by Ken Hom
We were all strongly opposed to the war in Vietnam. A month before I arrived in California, the news had broken of the My Lai Massacre, in which hundreds of unarmed civilians in South Vietnam were slaughtered by US soldiers; the women raped and their bodies mutilated. News of America’s napalm bombings ignited yet more fury back home in the States.
The war was a bloodbath, and Berkeley was a centre of anti-war protests and demonstrations. We all hated the war, and the US had no business being there. I participated in many marches. My Chinese friends and I felt that we were also victims because of our Asian appearance. They were killing gooks – which meant us.
These were exciting times, full of firsts for me. For the first time, I was living in a climate that I just adored. There were no winters. Every day I awoke to another day of sunshine. Winter in Chicago and it would be dark at three o’clock in the afternoon. We could wear our hair long, submerge ourselves in free love and dance away to the Beach Boys, Cream, Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’. I was thinking, I’m part of this! In Chicago, I had never felt as if I belonged. Chicago now seemed stale.
All over the States, young people packed their duffel bags with beloved tie-dyed jeans (adorned with flower power patches) and cherished vinyl records, and flocked to California to become students. The peace sign was the familiar greeting in this comfort zone state. People didn’t care if I was Chinese, which was another new experience for me. For the first time, I was in a place where I didn’t feel excluded. In Chicago, there was something of an apartheid system: blacks stayed with the blacks; whites with the whites; races didn’t mix. San Francisco, meanwhile, boasted the country’s largest Chinatown.
When I moved to Berkeley, the place was buzzing with Asian activists. I made even more friends, and joined the Workers’ Viewpoint, a Maoist group. For the first time, we were reading news stories and seeing films about what was happening in China during what was the height of the Cultural Revolution. We considered the revolution to be a great event. How foolish we were. Overthrowing society meant throwing out the bureaucrats and revolting against authority. How fantastic was that? Let’s throw out all the rascals.
What particularly disappointed us, and brought us back to reality, was what was happening in Cambodia. When we found out about the mass genocide under Pol Pot’s murderous regime – at least two million civilian deaths, it is believed – we became seriously disillusioned.
I began to cook again. After leaving my job with Uncle Paul, I had not cooked often. My mother made the meals at home, or I’d eat in restaurants. In California, the interest in me as a Chinese-American extended to an interest in Chinese food. My flatmate, who was a little older than me, enjoyed cooking and had a large circle of friends. It was not unusual for him to say, ‘There’s a crowd coming tonight. Your turn to cook.’
My cooking also benefited from this period of discovery: I started to explore non-Chinese cuisines. I bought Julia Child’s books on French food and read every single word. I worked my way through her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, cooking every recipe. Like many people of my generation, I learnt how to cook French food from Julia’s book. As the title promised, it did enable me to master the art. I appreciated the audience of hungry students who pitched up to be fed, and they were appreciative of my food.
Through cooking, my own social circle developed and grew. All cooks know that food creates smiles and friendship. I found myself thinking increasingly about the dishes I’d serve when it was my turn to feed the famished.
I was one of the millions of poor Americans entitled to ‘food stamps’, the government programme introduced to help the malnourished through the Great Depression and then reintroduced by President Kennedy. The stamps meant cheaper meals, and I was using them to buy food for my dinner parties – probably not their intended purpose.
I studied History of Art at the University of California, in Berkeley, and was fascinated by the great moments of European history. In order to illustrate what they were teaching, the lecturers used photographs on slides, which were beamed onto a large white screen. Video and DVDs had yet to come along. They were photos of art and monuments and sculptures, on display in large European cities.
Now, after about eighteen months of the course, I was sitting in class one day, observing the screen and listening to the lecturer, when suddenly I had an idea. After class, I approached one of the tutors and said, ‘I’m planning on going to Europe. Would you like me to take photos? You could use them as slides.’ I tossed in the names of a few works of art notably found in Europe and worthy of a slide shot.
The teacher said, ‘Sure, we’ll pay you for them.’
Within a matter of seconds, I transformed myself from mere student at Berkeley to business partner of Berkeley. For about $150, I bought myself a Europass, a ticket around Europe that was popular with American students at the time. Off I went, to travel and stay in the cheapest hostels. In fact, in Amsterdam I slept on park benches and hung out with hippies, puffing on exotic, conical, hand-rolled joints. As part of the trip to Europe, I visited Italy and France, where I ate oysters for the first time.
When the three months were up, I returned to California … only to arrange a student grant that would enable me to live and study in France. So, in 1973 and at the age of twenty-four, I began a twelve-month escape.
In France, I missed little about America but pined for Chinese food. The cravings were strong. However, at that time Chinese food and ingredients were unavailable in Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. I wrote to my mother, asking her to send a box of goodies, the sooner the better.
I was delighted when the box arrived, crammed with delicious ingredients. There were Chinese spices and bright, golden-yellow lily buds, or golden needles, which I could use for muxi or moo shu pork, a stir-fried dish. There were black beans: small black soya beans which have been cooked and fermented with salt and spices, and impart their own special richness to steamed, braised and stir-fried dishes. The bounty included Chinese dried mushrooms, which I soaked in water for about twenty minutes before straining and using, keeping the water as a vegetarian stock for soup.
