a business venture. They said, ‘Our idea is an aerosol spray can. But not just any aerosol spray can.’
Me: ‘OK. What type of aerosol spray can?’
Company with idea: ‘You spray it in the kitchen and it makes the room smell of cooking odours.’
Me (incredulous): ‘Makes the kitchen smell of cooking odours?’
Company with idea (insistent): ‘Yes.’
Me: ‘That’s insane. Most people hate cooking smells in their kitchen.’
Company with idea: ‘Do they?’
Me: ‘Yes. They want a spray that gets rid of cooking smells.’
I never found out what happened to their spray.
3
Never Play with Chopsticks
THERE ARE TWO recurring dreams in my life. One is a nightmare, the other is extremely pleasant. Both centre on food.
The nightmare is infrequent, thankfully, as I like late nights followed by plenty of undisturbed sleep. This bad dream places me in the kitchen of a restaurant just as the guests are about to arrive. The guests are not the bad bit. The bad bit is that my mise en place is not ready and this predicament has left me in a hot-sweat panic. I know, I know, worse things happen at sea. But please bear with me; this is chef stuff.
As we all know, in order to reduce the possibility of failure, you must prepare well in advance. The home cook will appreciate the anxiety of my dream. When you’re cooking Sunday lunch for friends, you want to have the vegetables peeled and the dessert in the fridge by the time the doorbell rings. Who wants to end up struggling with a kitchen catastrophe?
My nightmare, however, is propelled by fear rather than experiences from my past. I have done events for thousands of people and have never been unready. In real life I am organised, prepared to the point of obsession. In the dream, however, I don’t have my stuff together and awake in a fluster, feeling like the actor who’s about to go on stage but doesn’t know his lines. Indeed, it’s making me feel anxious just reflecting on it, so I’m going to put the nightmare to one side and let me take you to the pleasant dream.
This dream is also about food, and goes like this … I am eating something – anything – and it is delicious. The dream is so powerful, colourful and real to life that upon awaking I feel full up and completely satisfied. Last night I had such a dream. I was eating a plate of sashimi and particularly recall salivating over the raw slices of abalone and tuna. It was the kind of delicate, ocean dish you’d see in Japan. But then it vanished. I said, ‘Hey! Who took my plate away? I hadn’t finished.’ There I was, moaning about my food being snatched away, when I woke up, slightly irritated to have lost the food – but still, I was full, appetite sated.
You know, and just to digress for a moment, I never had abalone as a child because it was always so expensive, although it was talked about as a great delicacy, perhaps in the same way you may have heard about caviar or foie gras but never got to try it during childhood. The first time I had abalone was as an adult in Hong Kong. The Japanese like it fresh, raw and sliced. The Chinese dry it and then cook it until tender and serve it in a light oyster sauce. In Chinese restaurants, one dish of abalone could cost hundreds of pounds, though it is indeed the stuff of dreams when perfectly cooked.
Throughout my life I have had this eating dream (though sashimi did not feature in the ones of my childhood, which were less ambitious). Sometimes I wonder if the root of these dreams lies in poverty; as a kid, I was often hungry. There was food, but usually not enough of it. My dreams, therefore, fed me. They were a sort of method of survival via subliminal nurturing. In an unconscious state, I was experiencing a joy I didn’t get enough of while conscious.
Or maybe I just wanted to eat and eat and eat.
BEFORE I began working in the kitchen for Uncle Paul, I knew his restaurant. Everyone knew King Wah.
The Chinese restaurants were closed on Monday nights and King Wah was no exception. But on Monday nights it was filled with my uncles and their friends, who gathered for a weekly feast and a catchup. They worked in the restaurants of Chinatown and had the night off. Their wives stayed at home.
My mother, husbandless, was the only woman at these lively meals. I was her companion. We were the odd ones out, but extremely well cared for and well fed by a roomful of male chefs, who cooked the dishes before we all served ourselves.
When the crowd of us sat down at the long table, the critiques began. Often dishes were criticised because we happened to be in America rather than China, home to the best produce. ‘This doesn’t taste like it used to,’ they’d say, a reference to how it tasted in China. ‘You can’t get the ingredients.’ Meaning the best ingredients were only available in China. I was fascinated as they spoke of dishes they had eaten in China, such as drunken shrimp: the shrimp (or prawns as the British call them) are immersed in rice wine before being poached. There was self-criticism, too. ‘Oh, I cooked this for a second too long,’ one of them might say.
There is a great deal of superstition in Chinese food culture, as was apparent on those Monday nights. For example, in Cantonese, the word ‘yu’ means both fish and prosperity – it follows that serving a whole fish should bring ample luck to those who are eating it. The platter is put on the table so that the head of the fish is pointed towards the guest of honour. I know this bit can bother Westerners who are unaware of the custom and hate to see the head of a fish.
