My Stir-fried Life

by Ken Hom

  A few weeks later, when I was in Provence, I phoned Julia Child. It was her voice that will live with me for ever. It was filled with confidence and a sort of happy-bossy tone, and it went up and down in pitch with almost every syllable. ‘Come for lunch,’ she told me. ‘Take the train and we’ll pick you up from the station.’ I took the train from Marseille to Grasse, in the back country of the French Riviera, and waited as requested.

  The day’s heat was rising in temperature, and I looked at the little nearby shops and houses, which were colourfully festooned with cascading bougainvillea. A few minutes later, I saw a car heading towards me, the driver and passenger waving at me. Julia climbed out of the car, a great big smile, and while I had heard the woman’s voice on the telephone, I had not envisaged her stature. Julia was huge. Like basketball player huge. (I later discovered that, as a schoolgirl, she had indeed played basketball.) I am reliably informed that she stood at six foot, two inches (1.88 metres). You can add another foot to that height, purely because of her formidable presence. If anyone was larger than life, it was Julia Child.

  There were kisses and hugs – ‘Darling, welcome to Grasse…’ – and then, in the car, she said, ‘I have to pick up some bread.’ We went to the boulangerie, where there were more kisses and hugs and instructions to the baker from across the counter in high-pitched French. Julia’s exuberance did not subside in the slightest at any point throughout the day. Back at the house, which was modest, homely and beautifully done, Julia turned to the subject of lunch. ‘We are just having leftovers,’ she said. ‘Last night I had Michel Guérard.’ I have talked of Michel, a founding chef of nouvelle cuisine. These leftovers would turn out to be an exceptional feast. I stood and watched Julia in the kitchen, and remember noticing that the work surfaces were so high. To me, that is, not her. Apart from food, we talked of politics. Julia was very left-wing; hated the Republicans.

  There was a little twist to the meeting. Shortly before setting off for France, I had bumped into Professor Jean Bony, that famous medievalist who had taught me when I was at Berkeley. I mentioned that I was going to France, and added, ‘When I am there I am going to meet a brilliant cook called Julia Child.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said in a casual way, ‘I know Julia.’

  ‘You know Julia?’

  ‘Yes, I have known her for years. We were both living in Paris at the same time, and we used to attend the same study group. We would all get together to talk about medieval art.’

  When I asked Julia if she remembered Jean Bony, she said, ‘Of course.’ We agreed that if she came to dinner at mine, I would also invite the professor. They had not seen each other for thirty-five years.

  After lunch, Paul showed me his artwork and photographs. It was a lovely day, which ended with Julia telling me, ‘When your book comes out, have your publishers get a hold of me.’ Then she instructed: ‘You have to promote your book. You have to push it.’ She gave me a slap on the back: Julia was a tactile woman and did plenty of back-slapping. ‘I will host an event at my house,’ she added. Julia kept that promise. When my book came out in 1981, she held a reception at her home in Boston and invited along the press. From that evening, I still have a photo which shows me cooking with the wok, while Julia looks on, towering over me.

  About a year after my book, Julia published another one of hers. I invited her for a celebratory dinner, and this would be the opportunity to reintroduce her to Jean Bony. It was a quite poor – some might say ‘dodgy’ – part of Berkeley in which I lived, but on that evening a sleek limo swept through the area, pulling up outside my door. Julia popped out. The whole atmosphere was wonderful, with the two of them reminiscing and recounting tales of Paris in the 1950s. I cooked Peking duck, my signature dish, and my heroine came in the kitchen to observe. I was thinking, Oh my God, Julia Child is in my kitchen.

  She complimented my duck oven and wok burners and the design of the room, and as I cooked she talked about her days in China. During the Second World War she was stationed in Yunnan province, serving for the American intelligence services. Indeed, that is where she and Paul had met. She described it as ‘a courtship over delicious food’.

