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Chinese Food – How I got started in Cooking Chinese Food – Part I June 11, 2009

Posted by hslu in Cooking.
Tags: Cooking Chinese Food
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Chinese Food – How I got started in Cooking Chinese Food – Part I

I started to develop an interest in Chinese food when I was still a boy in Taiwan. Dad always had his single friends came over to our modest house for dinner around the end of the month right before the pay day. Most of his close friends were his class mates from 南京國立中央大學 ”Nanjing National Zhong Yang Da Xue,” a very famous university comparable to 北大 ”Bei Da” or Beijing university in the early 1900’s. Dad married earlier than most of his class mates and the single guys would come whenever they ran out of money; usually near the end of the month before they got paid on the first of every month. We knew all of them by their familiar voices such as: 國伯伯 ”Guo bobo,” 陳伯伯 ”Chen bobo,” 胡伯伯 ”Hu bobo,”  劉伯伯 ”Liu bobo,” 徐伯伯 “Xu bobo,” and 胖子叔 ”Pang Zi Shu,” among others. Mom would cook a lot of food and welcomed them as her own friends. Back then about 50 years ago, cooking was a time consuming and tedious task: we had only one cooking stove made of clay. It was about 24” tall, with a 10” diameter hole in the middle. A small door on the side of the stove near the bottom was used to start the fire and air supply. In the middle of the stove about 15” below the top was a cast iron grate which was used to support what we called 煤球 ”Mei Qiu.” A 煤球 ”Mei Qiu” was actually a cylindrical shape heating element about 8” in diameter and about 10” tall made from small coal nuggets and mud. A worker mixed the gravel-sized coal nuggets and mud in a pit usually by walking in the pit. The combined mixture was then scooped out and put in a mold to make a 煤球 ”Mei Qiu”  one at a time. They were then dried under the sun for up to a week or more. In the middle of a 煤球 ”Mei Qiu,” there were about 20 cylindrical holes extending from the base to the top of every 煤球 ”Mei Qiu.” These holes were necessary because they allowed easy passage of air and promote a more even heating of the entire 煤球 ”Mei Qiu.” We purchased them from 煤球 ”Mei Qiu” maker directly and he’d send them to us and helped us stacking them up on the side of the house. Before a meal could be cooked, a 煤球 ”Mei Qiu” went into the stove and rested on the grate. I’d help my mom to light it up by burning paper and wood chips from the small door at the bottom. I bent my knees, put my mouth close to the door, huffed and puffed and blew air through the small door to keep the fire going until the 煤球 ”Mei Qiu” was burning good by itself. Once the 煤球 ”Mei Qiu” is hot, I would make sure fire burning nicely from the bottom to the top through each of those 20 or so cylindrical holes. Now, Mom could start cooking.

The feast usually started with a 拼盤 “ping pan” which usually consisted of four or five cold dishes such as 涼拌黃瓜 “liang ban huang gua,” 涼拌海帶 “liang ban hai dai,” stir-fried peanuts, 鹵牛肉 “lu niu ro” or something else. Our guests would start with the cold plates and drink 高梁酒 “gao liang jiu,” a clear, hard liquor made from Gao Liang (a plant that looks like rice plant but does not require that much water” and wheat, with 50 – 60% alcohol content. While drinking, they played 划拳 “hua quan” like kids playing rock, paper or scissors. The person who lost the game had to drink the hard liquor in front of him or her. They were loud. They were noise. And they argued a lot. The ones who watched the game had a lot of fun too because they always made sure that there were no drop of liquor left at the bottom of the small glass cup. It got progressively louder after a few runs of drinking and playing. 划拳 “hua quan” is a two-person game of wit and strategy. Each person would yell out a number and at the same time showing his or her hand with number of fingers extending out. The number of fingers ranged from zero to 5 and the number shouted out by the players should range from zero to ten. The pace of the game got faster and faster until someone won. The person who correctly shouted out the sum of fingers from two players won the game.

While our guests were eating and playing, mom would continue to cook other dishes. Since we only had one stove, the dishes were served one at a time until all dishes were served. Mom would occasionally go to the table, chat with them and drink a run or two with our guests. I and my sister would stayed in the kitchen and helped out with whatever task was on hand: stirring the food in the wok so that it won’t get burned, putting in a hand full of green onions before the dish was finished, or stirring in corn starch to thicken the sauce just before the dish was served. We also got a chance to taste a little of this and a little of that whenever we could. We kids never got to eat with them and had to wait until our guests finished their meals. I, being the oldest of five kids and the first son, occasionally was called to the table, drank some of that 高梁酒 “gao liang jiu” and received a bite or two from my Dad. Mom would join them after she finished cooking and we got to eat the left over when everyone was done. We liked the dinner parties even though we had more work to do because the leftovers were much better than what we usually ate on other days. This continued even after Dad’s single friends got married. By then, they continued to come to our house and they would bring their wives along too. Occasionally, we got invited to their houses and were treated with their home cooking as well.

As I grew older, I continued to help my Mom with cooking and shopping during the years when I was in college in Tainan, about 70 miles south of Taizhong and when I served two years in the Army after graduating from college. Whenever I came home, I would grab the basket and walked with my Mom to the small open market behind our 眷村 “juan cun,” i.e., a community specifically built for arm services personnel and their families. Ours was called北屯新村 “bei tun xin cun,” (a new village in bei tun) would help her with “dan fan,” washing dishes, pots and pans, cleaning vegetables, and cleaning dishes off the table. Occasionally I got to perform such odd jobs as killing a chicken, getting rid of its feathers, cleaning a live fish and making 豆漿 “dou jiang,” etc. Of course, I would stay in the kitchen and helped with dishes even though we didn’t have guests coming. By this time, we had a two-burner gas stove using bottled liquefied gas. The bottle for the liquefied gas was about twice the size in length of propane bottles we usually get from Home Depot or Lowes. Our guests continued to come but less often. Some moved away from Taizhong. Cooking process has been greatly improved from the clay stove and 煤球 ”mei qiu” era. It was much faster, cleaner, and not as messy. But the fun was still there: doing a little of this and a little of that and got to try a little of this and a little of that.