I had some English and French friends who were also students in Aix, and invited them for dinner. ‘My God,’ they said, as they inhaled the wonderful smells coming from the tiny cooker. They had never eaten Chinese food. They came back for more, again and again.
My financial wizardry came into play once more when I Channel-hopped and visited Bristol University to see my friend Carol Mason, who was studying for a doctorate. When I told Carol about my photos of European artworks, she whisked me to the Art Department to meet a lecturer. He flicked through my vast collection of colour photos, soon to be slides at Berkeley, and said, ‘This is exactly what we’ve been looking for. We’ll buy them.’
My photographs would end up on white screens on both sides of the Atlantic, enabling students to see artwork they could only hope of seeing in real life and that I had seen up close, of course.
I returned to California, minus the funds to support myself. I was destitute. During my final months in France I had resorted to my credit card to finance my existence, and the extortionate interest rate on an ever-increasing debt was new to me. Students don’t have cash; they’re not supposed to have cash. Now I was no exception. I’d have to hustle. I needed to get some work.
Enter Ron Zuckerman. He was a dear friend with a loveable surname, and he happened to go out with Carol Mason, who had looked after me in Bristol. Ron was a teacher at a posh school and he had eaten my food. Apart from that, he knew the extremely wealthy wife of a congressman, and she happened to own a farm in California. Ron said, ‘She’s wondering whether you could come out to the farm for the weekend and give classes on Italian cooking.’ I had eaten well in Italy, and was passionate about Italian cuisine. Who isn’t?
‘Ron, it sounds great. What’s the fee?’
‘Three hundred dollars.’
Imagine an oak treasure c
hest overflowing with shiny gold and silver coins, and diamond necklaces cascading down its sides. In my mind’s eye, that’s how I saw the $300. So I paused for a few seconds, as if I were mulling over the sum, and whether I could bring myself to work for such a paltry amount, and then I said to Ron, ‘Please tell her yes, I’ll do it.’
Apart from earning what, to me, was a fortune – and I was about to say small fortune but it was probably a large fortune – the weekend was a huge success. When I was packing up to head home, the congressman’s wife asked me, ‘Do you know anything about Chinese cooking?’
‘I could do it blindfolded,’ I responded. She booked me for three more weekends. At these, I would show the ‘pupils’ how to cook Chinese food. Two final points: no, I didn’t wear a blindfold; no, I did not guess this would lead to a career.
However, soon I was cooking private dinner parties in people’s homes, many of the gigs coming by word of mouth. At Christmas, I would make coulibiac of salmon to sell. It was a very profitable and thriving business. Catering had become an extension of my cooking classes. So in the autumn of 1975, at the age of twenty-six, I had no problems when I asked my bank for a loan to buy a house in Berkeley, even though I was still a student. I liked my Chinese-American bank manager.
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Duck in Two Courses à la Julia Child
This recipe is directly inspired by a traditional French custom of serving two courses from one duck; something I learnt from reading Julia Child’s book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
The origin of the custom is easy to imagine. It is based on the same necessities that lead one to substitute steaming for roasting a turkey: the breast cooks more quickly than the thigh. A boned duck breast may be grilled in less than 10 minutes but the rest of the duck takes closer to 45 minutes to cook.
So it makes sense to cut the duck into pieces before cooking and then to prepare at least two dishes, using different techniques. Most cooks understand that it is best to work with the cut-up duck.
For this dish, I separate the breasts from the rest of the duck. The boned and skinned breasts are then seasoned and marinated. After a quick sauté, the breasts are finished off in my Chinese vinegar and butter sauce. Remember that the Chinese vinegar is slightly sweet and will not offend the richness of the duck breast. I prefer my duck a bit pink, so you should let your own taste guide your timing – but be careful not to overcook.
The duck legs are marinated in a traditional Eastern mixture of soy sauce and Chinese Shaoxing rice wine, a flavouring that the robust character of the duck nicely absorbs during the roasting process. In effect, you and your guests will enjoy and complete the first duck course just in time to welcome the second course as it emerges piping hot from the oven.
Serves 4
1x1.8–2 kg (4–4½ lb) duck
2 teaspoons Chinese seasoned salt (see end of recipe)
For the marinade:
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese Shaoxing rice wine
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1 cup basic chicken stock
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon Chinese dark vinegar
2 tablespoons butter
To obtain breast meat, cut through the length of the breast, slicing to the bone. With a boning knife, cut the meat away from the bone. Repeat the procedure for the other breast.
Cut the thighs from the carcass.
Skin the breasts and cut the skin into 2-inch pieces crosswise. Dust the breast meat with the Chinese seasoned salt. Mix the marinade ingredients in a heatproof casserole or baking dish and add the thighs, tossing to coat evenly. Marinate for 40 minutes.
