My Stir-fried Life

by Ken Hom

  I was finding my identity and Hong Kong was finding its identity. When I first went in 1980, Hong Kong was just taking off, not only financially. It was becoming more sophisticated and international. Chefs were arriving from all over the world to cook in Hong Kong, and foods that were un-Chinese, such as asparagus, were appearing in the markets. People in Hong Kong were educated in the ways of the world as well as in the ways of China. Until then, everyone had wanted to get out of China, but now people were coming to visit. For the first time, Chinese chefs were also returning to set up their own businesses in a land that was not foreign to them.

  There was an air of sophistication about the place. In Chinatown in San Francisco, the Chinese knew, of course, that they were not in their country and kept their heads down. You could sense their anxieties of being the minority. The confident inhabitants of Hong Kong were stylish and worldly, and knew about everything. They knew of restaurants in Tokyo and New York.

  I was surprised by the influence of Japan upon Hong Kong. It was here that I started to buy Japanese pop songs, which the Cantonese liked. I could buy clothes by Japanese designers. And these were clothes that fitted me – in America everything was jumbo-sized because I am too small. People were much more aware of Japanese food, plus there was Thai and Vietnamese food on a scale that we did not have in California.

  I was forever fascinated in the markets, there was so much I had not seen or did not know. I am aware that we continue to learn until the day we die, but in the markets I realised how much I did not know. In America, these foodstuffs were often forbidden. Here, I tasted Chinese ham, which was not allowed to be imported into the States. Apart from eating proper Sichuan food, I had Shanghainese food, too. The Shanghainese boast that Hong Kong was a sleepy backwater until they arrived in 1949, after the People’s Republic was established on the mainland. There is some truth to this claim, as the Shanghainese did indeed bring with them their great commercial and manufacturing skills. They also brought their style of restaurants: pass the windows and you will see the cooks preparing specialities such as dishes with broad beans, or steamed Shanghai dumplings.

  These dumplings are made using dough of flour and water, which must be allowed to rest after mixing. This is laborious and time-consuming. Instead, I use wonton wrappers. The filling is finely minced pork, dried Chinese black mushrooms (first soaked), finely chopped spring onions and coriander, light soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, sesame oil, white pepper and potato starch mixed with water. The dumplings are steamed for fifteen minutes in a tightly covered wok.

  Seafood was very popular and expensive, its supply never quite catching up with its demand. Many restaurants had tanks to keep the fish alive before they were ordered. Meanwhile, dried seafood such as shark fins, dried scallops, dried abalone and dried salted fish were prized for their intense taste and flavours and were among the most costly types of food in Hong Kong at that time (especially in restaurants because of the long preparation time).

  There was a restaurant that had just opened and it was beautiful, but it specialised in shark fin. I found it bizarre to see bowls of shark-fin soup – not the most elegant of dishes – being consumed in this opulent setting. Shark fin, as I have previously mentioned, is an acquired taste (and I do not condone or approve of its consumption). The fin requires four days’ preparation, from soaking it to cooking it in at least three batches of good stock, and, aside from its chewy, gelatinous texture, its taste depends on the quality of the stock.

  One evening, I wandered into a restaurant, took a seat at a table and smiled as the waiter asked if I would like to try the house speciality. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Drunken shrimp,’ he said.

  As a child in Chicago’s Chinatown, I had listened – I was mesmerised – as my mum and uncles sat around a table in the King Wah and spoke often and excitedly about drunken shrimp, a curiously named dish they had left behind in China. Now I was being offered it.

  The moment has never left me. Live, medium-sized shrimps – what would be called prawns in Britain – were brought to the table in a crystal bowl, flipping and jumping around. Rice wine was poured onto them, just enough to cover. Then a transparent lid was placed over the bowl to prevent the shrimps from jumping out. Nothing happened for about ten minutes. Nothing except that the shrimps got ‘drunk’.

