The Last Chinese Chef (33 page)

She backed out of Sam Liang’s room. As she crossed on the path she could hear the Chinese voices from the kitchen. The interplay of sounds was like abstract music to her. When she pushed open the door to the kitchen she saw that Jiang was disagreeing with Sam about something. Tan was off by himself carving furiously. He already had made birds and animals. He looked slightly melted.

“Perfect timing,” Sam said to her. “They’ll be here soon.”

“Were you arguing with him?” she said when Jiang turned back to his task.

“He thought I was using too many crabs.”

“Is there such a thing? Ever?”

He laughed.

“I didn’t think so,” she said, triumphant. “What’s the dish?”

“Spongy tofu. It’s a simple, plain dish — but the sky-high imperial version. The thing about tofu is, if you boil it rapidly for thirty minutes it will fill with holes. It becomes a sponge, ready to squirt its sauce when you bite into it. Now the average kitchen might dress it with green onion and oyster sauce. You know, whatever. Not me. I am making a reduction sauce from thirty crabs.”

“But that sounds great!”

“And not even their meat. Their shells, their fat, and their roe. Reduced and thickened until it’s just thick enough to soak into the tofu and stay there. Until you bite into it. This is a dish of artifice. See? It comes to the table looking like one thing. Like the plainest of food. Tofu. But you taste it and it’s something different.”

“Don’t listen to them. Do it.”

Sam stopped and turned his head to a sound, the gate. A knock. It was the smallest of sounds by the time it got all the way back to the kitchen, but this was his home and he knew that small sound by heart. “First Uncle! They’re here.”

“Oh!” Jiang yanked off his apron and brushed his pants, anxious suddenly, fussy.

“You’re fine,” said Sam. “Go.”

Maggie held the heavy door and watched him pause to light the candles and switch on more lamps to illuminate the couplets of calligraphy around the walls. Then he hurried out to the gate.

“How many judges are there?” she asked Sam.

“Six. All food people, from the Ministry of Culture and the Beijing Restaurant Association.”

“Here they come.” She peeked through the door.

Sam put his knife down and came over to stand next to her and look through the crack. The panel filed in, all men, with one senior member, all in dark suits, smiling, First Uncle welcoming them. It was right for him to be the one to do it; he was the eldest. Once he had them settled in their seats around tiny dishes of pickles and salt-roasted fava beans, he poured a rare aromatic oolong while he delivered a sparkling little introduction to Liang family cuisine.

“Now!” he hissed as he swept back into the kitchen. “Are you ready?” But Sam already had the first appetizers laid out. After an interval for the diners to relax, Jiang carried out a mince of wild herbs and dried tofu, sweet-savory puffs of gluten, and pureed scented hyacinth beans. He came back for the fragrant vinegar duck, spattered with brown Shanxi vinegar. The last appetizer was fresh clams, marinated in a dense bath of soy, vinegar, and aromatics. “That’s
nong,
” he said, bringing the sauce close to her to smell. “The dark, concentrated flavor.”

A shimmering interval of eating and happy laughter floated by in the dining room. Appetizers were consumed, along with tea and the first toasts of wine.

Sam himself carried in the first main courses. According to the classical pattern he started with a few lacy-crisp deep-fried dishes: pepper-salt eel fillets like translucent little tiles, similar to those his father had described making for the mother and son in the swamp; and an aromatic stir-fry of yellow chives studded with tiny, delicate fried oysters.

Back in the kitchen, he stir-fried tender mustard greens with wide, flat tofu-skin noodles and plump, fresh, braised young soybeans. These glistened on the platter in a light crystal sauce. After that there were lamb skewers, delectably grilled and crusted with sesame.

On the other side of the kitchen Sam noticed Second Uncle looking distinctly glossy as he bent over his knife. Too much to drink. It was bad enough that he was using a knife to carve vegetables; he had to be kept away from food. Sam and Jiang would need to do everything by themselves. Could they?

“When is Baba getting to Beijing?” Sam asked in Chinese, loud enough for only Jiang to hear.

Jiang understood; he sent the smallest look in Tan’s direction. “Actually, he is here.”

Sam jerked around. “Already here?”

“He came a few hours ago.”

“Why didn’t he call?”

