My Stir-fried Life

by Ken Hom

  ‘Mum, you don’t have to pay. We are here as guests of the hotel.’ We hovered in the lobby. She was shaking her head. There I was, using my most persuasive powers to convince her to spend a few nights in one of the world’s finest hotels. For free. Boy, I would love to tell you I won. But she did – my mother never stayed at the Peninsula.

  Meanwhile, cooking at the Verandah presented challenges, but of a different nature (and my mother was not there). I had settled on a theme to the menu: East meets West, featuring dishes from my then best-selling book. One of the evenings was to be a special meal for the Mayor of Shenzhen, which was then a fishing village but was about to be designated as a special economic zone. Today, it is a thriving metropolis with a population of seven million.

  There were to be seventy guests – dignitaries with their wives and other well-to-dos – and I felt that the menu was suitably celebratory and opulent, but also affordable, even though the event was being hosted by a super-rich businessman. Eric Brand, the food and beverage manager, took me to one side.

  ‘The menu is perfect, it’s great. But please can you increase the cost per head?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Please can you increase the cost per head? Please can you make it more expensive?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Increase? Traditionally, people ask for the cost to be decreased. You know, save money rather than spend more of it.’

  Eric explained. ‘This is an extremely special dinner and the host wants that to be reflected in the price. He wants to show face rather than lose face.’

  ‘Ah, OK. I get it,’ I said. ‘In which case, let’s use truffles. Truffles aren’t cheap.’ Eric agreed.

  Catering is a funny old business, which works best when everyone is happy. Eric was happy because I had found a way to make the meal cost a fortune. And the host would be happy because he was paying a fortune, which was precisely what he wanted to do. His guests would be happy because they were not paying. And I was happy because Eric was happy that the host and his guests would be happy.

  That was all before the evening itself. We had lined up a real feast, and the dishes included chicken spring rolls with rice paper and sun-dried tomatoes, my East–West oxtail stew, and steamed fish … with black truffles from the south-west of France. The head chef (another Eric), Eric Shali, and his brigade did a fantastic job.

  Now, the black truffles from France left that kitchen on seventy plates, adorning the steamed fish. Half an hour later, the waiters brought the same seventy plates back into the kitchen. They had all enjoyed the fish; there was nothing left of it. However, many of the guests had not eaten the expensive French delicacy. Instead, they had pushed the truffle to the side of their plates. The two Erics and I stared in arrant astonishment at a few dozen expensive and ornate plates, the rims neatly dotted with rejected slices of the black treat that had been touched only by fork prongs. What a strange sight. And what of the cost! Hundreds of pounds of waste right there in front of us.

  Why on earth had this happened? ‘It’s the Chinese,’ said Eric the chef. ‘They don’t know what it is. So they won’t eat it. But the plates without truffles on the sides – those are the plates that went out to the Hong Kong Chinese. They know it’s truffle.’

  ‘There’s no way we’re binning it,’ I said. ‘Put it in a big bowl and we’ll feed it to people who’ll eat it. And that includes me!’

  After service and over a glass of Chablis, I sat with the two Erics, giving a post-mortem (maybe the wrong phrase) on the meal. ‘I’ve always been intrigued by truffles,’ I said to them. ‘I love them. When I had my cookery school in California, I used to go to a place called Pig-by-the-Tail. It was run by a woman called Victoria Wise, who was the first chef at Chez Panisse. Well, Victoria decided that she didn’t just want to be a chef. So she opened a charcuterie right across the street from the restaurant. I’d happily browse and shop. And I’d also buy truffles from her. I’d use them in my dishes for the cookery school.

  ‘And in that same cookery school,’ I continued, ‘I had a photo of a man who is holding a massive black truffle. It’s a great shot and I pulled it out of Gourmet magazine and had it framed. Still got the framed photo in my kitchen at home. That man was called Alain Pébeyre, the son of the founder of the Pébeyre family. Truffle farmers. Now, what a family they are…’

  Eric Shali interrupted. ‘Yes, a fantastic family. I know Jacques Pébeyre…’

  Eric Brand interrupted Eric Shali, ‘I know Jacques, too.’

