My Stir-fried Life
Page 24
I talked with my relatives in Chicago, and to funeral directors, and we arranged matters so that there was a cremation. Come September, when I had finished my treatment, we would have a memorial service. Once those arrangements were in hand, I continued my treatment, going for beam zaps two or three times a week.
My mother was a good lady. She grew up in a rich family but they lost everything. Constantly aware of her sacrifices, I took care of her, and gave her money. This morning I found myself rummaging through some old correspondence and came across a letter that I had written to her when I was in California in the early ’80s. She had kept the note, filed it away, and it reverted back to me after she died. ‘My dearest mother,’ it read, and then told her that I was enclosing a cheque for $1,000, adding, ‘I will send another $1,000 as soon as I have it.’ She would have understood the cheque but not the words. I typed the letter using English and knew that she would see her friends at mah-jong; they would be able to translate, and she played mah-jong most days of her life.
I say I gave her cash, but she rarely spent any of the money I sent her. She just put it in a savings account in the bank, which drove me crazy. I would say, ‘Mum, that’s not what it’s for. I am giving you money so that you can spend it.’ However, I did not want her to change. As long as she was happy and taken care of; that was what I wanted. She enjoyed eating until her final days. When she turned eighty, I invited 250 guests to a banquet. That was almost the whole of Chinatown.
When I was a child, my mother fed me. When I was an adult, I fed her. The last time we were together was in the spring of 2010, when I treated her to a meal in a Chinese restaurant. My visit to Chicago, my time with my mother, was inadvertently extended.
I was due to leave on a particular day but the cloud of volcanic ash spreading through the air from Iceland meant that flights all over the world were cancelled (and, as you know, that assignment to cook for the Blairs in England was soon to be in jeopardy). Unable to travel, I got to spend a week longer with the woman who had brought me into the world. None of us knows how much time we have on this earth and, through a kind twist of my life story, I was delivered a precious gift from the gods.
WE all deserve one great love affair in our lives and, in that respect, my mother had not been deprived. Hong Jung Hom was born in China on 15 March 1915. As a young man he emigrated to the United States and lived in Arizona. Here, he became Tommy and was not lonely as he had brothers there too. Tommy Hom was my father.
He took a job as a clerk, and then, in the early 1940s, following the outbreak of the Second World War, he went to fight for the American Army and for America. During battle, he was skilled with the machine gun and served in campaigns in central Europe and then, at the end of the war, in Germany.
After the Allied victory, he returned to America in 1946 and, two years later, went from his home in Phoenix to Tucson, where he applied for papers to go to China. He wanted to find himself a wife and was unlikely to find one in Tucson, Arizona.
While he waited for his papers to arrive, he worked for his brother Paul at a grocery store and made money that would help him on his travels. There was talk that Paul gave $1,500 to Tommy. Their brother Teddy, it was said, had also planned to go to China but when he, too, received a gift of the same sum from Paul, he headed instead for Los Angeles, where he squandered the cash.
On arrival in China, Tommy went to his home to visit relatives. Soon after, he was introduced to my mother, and they were married. China was a country in turmoil, and the young couple who would become my parents swiftly embarked on a departure route. They went first to Hong Kong and from there travelled by ship to America, via the Philippines. Once settled, Tommy continued to work for his brother Paul.
After my birth in May of 1949, he enjoyed – I hope – eight months of fatherhood. Then he suffered a fatal heart attack. He vanished from our lives before I was at an age old enough to form ever-lasting memories. To me, he is a man in a few photographs.
My mother, as I have mentioned in earlier chapters, did not talk of my father. Sometimes when she was cross with me, she would say, ‘Your father would never do that.’ Or, ‘Your father would be ashamed of you.’ That did the trick; stopped me misbehaving.
A few months after my mother died, I had the task of wading through the scores of boxes that she had left behind. Mum never threw anything away. Among the dusty documents and yellowed papers, I came across a small book which was limited in contents, but those contents meant the world to me.
The book was my father’s passport. ‘Height: five foot, six inches … Distinguishing features: mole on chin.’ There, on its pages were the stamps he had received at each port of visit, and therefore showed his travels. Now, I knew that my parents had married in China and then returned to the States, but I was unsure of the dates.
By following the dates on the stamps, I knew the movements of my parents. They showed that I was conceived in China. So I was made in China.
As my mother did not discuss the past, I was unaware of my parents’ marriage. How close were they to one another? I never knew. I never knew until I was in China and went to see an elderly aunt. She poured me tea, and the subject switched from food to my parents, and then my aunt said something that surprised me. It was like the opening of a gift that had been sitting in front of me for decades. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘your mother and father really loved each other. They were very much in love.’
WHAT of my surrogate father, my uncle Paul, my first employer (and no relation to my father)? I had not forgotten him. I will never forget him. Many years after leaving Chicago, I found myself back in the city, promoting a newly published book. The King Wah by then was long gone from my uncle’s life, but it remained in the family: it was in the hands of his sister-in-law, who was also running a catering company from the kitchen.
