The Last Chinese Chef (34 page)

“The spongy tofu,” said his father. “What else can you tell me about the room, the poems, the serving pieces?”

“There is the couplet on the wall,” said Sam. “It’s something we chose from Su Dongpo, a poem about taking a boat down the Grand Canal. Uncle Jiang did the calligraphy. It says:

“Good,” said Liang Yeh. “Let me see through into the dining room.” He moved to the door and peered through the crack. “Ah! You have made it beautiful.”

“I’m sure I could have done a better job,” said Sam, knowing that he couldn’t have, but using the automatic modesty that came with Chinese.

Sam was startled when he realized they were speaking Chinese. His father had not spoken it much during Sam’s childhood, sticking stubbornly with his simplified English and thus allowing himself to be simplified before the world.
No wonder you retreated.
Now the deep-throated,
rrr
-inflected Mandarin of Beijing had settled back over his father. “You can talk, too,” he said to Sam approvingly.

“Still learning. I’ll show you the house later. I did over everything except the little north-facing room. That’s where I lived while they were doing it. But it’s not what you remember, Baba. It’s just one court.”

“This was my mother’s court,” said Liang Yeh softly, “Chao Jing.” And Sam saw the rain gathering in his eyes. “This was her main living area. She had her bed over there.” And he pointed to the private rooms. “All right.” He stepped away from the door. “Go on. Other serving pieces?”

“We brought out the Shaoxing wine in the ‘rustic heart’ jug — you know the one?” said Sam.

“So well! It was my father’s.” Liang Yeh followed him back to the cooking area, picked up the menu, and studied it. “The spongy tofu was your second artifice dish.”

“Yes. The first was the whole crisp chicken skin, stuffed with other things.”

“Then you lost one artifice dish. We need something intellectual,” said Liang.

“Or historical,” said Sam. He switched into English. Chinese was for allusion, English for precision. He was in another realm with his father now that he could speak both. It shifted everything between them. “See, nostalgia is powerful here right now because of how fast things have changed. Anything that really nails the recherché is automatically provocative; it unleashes a whole torrent of ideas in people’s minds.”

“All right.” His father paced the counters, scanned the ingredients. “Can you buy me a little time?” They were still in English. “Serve something else?”

“The lotus-leaf pork ribs,” said Sam. “Uncle Xie’s recipe. They’re ready.”

His father turned. “He taught you? Go ahead, then.”

By the time Sam had served the ribs and chatted with the diners and come back, Liang Yeh had something under way. Sam watched him working with chestnut flour and cornmeal, mincing pork. He did it so easily.
Why did you hold back all those years? Why wouldn’t you cook? Was the fear worth it?

“You don’t need this pork, do you?”

“No,” Sam said. “It’s from the top of the ribs.”

“Never waste food,” said Liang Yeh.

Jiang gave a chirp of laughter from where he stood, cutting, but Sam did not laugh. He took a deep breath in, loving it. It was home, being in the kitchen beside his father. It was the root of his chord, even though he had never heard it played before. “Yes, Baba,” he said, obedient. Don’t waste food.

His father made three cold vegetable dishes, one of macerated bite-sized cucumber spears shot through with sauce, and another of air-thin slices of pink watermelon radish in a light dressing. Braised soybeans — those left over from yesterday’s prep — had been dressed with the torn leaves of the Chinese toon tree.

Then the meat and the cakes. First he marinated the minced pork. While it soaked he worked with the wheat flour and a little fat until he had just the weight he wanted, then formed the dough into balls that he rolled in sesame. The next step was to add minced water chestnuts to the pork and fry it quickly on a griddle with garlic and ginger and green onion and soy until it was deep brown and chewy-soft. Then he held another wok upside down, dry, over a high fire until it was very hot, after which he pressed the dough balls into little disks all over the inside and flattened them slightly with his fingers. “This is another dish of the Empress Dowager’s,” he told his son. “This one came to her in a dream. Did you know that? The Old Buddha dreamed, and then she ordered her chefs to make it.” He smiled. “Actually it’s not bad,” he said.

