by Ken Hom
Roger replied, ‘They are waiting for you.’
‘You’re joking.’ I could not believe it. They were waiting for me and I only had two hours to sign – luckily my name is short.
I was deeply touched when a Chinese-British postman, looking smart in his Royal Mail uniform, stepped from the queue to shake my hand. He had a proper cockney accent, and he said, ‘Ken, it is so fantastic what you are doing for us, showing the British people our food. Thank you very much.’ I was overwhelmed by this brief but meaningful acknowledgement. If nothing else, I had made this man happy. I was humbled by his words, and felt a tear run down my cheek. For the first time, I really felt that deep affection from people I did not know.
In a bookshop in Manchester, they took me into a large back room where they had hundreds of copies of Chinese Cookery. I thought, They are never going to sell those. I felt sorry for them. In the States I would be lucky if someone had a stack of twenty of my books.
They did, however, sell in that store in Manchester, and in many others throughout Britain. The recipes have endured the test of time. Three decades later, the book has sold one million-plus copies around the world. In 1985, the BBC would commission me to write another book, Ken Hom’s Vegetables and Pasta, which was published in 1987 when Chinese Cookery was repeated on TV. Jenny was sending me the Sunday Times bestseller lists, which showed Chinese Cookery competing with Vegetables and Pasta for the number one spot. Each title alternated from number one to number two as the weeks went on. It was amazing but, again, I was watching from thousands of miles away.
Most people are detached from those who buy their books. We can’t meet them all so they have questions and we don’t know what those questions are. Nowadays we know those questions because they are easily asked on the internet, via Twitter or Facebook. But before the internet and social media you had to have people ask you the questions. In fact, nowadays I try to anticipate the questions.
Recently I was in Liverpool and met a woman who had a first edition of Chinese Cookery. The book was in tatters, covered in stains of tea, coffee, wine and maybe a little cornflour. How wonderful! It is a great accolade to see copies from the old days, with notes written on the pages. ‘This one was sensational’ next to one recipe. ‘I’ll do it again’ written beside another, and then, ‘A family favourite’. It makes me think, Oh my God, this is something as ordinary as cooking that is connecting our lives.
On those book tours in the ’80s, it was helpful to visit supermarkets to see what was available so that I could suggest substitutes, and would know not to say ‘use this’ when ‘this’ was mostly unobtainable in Britain. I did not live in Britain, but was starting to see how the food scene was changing. Visiting the UK a few times a year had provided me with a clear perspective of the nation’s progression, seeing how quickly things change and how the supermarkets met the challenge of supplying shoppers’ needs and desires.
Then, of course, I always insisted on eating in the best restaurant in the area to see what the chefs were like. This was a way of meeting budding chefs, giving me a comparison with the chefs I knew in America. I wanted to see what they were doing in Great Britain, and how that was changing.
PICK up a cookery book and you tend to flick through the pages, stopping on the colourful photographs of dishes that catch your eye. Oh, that looks delicious, you think. I’ll make that for supper on Saturday when Nick and Sally come round.
Such books, when done well, provide joyous escapism. For many of us, the cookbook moves from our bedside table to our kitchen counter, and back again.
The reader gets to cook new dishes and glean a few culinary tricks. For the author there are bonuses too: the simple pleasure of sharing with the reader; the feeling of bliss on receiving the finished product, hot off the press and sent by the publishers; and the contentment that comes from making new friends – friends with the other people who help to produce that single book.
I am still close to Ann Bramson, my first editor way back at Simon & Schuster in New York. Subsequently I have established equally happy friendships with wonderful photographers, food stylists, designers and other editors at publishing houses.
One of those editors was Heather Holden-Brown, who has since become a brilliant literary agent. She joined BBC Books in the late 1980s and, a few months into her job, she was ‘put in charge’ of me. It was Christmastime and, as I was visiting London, we agreed to hook up. Heather made her way past the throng of shoppers around Sloane Square and came to the flat in Chelsea where I was staying during the stop-off. This was our first encounter, and I only found out later that she was a little anxious about our meeting because she had not previously worked on food books. Maybe I sensed her slight apprehension, so I figured we should have a drink and she didn’t object when I grabbed a couple of glasses and opened a bottle of Chablis, nicely chilled, and put on the coffee table between us a plate of golden-brown dim sum.
We chatted about books and food writing, of course, and then Heather told me a story which has stayed with me. It is a story, I suppose, which neatly illustrates how the immigrant remains faithful to the food of her or his homeland. Now, you and I can leave the country where we have been born and raised and lived for decades. We can move abroad to begin a new life. But can we leave behind the recipes? We cannot. After all, Britain is renowned for its food culture, which is founded on the recipes and food brought to the nation by immigrants.
Heather’s story was about her mother, who was born and raised in Canada – Toronto, I think – and, in her late twenties, she came to London. I do not recall if she was specifically looking for a husband in England. Yet she found one.
Once married, they settled in Surrey and, in the early 1950s, my dear friend Heather was born. This is where we reach the interesting food angle of the story. You see, we all savour the new, exciting tastes of faraway lands, but we continue to crave the flavours and aromas that take us back to our kitchens at home.