  ‘I do enjoy Chinese food,’ she said to me. ‘Beside French cuisine, it is one of my great loves. I could learn to cook French, but I could never learn to cook Chinese.’ Silence. Then she said, ‘But I do love to eat it.’ And so we ate it…

  I must confess that even at this stage in our friendship I still addressed her as Mrs Child. This was the Chinese within me: she was much older than me, and to call her Julia seemed disrespectful. Just before the meal was served, she enveloped me in her arms so that I felt my feet lifting off the ground, and said, ‘Please, you can call me Julia.’

  ‘I find it very difficult, Mrs Child.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we made friends, nevertheless.’

  12

  Making Stir-Fry in the House of Chaos

  THOSE WHO LIVED in the Berkeley Hills, with its stunning views over San Francisco Bay, included Dr Yuen Ren Chao and his wife Buwei Yang, both elderly but with the energy of a young couple.

  She was a retired physician who had studied medicine in Tokyo. In fact, it was as a foreign student that she had discovered the enduring pleasures of cooking: she did not have a taste for Japanese food, and so had fun making her own.

  He was a gifted linguist whose education had brought him to America, to study at Cornell and Harvard. He spoke many Chinese dialects. On returning to China, he had met Buwei and fallen madly in love with her and, I am sure, the gastronomic delights she cooked for him.

  They were married in China in 1920, and subsequently became the parents of four daughters. A year before the outbreak of the Second World War, and fleeing the Japanese invasion, the Chaos packed their cases, left Nanjing, the capital of the eastern Jiangsu province, and came to America, via Hawaii. They began a new life, first in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the linguistics expert shared his wisdom with scholars at Harvard.

  At this point their story takes an interesting turn. As the conflict raged abroad, they carried out jobs; roles that would assist the war effort. Dr Chao, who also spoke Japanese, taught languages to instructors in the US Army. Meanwhile, Mrs Chao – she was under five feet tall, but was never to be underrated – cooked frequently for her husband’s ‘pupils’. She shopped for ingredients in Boston’s Chinatown, not far from their home, and the dishes she prepared were always Chinese.

  Her creations were refreshingly impressive to an audience of Americans in the 1940s who had never seen, let alone eaten, Chinese food. The Chaos’ house echoed with American voices saying ‘Wow!’ and ‘Amazing!’

  Indeed, when tiny Mrs Chao carried her dishes from kitchen to table, the reaction was so positive, the praise so recurrent, that she had an idea. ‘I will write a book of recipes,’ she decided and, forever a busy soul, she immediately set about the task of compiling a cookery book. The challenge, however, could not be completed by her alone. Although Mrs Chao was a talented cook, her English was not sufficient for her to write the recipes.

  Step forward Dr Chao. He helped to translate the recipes into English. There was a third party involved in the production of the book, the couple’s daughter Rulan (also known as Iris). Then in her twenties, she was another mighty intellectual, soon to have a formidable career as a professor at Harvard, and with remarkable talents for music and linguistics. She, too, would translate for the American audience.

  And so it was that the three Chaos – mother, father, daughter – toiled away to produce a manuscript. Until then, there were few Chinese recipe books in America. (One book, New Chinese Recipes: For the American Family, was a slim volume, published in 1940 to raise funds to help the people of China.)

  Now, being linguists, Dr Chao and Rulan reflected deeply on the descriptions of Mrs Chao’s cooking.

  First, there was this issue: in Chinese cooking, when you start to fry dumplings or wontons you will see that, instantly, they fasten themselve
s to the hot wok or pan. That’s meant to happen. This process browns them and gives them an irresistible crispiness. Dr Chao had a eureka moment. ‘We shall call them “pot-stickers”.’

  There was another issue, concerning rice. Many Chinese dishes require cold, steamed rice to be placed into a hot wok and then vigorously tossed around using chopsticks or a long spoon – the grains take on a nutty toasted flavour. Dr Chao had another flash of inspiration. ‘This’, he declared, ‘we shall call “stir-frying”.’

  In 1945, Buwei Yang Chao celebrated the publication of her book, How to Cook and Eat in Chinese. The phrases pot-sticker and stir-fry began to work their way into the language and languages, not just in America but in kitchens, restaurants and cookery books all over the world.