The wok with the dough disks inside it went back over the fire, upside down and angled, constantly turned, carefully watched, until all the flat cakes were golden brown and ready to be popped off.

“Split them,” Liang Yeh said, handing the steaming plate to Sam. “Stuff them with the meat.” Sam started this, fingers flying. Each one emitted a fragrant puff of steam when he opened it to push in the meat. Meanwhile his father turned to his other bowl of dough, this one of corn and chestnut flour, and worked it until it was ready. From this he shaped a swift panful of tiny thimble-shaped cones.

“After all these years?” Sam said, because he recognized what his father was making —
xiao wo tou.
This was the dish that had caused him to flee Gou Bu Li that night. This was the rustic favorite of the Empress, which Liang Wei had warned his son never to make. “Why now?”

“Better than being haunted by ghosts, isn’t it? Besides, it’s another resonance on your rustic theme. For those who know their history, the connection will satisfy.” Watching the speed at which he moved, it was impossible for Sam to believe that those fingers had been resting for forty years.

The corn cones went in the oven only briefly — fuel had been scarce on the road when the Empress fled — and then came out. He arranged them on a plain platter with the tiny meat-stuffed cakes. “Think of it as a pause by the side of the road,” he told his son as he packed everything on a tray around a turnip that Tan had turned into a fragile pink peony.

“Should I tell the panel the background story?” said Sam, before he carried it out. “Because I don’t think they will know.”

“Surely they will know,” said Liang Yeh. “It’s the Empress Dowager.”

“Brother,” chided Jiang, “they won’t know. They have forgotten.”

Liang Yeh shrugged. “Then let it be.”

Sam took the platter from his father. He saw that his father was different here, light, almost at ease, in the way he must have been when he was young. Gone was the ill-fitting cloak of exile he had worn for so many years, the hunched and anxious shoulders. Sam wished his mother could be here, seeing it. She loved Liang Yeh, loved his kindness and his mordant humor; she would be uplifted to see him so happy. Sam felt a pang of longing for them to be together, the three of them, with his father like this, here in China.

Back in the kitchen Sam noticed Maggie sitting now, watching. She was so attentive. Her presence reminded him that most people did not watch things very closely. Well, it was her job. She was a writer. He liked knowing she was there. She saw everything. He almost seemed to see his own life more clearly when she was here to witness it. Soon, though, she would be gone. “How much longer are you going to be in China?” he said.

“I try not to think about that.”

“Why?”

“I guess I don’t want to leave. I would never have thought I would like it here, this much. But I do. It feels good.”

“So stay,” he said.

“I can’t. I have to work. By the way,” she said quickly, changing the subject, “he’s amazing, your father. He really kept his skills up. I thought you said he never cooked!”

“He hasn’t, for many years,” said Sam. “He’s just naturally great. He’s the last Chinese chef.”

“No, Sam,” she said. “You are.”

He smiled. “That’s why I wish you didn’t have to leave.”

“I feel the same.”

“So maybe you’ll come back.”

She said nothing. He held the first of the three molds over the sink and, supporting it with a sieve, dislodged it in one piece. He opened the crevice just a bit, and sizzling pork fat ran off and hissed into the sink.

“Nephew! Your sense has vanished and left you!” Jiang flew across the room at him.

“Remember?” Sam said to Maggie in English. “I told you this would cause a fight.” Then he went back to Chinese. “Uncle, we don’t need
all
the fat.”

“But this dish is
you er bu ni,
” To taste of fat without being oily. “That is its point!”

“This is enough fat.”

“Leave him!” cried Liang Yeh. “Do you not think he knows the right amount? To the droplet? To the touch?”

A change came over the room. Even Maggie felt the fine hairs on her arms stand up.

“Perhaps you are right,” said Jiang in Chinese.

“Thanks, Dad,” said Sam, using English. Then, in Chinese: “It’s so rich already. And this is the first rice we’ve had. I assure you, for the
meishijia,
the fat is waiting, delicate and aromatic as a soufflé, right under the skin.” He turned to his father. “You serve it. Please. I served your corn cakes and your sloppy joes.”

