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Thursday, August 12, 1999 By Marlene Parrish, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Say "Chinese food."
What jumps to mind?
Little paper cartons filled with carry-out? A dark restaurant decorated in red with a high tassel count? Deep-fried mystery meat on rice with snow peas and wee cobs of corn? Unfortunately, this is what passes for the Chinese experience for many Americans.
Real Chinese food, as in "real for thousands of years," is elegant and imbued with ancient tradition and ritual, symbolism and beauty. It is said that the highest form of Chinese cooking is the Cantonese style.
The homestyle version of Cantonese cooking is seldom found, much less eaten, by most Westerners. Why? There are few restaurants with well-trained native chefs willing to cook in the old ways -- beyond spring rolls, wontons, pork dumplings, fried rice and stir-fried dishes. The cuisine is labor intensive and relies on exotic ethnic foods. And special celebration and health-giving dishes usually are beyond the range and interest of most home cooks.
Now those traditional recipes are within reach in a new cookbook, "The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen." The book is the result of author Grace Young's painstaking research into her Cantonese roots. Almost by accident, she took her grandfather's advice to never forget the importance of her heritage. By writing the book and recording her family's history, Young has honored her ancestors with a collection of 150 recipes that her family has been cooking at home in China and San Francisco for generations.
The book is more than a collection of recipes. It is a historical document. With it, Young takes her place as a food historian alongside Meryle Evans, Jessica Harris and Virginia Bartlett.
-- Marlene Parrish
"Growing up in San Francisco, I ate Cantonese home-style food every day," says Young. "These were rich and savory dishes with pure, simple flavors. My parents wanted my brother, Douglas, and me to know why in all of China the Cantonese are considered to be the best cooks. Both of us had really taken it for granted because that was how our family ate."
But those experiences formed the tastes and appreciation that led Young to a career as a top food stylist and recipe developer. She has been director of the test kitchen and food photography for Rebus Inc., a New York publishing company, for 16 years. She has directed the recipe development and the photography for many Time Life Books' series, including "Great Taste-Low Fat" and "Great Meals in Minutes." She has also been the test kitchen director for the University of California at Berkeley Wellness Cooking School's "Simply Healthy Cookbook" and has appeared on many television and radio programs.
In short, she knows a lot about food, recipes and cookbooks. Other people's cookbooks, that is. She had no intention of writing one herself.
There is always a pivotal moment when any book is conceived. Here is the story of Young's moment of truth:
"I became an independent woman when I moved from our family home. I came to New York for one year and stayed for 20. My new world had little to do with the traditional Chinese upbringing I knew in San Francisco. My parents couldn't understand the corporate life, and as my life evolved, I came to ask them less and less about the past."
Yet Young always returned to San Francisco for the Chinese New Year's celebration. "My parents, unlike my uncles and aunties, always do the traditional presentation with all of the special New Year's dishes -- Buddha's Delight, Turnip Cake, Sesame Balls, Candied Walnuts and the New Year's Tray of Togetherness. The house is decorated with cherry blossoms and pictures of the Money God. In the living room, bags of oranges and tangerines studded with lysee (lucky money) stand ready for our relatives' visits. And there are the red and gold money envelopes for the children."
About four years ago, Young decided that she wanted a permanent record of the holiday celebration. "I wanted more than just snapshots," says Young, an excellent photographer herself. "So I invited a photographer friend, Alan Richardson, to come home with me. Alan and I have worked together for years."
With her eye as a food stylist, Young selected the props from her mother's china closet and set up the shots. "We used my mother's wedding china, all over 50 years old. I remember the rosewood Tray of Togetherness with eight sweets from childhood. People of my age don't even OWN things like this."
When Richardson showed her the prints, Young was shocked to see the images. "The food was even more beautiful that I remembered it in my mind's eye. I knew right then that I should record the recipes. Those photographs that were to go into my personal album were the inspiration that helped me to visualize the possibility of this becoming a cookbook."
When Young began to record the recipes, she realized she'd opened a Pandora's box. "I cook Chinese, but I never learned the specialty and celebration dishes," she says. "All my relatives are wonderful home-style cooks, but since no one of my generation had really taken the time to learn their recipes, most of the recipes were at risk of being lost. I interviewed my parents, my uncles, aunties and cousins. Many of my relatives are quite elderly, so their cooking reflects a very traditional style of Chinese cooking, one that was nearly lost during the Cultural Revolution in China."
Young's time in the market and in the kitchen, shopping and cooking with her parents, was a special time. When her father sliced ginger with a cleaver, the shreds were as thin as blades of grass. "He told me that a cook recognizes another cook the moment he sees him slice ginger," Young says. "One of my greatest joys was to serve my father the same food that my mother has cooked for him. I feel that this book is my anchor to the past."
Young has recorded her family's recipes without Americanizing the ingredients. "There are authors who offer substitutes for traditional Chinese ingredients," says Young. "But this fails to recognize the genius of the cuisine. There are reasons for thousands of years of reverence for certain combinations. If you want to cook Chinese dishes, you will need exotic ingredients along with the time to make them."
A cookbook using traditional Chinese ingredients could be intimidating. But Young knows her business and has crafted enough books to know how to streamline information. Although there are no short-cuts in the recipes, Young offers practical approaches to the recipes.
"One of the biggest obstacles people face when they want to cook Chinese food is finding and identifying the ingredients," says Young. "Clerks in Chinatown often don't speak English and packages often have only Chinese labels."
Two chapters in the book, "Shopping like a sleuth" and "Going to market with Mama" provide the secrets for identifying the ingredients, as well as instruction on how to differentiate fresh from old produce. This is invaluable when recipes call for green turnip, luffa, snow fungus or shelled dragon eye.
In addition, the book provides four ways to identify ingredients. A color photograph, the description and a Cantonese pronunciation. And if all else fails, show the shop clerk the Chinese character.
The recipes are divided into user-friendly sections. The first section includes the everyday dishes that Young grew up eating -- simple stir-fries, easily constructed in the Western kitchen. Next is the celebration section, with its labor-intensive recipes. "I knew that if I didn't record the recipes and their presentations, they might be lost forever," Young says. "This section might be best read for background."
One section is on the healing soups so revered in China. "The Western cultures tend to take pills and supplements for ailments. The West knows nothing about the healing nature of our soups. We Chinese integrate herbs into the diet and cook with the concept of warming and cooling foods known as yin-yang."
Insights scattered throughout the book are fun to learn as well as full of information. Some Chinese terms are endearing. Young talks about wok hay, which means the breath of a wok. "Many people dislike piping-hot food and prefer their food to cool before eating it, but most Chinese are just the opposite," says Young. "Wok hayis not simply hot food. It's that elusive seared taste that only lasts for a minute of two. It can be compared to food hot off the grill and grilled food that has been left to cool. For the Chinese, if the dish doesn't have the prized taste of the wok's aroma, it isn't an authentic stir-fry."
Will Westerners use this book? Some, yes, but much of it, probably not. To make a study of the cuisine is to mentally submerge one's self into an unknown but fascinating world.
Love the book for its historical significance. Take it to bed for a wonderful read. Try the recipes from the first chapter. And when finished browsing, place "Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen" on the shelf near "Bitter Almonds," Maria Grammatico's tale of growing up in an Italian convent, "A Year in Provence," Peter Mahle's story of his home in France, and "Pomp and Sustenance," a story of 25 centuries of Sicilian food by Mary Taylor Simeti, books that are all rich with authentic recipes and family remembrance.
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The accidental author