Taking this further, if you have respect for someone else at the table, you grip the communal chopsticks, pick up the choicest part of the fish – the succulent cheek – and place it on your guest’s plate. At those Monday night meals, the fish was brought to the table and then one of my uncles would take the cheek upon chopsticks and give it to my mother. ‘Thank you,’ she would say. In turn, she would lift the cheek with her chopsticks and put it into my bowl.
So much was conveyed by this almost-silent ritual involving food. It said, for instance, do not think only of yourself; that we s
hould all look after each other; that food is about sharing; that my mother would be fed generously. There was another unspoken message: We’re looking after your mum, and you better look after your mum. Take care of her, and if you don’t, we’ll come and punish you. So it was through food that I learnt how to be in life, and how not to be. In return for the fish cheek, I tried to acknowledge that I got the point, and had learnt the morality lesson.
The upper side of the fish is eaten before the entire bone is removed, and then the underside is enjoyed. The fish is never turned: to do so will bring bad luck. If there’s a bone in your food, spit it out – in Chinese company, do not use your fingers to remove the bone from your mouth. Please.
There were other gastronomic customs that I learnt in those early times. Food, for example, is served to the side of the guest – never, ever reach across the table to grab a bowl. At a British table, if a child eats noisily there is likely to be a reprimand from the parents. ‘Stop making that horrible noise. Eat nicely!’ For the Chinese, meanwhile, eating nicely means making some noise. Actually, the louder the noise, the better the table manners. Eating noises mean that you are happy and enthusiastic about the food. From now on, I’d like to hear Western mums and dads telling their children, ‘Hey, what’s wrong with you! Why aren’t you slurping? Start slurping and guzzling – just eat properly!’
In King Wah, I really mastered the chopsticks, having used them very awkwardly for the first few years of my life. You must master chopsticks when you are young because otherwise you don’t get to eat. And you have to learn fast, especially when you are hungry, because you’re up against the other chopsticks. So I suppose I learnt by osmosis, along with the many rules of Chinese eating etiquette.
In my early years, I learnt never to play with the chopsticks, because to do so is disrespectful of the food and of others at the table. I tried not to drop chopsticks on the floor – this brings bad luck. They should be put down – and never crossed – at the side of the bowl. Also, they should never be stuck into the rice in your bowl, which is only ever done when we are respecting the dead at funerals.
I was told not to use my fingers when eating, nor to be so rude as to leave a single, little grain of rice in my bowl. Now, that wasn’t a problem for me because, as you know, I was always hungry.
Food is medicine. I was not given syrups, pharmaceutical powders or pills from the chemist. Depending on my ailment, my mother plied me with any combination of bok choy, bitter melon (my favourite), Chinese broccoli, cabbages, various meats or sauces, and exotic herbs and roots. I absorbed the Chinese attitude towards not eating too much meat because fan foods (grains) and cai (vegetables) are the foundation of good and wholesome diets.
Numbers are symbolic. The words ‘four’ and ‘death’ are written in the same way, so four of anything is to be avoided. Colours, too, carry messages. Orange is like gold, the symbol of wealth, while red denotes a happy, good-luck colour. Wander through the streets of any Chinatown in the world, and you will see that the signage for restaurants and shops are ablaze with oranges and reds. Strangely, the colour code changes for correspondence, which must never be written in red, the colour of blood. For Westerners, it is also poor form to write in red ink, but I am told that is because the colour is reserved for showing accounts are ‘in the red’. To write in red is impolite.
In the West, black is the colour of death. In China, it is white which symbolises the end of a life. Mourners wear black to British funerals. Mourners wear white to Chinese funerals. If you want to win friends in Britain, send white flowers – symbolising peace, serenity and happiness. If you want to lose friends in China, send white flowers – it’s like death just pitched up on your doorstep.
WHEN I began school at the age of six, I didn’t know how to hold a fork. Chopsticks, yes, I was an expert. In the school cafeteria, I jabbed the fork into the food – and, I should add, this was food that was new and different to me. There was strange food, with so much meat, and there were dishes such as macaroni and cheese. I remember it was at school that I first came across potato. But I don’t remember very much because my mum did not give me money for the cafeteria.
Instead, I stayed in the classroom during lunch breaks and my meal was the contents of a thermos flask, given to me by my mother each morning. It might be minced pork meat with preserved vegetables. Or perhaps it was my favourite – peas and Hong Kong sausage, which my mother had cooked in sticky rice. It made me feel warm and really stuck to my ribs.
I needed something to make me feel warm. I never hated Chicago. I just did not like the wintry weather. In the ’50s and ’60s, schools were not heated like they are these days. They had mile-wide hallways and corridors with wooden floors and didn’t stand a chance against Chicago’s notorious wind factor.
