by Ken Hom
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know what a vanilla bean is.’
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Pears, in Chinese culture, are a traditional symbol of longevity and fidelity. Indeed, the appeal of the pear extends beyond the grave, to the dead who cannot forget the pleasure they brought.
When I was a child, I was told never to bring home pears on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. That is the time when ghosts would be roaming the earth, seeking pears, among other goodies. So, on that day the pears might contain ghosts who would bring bad luck into the house. I did not doubt it at all.
Traditionally, pears also bring happiness. This means they should be eaten whole, never divided. Chinese pears are quite different from Western ones. They are round and crisp, like apples, rather than the soft and pear-shaped fruit with which we are most familiar.
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THE day with Amy, author of The Joy Luck Club, was unforgettable. She came to my home, and was delightful. When I asked her if she liked to cook, she was honest. ‘I don’t,’ she replied. ‘I am a miserable cook but an extremely talented eater. I grew up in a home in which I enjoyed wonderful Chinese food, three times a day. My mother was a marvellous cook and because of that I developed low cooking esteem. Even when I was rinsing rice I somehow managed to burn it. In the end, I became the family’s dish washer.’
This was intriguing, as she writes so frequently about food. She explained, ‘I find myself growing hungry as I’m writing and that’s why there are so many references to food in my books. People think there’s some hidden symbolic meaning, but really my stomach was rumbling as I was writing and I imagined the meal I would be eating … If I could cook, that is.’
Amy arrived on my doorstep carrying a designer bag. In the bag there was a small Yorkie, the name of which escapes me. It could have been Bombo. The bag was specifically designed with the dog in mind – there was a little comfy bit, where the animal could sit and peer through a grille, which also allowed ventilation and prevented the mini beast from suffocating. Amy and that dog were inseparable. She insisted that the dog would sit on her knee as we ate a meal of steamed scallops. Now, if we had been there without a film crew, it would have been fine. But when you are filming, you are acutely aware of all the sounds around you. And that dog yapped incessantly. I have since read an interview with Amy (in The Bark magazine) in which she said Yorkies are ranked as the noisiest dogs in the world. We had the footage to prove it.
When Kate tried to remove the dog, it yapped even more. Kate thought, It’s fine, we’ll do a huge sound edit job. However, what no one noticed at the time was the dog’s misbehaviour at the table. Amy would eat and then place her chopsticks on the table, at which point her pet would extend a lengthy tongue to lick the chopsticks, before Amy then picked up the chopsticks again, collected a scallop and placed it in her mouth. This meant that it was licks as well as yaps that had to be edited out.
When Amy left, one member of the crew said to me, ‘Were you tempted to put that little thing in the wok?’ No, not at all. I adore dogs and have had several as pets over the years. The following day, the San Francisco papers covered a glitzy dinner event. There, in the photos, was Amy walking along the red carpet. She was holding a designer bag, and clearly visible was the head of that chopstick-licking, yapping Yorkie.
BEFORE Hot Wok was broadcast, Kate was eager to drum up some press coverage for the series. She figured, It’s great that I’ve managed to make it an evening show, but how many members of the press can actually be bothered to come to the launch of a cooking series?
She came up with the idea of launching it at the Chinese Embassy. The previous year had seen the broadcast of The Dying Rooms, a terribly sad and highly controversial documentary which unearthed China’s attitude to orphans. China was on people’s minds, and Kate reckoned that people would love to see inside the Chinese Embassy. So, with Tom, her husband and producer partner, and a girl from the BBC’s publicity department, she went to the Chinese Embassy in Portland Place. Kate found it a bizarre experience, and afterwards she said, ‘It’s terribly grand on the outside. On the inside it is full of people with ill-fitting suits, and a couple of chairs in a huge room.’
The staff asked her to explain the political aspect of the show. ‘There is no political aspect,’ she said. ‘Ken Hom is a Chinese person and he wants to bring Chinese food to the ordinary man and woman, the working people and the mothers and children.’
She presented a list of the guests who were due to attend the launch. They included June Whitfield, star of Absolutely Fabulous, but the official was more interested in another name. ‘Ah,’ said the man, ‘you have Terry Waite and you tell me there is no political aspect.’
Kate said, ‘He is somebody who has suffered and he thought about food all the time he was away. He loves Ken’s food, and he’s now got a wok.’ The man then asked Kate, Tom and the girl from publicity if they would like some tea. ‘Oh, that would be lovely,’ said Kate.
At that, he reached under his chair and brought out a flask and a few mugs. He poured out the black tea and handed it around. There was no milk or sugar or even a table. At that time, China’s poverty was tangible.
Kate said, ‘It would be wonderful if your staff could cook for the press. And while we have the press in we would like to show some clips from the series. Do you have TVs here?’
‘No,’ said the man.
The publicity girl chipped in, ‘We could bring a couple of sets. We could put one there and another one over there…’
The man said, ‘Yes, we will agree to this. The press will come, but it’s not political, it’s positive.’ There was a pause, followed by, ‘We will require the money now.’
Kate said, ‘Normally, you would do it and itemise everything – all the costs – and then you would send us an invoice and then we would pay.’