  Then the lid was lifted, and the shrimps were spooned out and poached briefly in a clear chicken stock. Finally, they were served, shells and all, with a sauce consisting of soy sauce to which hot, fresh red peppers and heated peanut oil had been added. Three decades is a long time to wait to try a dish, but it did not disappoint.

  I was out all the time, exploring every part of the city. I had cousins there, so I saw them as well. Hong Kong would become my part-time life, and every year I would spend at least two months there.

  * * *

  One of the most fascinating dishes I came across in Hong Kong was the so-called deep-fried milk. Milk custard is cut into diamond shaped pieces which are then lightly battered and deep-fried until crisp. They are dipped into sugar.

  Milk dishes were interesting to me because the Chinese do not enjoy milk with the same gusto of Westerners. A glass of cold milk is enjoyed by a Westerner, but is not appealing to the Chinese.

  So I was surprised to find many popular milk dishes in Hong Kong. The chefs ingeniously combined milk with evaporated milk, thereby reducing the milk smell and taste. How milk got into Chinese cuisine is an intriguing question. One theory, perhaps the most plausible, is that the dishes spread to Hong Kong from the Portuguese recipes of Macau, where milk-influenced fare started appearing in the sixteenth century.

  There is also fried milk with pine nuts, made in the wok. The nuts are stir-fried for a matter of seconds, until golden brown. They are removed. Then the milk mixture – milk and evaporated milk – is poured into the hot wok. The milk curdles. Its chemistry changes to something which is digestible, and palatable to Chinese. It also takes on a new flavour and taste. The pine nuts are returned to the wok, stirred with the curds and served with bean thread noodles. There’s a garnish of coriander and ham, both finely chopped.

  Many shops specialised in bean-curd custard or steamed milk with ginger juice. The latter combines whole milk with sugar and ginger juice, which is steamed. The result is delicate custard with a refreshing ginger bite, which is sweet and spicy, and served warm with slices of mango or orange.

  * * *

  SUSIE and I rented a professional cookery school in Hong Kong, where I would cook and teach and the students would cook and learn. Our days were jam-packed – in the most enjoyable way – with cooking, eating and shopping for produce in the colourful, heaving markets. The dinners were carefully considered, as I wanted to show the students different techniques and styles of cuisine.

  The only problem was the wine. It was the early ’80s, before Hong Kong had discovered a fascination for the great wines of France, and there was little available. Susie and I decided to cut our costs by taking wine from California, which we could buy at bargain prices through our contacts (who thought it sounded like a great way of spreading the word in Hong Kong). Friends, including Ron Batori and Belle and Barney Rhodes, swung into action, donating cases of wine for our cause.

  For that first trip, Susie managed to sweet-talk Singapore Airlines into letting us check in cases and cases of wine, and then we boarded the flight to Hong Kong. At Hong Kong, there was a chauffeur waiting, very kindly sent by the Peninsula to take us to the hotel. He saw that we were travelling with five cases of wine, which he duly loaded onto a trolley, and took us to our car. Our cases were loaded into the trunk of the limo and we thought we saw a dribble of wine at that stage, but said nothing and submerged ourselves in the air-con luxury of the back seats.

  When we arrived at the Peninsula, a regiment of bellboys took our suitcases and boxes of wine, and Susie and I stepped from the car and started walking towards reception. We were behind the bellboys, and realised we were following a
trail of Cabernet which had tarnished an otherwise glinting marble floor. It was acutely embarrassing. Susie took charge of the wine, putting the cases in her room. Then she contacted the Peninsula’s food and beverage manager, and went to talk to him about Californian wine, of which she knew very little.

  He agreed to store the wine, and Susie’s job thereafter was to collect it and take it to restaurants, at which point there was another headache. The restaurants in Hong Kong were not used to serving good wine, and they did not have many wine glasses. So it was not merely a matter of bring your own wine, but bring your own wine glasses, too. We arrived at restaurants clinking.

