by Ken Hom
His culinary passion was ignited as a child when he would cook with his mother in the kitchen of her boarding house in Indianola, after the family moved from Sunflower. One of his books was an endearing nod to his roots: Craig Claiborne’s Southern Cooking.
Craig was a famous socialite, and I had first met him in 1980, albeit briefly, through the New York-based cookery writer Paula Wolfert. We hit it off. Then an eight-page feature came out in Bon Appétit magazine and, at the risk of sounding ridiculously smug, it was all about me and what I was doing in California. Bon Appétit was the largest-circulation food magazine in the States, and I remember that my summer cookery classes were filled within hours of the magazine hitting the stands and informing readers of my existence.
‘I want to come to California and write about you for the New York Times,’ said Craig. His article, published on 6 February 1981, featured the headline: ‘A Chinese Chef Rings in the New Year’. Running over two pages, it included an interview with me along with a few of my recipes, and was a remarkable raising of my profile. And then some! Not only an endorsement from the New York Times, but one from the deity that was Craig Claiborne.
Publishers in New York didn’t and don’t think much counts until it appears in the New York Times, and when mine saw Craig’s piece they increased six-fold the print run of my new book. This was to be my first book, Chinese Technique. The publishers, Simon & Schuster, were delighted when I suggested a book tour of twenty-eight cities throughout the States.
You know me by now – I assessed the cities that had the largest book sales, plotted these cities on a map of America, worked out the time it would take to travel from one place to another, and then returned to my publishers to say, ‘It’ll take three weeks.’ Now, see, you can’t just sit on your ass and expect things to come. I don’t care how talented you are, you’ve just got to go out there and you’ve got to work hard for it.
New York was the first stop of the book tour, and the New York Times held a sensational party for me, attended by the newspaper’s editors, and I started to meet a new crowd of people. I was interviewed by a then-unknown Martha Stewart, who was writing for House Beautiful. A young woman in Baltimore named Oprah Winfrey invited me on to her early morning chat show. Julia Child, as she had promised, threw a party for me at her home in Boston, inviting influential members of the press. The attention was phenomenal and, when I reflect on it now, the privilege was substantial. Coming from an impoverished background, I was now the guest of honour – and it was an honour for which I always feel grateful.
I remember, for instance, that the book tour took me to Chicago, where I stayed in the luxury of the Ritz-Carlton. The publicist phoned to say she’d messed up on something or other, and then there was a knock on my door. A waiter was standing there, beside a trolley upon which there was a silver ice bucket in which there was a bottle of Louis Roederer Cristal. There was a note from my publicist: ‘Sorry for messing up.’
The tour was an eye-opening, dream-like experience as I flitted in stretch limos from one signing to the next, and stayed in the finest hotel suites. I can get used to this, I thought. Instead, I returned to California and then went to Hong Kong for one of my tours, which were now overbooked due to the media attention from the book tour. In June of 1982, Craig Claiborne got in touch to talk to me about his party. He had his own book, an autobiography, to launch.
I must tell you a story about Craig, just so that you have the full measure of the man. In June 1975 there was a TV channel fundraising event, for which American Express kindly offered a spectacular prize: to fly the highest bidder and a companion anywhere in the world for a meal of their choice. No catches, no limits. That’s not quite true. There was one condition: that the restaurant took American Express.
Craig put in a bid of $300 but thought, as I would have done, that he would be outbid. Surely someone would offer thousands for such a prize. But no, he won. It makes you wonder where you would go, doesn’t it? Craig gave the most serious deliberation to the choice of restaurant.
He sought counsel from a friend in Paris, who suggested Chez Denis in Rue Gustave Flaubert, close to the Arc de Triomphe. Next, Craig took a flight to Paris to check out the restaurant, having ensured first that it would accept American Express. This trip was merely a recce, ahead of the real deal. He loved the food and told a little white lie to the owner, Denis Lahana. Craig did not mention Amex but said instead that a wealthy friend had offered to treat him to the most expensive meal in Europe. ‘What would you charge?’ he asked Denis. The response: $4,000. Once American Express had agreed to the restaurant, Craig returned to Paris with Pierre Franey. They embarked on the meal they would never forget for as long as they lived.
Beluga caviar and champagne began the feast as an hors d’oeuvre, and then came three soups, a parfait of sweetbreads, and tarts of quail and ham. There were oysters, followed by lobster with truffles, and then ortolan – the tiny birds which, when legal, were a great delicacy and eaten in one mouthful, usually with a napkin over the head, either to capture the scent or to prevent God seeing you eat a small bird.
There was duck and loin of veal, and so it went on and on, one dish after another being carried to the table. Over four and a half hours they worked their way through three courses composed of twenty-four dishes (not including the hors d’oeuvre and the first things they were served on being seated at the table – little Parmesan cheese toasts and a small dish of toasted almonds from Mallorca). Pheasant, foie gras, woodcock; the whole caboodle. Desserts included îles flottantes – that classic French dish of poached meringue ‘islands’ in a sea of vanilla-infused crème anglaise. With this dish they savoured a glass of Château d’Yquem, from the 1928 vintage. Try buying a single bottle of that honeyed wine today and it will cost you about the same as their entire lunch. So maybe don’t try buying it.