He came back with, ‘No. We have to buy ingredients, we need the money beforehand.’ Kate agreed.
They were about to leave, when a member of the staff asked if they would like to see the building, adding, ‘We have a cinema downstairs.’ It was like, We’re having all this discussion about how we’re going to show the programme, and you’ve got a cinema downstairs.
Sure enough, there was a cinema downstairs, large enough to seat about 100 people, and that is where we showed the clips. The press came in their droves, along with some of those who had featured in the series. Terry Waite – by now a wok enthusiast – was there, doubtless with official Chinese eyes upon him. The Chinese Embassy had created a banquet, but there were none of my dishes. Kate saw this as a snub, as she had explained in advance to the embassy officials that the food should be from my Hot Wok cookbook, which accompanied the series. ‘It’s OK,’ I reassured her. ‘It’s a pride thing. They have only made what they know how to make.’ At the Chinese Embassy, they were delighted with the positive outcome in the media.
IN those days I was often mistaken for Ken Lo. He had a well-known restaurant, Memories of China, in Knightsbridge and another in Chelsea Harbour. He was called Ken and I was called Ken, and we were both Chinese men involved in the business of food. However, we were certainly not the same man, and Ken, by the way, arrived in Britain in 1938, some eleven years before my birth.
It was not unusual for people to tell me they had eaten in one of my restaurants when, in fact, they had eaten in the other Ken’s restaurants. Most of the time I’d correct them, pointing out they meant Ken Lo. Other times, someone would say, ‘I had a fantastic meal at your place in Chelsea Harbour.’
And I’d say, ‘Oh, thank you. I’m so pleased. It’s always good to get feedback.’
Kate was in her office one day when she received a call from a journalist who said, ‘I am so sorry to hear about your presenter.’
Kate said, ‘Ken?’
Journalist: ‘Yes, Ken.’
Kate: ‘What about him? What have you heard?’
Journalist: ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t you know? He’s died.’
&n
bsp; This might have alarmed Kate had I not been sitting opposite her at the time. She said, ‘I am right across the table from him, and he’s very much alive.’ When she put down the phone, I asked what it was all about and she explained that once again I had been confused for the great Mr Lo, may he rest in peace.
I had first met Kate when I was looking for a TV production company with which to work. She took the Eurostar to Paris, and came to my flat for lunch. When I raised the subject of dietary requirements (if such a phrase was in use then), she said she could not eat chillies, ‘perhaps because I’m Scottish’. The slightest hint of chilli makes her throat close up and her eyes water, and later I would always make her a separate version of any dish, minus the chillies.
One year she came for Christmas in Paris, with her husband Tom, and their daughter Jane, who is vegetarian. I made vegetarian dishes for young Jane, though constantly reminding everyone that ‘we Chinese eat everything with two legs or no legs’. The flat was full of tins of caviar, and she decided, ‘I don’t eat anything with a face – so caviar is OK.’ On Christmas Day, when the city was cold but brightly lit by the sun and enchantingly romantic, we went to mass at Notre Dame, and then back to mine for the big Christmas lunch.
We could sit and talk about food for hours and hours. Kate had grown up in Glasgow, raised on a diet of working-class Scottish comfort food. This diet included huge slabs of roasted meat, but the vegetables – potatoes, turnips, cabbage or carrots – were usually overcooked. There were big, hearty puddings too, warding off the icy blast of the winds. Her childhood meals at home finished with a steaming cup of tea and a biscuit, or two. She did not know of ginger, though that was not unusual at that time in Britain. ‘Where I come from,’ she said, ‘ginger is pop – as in ginger beer.’ (By the way, if you don’t know what pop is: it’s a general, ancient term for a sweet, fizzy drink.)
Glasgow is the home of the deep-fried Mars bar, though Kate had never seen nor tasted one. ‘My mother was at home and she always cooked good food, but it wasn’t spiced and full of flavour, so we didn’t have anything fancy. It was all quite bland.’ She went to a convent school where the nuns had decreed, ‘The girls shouldn’t have very much to eat because it will make them sleep in the afternoon.’ Yet she loved to eat, and during the religion class just before lunch, she would sit at her desk, daydreaming of food. ‘I might have looked like I was thinking intently about Jesus,’ she told me, ‘but really I was thinking, I wonder what the pudding will be?’
Unlike Kate, I am not sweet-toothed, but whenever we came to plan the recipes, I’d say to her, ‘We better have a couple of puddings – just for the British people.’
Kate did not enjoy cooking: ‘The cooking that I knew was the way my mother cooked – and that’s basically quite a tedious process of peeling things and then boiling them to their death.’ However, her husband, Tom, was cooking with a wok long before I met him. Men like to cook Chinese food. It is speedy, and satisfies man’s primeval instincts: the bashing of a sharp object against an ingredient, followed by fire, and lots of it.