  Once we had the wine and the glasses, there was another difficulty. Waiters did not know how to serve the stuff. When you think about it, why would they? After all, they did not drink wine, did not sell wine, did not possess wine glasses and had no interest in wine. It would have been odd had they known how to use a corkscrew, how to pour and how to pour in small quantities. Sometimes they would pour red wine into glasses half-filled with white wine, and I’d leap up in horror: ‘Please don’t do that!’

  The response? ‘Oh, it makes a nice colour.’

  So aside from me teaching the students, the waiters also learnt a thing or two about wine. And to think that Hong Kong is now one of the largest wine auction markets in the world. The finest Château Lafite Rothschild vintages grace the cellars of restaurants in China, should you happen to be there and have a barrow-load of cash when the sommelier comes your way.

  There were a few sartorial issues. I wore a white suit, which, Susie said, made me look like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. On our first visit to a duck farm, I was with my students, and in my white bell-bottoms, traipsing through duck mess (no, not very John Travolta). Glancing down at my splattered trousers, Susie said, ‘Ken, this day will be a highlight or a disaster. How are we gonna make it the former?’

  Susie and I took a new group of students on a tour of one market which was on levels, with different produce on each one. On the first level there were stallholders selling live fish that were being pulled from water tanks and gutted on big boards. On the next level there were hundreds of tanks filled with thousands of bouncing frogs. As we passed, we could see them being taken from their tanks and despatched. We walked up to the next level to find hundreds of stalls with live chickens, again being slaughtered as we strolled along. I thought this was thoroughly interesting for the new students, but then Susie turned to me and said, ‘Ken! Enough! Your audience is not ready for this.’

  ‘Susie,’ I said, ‘you need to get in touch with your food.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she said. We did not venture up to the next level.

  At a restaurant in Stanley Market I went into the ‘restroom’ and, as I stood at a trench letting nature take its course, my brand new pair of extremely expensive sunglasses fell from my face and into the trench. I had a choice: leave them or fish them out. As I said, they were extremely expensive so you can guess which option I took.

  THE cookery school tours in Hong Kong were so successful that they would continue, year after year, for a decade. They appealed not only to devoted cooks. Some of America’s finest chefs became ‘students’, joining us on trips. After the first three years I had the hang of it; Susie was already an expert at top-line tours, so I was in good hands, and she advised me on what to do and what not to do. The knowledge would later come in useful when, for instance, I organised a truffle tour in France. Many chefs came on that, too.

  Our American students were intrigued by the Chinese way of life and their aspirations. Importantly, the trips were about more than just food; they were about understanding food within the context. There was an immersion in Hong Kong’s religion and history, how Hong Kong came to be, and its different ethnic groups, like the Hakka people. I always want things to be educational; it’s a crucial aid to culinary awareness.

  They were magical mystery tours, which ended up on a junk – we’d pile on board and have drinks and sushi as we sailed, before winding up at a pleasant restaurant. To help us out, we hired a few staff: a lady who worked for an American company and was the wife of a CEO; a businessman and his wife; oh, and the wife of the Chief of Justice. The final day ended with the Peninsula’s Rolls-Royces whisking us off to a restaurant for a spectacular feast of Peking duck.

  All of this was crammed into one week, and the students returned home having enjoyed a wonderful, memorable taste of Hong Kong. They had seen and experienced food as a mirror of society and history. I always felt that through food I could give people a glimpse into another society and how they could benefit from such insight. They were not the only ones to benefit. After the first trip, Susie and I sat in silence on the plane, preparing for take-off, and she said, ‘Ken, a penny for those thoughts.’

  ‘Susie, you know, for the first time in my life I don’t feel like a minority.’

  * * *

  Crispy Shrimp Paste Chicken

  I first enjoyed this chicken dish in the company of Willie Mark, Hong Kong’s most knowledgeable food critic. We were at the Sun Tung Lok restaurant in Harbour City, and I was unprepared for the excellence of what I thought would be a simple fried chicken dish. I immediately set out to duplicate the dish in my own kitchen and have ever since incorporated it into the repertory of dishes I make frequently.

