Fifteen Years in America – Chapter 5: The Chef of the Student Cafeteria – Parts 5 & 6

This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story originally written by my dad in Chinese. For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. If you can read Chinese you can read the original at my dad’s Yahoo blog. He has just finished Chapter 8. Enjoy!

Continued from Part 4

In the previous chapter I mentioned that I really wanted to bring the authentic Yangzhou Fried Rice to the school cafeteria. The reason for this is that in America Yangzhou Fried Rice is a dish in almost every Chinese restaurant. I tasted a couple and it seems that none of them are authentic.

One day at work I told Morri that I am from Yangzhou and I knew how to make authentic “Yangzhou Fried Rice”.  I said to her, “If you try my Yangzhou Fried Rice, then you would know how good the real Yangzhou Fried Rice is.”

Morri listened to what I said and sounded a bit doubtful,   “Are you sure?” She said to me.  I confidently told her that there is no doubt that I could make it.  I asked her to agree to one term, which is that I get to pick the ingredients I want and she needs to get all the ingredients for me.  Morri couldn’t agree to that so she brought the proposal to the head chef Craig.  Craig is also a Hawaiian.  He is sturdily built, not very tall, and sported a thick mustache.  He spoke pidgin and was a graduate of a famous culinary academy in New York.  He chose Kapiolani Community College after he graduated because the college has a very strong culinary program.  Craig is not only the chef of the cafeteria but also did demonstrations for culinary students.  When I was working there I often saw Craig work with a gaggle of students wearing chef hats and aprons.  Craig and another professor named Kent often had a myriad of sauces and containers and did various lessons.  At that time, I admired those classes quite a bit.  I thought to myself, if I were 15 to 20 years younger, I should also major in cooking and maybe I could have gone back to China and opened a restaurant featuring western cuisine.  Perhaps my restaurant could have been quite popular.  Recently, I received an alumni magazine from the University of Hawaii and there was an article about the Chinese Ministry of Education visiting Kapiolani’s Culinary Arts department.  The goal was to speak about educating more Chinese people in western cuisine.

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Part 6

Morri told Craig that I wanted to bring Yangzhou Fried Rice to the students and staff of Kapiolani.  Craig is a person who is very open to new ideas and suggestions.  He loves to cook food from different countries such as France, Italy, and Korea.  One particular dish I thought was quite interesting was a Hawaiian dish called Laulau.  Craig would take some  ti leaf and wrap pork in it, and then the package is roasted until the pork is so cooked that it falls apart.  After it is cooked the leaves would be removed and its aroma would flood the room.  Honestly, I thought that it tasted pretty good, but the presentation was quite ghastly.

Craig heard that I want to make some Yangzhou fried rice and he agreed heartily.  He told me to make a list of the ingredients and I thought about the things my neighbor taught me about Yangzhou Fried Rice.

Yangzhou Fried Rice is also called Yangzhou Egg Fried Rice, and legend has it that it is the favorite dish of  Yang Su of the Sui Dynasty.  It was called “Broken Gold Rice”.  When the emperor of Sui was touring Yangzhou, he brought the dish to the city, and it was further enhanced by chefs of many generations.  The Huaiyang cooking school has an emphasis on “seriousness in choosing ingredients, expertise and care in preparation, exactness in portion and color, and preservation of original taste and juices”.  Eventually, Yangzhou fried rice became one of the most famous dishes of  Huaiyang cuisine.

Authentic Yangzhou fried rice has the following main ingredients: Chinese rice and eggs from grass fed hens.  Side ingredients include sea cucumber, grass fed chicken meat, Chinese sausage, scallop, fresh water shrimp, mushrooms, fresh cooked bamboo shoots, and snow peas.  Additionally you would add diced green onions, salt, cooking wine, chicken broth, and vegetable oil.

At that time in Hawaii we didn’t have so many Chinese ingredients.So we used Thai jasmine rice and cooked it with a bit less water than usual.  That makes the rice stiff and better for frying.  We also didn’t have eggs from grass fed hens because all eggs in America were produced in large scale chicken farms and shipped in cartons.  This worked just fine and I also added chicken meat, lean pork, shrimp, and snow peas.

To be continued!

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