  I recoiled in surprise, and then said, ‘What? You both know Jacques? I would really like to meet him, if only to say hello and shake his hand.’

  Eric B smiled. ‘Leave it with me.’

  In late December of the same year, I was in England, celebrating Christmas with the food writer Paul Levy. We stuffed ourselves full of fine food and wines, although at times the mood was morose because of a recent terrorist atrocity; earlier that month, Pan Am flight 103 had exploded in the skies over Lockerbie in Scotland. I returned to France and took a train south. True to his word, Eric Brand had spoken to Jacques, and I was the cheerful recipient of an invitation to visit the Pébeyre family. Jacques was there to meet me at the train station and I noticed how he smelled of truffle. We got into his car and there, again, was the truffle perfume. At home, the Pébeyres received me as if I were family.

  A day or two later, I was joined by friends from Hong Kong, Grace Fung and Kendall Oei, and they too were taken into the fold. I was the honoured guest but truffle was the star of the show – we ate tons of it – and one lunchtime Jacques’s beautiful wife Monique cooked up a truffle omelette to feed twenty-two guests, enjoyed with excellent wines, before we all hugged and kissed farewell on the doorstep.

  I am a believer in the doors theory of life: in this corridor of existence, one door might close but another will open. Sometimes both doors stay open, which is even better.

  My two-week stint at the Peninsula’s Verandah restaurant caused a stir. Apart from being well received, I was the toast of Hong Kong’s gourmets and food critics. I did not know it at the time, but the event was to lead to a succession of doors being opened.

  The dishes were hailed as a resounding success and, shortly after the pop-up, or guest chef appearance, I was approached by Cathay Pacific. ‘Would you like to help us with the meals we serve to our passengers? Would you like to meet to discuss it?’

  Ever since taking my first flight – in 1968, when I was nineteen years old and travelling from Chicago to Florida on my own for my first ever holiday – I have noticed one constant: flying makes me hungry. However, there was also a constant in the quality of the food served on airplanes: it was dreadful. So I was looking forward to the meeting with the Cathay Pacific hierarchy. It began with them praising my tenure at the Peninsula and, in particular, the theme of East meets West. ‘This is a brilliant concept … This is something that our passengers would really appreciate … More and more of our clientele are Chinese. They are travelling not only in economy but in business and first class. We want a concept that’s innovative. East meets West is a concept that fits. What do you think?’

  I took the opportunity to let off steam. ‘The mistake airlines make is to pretend they are restaurants in the sky. They try to be fancy and ambitious – this can never work. Restaurants are restaurants with proper kitchens and a brigade of chefs who are just behind the swing doors, a few feet from the table. Planes are not restaurants. Of course, people want to eat on planes – I know that, I’m the hungriest person who ever flew. But do passengers really want a tough piece of meat with nasty sauce on it? That concept is all wrong.’ My audience were shaking their heads in agreement. Of course they were. This was why they had called the meeting.

  I continued. ‘But passengers need comforting food, especially on a long-haul flight. Can you imagine how wonderful it would be to have a nice bowl of noodles, with maybe prawns and lots of vegetables? And in a broth that gives you that sense of well-being that you get from a ho
memade soup, full of flavour and steaming hot.’

  In 1990, my happy partnership began with Cathay Pacific and would continue for three years. That was more than enough time for me to revolutionise menus, creating meals for passengers that met my comfort food criteria. Also, I learnt a lot about food, what can and cannot be served on a flight.

  Many of the dishes that were served on flights were inspired by my book, East Meets West. They included fresh crab and lemongrass quiche, Asian-flavoured duck salad, Asian pear watercress soup, spicy ragout of ginger prawns, crystal prawns with fresh basil, peppers and garlic, steamed salmon in Chinese cabbage, and shellfish in black bean and butter sauce. Chicken dishes included ginger-orange roast chicken and chicken in rice wine with Sichuan peppercorn butter sauce. There was grilled steak with oyster sauce and bok choy and roast rack of lamb with Asian-style marinade. And for the vegetarians: Chinese ratatouille, rice noodles primavera, and pasta in black bean sauce with triple tomatoes. We served desserts of lychee sorbet with raspberry sauce, orange-ginger custard, and ginger crème brûlée.