  The couple had another daughter, Lensey, who wrote her first book at the age of eight and, under her married name Lensey Namioka, she wrote prolifically about China and the Chinese-Americans, with an audience mostly of children and young people. Her works include Ties That Bind, Ties That Break, about a girl who refuses to have her feet bound. The name Lensey is unique. Her father established that there were two syllables that can be used in Chinese, but which appear in no Chinese words. They can be written in English as ‘len’ and ‘sey’: when joined together, they made a name.

  IN 1947, the family moved to California, and to a large family house, high up at 1059 Cragmont Avenue, in the Cragmont area of Berkeley Hills. Dr Chao took up his post at the University of California, becoming Agassiz Professor of Oriental Languages.

  He would describe their home as the House of Chaos, relishing the play on words. Maybe he did consider it a house of chaos, because he plotted an escape route. Or rather, he decided to build for himself a Chinese study in the grounds behind the property. When he sought planning permission, however, the building regulations prevented the development. Always one to accomplish his dream, Dr Chao got round the rejection by building a smaller dwelling – a cottage, with bedrooms, which could also be his study.

  In time, this would become a property the Chaos could rent out. Mrs Chao particularly liked the idea of creating her own Chinese ‘compound’, where she could have people around her who would be supportive.

  This takes us to the 1970s, and a young woman called Susie Maurer.

  Susie worked in the travel industry and had gone through a messy divorce. Unlike one of those other divorces, which aren’t messy. She had a daughter, Erika, and they lived in San Francisco. A girlfriend had said to her, ‘Susie, you’ve got to get out of San Francisco. Come live in Berkeley.’

  Somehow or other, she found herself viewing the Chaos’ cottage, and Mrs Chao must have sensed Susie’s supportive nature. Mrs Chao’s instincts were flawless because, I would later discover, Susie is particularly supportive. Soon Susie and Erika had left San Francisco and were living in the cottage behind the Chaos. Cragmont Avenue would be Susie’s home for the next forty years, and she loved pretty much every moment of it, living in the shadow of that redwood grove and close to the big rock where people would come to practise mountain climbing.

  There were many upsides. Susie had an uncle who said, ‘China is the future,’ and he paid for Erika to have Chinese lessons in high school. The world-famous professor Dr Chao, though, was her mentor.

  They all got on well. Susie would describe Dr Chao as ‘a sweet, unassuming intellectual, whose brain was so wonderful he could live with himself for ever’.

  Later on, when China opened up, VIPs came to visit the renowned linguist and academic. One day, Erika phoned her mother to say excitedly, ‘Mom, there’s a big car just pulled up outside the Chaos’. It has flags on the front.’ You never knew who you would meet there.

  Mrs Chao, who was renowned to all the restaurateurs in the area, did not cook as much as she had done, but she enjoyed entertaining at home. Once, before a Chinese dinner, she took Susie to the dining table and said, ‘Watch how I place the table. So and so thinks he is at the most important seat, but really he is not.’ This amused the Chao matriarch. In the bathroom upstairs, she often kept a live fish in a bath of cold water to purge it – and maybe, just maybe, to shock visitors a little.

  * * *

  Squirrel Fish

  Speaking of Mrs Chao’s bath guest, perhaps this is an appropriate point for a recipe that involves a whole fish. Remember, serving a fish in its entirety will bring plenty of good fortune to those at the table.

  Chinese chefs are masters at making foods appear not what they are supposed to be, and that playful attitude is apparent in this delightful dish. It is all in the technique of preparing the fish. Once fried, the fish curls up like a squirrel’s tail, hence its name. This is the classic presentation of a banquet dish for a sweet and sour fish. It is worth doing and is impressive, to say the least.

  Serves 4–6

  1 whole sea bass, about 1 kg (2.2 lb), cleaned

  salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

  cornflour or potato starch for dusting

  900 ml (1½ pints) groundnut or vegetable oil

  For the sauce:

  300ml (10 fl oz) chicken stock

  4 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry

  6 tablespoons light soy sauce

  3 teaspoons dark soy sauce

  3 tablespoon tomato purée

  6 tablespoons Chinese white rice vinegar or cider vinegar

  2 tablespoons sugar

  2 tablespoons cornflour, blended with 4 tablespoons water

  First, cut off the fish head behind the gills and set aside. With a sharp knife, fillet the fish on one side and cut until you reach the tail bone. Do the same with the other side.