So when Heather was packed off to school, she would have shepherd’s pie or steak and kidney pie for lunch, but when she returned home, she ate like no other young lady in the county of Staffordshire, where her family were by then living. Heather’s eyes lit up – mine, too – as she told me, ‘My mother made chocolate brownies, big cherry pies, heaps of pecan pie and lots of chocolate chip cookies.’
They are all trendy now, but in the ’50s they were unknown in Britain. A sip of Chablis and then Heather went on. ‘She roasted ham and served it with raisin sauce … None of my friends had food like that.’ Her mother even made an intriguing dish called spaghetti Bolognese, buying olive oil from Boots in the nearby high street.
I have no idea about the number of possessions Heather’s mother brought to Great Britain from Canada, but I know that one of her suitcases contained her bible – it was The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer. Ms Farmer was New England’s answer to England’s Mrs Beeton. First published in the 1890s, it is a classic, with hundreds of recipes for the aspiring home cook, ranging from oyster gumbo to a whole stack of muffin recipes, along with half a dozen chowders, Maryland chicken, Boston baked beans, and desserts of macaroon cream, peach custard, ice creams of banana, caramel and pineapple, as well as baked Alaska. Bedside-table stuff.
As we heard the high-pitched harmony of child carol singers making their way down the street towards the front door, my new friend added, ‘One day I came home from school and my mother said, “Heather, we’re going to make popcorn.”’
‘Popcorn?’ said the daughter to her mother. ‘What’s that?’
I cherish Heather: she always makes me hungry.
TRUE, I had a career in Britain, but, as I had not planned to become a TV presenter in Britain, I returned to California after the promotional tour and resumed my life there. Like everything I do, I merely try to give it my very best. I had thought, I’m not going to do something of which I will be ashamed. As I was not from Britain, I did not think the British public would ‘embrace’ me.
But I did not feel at home in the States, so I was used to being the outsider. I thought, I’ll give it all I’ve got, learn as much as I can, and take the experience.
It was 1985, and I was thirty-five years old. Business for me was flourishing, and included a trip to Asia for the Potatoes Board as well as another for the Wheat Board. These corporations pay sensational money; I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, complain.
Meanwhile, I was receiving all kinds of proposals and propositions to endorse products. The most appealing and attractive offer was to endorse a wok. More than twenty companies tried to get me to sign up to it. Terence Conran, founder of Habitat, was one such person keen to sell a Ken Hom wok. The problem was that, while all of them wanted to sell a wok with my name on it, none of them wanted my involvement in its design. To me, this was ridiculous. For decades, I had been cooking with a wok. The companies, however, were usually run by people who had never cooked with such a utensil.
Also, I had form. In California I had already designed a wok for use in professional kitchens. Although offers were tantalisingly handsome, I was adamant, should there be a deal, that I would be intimately involved in the design and would sign off on everything. That was the clincher, the make or break. I figured that if nobody would agree to my terms, then why should I do it? Many meetings with companies concluded with me saying, ‘I’m sorry, this isn’t going to work out.’ The thing is, a cook cannot cook Chinese food without a good wok.
THE wok is a versatile piece of equipment and may be used for stir-frying, blanching, deep-frying, steaming and smoking foods. The sides of the wok are deep. Its bottom is either tapered or slightly flattened, ensuring the wok is quickly heated and the food is cooked evenly. The deep sides prevent the food and oils from spilling over during cooking, although you don’t need much oil in a wok. It’s a healthy way of cooking.
Chinese cuisine has been described as ‘a cookery of scarcity’. In a geographic situation of limited arable land and even more limited forests, providing food and firewood for a population of so many millions was an enormous challenge. Over the centuries, the Chinese learnt how to extract from nature the maximum of edible ingredients and to prepare them tastefully with a minimum of cooking oil and fuel. From these necessities, stir-fry cookery and the wok were conceived and fashioned.
The wok came into wide use about 2,000 years ago, and its appearance coincides with the progression of China’s Iron Age, which came much later than Europe’s. The word ‘wok’ is Cantonese. The word ‘guo’ is used in Mandarin or pinyin Chinese. As the Cantonese are the great travellers of China, it is their pronunciation of the term that has won worldwide acceptance.
Traditionally, Chinese kitchens are sparsely furnished, but the stove (usually rectangular) is substantial and has two circular openings above the fire chamber. Large, round-bottomed, cast-iron woks fit tightly on these openings so that all the heat is transferred to the wok and none is lost. So the proper cooking temperatures are quickly attained. Every tool in the kitchen is versatile, every technique extracts the full nutritional value and flavour from the ingredients, and the foods themselves are prepared so that they cook quickly in a little oil and don’t waste heat. The wok evolved to its perfection in this environment, a warm stove and a wok becoming synonymous with heart and home at the centre of Chinese family life.
There are two types of wok: pau and Cantonese. The pau wok has one long handle which is 30 to 35 cm (12 to 14 inches) long, making it perfect for stir-frying. You hold it with one hand, while using the other hand to stir the ingredients – using a long spoon, spatula or chopsticks, that is, rather than your hand! The long handle saves the cooks from hot splashes of oil, should there be any. The traditional Cantonese wok has short, rounded handles on either side of the edge or lip of the wok. This type of wok is easy to move when full of liquid, so ideal when deep-frying or steaming.