  I got hungry often because over that period I spent so much time in the skies, flying to airports on board Cathay Pacific in order to visit the chefs and the catering teams that worked for the airline. Over two years I went to thirty-five airports and one time I took a fifteen-hour flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, met the team and then, a few hours after landing, was back in the sky, returning to LA. An all-round trip of 15,000 miles.

  The job took me all over the world: to Japan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Thailand and Canada. And more doors were opening. Hotels, such as the Oriental in Bangkok, and the Regent in Sydney and the Regent in Auckland, invited me to host pop-up restaurants. This meant that I was able to meet and work with interesting chefs, explore new places and taste dishes and ingredients that were new to me.

  One of these trips was to the small island of Taiwan, where I cooked in the lively capital, Taipei, for the country’s President. During the trip, I had time to eat in the local restaurants. One night I was taken to one by the legendary Chinese cookery writer and teacher Fu Pei Mei. The tiny restaurant was along Xinyi Road and she introduced me to Mr Yang, the owner of this very special restaurant, which I concluded was Taiwan’s best-kept secret. Its speciality was xiao long bao, delicate soup dumplings. They were being made in the ground-floor kitchen, which had a window so you could watch the chefs folding the dumplings. They were the most magical dumplings I had ever put into my mouth. I ate twenty-five of them, at least.

  Afterwards, I could not stop thinking about them, but by then I had left Taiwan so there was no way of curing the dumpling cravings.

  In late 1992, I received a phone call from Nancy Newhouse, one of my editors at the New York Times, to which I contributed fairly regularly. ‘I want you to write about the best restaurant you’ve eaten in,’ said Nancy. ‘One condition – you can’t have a connection to the restaurant. Three hundred words, please, for three hundred dollars.’

  Immediately, I thought of the dumpling restaurant in Xinyi Road. Sure, the readers of the New York Times would never have heard of it, and would never eat its extraordinarily good dumplings. But I was within Nancy’s brief and I raved about the eatery, praising ‘the world’s tastiest dumplings ever’.

  The short article appeared in January 1993, alongside the favourite restaurants of nine other chefs and cooks. The piece was headlined: ‘The World’s Top Ten Gourmet Restaurants’.

  Among the readers was the executive of a Japanese business. He was curious about the little dumpling restaurant I considered to be the best in the world. And doors were about to open for the owners of that restaurant, which was called Din Tai Fung. Lots of doors. Today, Din Tai Fung is not a single entity but a chain, with about 120 restaurants in all corners of the globe. You may well have eaten their dumplings.

  They never forgot me and my 300-word review which kick-started their phenomenal worldwide success. At some of their restaurants, my review is etched in large letters on bronze plaques. Beside the front doors, appropriately. I don’t get royalties in return for their use of my critique, but they say I can eat free for life.

  ON those flights from here to there and back again, my mind often took me to the medieval streets of Cahors beside the Lot river. Ever since Eric Brand had introduced me to the Pébeyre family, I visited them whenever possible. I adored Jacques, Monique and their family, and I was falling in love with this part of France, utterly entranced by its rusticity and the way that people lived by the seasons.

  Until now, I had been used to an urban lifestyle, where all types of food were available throughout the year. The rural rules of gastronomy were entirely different, and I liked them. When white asparagus, for instance, came into season in this part of France, we had three weeks to eat it, and we ate a lot of it. Then we wouldn’t see it again until the spring of the next year. For me, the south-west is the true heart of France. Another door was soon to open. An extremely old door, but one that was new to me.