  The distinctive flavour comes from the shrimp paste, which gives an aromatic and exotic taste: it must be used with care, as it is quite strong. The secret to the extra crispness of the chicken is in the double frying. Marinated and then fried the first time, the chicken is fried again just before serving, making it ideal to serve at a dinner party. This use of a seafood paste to flavour chicken is a typically southern Chinese touch: a Chaozhou inspiration.

  Serves 4

  1.1 kg (2½ lb) chicken, or boneless thighs chopped into bite-sized

  pieces

  For the shrimp paste marinade:

  1 tablespoon shrimp paste

  1 tablespoon ginger juice, squeezed from 2 ounces ginger

  2 teaspoons sugar

  2 teaspoons Chinese sesame oil

  1 teaspoon light soy sauce

  All-purpose flour or potato starch, for dusting

  2 cups groundnut or vegetable oil, for deep-frying

  3 tablespoons finely chopped spring onions

  Chop the chicken into pieces with a heavy knife or Chinese cleaver. In a medium-sized bowl, mix the shrimp paste marinade ingredients, add the chicken and let it sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.

  Heat a wok or large, deep frying pan until it is hot and add 2 cups of oil. Lightly dust the chicken pieces with flour, shaking off any excess. When the oil is hot, deep-fry half the chicken for 5 minutes or until golden brown. Drain it on kitchen paper. Then fry the rest of the chicken.

  Just before serving, remove any debris from the oil with a fine mesh ladle. Reheat the oil until it is very hot and re-fry the chicken for 1 minute or until golden brown and heated through. Drain on paper towels, sprinkle with chopped spring onions and serve at once.

  * * *

  16

  A Product of Sunflower

  START AT MEMPHIS and chug south along the Mississippi for a hundred miles or so, and you’ll come to Sunflower County. Within it is the town of Sunflower. It’s more like a village, with only a thousand residents. About 800 of them are African-Americans; their ancestors were slaves who toiled until death on the vast corn fields and cotton plantations of the South.

  Strangers don’t tend to come to Sunflower just to browse or take a look around. There are a few churches in the town, but no hotels. If you want to eat in a restaurant you’ll have to go further south to Indianola (formerly Eureka), to the Blue Biscuit for rib-eye and Delta beignets – square, puffy, hole-less doughnuts – dusted with icing sugar, and then maybe mooch around the BB King Museum, which is just across the road.

  Not much goes in to Sunflower, some might say, and not much comes out. But things took a distinct turn
on 4 September 1920, with the birth of one more inhabitant. He was Craig Claiborne and he’d outgrow Sunflower on his journey to greatness in the world of gastronomy. Though the folks in Sunflower never quite forgot him. In fact, they are reminded of him most days – head down Craig Avenue and you’ll come to Claiborne Street.

  Craig Claiborne was, for many years, the most powerful figure in the world of American food. He had fought in the Second World War, and again in the Korean War, but was determined to make a career of his two great passions: writing and cooking. He paid to learn about cooking at Ecole Hôtelière de la Société Suisse des Hôteliers, the hoteliers’ learning post near Lausanne, in Switzerland. He dabbled in PR before becoming editor of Gourmet magazine. Then he received the ultimate honour when, in the late 1950s, he was made food editor of the New York Times. Food, cooking, fancy restaurants; at that time these were not supposed to be a concern for men. Craig’s appointment was a brave one, but it was the right one, as time would show.

  Craig was masterful in several ways. He possessed an extensive, ever-growing knowledge of food and had a flair for teaching about foreign cuisines – at that time French and Italian – that might have seemed intimidating to the American audience. Craig was a restaurant critic and gifted food writer and also wrote (often with his dear friend Pierre Franey) a score of cookbooks, as well as an autobiography, A Feast Made for Laughter. He was a kind, gentle man who was determined to champion the young, up and coming chefs.