Of the other wines, there was a Château Latour, produced in 1918, when the French were cheerfully celebrating the end of the First World War, and which Craig and Pierre deemed to be the finest Bordeaux they had ever tasted. There was also Château Pétrus from 1961. Their favourite wine of the feast was Romanée Conti from the 1929 vintage – if you can find a bottle today it will cost you about $25,000 or £18,000. There was Madeira from 1835 and cognac from 1865.
When Craig wrote about the feast, there was outrage from about a thousand readers of the New York Times, who sent letters of complaint: how could he indulge in such extravagance when people all over the world were starving? It was the middle of the ’70s and the end of the war in Vietnam, and orphans were being brought over from Vietnam to find foster homes in the States.
Anyway, Craig argued that his meal had not deprived anyone of a single mouthful of food. Julia Child dropped him a line to give support, saying, ‘Does anyone object when some rich bitch buys a $4,000 mink coat?’
SO it was ’82, and Craig’s party for the launch of his autobiography, A Feast Made for Laughter. He had invited what he regarded as the best chefs in America to come and cook for him at the party, and I was delighted to be one of those chefs. It was a sumptuous affair, and the guests included his literary friends Kurt Vonnegut and Betty Friedan, as well as Hollywood stars such as Lauren Bacall. But the place was particularly notable for the number of chefs who had come from far and wide to raise a glass or three to the esteemed Mr Claiborne.
One of them was Madhur Jaffrey and, thankfully, through the heaving crowd in which paths could not possibly cross, ours did: we managed to meet. It was entirely my pleasure, because I admired both Madhur and her books. She told me how she had recently made a series for British television – the BBC, no less – and that it had been a great success. ‘Congratulations!’ I said. ‘I’m thrilled for you.’ And I was.
I thought little more of it. Within a day or so I was on a flight to France, where I would spend a couple of months of the summer cooking, eating and trying out new restaurants. When I returned to California at the end of August, there was a small pile of telegrams.
You must remember, this is ’82. There were no mobile phones, few people had faxes and I was considered ahead of the game simply because I owned an IBM computer, on which the cursor had a mind of its own and the characters appeared in green on the screen. Anyway, I started to go through the telegrams. One of them was from my new friend Madhur, and was to the point. It read: ‘Please call me. English TV is desperate to talk to you.’ Well, we all had landlines, so I called Madhur.
What came next was to be the beginning, as they say, of a new chapter.
17
The New Chapter
MY HOME WAS in sunny California (you may be tired of me reminding you). I did not live in Britain, did not watch British television and therefore did not know what was on offer in terms of food programmes. Pretty much zilch, it turned out.
When Madhur sent the telegram there were, at that time, three British television channels – BBC One, BBC Two and ITV. Channel 4 was a few months away, broadcasting for the first time on the afternoon of 2 November 1982. Eight years later – to the day, funnily enough – Sky would launch.
Just to set the scene, here is a brief overview of the year…
Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. Prince Charles and Princess Diana celebrated the birth of their first child, William. Terence Higgins died of Aids, spawning a charitable trust that would become one of the largest in Europe. And when the news did not centre on the war raging against Argentina, over ownership of the Falkland Islands, there was the grim reality of life for many in the UK: unemployment was at three million. Life, as we know – and the British certainly knew it back then – is not always a bowl of cherries.
On paper, this did not necessarily seem like a nation eager to find out more about food. They had other things on their mind, and round about this time looked to comedy from The Young Ones, ’Allo, ’Allo! and the American import, set in a Boston bar, Cheers.
Today, you will see the primetime slots filled with cookery and food programmes. Every channel covers food in some way. In those days, things were very different. Cookery programmes were confined to BBC Two, and they were broadcast in the morning or, perhaps, during the afternoon although it had yet to dawn on the broadcasters that many people would ever want to switch on ‘the box’ during the day.
British television viewers had seen food cooked by Fanny Cradock, a stern lady who delivered instructions to her bumbling husband Johnnie. ‘Pass me a bowl, Johnnie,’ and that sort of thing. He was, I suppose, a bit like her sous chef or even her kitchen apprentice, and he didn’t pretend to have a clue about food. Next came The Galloping Gourmet, a good-looking cook called Graham Kerr, who’d been born in London but moved to New Zealand in his twenties. Kerr spent about thirty minutes (the duration of the show) cooking a meal. When it was done, he would dash into the studio audience, extend a hand and pull an admiring lady from her seat, whisking her onto the stage, where the table was laid and the meal awaited. They ate as the credits rolled. His programme was fast and fun, even if a studio stage is not the most romantic location, and it was strangely compelling and colourful in the otherwise grey and drab world of cookery on British television.
By the early ’80s, the outlook of television cookery was changing, albeit slowly. Delia Smith was on the scene, though cookery was still hidden away in odd times of the schedules. So if you were interested in seeing the programmes you’d have to set your video recorder, if you could work out how to set your video recorder.