His eldest uncle regarded him patiently. “This is your night.”

Sam understood, but still — to stay away from his childhood home? “Where is he?”

“At Yang’s house. Not far from here.”

“We may need him,” said Sam.

“We may,” Jiang agreed. “But let us wait. Do you know, it was always difficult for your father to be his father’s son. He was never the original one or the real one, only the son. He knows well that you have been here alone for four years, with us. He wants you to win tonight the same way.” Jiang raised a white eyebrow. “I agree with him.”

“Unless we need him,” Sam qualified.

By now there was a palpable surge of success from the dining room, the sound of pleased conversation, laughter, delight, comprehensible in any language. Everyone in the kitchen was smiling, Jiang, Sam, even Tan, still on the side carving daikons.

Sam signaled Jiang that there would now be a pause. Shaoxing wine was to be served, thick, aromatic, in tiny stoneware cups. Uncle Jiang poured it from the large crock into the smaller, more precious one that would be borne to the table; it was inscribed with the words of the ninth-century poet Po Chu-I,
What could I do to ease a rustic heart?
Sam had planned every small thing this way, to support the theme of the meal. He positioned the jug with its words on the tray. He hoped the diners would have their own rustic thoughts. Perhaps they would be reminded of the words of Confucius —
With coarse grain to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow: I still have joy in the midst of these things.

When the tray was ready Jiang closed the wine crock and stowed it high in the cupboard, out of reach. “I saw that!” said Tan.

“I hope so!” Jiang shot back.

While they were drinking and toasting the dishes at the table Sam took the next course from the oven, a perfect plump chicken, roasted to a crisp honey brown. No, she thought, not a chicken — this was the chicken
skin.
“Is there any chicken inside?”

“None,” he said. “Minced vegetables and ham. You cut it like a pie. Here we enter the part of the menu which toys with the mind. You see one thing, you taste something else. This is supposed to wake you up, make you realize you’ve been daydreaming. You know what I mean?”

“I feel that way all the time here,” she said. “Seems like my whole life before I came to China was a daydream.”

“Wo yiyang,”
Sam said, Me too. He turned to Jiang and Tan, who had magically risen from his corner and joined them at the center island. The three of them quickly created a monumental platter by settling the whole crisp chicken on a papery bed of fried spinach next to a pearly white woman in flowing robes carved from daikon, her lips and eyes brightened with food coloring, her hands spread in universal kindness. This provocative creation was borne out, thwacked open, and shouted over by the diners. In the kitchen, Sam lifted the steamer to check the ribs in lotus leaves. Almost time.

Behind them they heard a cry. Maggie turned and saw Tan’s hand raised, the clutch of his other fist not quite hiding a little up-rush of blood. He had cut himself. She grabbed a clean towel and leapt to him, applying pressure.

“Thanks, Maggie,” Sam said, and then to Jiang, in Chinese, “Let’s go to the soup.”

This he assembled in an enormous blue-and-white tureen — the intense, delectable fish broth, the fish balls like fresh clouds, the silky tofu, the mustard greens. The great bowl was too heavy for Jiang.

“I’ll take this one,” said Sam, hoisting it.

When he walked into the dining room with the soup there rose a general murmur of approval which escalated to a cheer. He told them the soup was a tribute to Hangzhou.

Then they were ready for the tofu with crab sauce. Tan’s finger had stopped bleeding and been bandaged, so Maggie came over to watch. Sam reduced the sauce and then thickened it with emulsified crab fat and crab roe. Just enough, he said to her, so it would penetrate the tofu and stay there.

When it was right he dropped in the slices of spongy tofu, immersing them. “This cooks on low. The tofu will drink up all the sauce. It looks like tofu — a peasant dish — when it comes to the table. Then the crab squirts out when you bite into it. So good. Here — try. This is what they will taste.” He took a spoonful and dropped it in a small clean dish, which he held up and tipped to her lips. “Go on.”

She opened and let him pour it into her mouth. It was crab flavor multiplied further than she had ever thought possible. “What
is
that? I never tasted crab flavor so intense.”

“The shells are the secret,” he said. “The part most people throw away. It’s almost ready.” He stood over the tofu, monitoring it. “Now! Let’s go.”