* * *
In the winter months we had soup most days, served at the same time as a couple of other dishes. (Drinks, by the way, such as water, wine and tea are rarely served at a family meal.) Sweetcorn has always been one my favourites, and I liked the American staples of corn on the cob and mashed potatoes.
My mother’s sweetcorn soup with crabmeat was always a treat. To make enough to feed four (we both had seconds), she used 450g (1 lb) of sweetcorn on the cob, washing the cobs and then removing the kernels with a knife or cleaver. However, 275g (10 oz) of canned or frozen sweetcorn can be used. Mix an egg white with a teaspoon of sesame oil and set aside.
In a large pan, bring 1.2 litres (2 pints) of chicken stock to the boil. Simmer for 15 minutes, before adding 1 tablespoon each of Shaoxing rice wine (or dry sherry) and light soy sauce, 2 teaspoons of finely chopped fresh ginger, a teaspoon of salt and the same of sugar, ¼ teaspoon of freshly ground white pepper. And add a mixture of 2 teaspoons of cornflour blended with 2 teaspoons of water.
Bring the soup back to the boil and then lower the heat to a simmer. Add 225g (8 oz) of freshly cooked crabmeat or frozen crabmeat. In a steady stream, slowly pour in the egg-white mixture, stirring all the time.
Ladle the soup into a large tureen, garnish with finely chopped spring onions and serve immediately.
* * *
MY mother bought vegetables in season, as they are the cheapest. Come the summer months, we gorged on the abundance of available vegetables. We disagreed on sweet potato: she loved it, I hated it. Cabbage remains one of my favourites. In Yangzhou, there is a saying: ‘If you do not eat vegetables for three days, your eyes will catch fire.’ We ate vegetables so often I never got to challenge that adage.
Often, we had fish and seafood because it was inexpensive. The fish was steamed by my mother in a wok to become a simple but particularly good dish. Chunky halibut, for instance, steamed with ginger and spring onions, made a substantial meal and I could fill up on it. I was encouraged also to fill up on rice. In China, when you eat a lot of rice you are known as ‘a rice barrel’. However, I remained a beanpole, and my mother took me to the doctor to have me tested for tapeworm. I never told the doctor about my eating dreams. My relatives, meanwhile, were constantly amused by my rice consumption, and poked fun of me, ‘Oh, you’re a rice barrel.’
THERE were others who made fun of me, though with no affection. The other kids at school ridiculed me because I didn’t speak English. Although the school was close to Chinatown, there weren’t that many Chinese-Americans. Chinatown wasn’t that big at the time, and certainly not large enough to produce enough kids to make an impact on the school’s population. I learnt very quickly to speak English. It was about survival. The alternative was to be traumatised. I saw some kids who came from China and, sure enough, they would withdraw into themselves.
At the age of ten, I moved up to junior high, which was in a bad, mostly black neighbourhood. My friends and I had to be careful, watching out for gangs of young thugs who would try to rob us or beat us up if we didn’t hand over whatever we had, be it candy or cash.
However, I was never prejudiced. I never once felt racist or uttered a racist comment. That is because my m
other had frequently said to me, ‘You know, there are bad black people and there are nice black people.’ Pause. ‘Just as there are bad Chinese and good Chinese.’ And she’d add, ‘I know, so believe me. You must judge people on how they are.’
I’d moan to her that I was eating strange food when all the other kids ate bologna sandwiches. ‘I am American,’ I’d tell her.
‘You’re American?’ she replied one day, in a mocking tone of surprise. ‘Just take a look in the mirror.’
In order to deal with the bullies who taunted my appearance and Chinese-ness, I mastered a put-down, of which I was extremely proud. ‘Well,’ I’d say, looking the bully straight in the eye, ‘at least our food is better than yours.’ I don’t remember knocking out anyone with this line, but who could argue with it?
My classmates were fascinated by my thermos flasks of Chinese food, and when I let them try a bit, they fell in love with the stuff. Some days I traded my food for theirs, and so I got to enjoy rich bologna, sandwiched between thick slices of ethnic rye or pumpernickel – proper bread!
4
Cracking Conch, Peeling Prawns
UNCLE PAUL TAUGHT me how to cook. More than that, he taught me how to love food, though that sounds a peculiar statement. Also, he instilled in me a strong work ethic and an astute sense of business.
Uncle Paul was small, skinny as a rail, impeccably dressed and dapper, charming and intelligent. Somehow he managed to have three wives. He was also incredibly demanding, and I admired him for believing that nothing was ever good enough for him or, rather, that perfection was achievable. He was a shrewd entrepreneur who had opened the restaurant a few years earlier. Later on, he would go on to own a steel mill, and set up a film production company in Taiwan.