Render the duck fat by cooking the skin pieces over low heat in a medium-sized frying pan for 20 minutes, or until the skin is crisp. Remove the skin (crackling) with a slotted spoon and reserve. Turn up the heat and sauté the breasts for 2 minutes on each side.
Remove the breasts from the pan and keep them warm. Drain off the fat and return the pan to the heat. Add the chicken stock and reduce to a quarter of a cup. Add the soy sauce, dark vinegar, and butter, and stir to combine thoroughly. Remove from the heat. Cut each breast crosswise into slices.
Cover a serving plate with a little sauce and fan the sliced breasts around it. Sprinkle with skin cracklings.
Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F, gas mark 6). Bake the thigh pieces, uncovered, along with the marinade for 40 minutes.
To make Chinese seasoned salt:
2 tablespoons roasted Sichuan peppercorns, finely ground and sieved
3 tablespoons salt
Heat a wok or large frying pan until it is hot and add the ground peppercorns and salt. Stir-fry for 1 minute, remove and allow to cool. Then mix in a blender for 1 minute.
It is now ready to be used or can be saved for future use.
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7
A Career
MY STUDIES HAD opened a vista to subjects that fascinated me, such as the French Revolution, or the development of Britain from a small island in the Atlantic to the ruler of an empire spread across the globe.
The curriculum focused on sculpture from the late Romanesque to early Gothic periods, and I had an excellent teacher. Born in Le Mans in 1908, Jean Bony had been appointed at Berkeley in 1962 and was an eminent professor of art and architectural historian of the medieval era.
As a young man, he had been a French teacher at Eton, before returning to his homeland at the outbreak of the Second World War to fight in the French infantry. He was captured and spent three years in an internment camp as a prisoner of war, though he never talked to me about either his past or food. However, his imprisonment did little to dampen his spirit, and his CV positively glittered with his impressive positions at places such as Yale and Cambridge.
Professor Bony was a small, wiry man who was extremely agile, and he was expressive and had real gravitas. He was also kind to me and gave some thought to my next step. It was 1976; I was in my mid-twenties and taking stock. I could not be a student all my life. That next step was a career. The professor was an acknowledged authority around the world and he happened to be well-connected at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Today, it can be found within Somerset House, on the Strand in London, beside Waterloo Bridge and the River Thames. Then, the institute was in Portman Square, a stroll from bustling Oxford Street in the West End.
It was founded in the 1930s by a triumvirate of art collectors, whose aim was to improve the understanding of the visual arts in Britain. ‘Perhaps I could get you into their graduate school,’ said Professor Bony. ‘I will have a word with them, if you like. Ken, have a think about it.’
I had a think, and returned to my teacher to say, ‘I have had a think. I am so grateful to you. But I just cannot see myself in a career of academia.’ Even, I might have added, if it involved living in London, a city I adore and that I had visited for the first time five years earlier.
‘What will you do?’ he asked.
‘I am going to be a teacher,’ I said. ‘But in cooking, not art.’ I had totted up the pros and cons. Being a professor could not bring in a good living and, what’s more, I knew how to cook. Enthused by the prospect, I made an impulsive decision to quit the course, leave university and throw myself into the art of cooking and the pleasure of teaching about it.
I was six months short of completing my four-year course, and if the cooking didn’t work out I would have returned to my studies. However, there was a momentum building in my cooking career. I was running my own little private catering business and was now teaching not only Chinese but French cookery classes. I even had a special Christmas class, when I’d gone to Chinatown and bought pheasants and hung them, before cooking the birds with my students.
I know, I know, I know – it was a big risk. You don’t need to tell me that. My mother was telling me that, everyone was telling me that. But you know what? I figured, OK, if you don’t take a chance, nothing ever happens. I pressed on to build
my business.
First, I had to spread the word. There was a newspaper that was distributed free and most readers avoided the news pages and flicked straight to the classified ads, to see where they could enrol for art or yoga classes – typical California zen-hippy stuff. I placed the ad for cookery classes. People came to the Ken Hom Cooking School.
Second, I visited my Chinese-American bank manager (who had loaned me the money to buy my house) and took out another loan to extend my house. The extension would provide me with an office and a kitchen that was open, casual and easygoing, and large enough for each of a dozen or so students to have work surfaces. I had a professional wok, a duck-roasting oven and plenty of space in which to hang equipment. There was also space on the wall to hang a framed photograph that I had cut from Gourmet magazine which always made me smile. The shot showed a Frenchman sniffing, through his long, white beard, an extremely large black winter truffle, one of my favourite foods. He was Alain Pébeyre, of the iconic Pébeyre truffle farming dynasty.
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The kitchen is changing. Nowadays people seem to like a minimalist kitchen. They want to hide their oven, kettle, toaster, fridge, freezer, as well as their pots and pans, knives, whisks, mashers, tongs, forks, sporks and spoons (be they slotted, wooden or silver, or for the purpose of spaghetti, salt, melon, grapefruit, coffee or caviar). Not me. My kitchens aren’t changing. I like everything on display, easy to see and easy to grab when needed.