There was also Sarah Brown, who had been a dancer but now made vegetarian food in a BBC series. Madhur Jaffrey, the sender of the telegram, had added a dimension. As she had mentioned to me when I met her at Craig Claiborne’s party, her BBC series was a huge success. Behind the scenes, producers and decision-makers at the BBC were trying to analyse its popularity.
Madhur was beautiful and charming and cooked delicious Indian food. Through the creation of dishes, the viewer was taken to a faraway country – indeed, another continent – with all its mystique and exotic allure. The British have long had affection for Indian food, and Madhur showed them, encouraged them, to cook it because it tasted sublime and was not difficult to cook. Often, Delia and Madhur inspired women (most men did not cook in those days) who were searching for inspiration: what can I make for my friends when they come for supper on Saturday?
WHEN I called Madhur, she said, ‘Ken, you must talk to the BBC. They changed my life.’
‘Madhur, what am I going to do in England? My career is finally getting started here and nobody knows me from Adam in Great Britain. I mean, I would be starting from scratch.’
She said, ‘Will you just talk to them?’
I said, ‘Yes, of course.’ I was grateful to Madhur but to be frank – and you’ve probably gathered from the dialogue – I was not the voice of optimism.
Madhur explained that a TV crew would be coming to California to make a documentary and, while in the area, would like to take the opportunity to interview me. So a couple of weeks later a producer, Jenny Stevens, came to my home/cookery school. She was a New Zealander and had been the assistant producer on Madhur’s series. Jenny and I talked for about an hour and a half, and she recorded me. She told me how the series would work – cooking in the studio, and being filmed out on location. As for the location? ‘I’d like to come and film you in Hong Kong when you have finished one of your cooking tours,’ said Jenny.
She asked if I could extend my time in Hong Kong, adding on a week, which would enable some filming. I said that would be fine, and her parting words were: ‘We’ll get back to you.’
Jenny Stevens did not get back to me. I assumed it was because: a) I lived in California; and b) she considered that my English was not proper English. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I reckoned. But I did not think I had a chance, and when 1983 came around I resumed my cookery class, carrying on with life. Then one day, in the middle of January, I received a frantic call from England. It was Jenny Stevens, the producer from the BBC. ‘We’d like you to come over and audition,’ she said. ‘We’ll fly you over.’
I said, ‘That’s wonderful but I can’t just drop what I’m doing. I have things already booked. I can come to you in early February.’ We agreed that I would fly there for three days, do the audition and fly back. Economy flights, of course. This was the BBC.
18
The Test (and Testing Times)
BAYSWATER IS A part of west London which has enjoyed its fair share of romantic history. In the early 1900s, for instance, J. M. Barrie spent three years writing Peter Pan at his home at 100 Bayswater Road. However, it is absolutely packed with large, expensive houses that have been turned into cheap hotels.
The BBC had put me up in one. Yes, moi – the man who had, quite recently, indulged himself in the lavishness of the Ritz, Chicago, opening the door to waiters with bottles of expensive champagne on trolleys, courtesy of Simon & Schuster. Here in Bayswater, the room was so small that this is what had happened on the first morning…
There was a knock on the door. It was my breakfast tray arriving. I tried to open the door but it banged against the bed. So I had to manipulate the door in order for the tray to be passed to me. I saw only hands, one on each side of the tray. ‘Just leave it outside the door when you’ve finished,’ said a male voice on the other side of the door. Just? He made it sound easy.
Once the tray was inside, it reduced the room’s volume by about a third. I crouched on my tiny bed in my tiny room, eating cold scrambled egg on cold toast, wondering how I would remove the tray, and saying to myself, ‘What the hell have I got myself into?’ And then I tried to get myself out of the tiny room, moving the bed so that I could open the door.
The producers had managed to find a free (as in available, not as in cheap) studio, and I was told it was where Winston Churchill had delivered his broadcasts during the Second World War. Apparently, this was where the great British Prime Minister had stood at a microphone, addressing the nation of wireless listeners: ‘We shall fight
on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets…’
Meanwhile, I was there to do an audition for a cookery series. I was struck by the shabbiness of the studio, and I was polite but still thinking, What the hell am I getting into? It was bordering on decrepit. However, I was an admirer of the BBC, knew of its reputation and had watched BBC productions that were broadcast on American television. I did the audition.
I stood behind a ‘kitchen worktop’, against a backdrop of sky blue, and looking quite snazzy in slacks, a striped shirt and a purple cashmere jumper. There was a cooker, which had two burners and was one step up from the sort of device you’d take on a camping trip. Nowadays camping is trendy and posh, so the cooker would be considered a few steps down. It looked like the kind of thing you’d have seen in a caravan. I had a wok on the heat, but the heat did not reach my version of high, which, as you know, is ferociously high. I had brought my own meat and vegetable cleavers, but not a chopping board.
Which leads me onto the BBC chopping board. It was not particularly heavy or sturdy, which was fine. However, there had been a price label stuck to the wood and this had been removed, but in a cack-handed manner, leaving the sticky underneath of the sticker on the board and clearly visible to me, at least. For this – my first experience behind the cameras – I pointed at the remnants of the sticker, looked at Jenny behind the camera, and said: ‘Shall I remove that? It looks very tacky.’