Had Uncle Paul not looked after me, perhaps there would never have been a cookbook to promote, and maybe you would not be reading this now. My debt of gratitude to him was substantial. I paid him a visit at his home. When Uncle Paul greeted me, he was as elegant and dapper as I remembered him, smartly dressed in a pristine suit.
‘I want to thank you for everything you did for me,’ I said.
‘No problem, Ken,’ he replied. Short and sweet.
* * *
Stir-Fried Beef with Tomato and Egg
This is a quick and easy dish, which my mother often made using ingredients that were easily available and relatively inexpensive. Here she employed the inventive Chinese technique of combining seemingly disparate ingredients into a delectable blend.
Although I don’t know if the recipe is authentically Chinese, it certainly rests today deep in my taste memory. Mother often waited until I returned from school and then would quickly stir-fry the ingredients together: savoury, rich bits of minced beef (which was the only beef we could afford) with soft, ripe tomatoes pulled together with strands of egg in a sauce that will always remind me of her.
Serves 4
225g (½ lb) minced beef
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1½ teaspoons Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon cornflour
4 beaten eggs
2 teaspoons sesame oil
½ teaspoon salt
1½ tablespoons groundnut or vegetable oil
2 tablespoons finely chopped garlic
1 tablespoon finely chopped ginger
1 tablespoon coarsely chopped fermented black beans
3 tablespoons finely chopped spring onion
1½ tablespoons light soy sauce
1 tablespoon Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry
2 teaspoons dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup chicken stock, homemade or store bought
3 medium-sized ripe tomatoes (quartered into wedges)
2 teaspoons sesame oil
In a small bowl, lightly beat the eggs, then mix in the sesame oil and salt, and set aside.
Heat a wok or large frying pan over a high heat until it is hot. Swirl in the oil and when it is very hot and slightly smoking, quickly toss in the garlic, ginger, black beans and spring onion. Stir-fry this mixture for 30 seconds. Mix in the beef and continue to stir-fry, breaking up the meat, for 2 minutes until it begins to lose its raw look. Pour in the soy sauces, rice wine, salt, sugar and pepper. Give the mixture several good stirs and then pour in the chicken stock.
When the mixture comes to a boil, add the tomatoes. When it starts bubbling vigorously, drizzle in the egg mixture and stir it slowly. Once the egg has set, pour in the sesame oil and give the mixture two more stirs.
Ladle the mixture into a bowl and serve at once.
* * *
30
The Turner Point
THERE IS A karaoke machine in my library in Catus. If you really want to appreciate karaoke – and, come to think of it, saké – go live in Japan like I did. As you have read, I enjoy dancing and mastered my moves as a teenager, grooving away to performances of James Brown and co. at the Cheetah in Chicago. Singing is also a form of relaxation and escapism. Cantonese pop songs do the trick; give them a try.
One of those concerts at the Cheetah was unforgettable. Ike and Tina Turner came to town and let it rip. I danced and sang along to the spell-binding Turners, and their tracks have enlivened many a party at the watchtower of Catus.
My friends in this part of France include Alain Dominique Perrin, one of the great entrepreneurs and the man behind the Richemont Group, which has luxury goods brands such as Cartier, Montblanc, Piaget, Dunhill and Van Cleef & Arpels. Back in 1980, he acquired Château Lagrézette in Cahors. He spent a decade restoring the château, its gardens and vineyard. In 2005, the wine was recognised by Wine Spectator as one of the best 100 wines in the world. It’s true, the wine is out of this world. Whenever we meet we always eat and drink well. On one occasion, when the Blairs came for lunch, I invited Alain, and they all became good friends.
Alain had a party to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, a spectacular event which was done with all the style and panache I have come to expect of him. The venue was the Musée National de Monuments Français. One of the great institutions of Paris, it is home to plaster casts of French monuments, as well as paintings and sculptures. There were hundreds of guests in this splendid setting, including former prime ministers, government ministers, actors, pop stars and supermodels. The entire French elite were there. Had the roof collapsed, France would have lost its population of VIPs, as well as the nation’s beloved heart-throb Alain Delon.
Alain’s team had laid on an outstanding and glorious array of food, and downstairs – for the younger crowd – there was a disco with vodka on tap. Word went round that Tina Turner had arrived at the door and, suspecting a scrum, I headed to the back of the room to avoid the crush as people tried to speak to her. Sure enough, a few moments later I could see a mob and imagined the singer was at the centre of it, and I carried on chatting with friends.
Suddenly, Alain’s PA dashed to my side. ‘Monsieur Perrin would like you to come and meet Tina.’ Well, I followed her and noticed that other guests were giving me the once-over as I got closer to Tina. They were a little envious, and thinking, Who’s he?
Alain introduced me to Tina and, as we sat down together, I said to her, ‘You don’t know me but I know you. I saw you in 1966 at the Cheetah. You were performing there with Ike.’ And we hit it off immediately, chatting for ages.
Eventually Alain got a word in edgewise. ‘Ken is a great and famous chef,’ he said to Tina. ‘And he has a house near my château and a grand kitchen. I am sure he would be glad to cook for you.’
I said, ‘I would be honoured to cook for you.’
Tina said, ‘Really? That would be lovely.’