  Gently pull the two fillets intact and attached to the tail bone. Cut the bone that is attached to the tail bone. You should have two fillets held together by the tail bone. (Alternatively, you could ask your fishmonger to do this for you.)

  Now score each fillet flesh side in a crisscross pattern. Season the fish with salt and pepper. Thoroughly dust the fish and the reserved fish head with cornflour or potato starch, shaking off any excess.

  Make the sauce by combining all the ingredients, except the cornflour mixture, in a saucepan and bring it to a simmer. Slowly thicken the sauce with the cornflour mixture and set aside.

  Heat a large wok until it is very hot. Add the oil and, when the oil is slightly smoking, quickly deep-fry the fish until it is crispy and cooked. Drain on kitchen paper. Now deep-fry the fish head and drain on kitchen paper.

  Set the fish and head on a platter and pour over the sauce. Serve at once.

  * * *

  13

  The Cook on Crutches

  MY COOKERY SCHOOL at home in Berkeley was popular with couples, as well as professional people who had their day jobs but were keen to improve their cooking skills. Along the way, I met people who became friends; I still know and am close to a few of them.

  At one of my classes, I met the person who would become my lawyer. And I met the woman who became vet to my dogs, Zita and Molly. An insurance agent who came with his wife to my classes became my insurance agent. One day, a woman came in, and drew considerable attention because she was hobbling along on crutches. Actually, she had come not to my class, but to one that Jeremiah was teaching.

  We got talking, and I asked about the crutches. Wouldn’t you? It turned out that she had been in an automobile accident and had wanted to do ‘something fun’ while she recuperated, so she’d signed up for Jeremiah’s class. And the conversation ended.

  ‘Well, it’s good to meet you. I’m Ken Hom.’

  ‘And I’m Susie Maurer.’ That lady, I would later learn, lived in the cottage behind the House of Chaos.

  We met again, and then again, and our friendship developed on a mutual love of cooking. I would send her newspaper articles. She probably thought, What’s this all about? And she would talk to me about her travels around the world. She also had a car, while my own travels were on my bicycle. One night I called her, and started with,
‘What are you doing?’

  She said, ‘I’m not doing anything. Why?’

  ‘Please can you come and pick me up because I need to get a pig from Chinatown? It won’t fit on my bicycle.’ An hour later we were in Chinatown, and Susie stayed at the wheel while a couple of butchers helped me load the hefty carcass into the trunk of her car.

  COOKERY schools were still a rarity, even in the food revolution state of California, but people were becoming increasingly interested in good food. I was getting well-known and being asked to travel to other cities to teach and do demonstrations. There were others, however, who were travelling abroad – with their students – to teach about the food of foreign lands. For instance, Marcella Hazan, the woman credited with introducing Britain and America to Italian cookery techniques, was teaching cookery classes in Italy. Florence-born Giuliano Bugialli was also teaching Americans who fancied a cookery holiday in Italy. Susie had taken ‘students’ to cookery schools in France, so she knew the drill.

  Nobody was doing cookery schools in Asia. What if I was to fill the void, with Susie helping me? We could get together, say, a dozen students who were curious about Hong Kong. Susie could arrange the travel and accommodation, and I could do the exciting cookery demos and masterclasses, and take the students on interesting tours of the markets and fun visits to restaurants. Erika would soon be starting college, and Susie was looking for a way to help pay for the schooling. This could be the way.

  We talked about Hong Kong, and talked about it some more … Nothing happened.

  Meantime, Susie became sort of hooked up with Jeremiah Tower. He was trying to raise money to set up his own restaurant, Stars, and was on the look-out for financial backers. Susie had a rich client, to whom she had mentioned Jeremiah’s hopes of becoming a chef-patron; and she was thinking she could leave her job in travel to manage the restaurant’s front of house. Her rich client had said of Jeremiah, ‘Bring him over one night. I’d like to meet him.’