Getting To Know Your Chinese Dad Through Cooking
Kevin Pang learned more than making meals from his father
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A Generational Journey From Hong Kong Markets To Orange Chicken
Kevin Pang says he did not know his father at all before he began working on a cookbook with him. Arriving in North America with his parents at age six from Hong Kong, Kevin stubbornly decided he would only speak English from then on. His parents, however, could mainly communicate in their native language.
“We understood about 30 percent of what we were saying to each other,” Kevin said last week. “So that’s a big problem, right? And (when) those communication issues occurred, you just have nothing to talk about.” The conversation remained cursory into Kevin’s adulthood.
“Every weekend, I’d call him, and we would talk for two minutes. I’d ask him, ‘How’s the weather? What are you guys cooking? And what did you buy at Costco’ because that’s his favorite store and my favorite store as well.”
Finally, longer conversations
It was not until Kevin became a food writer for the Chicago Tribune that he began to ask his father about Chinese cooking techniques.
That’s when I met Kevin, and I was delighted that he visited Ann Arbor’s Literati Bookshop this week on his tour for A Very Chinese Cookbook: 100 Recipes From China and Not China (But Still Really Chinese), which he co-wrote with his father.
As it does for so many people, food became a bridge for the Pangs. “My work almost forced me to have conversations with my parents,” he said during his book event. “We would have these long, two, three hour conversations, two or three times a week.” The conversations informed Kevin’s award-winning work at the Tribune, and it also helped him view his father as a person rather than an authority figure.
“I would always see my father as someone who was older than I was, who would give you grief, who would chastise you. Like his role was to be on my case, right? And to say no to things.”
But, in the conversations with his father, he finally learned about Jeffrey’s upbringing. He grew up in the Diamond Hill neighborhood of Hong Kong, and began visiting local wet markets (those selling seafood, meat and produce) twice a day with his mother. They went that often because the family did not own a refrigerator. “She would teach my dad what to look for,” Kevin said, such as how to choose the freshest fish, select a flavorful eggplant and pick out the best lotus root.
"If he was able to pick out the best produce, my grandmother would reward him with a bowl of noodle soup,” Kevin says. The conversations taught him to see his father as a child “with hopes and dreams and fears and curiosity. It’s strange to say, but he was once a kid, too.”
Kevin learned that many people in Hong Kong relied on television cook Lisa Fong, whose popular programs ran during the 1980s. Her shows inspired Chinese viewers the way Julia Child’s did for her audience.
Kevin’s parents had about one year’s advance notice before they emigrated to Toronto in 1982, which sent them into a viewing and cooking frenzy.
“They started learning these recipes as quickly as they could,” he says. “They could cook through a dish with my grandpa and grandma and our aunts and uncles by their side.” The Pangs wound up with a blue spiral notebook with about 60 recipes they copied from TV, although they were less precise than formal recipes. “That book was so important to them that they brought it in their carry on luggage because they didn’t want to lose it.”
Once in Canada, the Pangs used their recipes to connect with the Hong Kong diaspora. They had an ulterior motive, Kevin says: not just friendship, but to perfect the recipes brought from Hong Kong with ingredients now available to them. “It soon became a tablespoon of vinegar, a teaspoon of cornstarch. They would cook them over and over again, over 35 years.” They still have the well-annotated book, and 11 of the recipes are in the Pangs’ new cookbook.
A secret filmmaker
The Pang family continued to use that notebook once they moved to Seattle, where Kevin spent his formative years. Along with his work as a journalist, Kevin became a filmmaker who produced For Grace, a movie about the talented Chicago chef Curtis Duffy.
He did not realize there was another filmmaker — of sorts — in the family until 2012. Unknown to Kevin, Jeffrey began making a series of Chinese cooking YouTube videos featuring those memorized recipes.
Used to a higher cinematography standard, Kevin considered his dad’s work to be cheesy, with royalty free music and shaky camera angles. But Jeffrey’s first one drew 50,000 views. Since then, his several dozen videos have accumulated 2 million views, which astonished Kevin. “I was in digital media and I could not get 2 million views,” he said.
When Kevin joined America’s Test Kitchen, he brought his father along with him, and together they began filming all manner of dishes, many of them basic instructions such as Shumai 101, Fried Rice 101, and Orange Beef 101. They also offered advice on how to use chopsticks, choose kitchen gear, and using a cleaver.