Alain said, ‘I will make it happen.’
True to his word, he arranged the date and I was told to make my way to Le Bourget Airport in Paris, where his private jet would fly us down to Cahors. I had been shopping in Chinatown for my ducks and arrived with bags laden with food. These went into the hold and then, as I boarded the aircraft, there was Tina with her husband. The jet had just whizzed them to Paris from Switzerland.
We all flew down to Cahors, and later met for a feast of Peking duck. Tina is a practising Buddhist; she eats meat but little of it. So I made a few interesting vegetarian dishes.
* * *
One of these dishes incorporated bitter melon. To the scientist it is a fruit (its seeds are on the inside). But to the cook – and the Chinese – it is known as a vegetable, and an unusual-looking one at that. It is not to everyone’s taste and during my travels of China I discovered that even the Chinese must learn to love it.
With a bumpy pale to dark green skin, it has a slightly bitter quinine flavour that has a cooling effect on the mouth. The greener the melon, the more bitter its taste. Many cooks seek out the milder, yellow-green varieties.
To the cooking of this strangely flavoured vegetable. Cut it in half, remove the seeds, discard the membrane and then – to lessen its bitter taste – either blanch or salt it. It is delicious when stir-fried with chillies or braised with fermented bean curd.
* * *
‘DARLING,’ said Tina in her deep voice. ‘That bitter melon is delicious.’ Most people like to eat, no matter how famous they are. Tina was a keen cook and knew of bitter melon but was one of those detractors. She became a fan that day.
I had a friend, Thierry, who was Tina’s most ardent admirer. When I told him of meeting Tina in Paris, he said, ‘If ever you do cook for her, you better invite me.’ I invited him. Now, Thierry is a big talker but I sat him next to Tina and, for the entire night, his jaw was on the floor. After a magnificent and special evening, Tina departed, clutching a stack of my books, and Thierry danced around the watchtower, waving his hands in the air, exuberant after meeting and eating with the fantastic Ms Turner.
31
… And the Turning Point
MY MOTHER WAS a very giving person. Even though she did not have much, she gave what she had and she shared and, as you have shared my story, you know this much. Even though she was not religious, she believed in karma. One good deed leads to another.
I looked around at what I had, and it took a while because I had too much. I had reached a stage of life when I wanted and needed to downsize. My greatest pleasure in life is travelling, and not much is required for travelling.
Of course, I am fortunate. I have an apartment in Paris, my watchtower in the south-west of France, and when in London my home is the Dorchester Hotel, a grande dame on Park Lane with views over Hyde Park. I had also bought a home in Thailand, which I still have and where I spend a few months of each year. The homes I would keep. I had worked hard for them. Yet sharing was due.
I’LL step away from my own story, to return to my friend Ron Batori.
After the Academy, he had moved into the wine trade of Napa Valley. He was a big success, as you can imagine. But one day, we’re talking ’92, he had had enough of that, too. He kind of needed a change in life, was tired of California, and of America. Ron said to himself, ‘I’m leaving. I’m leaving the wine business for good. I’m selling my cellar and I’m selling my house. I’m leaving.’
That is precisely what he did. He had thousands of bottles of great wine. He sold them. He had a beautiful house in the Napa Valley. That went, too. He just got rid of everything.
He applied for a new job, which he had seen in an ad in the Wall Street Journal. It was for a post running a school in Bangkok. He got the job. It was not as he had hoped. He arrived at the school only to discover that it was not well run. There were no funds in the school’s accounts and, worse, it was offering degrees that were
n’t really degrees.
It was all a bit hairy. One time he asked the school accountant, ‘Why did you pay this bill instead of that bill?’
The response: ‘If I don’t pay this bill then death to the accountant.’
Ron said, ‘I understand.’ He found this very stressful, knowing that false dreams and hopes were being sold by the school. He was about to leave Thailand but … but he happened to have a friend back in the wine business of Napa, and this friend bailed him out. He knew a member of Thailand’s royal family, and he said to Ron, ‘Why don’t you run one of my companies?’
He was referring to a company that was in the business of hotels, property development and architecture. So Ron took over a hotel in Phuket. The Boathouse was nothing too large: thirty-five rooms and empty for most of the year. But it was a beautiful little hotel, and right on the water’s edge.
Then Ron said to the company owner, ‘I have an idea. Why don’t we create a wine club? And why don’t we make it the best wine list in Thailand? And then I’ll call all of my friends that I have in California – Barbara Hansen from the Los Angeles Times, Marian Burros from the New York Times – and I’ll invite them to come over and stay at The Boathouse.’
There was more. ‘We’ll do Thai cooking classes, as well,’ said Ron, madly ambitious and enthusiastic.
So that’s what they did. Well, the next thing you know, they’ve put together a great wine list. Then Ron started something called the Chao Phraya River Wine Club, which was also going on at another of one of their places in Bangkok. Once a month they held a wine event in Phuket and a wine event in Bangkok. Next thing, the PR kicks in and they start getting masses of publicity. Then they won an award from Wine Spectator for the Best Wine List: the first place in Thailand to receive a Wine Spectator award.