When I first came to the United States in the summer of 1973, I shared a basement with three other guys; two whites and a Cantonese from Hong Kong, only ½ block from the campus. We cooked our own food most of the time using the standard range and oven in the basement because we were all too poor to eat out. I learned to cook some simple American food from the white guys and Cantonese dishes from my Hong Kong roommate. After a couple of semesters, I wanted to see what it was like to stay in the dormitory. It wasn’t a good fit to my life style: I couldn’t get up early enough to have breakfast and was always hungry late in the evening and into early morning hours because the dinning room closed at 8:00 PM. Fortunately, I got out of the dorm after one semester and moved to a very small room, about 6’ wide and 10’ long, in a basement of another house roughly 1.5 miles from the campus. The room had enough space for a twin-size bed, a desk and a chair. I paid $25 a month for that room but couldn’t cook because there was no kitchen in the basement. I had to figure out a way to take care of my meals.

I talked to three other guys who shared a small two-story house several blocks away. I said to them that I would do the cooking and buying food from the near by Safeway. They would do the cleaning and washing and we all shared the costs. They agreed without any hesitation at all since none of us really knew how to cook. We also got a single female student to join the program because she liked one of the three guys and eating with us provided her with perfect opportunities to be close to him. This was the beginning of my official cooking career, albeit without pay, even before I graduated from Wyoming University. To this date, I still remembered the sense of accomplishment when I, for the first time, used corn starch to thicken a pot of chicken corn soup which came out surprisingly good. I also remembered making many awful dishes but they had no choice but to eat them. The cooking deal continued for a little more than a semester. It ended after I moved to a larger place with cooking facilities. I guessed that they also got tired of my cooking and tired of being guinea pigs for so long. I sure got a lot of fun from the experience but the friendship between the girl and the guy didn’t flourish despite our encouragement. I went back to cooking for myself and the fond memory of those days is still in my mind even to this date.

My cooking skill received a fast paced training not too long after I finished the first draft of my thesis. I had worked for my advisor for three years laboring through the design, the purchase of necessary equipment and putting together a high pressure, high temperature combustion tube. I also conducted a series of tests of what was called “Reverse Combustion of In-Situ Coal Gasification Process,” modified a numerical program to simulate the tests results and marginally participated in a DOE-sponsored pilot test of said process in the field near Rock Spring, Wyoming. Coal Gasification received a lot of attention in the midst of sky-rocking crude price because of oil embargo from Saudi Arabia. I had done enough laboratory work for a PhD program and could get a PhD if I expanded my theoretical work further. Many other student had finished their master’s within 2 years and many didn’t even have to do any laboratory work, not to mention designing a high pressure (2000 psi) and high temperature (1500 ^oC) combustion tube and conducted a series of tests to prove the theory in the lab.

I felt cheated and used by my advisor after doing so much work for him. I asked him for more money but he refused my request saying that his budget was tight. I was so pissed that I finished my draft of my thesis, gave it to him, asked him to look over my thesis and mailed it back to me so that I could make necessary changes. I would then come back to school and do the defense. I also told him that I would move to South Dakota to co-manage the Chinese restaurant 京华楼 “jing hua lou” with my brother-in-laws. Maria and I drove our used car to Rapid City, South Dakota from Laramie with a U-Haul in tow on Christmas Eve in 1978 and worked with them in 京华楼 “jing hua lou” which was opened just a few months ago. The restaurant business was so good that we had guests waiting to get in until about 9 in the evening from Thursday to Sunday every week.

Unfortunately, we had a hard time getting good cooks from big cities such as New York, San Francisco, or Atlanta. Many of these cooks didn’t start as apprentices in famous restaurants in Taiwan or Hong Kong. None of them came from China because China was still recovering from Culture Revolution. They were actually young sailors who stayed in the United States illegally after port calls in New York, San Francisco, Houston or Los Angeles. They were young and single and most of them enjoyed life’s many options available only to Chinese cooks in big cities: gambling, women, night life, and job opportunities. After they came to Rapid City, no one liked the small town after a week or two because on their off days, there was nothing for them to do: no one to gamble with, no woman, no place to go, and no TV to watch because they didn’t know English. There were no buses or subways. And there were no friends either. We ended up driving them around on their off days, playing majong with them after restaurant closed for the evening. Many of them still didn’t like our arrangement and left us after a short stays. We then had to buy airline tickets to send them back to where they came from. Back then, we couldn’t order tickets on the Internet. We had to call travel agent and waited for the tickets. And an airline ticket wasn’t cheap either: it probably cost us somewhere around $1,000 or more to fly them back and forth.

We had to do something else to alleviate the situation and to reduce our labor costs. I decided to work in the kitchen during the day and manage the dinning room in the evening. By doing so, I could at least help out when a cook left unexpectedly. We then had enough time to look for a replacement from a big city in which usually took one or two weeks. Well, once I got this started, I didn’t get out of the kitchen until I left the restaurant and went back to school to finish my degree. That’s something for another time.