Here are Jeffrey’s five tips for cooking Chinese food.
The videos led to A Very Chinese Cookbook, which has more than 100 recipes, including Jeffrey’s, for quick dinners like Clay Pot Chicken Rice and Twice-Cooked Pork to comfort classics like Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup and fancier fare such as Cantonese Crispy Pork Belly and Ginger-Scallion Lobster. There’s also a shopping guide for finding the ingredients.
Kevin admitted that cooking with his dad can sometimes turn their kitchen into a mess. He offered one idea of his own: rather than dump dishes into the sink, buy a Rubbermaid tub and set each container inside of it as it’s emptied.
“A dish pit, exactly,” Kevin says. “You can just deal with it afterward. It just feels psychologically different than putting it in a sink, because in a sink you’re obligated to get it done.”
Kevin’s son Liam, age seven, hasn’t yet followed in the family’s cooking footsteps. But he’s gradually being introduced to Chinese — or Chinese-ish food. “He’s obsessed with orange chicken from Panda Express,” Kevin says. And Kevin is a fan, too. “It’s actually good, unequivocably. God bless him, I love him for loving orange chicken.”
Tipping Has Dropped Since The Pandemic
Here’s a chart that might make some restaurant people scowl. Tipping has dropped from the generous days of the pandemic. The norm is 15 percent, versus higher figures when people relied solely on carry out and delivery.
I haven’t cut back on my gratuities — I still tip 20 percent, or more for really good service. But I usually only add $1 for a coffee and I’ve resisted tipping for items like groceries that I’ve selected myself and brought to a check out lane.
How do you feel these days about tip amounts? Have you adjusted the gratuities you’re giving out?
Mary Berry Heads To Scotland For Her Holiday Special
Every holiday season, Mary Berry films a BBC holiday special that subsequently airs on PBS. This year, she is headed for the Highlands. Mary, I was delighted to learn, is half-Scottish, and her special will reflect her mother’s heritage. There will be dishes like cranachan pavlova, smoked salmon, fondue, beef pie, mulled wine and a buche de Noel.
Her special guests include Scottich tennis star Sir Andy Murray and the wonderful singer Emeli Sande. The program will air on Monday, Dec. 18.
Gloomy News From New Orleans
Everyone down South told me that I missed a miserable summer in New Orleans. It was hot and unusually dry, and more recently, has been beset by fog and wildfires. It was a dreadful time for the restaurant industry, too.
Axios says restaurants are still struggling after their slowest summer in 20 years. They are suffering from a combination of the weather, high food costs, other inflation worries, fears that salt water might flood the Mississippi River, higher rents and unpredictable crime.
In the past two weeks, two of New Orleans’ beloved small restaurants announced they were closing. Marjie’s Grill, in Mid-City, plans to close at the end of the year, after its revenues fell 30 percent. And Tava, an Indian-inspired restaurant that got lots of national attention, is closing on Saturday.
“We have experienced such a major shift in this ‘post-Covid’ time when remote work has replaced full office buildings and the intense heat that plagued the city this summer kept the slow season around for much longer than usual,” Chef Manish Patel wrote on Instagram.
“The cost of operation and maintaining a restaurant isn’t cheap or simple, but also it costs more than just money.” He went on, “Death threats, belligerent/entitled customers and unrealistic expectation brought on by people who think they know how to run your restaurant better than you are just a glimpse of what a daily roller coaster of emotions look like.”
Patel added, “If you want to see other small local businesses thrive and stay open, visit them, post about them and show love.”
We Have A Winner For Bake Smart
Deborah J. Binder of Edmonds, Washington is the winner of the wonderful cookbook Bake Smart: Sweets and Secrets from My Oven to Yours, by Samantha Seneviratne.
Says Deborah, “I love to bake and learning new approaches to baking is always helpful.”
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Bake Smart, Deborah!
Keeping Up With CulinaryWoman
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I’ll see our paid subscribers tomorrow with Red Beans and Advice, where I’ll fill you in on the finale of the Great Canadian Baking Show.
I’ll see everyone else next Sunday, and I hope you’ll have a great holiday. My brother and I are having a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving where we’re each contributing dishes (I’m not sure who’ll be making the toast and popcorn, though.)
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