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Wok Like A Man
Apr. 1st, 2010 11:51 amAfter a fantastic Sichuan dinner at CanonGrrl and Nepenthe’s house (CanonGrrl is a furious cooking demon, dinners there are always fantastic) I borrowed her cookbook Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop, and I been on kind of a Chinese cooking kick for the past couple months. Got myself a wok and everything. It feels a little weird, in that I’ve never bothered to cook Chinese before in my life, even tho I’m Chinese and I grew up in suburban LA eating some most authentic and creative Chinese food around. I think I have a certain amount of embarrassment at being Chinese yet not being able to speak the language; I’ve been served some of the best Chinese food in LA, New York, San Francisco, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and I’ve never been able to read the menu. What is that - a combination of guilt at being privileged to have great travel experiences thrown at me when I was young, and shame at disregarding my ethnic heritage during and since those adolescent years. It doesn’t gnaw at my soul or anything, but it’s something I’m aware of.
The notion of a responsibility to have some kind of connection to your ethnicity, and a disappointment with yourself for not living up to that responsibility, I dunno if it makes any sense to you, maybe you can only relate to it if you belong to just one obvious racial background, living in a country where that ethnicity is not the majority. I have the life experience of growing up Chinese, while you can have the life experience of being English/German/Scottish on your dad’s side Irish/Italian/Spanish on your mom’s side - one is certainly no better or worse than the other, but it’s a difference. There’s something there. I haven’t heard any of my Euro-mutt friends whine about a yearning to connect with their ancestral culture. But then I haven’t heard many of my Asian brothers and sisters whine about it either. I think I’m just a whiner.
But anyway, cooking Sichuan is really fun, it’s all big loud flavors, and it’s so cheap! There’s about half a dozen pantry staples you get at Super88 – light and dark soy sauce, black vinegar, cooking wine, chili oil, chili paste, sesame oil, Szechuan peppercorns, all that stuff will cost you like ten bucks. Fresh scallions, garlic, and ginger are practically free. Those components can be combined to make so many tasty dishes with chicken, beef, fish, and pork, especially pork, and more economically than you ever though possible. Which I guess makes sense, cuz there are a lot of Chinese people to feed out there.
I think what I’d really like to do is cook a decent Chinese meal for my parents someday.
The notion of a responsibility to have some kind of connection to your ethnicity, and a disappointment with yourself for not living up to that responsibility, I dunno if it makes any sense to you, maybe you can only relate to it if you belong to just one obvious racial background, living in a country where that ethnicity is not the majority. I have the life experience of growing up Chinese, while you can have the life experience of being English/German/Scottish on your dad’s side Irish/Italian/Spanish on your mom’s side - one is certainly no better or worse than the other, but it’s a difference. There’s something there. I haven’t heard any of my Euro-mutt friends whine about a yearning to connect with their ancestral culture. But then I haven’t heard many of my Asian brothers and sisters whine about it either. I think I’m just a whiner.
But anyway, cooking Sichuan is really fun, it’s all big loud flavors, and it’s so cheap! There’s about half a dozen pantry staples you get at Super88 – light and dark soy sauce, black vinegar, cooking wine, chili oil, chili paste, sesame oil, Szechuan peppercorns, all that stuff will cost you like ten bucks. Fresh scallions, garlic, and ginger are practically free. Those components can be combined to make so many tasty dishes with chicken, beef, fish, and pork, especially pork, and more economically than you ever though possible. Which I guess makes sense, cuz there are a lot of Chinese people to feed out there.
I think what I’d really like to do is cook a decent Chinese meal for my parents someday.