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Just the mention of steaming evokes memories of the kitchen at King Wah, Uncle Paul’s restaurant in Chicago’s Chinatown. Can we go back there, please? In the kitchen I would help to make steamed beef meatballs.
To make these meatballs, the beef is first minced by hand, using two cleavers, one in each hand. Egg white and cornflour are added during the chopping process, until they are fully incorporated into the meat. These two ingredients make the meatballs light and fluffy.
Next, the seasonings are added: light soy sauce, sesame oil, finely chopped coriander and spring onions, sugar and black pepper.
The chopping continues – Chop! Chop! Chop! – until the meat becomes a light paste. The meat is rolled into balls, and at King Wah we would sit around chatting while we rolled. A steamer or a rack goes into the wok, pour in water, turn on the gas, bring to a boil and lower the meatballs – on a heatproof plate – onto the rack or into the steamer. Reduce the heat to low, cover the wok and wait for 15 minutes. Pour away the liquid from the plate, put the meatballs on a warm serving platter and serve immediately.
The washing of the wok is as easy as the cooking in the wok. Do not scour a seasoned wok. Instead, wash it in hot water without detergent. If you wish to store the wok for a long while, or if you live in a damp or humid climate, rub the inside of the wok with a dessertspoon of cooking oil. This will provide added protection against rust.
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22
The Evolution of the Wok (Mine)
ONE DAY, I heard from a man named Michael Levene, who had a manufacturing business in Britain. As usual, I conveyed my wok terms – that I required the final say – and, as had become the way, expected that to be the end of the conversation.
To my astonishment, Michael said, ‘OK, we’ll do what you want.’
The company was set up by William Levene, Michael’s father, who began as a street vendor in east London. The entrepreneurial spirit ran deep in the family veins. Michael had done well by selling cookware products on TV. One of these products was a can opener, MagiCan, which became a bestseller around the world (sales were boosted when Margaret Thatcher was photographed cheerfully testing it while touring the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1988). With that, he launched another product, and so on. MagiCan, by the way, is still a bestseller to this day.
Michael lived in a huge, gothic-looking house in the north London suburb of Hampstead with his wife Jean, herself an accomplished businesswoman who had her own, eponymously named, PR agency. Michael was full of business ideas and liked to hear them from others, although he had a short attention span: if you couldn’t spit out your idea in ten seconds, forget it, because he would be bored by then.
He was respectful of what I wanted, which was control and the authority to sign off on a product. There were moments when he would try to talk me into something and I’d say that I didn’t think it would fly. He listened.
As he loved fine wine and good food, we spent many hours at the table together. There was an affinity, probably because he was Jewish and I was Chinese. My mother used to go to the Jewish quarter to shop and, when Chinese food was covered in the American press, it was always by journalists with Jewish bylines.
He was humorous, and our fun together was an essential bonus in our working relationship. He was never cheap and he put me up in good hotels. When I was staying in London, he would be sure to come and see me, even if it was over breakfast in my hotel, where he would always order kippers. I do not appreciate this smoked fish for breakfast, which is so popular in Britain. I can eat sushi in the morning, but not kippers. So I ordered eggs and bacon.
With Michael, I knew I had made the right decision. I have turned down many ventures that could have been incredibly lucrative, but I try to look at the long-term benefits of a project. I have a gut instinct which tells me when things do not seem right. Putting your name to everything that comes along can only devalue your brand. Integrity creates a strong brand. With the woks, as with everything in which I have been involved, I asked myself two questions. Would I buy it? And, if I bought it, would I feel ripped off? I was once asked to endorse a f
lavouring product which had no salt. ‘I just wouldn’t use it,’ was my response. ‘Why should I be involved?’
In August 1986, two years after I had filmed Chinese Cookery, I was back in Britain. Michael had flown me over to talk about the design and the weight of the wok, and we shot a video, a bit like a television commercial, which would be shown on TVs in shops and stores.
The wok was produced in time for Christmas and when I asked Michael to predict the sales, he responded, ‘Probably about 12,000.’ Come Christmas Day, more than 100,000 British people had each bought one of my woks. It just took off. The success was so overwhelming that I suggested returning to Britain in February 1987, to promote the wok around Chinese New Year.
This led to a two-week tour of cookery demonstrations, which I regard as the best thing I ever did. That is because it cemented my relationship with the British public. I got to travel around the nation, not just London, but north up the M1, visiting places such as Newcastle and Huddersfield and Derby, and, going west, to towns and cities that included Dorchester and Bristol.
People who had seen the series were able to come and watch the cooking, up close and personal. I learnt a lot about Britain and the British, whose sense of humour – packed with heaps of irony and an abundance of mischief – I find deliciously irresistible.
MICHAEL Levene provided me with an assistant, Sue Burke. She was also my driver and, as the road trip progressed, she became a funny, entertaining companion. As we drove, we sang – the oldies but goldies, mostly the Rolling Stones or the Beatles.