March 23, 2011 – Mango Pudding

The Richmond is a dangerous place. The Richmond? In San Francisco? Well, “dangerous” but not in the way you might think. It’s a nice walk through the Panhandle and into Golden Gate Park. If you duck behind the Conservatory of Flowers and follow the path you find yourself in The Richmond. A few blocks later and you’re on Clement Street. It’s the street where you can get a bag-o-dim-sum for under $5 and those good Chinese almond cookies for cheap. And of course the markets have some real bargains. Mango Pudding is my particular addiction. It’s such a simple mix and easy to make. It’s not quite jello and it is not quite pudding and it is perfect. The walk is just under three miles each way. Keep walking and you can eat all the dim sum and mango pudding you like.

March 9, 2011 – Stir-Fry Nation

Jennifer Lee puts the melting pot metaphor to rest for the final time when she describes America as more of a stir-fry than a melting pot. She writes, “We are a stir-fry; our ingredients remain distinct, but our flavors blend together in a sauce shared by all.” It’s all in her book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. The book has two of my favorite topics — Cultural history and in particular the immigration experience. And it’s about Chinese food. I did love this book and learned even more things about the role of Chinese Food in our culture. I have to thank the library for recommending this one. Another great pick in their On The Same Page Series.

Ironically, just before picking up this book, I did a piece for the 2011 Project on fortune cookies and then one on chop suey. So today it is about the stir-fry.

You’ll note my stir-fry is in my trusty, old, cast iron frying pan. I used to have a wok, but that never made it out here from the East Coast. Space is at a premium in a San Francisco kitchen, and you can make a stir-fry without a wok. I am sure some purists would disagree. But that is what is so great about a stir-fry there are no set rules. The stir-fry does make a great metaphor for America, because pretty much anything goes in it. I was aghast when my Australian friend Alan once tossed in peanut butter (a trick I have since copied many times. My cousin Bekah is a good cook, but when I saw the smoked kielbasa going into the stir-fry, I had my doubts. We are both half Polish-American, but I was raised on much more traditional Polish cuisine. Bekah, having far less experience with Polish food, clearly had no issues with using smoked kielbasa in a stir-fry. Needless to say, it tasted great and I do the same thing all the time. The only question is what’s next? Could I put soy sauce and hot oil on pierogis instead of sour cream and call them Polish Potstickers?

February 5, 2011 – Chop Suey

“All Chinese Eat Chop Suey.” Well according to an advertisement for Macmillan Petroleum in a 1953 issue of Popular Mechanics. That was a strange, old advertisement I came across the other day. Then yesterday, on a hunt for something else, I came to my stack of old San Francisco postcards. There was this image of San Francisco’s Chinatown with a Chop Suey restaurant. It’s an old postcard that tells us in the most dated language that: “Oriental costumes mingle with American, quaint Chinese patter is heard on all sides.”

I am old enough to remember chop suey. It’s that Americanized, Chinese food that was all we knew as Chinese food. It turns out, it was actually invented in China. The American version is based on an authentic Chinese dish. We like to think we know better now. We now know “good” Chinese food.

Nowadays it would be hard to find chop suey on a San Francisco menu. And still, San Francisco is a city with hundreds of mediocre Chinese restaurants. A few years back I finally discovered a really good one in the Inner Sunset called Nanking Road Bistro. I’ve eaten there a few times a month ever since. I really do love Chinese food. One time I asked the owner how he had pretty much the same menu as every Chinese restaurant in the City, yet his food was so much better. His explanation was really funny. He basically refuses to hire anyone who has ever worked in any other Chinese restaurant in the U.S. He went on to tell me that the owners of most Chinese restaurants won’t eat the food they serve. I knew I had found a good place, when I turned an older and very picky Chinese friend on to Nan King Road Bistro. He is a regular now as well.

As for chop suey, I do have a soft spot for a genre of cuisine I refer to as “cheap Chinese.” There is something to be said for bad, old time Chinese food. Best served in a red vinyl booth. But be wary, sometimes it just is really bad. I have encountered some crazy stuff traveling and the worst Chinese take away ever in, where else, England.

So today a homage to chop suey with a certain debt to Edward Hopper and the greatest chop suey painting of all time.

January 27, 2011 – Fortune Cookie

Today I reached blindly into one of the collage boxes today and pulled out a postcard from San Francisco’s Japanese Tea Garden. Perfect as our “winter” is fooling us again with a warm 66° sunny day. Pink blossoms are already popping out on trees all around town.

One of our local mythologies is about the invention of the fortune cookie. It was invented sometime after 1890 at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco. Apparently influenced by a similar confection in Japan. History and the timing of inventions often can be a bit muddled. And there is the irony that a dessert invented at a Japanese Tea Garden became a staple of American Chinese restaurants. Details aside, in the U.S., the fortune cookie surely got its start here in San Francisco.

I have a habit of hanging onto those fortunes. They get buried in the recesses of my wallet, find themselves between the pages of books and scattered in a messy desk drawer. If we hang on to the fortunes they come true, right?