The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones Read Free Book Online Page B

should be more than food; it should tease and provoke the mind. We have a lot of dishes that come to the table looking like one thing and turn out to be something else. The most obvious example would be a duck or fish that is actually vegetarian, created entirely from soy and gluten, but there are many other types of illusion dishes. We strive to fool the diner for a moment. It adds a layer of intellectual play to the meal. When it works, the gourmet is delighted.”
    “Okay,” she said, “artifice.”
    “Call it theater. Chinese society’s all about theater. Not just in food. Then there’s healing. We use food to promote health. I’m not talking about balanced nutrition — every cuisine does that, to some degree. I’m talking about each food having a specific medicinal purpose. We see every ingredient as having certain properties — hot, cold, dry, wet, sour, spicy, bitter, sweet, and so on. And we think many imbalances are caused by these properties being out of whack. So a cook who is adept can create dishes that will heal the diner.”
    “You mean cure illness?”
    “Yes, but it’s more than that. People have mental and emotional layers to their problems, too. The right foods can ease the mind and heart. It’s all one system.”
    “You cook like that?” she said. “You yourself?”
    “Not really. It’s a specialty.”
    “Okay,” she said, writing it down. “Healing.” As if food can heal the human heart. “Is that it?”
    “One more. The most important one of all. It’s community. Every meal eaten in China, whether the grandest banquet or the poorest lunch eaten by workers in an alley — all eating is shared by the group.”
    “That’s true all over the world,” she protested.
    “No.” He looked at her, and for the first time she saw a coolness in his face. He didn’t like her disagreeing. “We don’t plate. Almost all other cuisines do. Universally in the West, they plate. Think about it.”
    “Well . . .” That was true. Every Chinese restaurant she’d ever been to had put food in the middle of the table. “I concede,” she said. She was going to write Does not like to be crossed but instead wrote All food is shared, because it was true. He was right.
    Now he had taken a rack of pork ribs out of a plastic bag of marinade and was cleaving them off one after another. His tree trunk barely shuddered. She watched him swing his arm and his shoulder. He was wiry but strong. “Your grandfather was a chef,” she said.
    “Right.”
    “And your father too?”
    She saw him hesitate just a moment before resuming. So — some problem there. “Yes.”
    “Then he was the one who taught you to cook?”
    “No. My father stopped cooking when he went to America. I learned here.”
    “How?”
    “Well, first of all, I had always cooked. I learned the basics from my mother — brisket, chicken soup, challah. But four years ago I decided to change my life, and really learn to cook. I came here. I told you, my uncles. They’re incredible chefs, they’re older, retired — they taught me. Full-time. I spent the first few years basically cowering beneath them. They were rough. What you might call old-school.”
    “Are those the guys I heard on the phone?”
    “Two of them. That was Jiang and Tan, whom I call First and Second Uncle. Jiang Wanli and Tan Jingfu. There’s a third one, Uncle Xie, who lives in Hangzhou. Xie Er.”
    “Are they your father’s brothers?”
    “No. Xie is the son of a man who worked with my grandfather in the Forbidden City. Tan is the grandson of my grandfather’s teacher, Tan Zhuanqing, who was a very famous chef. Jiang grew up in Hangzhou with Xie; they were best friends. So we aren’t blood relations, but our ties go back for generations. Those kinds of connections are very strong here. Stronger than in the West.”
    “And all three were chefs?”
    “Tan and Xie were chefs. Jiang is a food scholar, a retired professor.”
    “I knew I saw that name somewhere.