  One day, Jacques and I went for dinner at Restaurant Le Gindreau, St Medard, Catus. We had a magnificent meal in this one-star restaurant and, around about coffee time, Jacques introduced me to the chef, Alexis Pelissou and his lovely wife, Martine. I threw into conversation that I felt an affinity to the village of Catus and said that I was looking for a new home. ‘I don’t drive,’ I said, ‘so would love a place that’s in a village and walking distance from the shops and bars, rather than an isolated house in the hills.’ Pause. ‘A large garden is essential,’ I added.

  ‘I know exactly the place for you,’ said chef-patron Alexis. He took me to a beautiful, ancient watchtower. The foundations were laid in 1185, when the English King Henry II ruled over half of France, all down the west of the country. The chef told me how the building had been empty for five years, and that the owners, who had moved elsewhere in France, were eager to sell. One of the attractions was the grand cellar. I was – and am – passionate about wine but had never had a cellar. There was a beautiful courtyard in the middle of the tower, with a well in the courtyard’s centre, and the property had a very big back garden.

  The owners had a buyer. The English watchtower, which had also been a French watchtower, was now in the hands of a Chinese-American.

  I never dreamt how much work it would entail. I bought it in 1991, and it took eleven years to get it to the right standard. I never want to do that again.

  As you come through the front door, you find yourself in a massive hallway, with a large window looking out to the courtyard. The most impressive room is the kitchen, home to my fourteen-seater table. There’s a massive hob, Maestro Bonnet, which makes ovens for many of the top chefs in France. To bring it into the house, it had to be dismantled, and it took a dozen grown men to haul in the mainframe.

  The kitchen leads to the garden and a swimming pool. You would think you are on a Greek island, rather than in the middle of France. The chirps of birds compete with the ringing of the church bells. The house has three bedrooms, as well as a library on one floor, and the top floor looks out over the valley.

  There is the most wonderful sense of community in the village, where everyone knows each other, and you cannot pass someone in the street without being kissed on both cheeks, French-style. The mayor brings me ceps and kisses both cheeks. There is the baker’s wife who comes round to your side of the counter, to kiss your cheeks. Tuesday is market day, and Catus is flooded with people. The markets provide inspiration for cooking – see what takes my fancy, and plan the dish around it. It’s also the only time when fresh fish is available. I have to stop myself diving into the sky-high pyramids of heirloom tomatoes.

  At the market I always see my friend Ghislaine, who keeps ducks, and don’t you know it – she sells superb foie gras and pâté. Usually she’d discard the duck wings and feet, but she keeps them for me, so that I can make confit to have with aperitifs. I always end up buying too much at the market, but that’s all right, and it’s
a form of relaxation.

  THEN there are les fêtes, the feast days when villagers gather in the square to eat roasted meats with couscous and drink the wines of local vineyards. Bastille Day is a national holiday on 14 July, and celebrates the anniversary of the storming of the Parisian prison, a historic moment of the French Revolution. The local farmers have a fête in the square, and villagers go from stall to stall, buying cheese and meats which you can grill yourself on a barbecue (be sure to take your own plates and cutlery).

  The baker has his own fête, at which children bake and we all sit around eating the warm, crusty baguettes and large loaves with plenty of cheese, and washed down with carafes of vin de pays du lot. It’s about sharing. People cook for you and you cook for them and, at times, Catus is one big fête. One year, I cooked a five-course Chinese banquet for about 150 people.

  There was a four-year period when I lived here constantly. These days, however, I tend to spend a couple of months in Catus, during the hot summer, when the three-foot-thick walls keep my home cool inside. The village is in a valley and in the winter months the house can be cold and damp.

  This is a house where I can truly entertain and cook a lot, and people have visited from all walks of life and all corners of the globe. Sometimes I think I could almost run the kitchen as a restaurant, serving forty covers a night. I have my woks, and thirty knives, made in Japan and Germany, but – probably like you – I wind up using the same ones: in my case, Chinese cleavers.

  In the time it takes you to read this page, I could stand up, leave the table, walk out of the front door, along the street and find myself in the wine shop. Once upon a time I had a large cellar of expensive wines, but Jancis Robinson helped to change that. ‘Drink local wines,’ she told me.