He took the rustic-looking platter he had selected and piled it on. Yuan Mei said nothing was more sophisticated than the simplest bowls and plates. This platter said “plain food.” It completed the illusion — all of which would be shattered when the diner bit into the crab sauce. This, he thought, might be his best dish.

“Ready?” said Jiang, and he took the platter and bore it toward the door. Just at that moment Tan rose from his chair, lost his footing, and stumbled backward into Jiang.

The platter flew from First Uncle’s hands. They all saw. But nothing could stop it from arcing through the air and shattering on the floor. Big, powdery shards of smashed porcelain came to rest in the tofu and crab sauce.

They all stood staring in a circle around it.

Sam was heaving. The thirty crabs. The glory of the taste.

“Who moved this chair?” Uncle Tan glared. “Nephew? Was it you? It wasn’t there before.”

Sam ignored him, turned to Jiang. He was drained of color. “Now we’re short one,” he said.

Jiang nodded. “I’ll call your father.”

“I’ll do it,” said Sam.

“Nephew,” Tan persisted drunkenly, “did you move it?”

Sam just looked at him. He knew when to raise the barriers so he could keep going, and this was one of those times. He turned away. As he thumbed Liang Yeh’s number into his phone, from the corner of his eye he saw Maggie step over to Uncle Tan and put her hands on his shoulders. On the other end of the line the phone was ringing.

“You should sit down and take a rest and let us clean this up,” he heard her say. “And don’t say another word to Sam right now.” She gently pushed him down into a chair.

In his half-lubricated state a foreign woman coming at him and then actually touching him was too much; he did exactly what she said and sank into the chair, mute.
“Wei?”
Sam heard Liang Yeh say on the other end.

“Wei,”
said Sam. “Dad. I need you. Please come right now.”

“My son, this is — ”

“Now,” Sam cut in. “I mean it. Please.”

“Wh — ”

“We’ve had an accident.”

Quiet. He heard small faraway sounds. “Right away I will come,” Liang Yeh said.

 

It was only a few minutes until he arrived, a small older man, stepping quietly in through the back kitchen door.

Tan looked up at him dumbly. “How did you get in?”

“No matter how far a man may travel, he still knows how to return to his native place,” joked Liang Yeh.

“Baba,” Sam said, and the two walked to each other. Sam held his father for a long time. He could feel Maggie watching, unable to take her eyes away.
This is me. Take a look. He comes with me.
They stepped apart and he introduced her.

“Hi,” she said, smiling up at him. She was on the floor, wiping up the last of the crab.

She had insisted on doing it while she kept an eye on Tan. Sam was grateful.

He led his father to the cooking area, explaining, and gave him a taste of the crab sauce that had just been lost. “Wonderful,” Liang Yeh whispered, his eyes wide, his face split in awe. It was a look Sam didn’t think he’d ever seen on his father’s face before. “How many crabs?”

“Thirty.”

“Thirty!” Liang Yeh’s gray eyebrows shot up. “Magnificent! I love crabs.”

“‘As far as crabs are concerned,’” Tan intoned, “‘my mind is addicted to them, my mouth enjoys the taste of them, and never for a single day in my life have I forgotten about them.’”

“You’re drunk,” Liang Yeh said.

“But accurate,” Jiang said. “That’s Li Yu, 1650. Word for word.”

“Still drunk. Old friend.” And Liang Yeh embraced Tan, who cried a little on his shoulder, and then Jiang, who squeezed him in a tall, quiet way. They had greeted each other a few hours before, but still seemed overcome by being together — old now, but together.

“Gentlemen,” said Sam, “I need another dish. Fast.”

But Liang Yeh was on his own time, as always. Now he was looking at the white woman over there with her rump up in the air, cleaning the floor. “Is she — ,” he said.

“No, Baba. Just a friend. Actually she’s interviewing me for a magazine. So only sort of a friend. A colleague.”

“Sort of,” repeated Liang Yeh. “She doesn’t talk?”

“No. But you speak English, last time I checked. Now come on. A dish.”

“All right.” Reluctantly he tore himself away from the natural speculations arising from the sight of Maggie on Sam’s floor. “Where are you?”

“Here. See the menu?” Sam pointed to a spot on the page.