“Xiao wo tou
and
shao bing jia rou mo,”
his father said. “Learn the Chinese names.”

“I will,” Sam said. And Liang Yeh carried the tray in high, with a flourish. They heard his smart steps across the floor, the click of the plates on the table, and then, from the panel, low shrieks of disbelief, submission, almost weeping.

“They’re going to eat the fat,” Tan predicted.

“Five to two says no,” Sam said. “A hundred
kuai.
”

“Done,” Tan said, satisfied. He had cooked for the
meishijia
all his life. He knew they would eat the fat.

Jiang stood back to let Liang Yeh back in and peered out through the crack in the door. “You win,” he said to Tan. “They’re eating it. Any more dishes?”

“One,” said Sam. “The last metaphor. It’s easy now. I made the broth yesterday.” From the refrigerator he took a bowl with about six cups of rich-looking jellied broth. “Lamb broth. I boiled it for three hours — lamb meat and bones, and wine, and all kinds of aromatics. Then I cooled it, took out all the fat.” He dumped the jellied broth into a pot. “Every great banquet ends with a fish,” he told Maggie in English. “This is going to be carp in lamb broth.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that combination,” said Maggie.

“It’s a literary finish. This last dish creates a word, perhaps the single most important word in the Chinese culinary language —
xian,
the fresh, clean taste. The character for
xian
is made up of two characters — the character for fish combined with the character for lamb. In this dish the two are joined. They mesh. They symbolize
xian.
They are
xian.
”

“Is it hard to make them work together, carp and lamb?”

“Harder than you think. It’s about the balance of flavors. Lamb cooked in wine is sweet and strong. Carp is meaty and also strong. If you can find just the right meeting point, they’re perfect.” The broth was heating up.

“It smells wonderful.”

“Watch,” he said. “As full as the people out there are, they’ll eat the soup, all of it.” He added the fish, brought the broth and the fish back to a boil, and immediately turned it out into a famillerose tureen. The smell was the two natural musks, of lamb and of carp, made one.

“Mm.” She drew it in. “In the beginning was the Word.”

He laughed at her, delighted, and took off his apron. “That’s it!” He lifted the bowl. It was done.

Dessert was a platter of rare fruits, trimmed and carved into bite-sized flowers and other small pleasing geometries, then assembled like a mosaic into the shape of a flying yellow dragon — imperial style, with five claws instead of four. This was another of Uncle Tan’s creations.

Crafting thematic images with fruits and vegetables was a common Chinese culinary trick, practiced at all the better restaurants, so when Sam first brought the fruit mosaic to the table the only comment it excited was on the perfection of the dragon and the pleasing way in which the finale reinforced the Liang family’s roots in imperial cuisine. It was only after the panel began to nibble at the fruits that the cries of happy surprise once again rose from the table. None of the fruits were what they expected. They were from every corner of China and her territories, like the delicacies that had always been brought to the Emperor. There were mangosteens and soursops and cold litchi jelly from the south, deep-orange Hami melon from Xinjiang, jujubes and crab apples and haws from China’s northeast.

If the members of the panel ate enough of the fruit to see the line of calligraphy alongside the painting of peaches on the plate, they would also find an excerpt from Yi Yin’s famous description of the tribute fruits brought to court, written in the eighteenth century B.C.:
North of the Chao Range there are all kinds of fruit eaten by the Gods. The fastest horses are required to fetch them.
If they ate far enough, they would read these lines and the connection would be complete.

Sam didn’t know if they would reach the quotation or not, but by now he saw that it didn’t matter. The act was enough. There was totality in the act.

Now, from the dining room, they were cheering and calling out. Maggie touched his arm. “I think they want you.”

So he walked in. They rose to their feet, crying out their happiness, applauding. “Marvelous!” “Unforgettable!” “The Liangs have returned.”

“Thank you,” he said back to them, “thank you.” He felt himself practically vibrating with happiness. He introduced his assistants, his father and his uncles, one by one. He bowed. He thanked them again.

After hearing the names, one of the panelists addressed Sam’s father. “You are Liang Yeh? The son of Liang Wei?”