Years ago, Kate bought a Ken Hom cleaver for Tom (if only she’d asked, I’d have happily given him one as a gift). Her friends said to her, ‘That’s ridiculous. Can’t believe you’re buying your husband a cleaver.’ She explained to them that he did not want to ‘ponce about with knives’ and that the cleaver had therapeutic qualities: slicing vegetables with a cleaver is a form of relaxation for Tom. Then there is the finished product. A bowl of finely sliced, stir-fried vegetables – all shades of red, green, yellow and orange – is more appealing on the eye than a plate of mashed tatties, overdone cabbage and gravy. One is technicolor, the other is monochrome (with shades of brown). Then again, you may well disagree.
When we were close to finishing Hot Wok in California, I thought about how we could celebrate once we had wrapped up. Kate had invested so much of her time in the project, and was fantastic in every respect. We were both born in 1949, and I had an idea. I said, ‘Kate, this has been such a wonderful experience. I’ve got a bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild 1949. And when we finish this series I’m going to open that and we’re going to drink it at Chez Panisse.’ The vintage is one of the finest for Bordeaux wines, and the producer is one of the best in the world.
She phoned Tom back in the UK and told him. He said, ‘Oh my God, that’s a chance in a lifetime. I’m flying out for the weekend.’
Kate said, ‘You weren’t even born in 1949. You weren’t born until 1950, stay home.’ The line may have gone dead by then; Tom caught the next flight over. We all had a taste of the great wine, and the chef emerged from the kitchen to enjoy a glass, too. After a spectacular meal, we breakfasted in style the following morning before Tom departed, catching his return flight to London.
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Chicken Sun-Dried Tomato Spring Rolls
My first culinary experience with Vietnamese rice paper wrappers convinced me that they were more interesting in taste and texture than even the Chinese flour versions I knew. They are lighter, crisper and have a more delicate, parchment-like quality, which I love.
I find Vietnamese wrappers most suitable for this dish, in which I combine Western herbs, sun-dried tomatoes, chicken and distinctively Asian bean thread noodles. The noodles, which are made from mung beans, absorb any excess moisture and add substance without heaviness.
You will find this makes a wonderful appetiser, and much of the work can be done ahead of time.
Makes 35 to 40 spring rolls
55g (2 oz) bean thread noodles
225g (8 oz) boneless chicken breasts, cut into thin strips about 3 inches long
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon finely chopped spring onions
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh chives
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh coriander
2 tablespoons finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes
One package Banh Trang dried rice paper 22 cm (8½ in.) cut into rounds
Sealing mixture:
3 tablespoons plain flour
3 tablespoons water
300 ml (10 fl oz) groundnut or vegetable oil
Soak the bean thread noodles in warm water for about 15 minutes, or until they are soft. Drain them well in a colander and cut them into thirds. Squeeze out any excess moisture in a tea towel.
Meanwhile, in a medium-sized bowl, combine the chicken strips with the salt, pepper, olive oil, spring onions, chives, coriander and sun-dried tomatoes. Add the soft noodles and mix well. This can be made ahead of time.
Make the flour paste by mixing the flour and water together.
When you are ready to make the rolls, fill a large bowl with warm water. Dip a rice paper round in the water and let it soften for one minute. Remove and drain on a tea towel or kitchen paper.
Place a large spoonful of the filling on top and roll the edge over the filling at once, fold up both ends of the rice paper, and continue to roll to the end. Seal the end with a little of the flour paste mixture. The roll should be compact and tight, rather like a short, thick finger cigar about 7.5 cm (3 in.) long. Set it on a clean plate and continue the process until you have used up all the filling.
(The rolls can be made ahead to this point; cover loosely with a tea towel and refrigerate for up to 4 hours.)
Heat a wok or large frying pan over a high heat until it is hot. Add the oil and, when it is hot and smoking, turn the heat down to medium and deep-fry the rolls, a few at a time, until they are golden brown.
They have a tendency to stick to each other at the beginning of the frying, so only fry a few at a time. Do not attempt to break them apart should they stick together. You can do this after they have been removed from the oil. Continue frying them until you have cooked them all. Drain them on kitchen paper and serve at once.
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26
Men United
WAY BACK IN the ’90s, I was being interviewed over after
noon tea, and the journalist asked me whom I would most like to meet. ‘For instance,’ said my interviewer, ‘would you, perhaps, really like to meet the Queen?’
I said, ‘I would love to meet the Queen, but to answer your question truthfully – I’d most like to meet Eric Cantona.’ Yes, Eric Cantona, then a footballer. I enjoy watching football and had seen Cantona playing well in a few matches for Manchester United. He was an excellent player and I was interested by his story: the French connection, what with my own French connection. I admired the man, as did the fans. During games, the stadium was filled with the chant, ‘Ooh aah, Cantona.’
Shortly after the interview was published, Sue Burke received a call. On the other end of the line was the personal assistant of Alex Ferguson, the football legend and then manager of Manchester United. The assistant said, ‘Alex saw that Ken was saying he would like to meet Eric. We can make that happen.’ Then there was a PS from the PA. ‘It would be great if Ken could come up and cook for the team.’
When Sue relayed the phone conversation to me, she threw in her own advice: ‘You better do it.’ Well, when I was next in the UK, I travelled from London to Old Trafford, the club’s football ground. It was a bit of a photo opportunity. They had invited the press and there were about a dozen photographers, ensuring that I appeared in the following day’s sports pages: a first for me.