Day 4–Notes on Dining

Dinner tonight was interesting. Tandoori chicken was on the menu. Bold and ambitious! The execution was a bit lacking though and the chicken turned out to be more like an Indian themed roast quarter-chicken, but it was still pretty good. Roast beef was a bit dry…not sure why I felt like I needed 2 meats, maybe it’s because I’m usually surrounded by vegetarians.

Tandoori chicken!?!

My co-worker suggested I mention the “No Removal of Food” policy. As the name suggests, no food may be removed from the dining rooms. It seems a bit odd that someone can’t take a snack back to their room to nibble on, but we’re in the middle of the wilderness, there are wild animals…including wild rodents. The more food we have lying around, the more problems we’ll have with rodents. I’m happy to follow the “No Removal of Food” policy. Chris did point out that people are allowed to leave the dining room with ice cream (there is an ice cream cooler in the main dining room). Chris believes this is because ice cream isn’t food…or the ice cream at camp isn’t food…

It’s 6:33pm and I’m going to bed. Getting up at 4am is tiring.

Day 4–Site Lunch

Workers pack their lunches in the “bag-up” rooms at camp. The building trades workers typically keep their lunches in designated lunch rooms with limited fridge space, so some of them use lunch coolers (like for picnics!). Office staff have a bit more fridge space so I can grab stuff that requires refridgeration. I usually go for sandwiches, beef pies, carrots & celery, yogurt, and cookies. The sandwiches aren’t bad…after they’ve gone through the panini press.

Suvarna charges the new guy $1 to use her “Big Boss Grill”, but since I’m really likeable, she lets me use it for free.

A panini press turns this mediocre sandwich into a glutenous and meaty culinary delight.

My office mate makes a salad by breaking carrots into a container filled with lettuce and other vegetables. He doesn’t have a knife.

Some people get really creative with lunch at site. The kitchen has at least two slow cookers. Someone even made chili today. Note that this isn’t just reheated chili, I watched someone throw in the ingredients for chili at 6:15am this morning.

Mmm…Pho, or is it Mmmmmm…Pho?

A nondescript building sits near the northeast corner of 83rd street and 83rd avenue in Edmonton. Over the past 6 years, it has been derelict and vacant for 4 of those years, and was occupied by a less than sketchy restaurant with even sketchier clientelle for the other 2 years. Renovated and rejuvenated, this building now houses Mmm…Pho, a restaurant specializing the popular Vietnamese comfort food.

Located at 8205 83rd street in Edmonton, next to the TD branch on the corner of 83rd and 83rd, Mmm…Pho is a small, sparsely decorated, but clean restaurant.  My daughters and I have dined at Mmm…Pho twice in the past month and we were pleasantly surprised. The service is friendly and helpful, which differentiates it from the myriad of Chinese restaurants I’ve sampled in Edmonton.

With a small selection of appetizers and desserts, the remainder of the menu is entirely pho. For the unfortunate few who haven’t tried pho, it is a fragrant Vietnamese noodle soup. Various vegetables and meats can be added to pho. Pho is also traditionally served with a side of fresh basil, bean sprouts and various spice enhancing peppers.  My oldest daughter is a vegetarian and was unable to find any dishes that were clearly meat-free, but after our server consulted the kitchen, we were informed a vegetarian pho could be prepared. My omnivorous daughter and I tried the steak pho. Each order of pho came in an enormous bowl, which could have easily fed 3 people. The vegetarian pho consisted of carrots, broccoli, sprouts and cabbage while my steak pho had thin slices of medium steak mixed in. The phos were deliciously fragrant and tasty. While the vegetables in the vegetarian pho were slightly overcooked, my daughter still gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up. This is not fine dining, it’s a Vietnamese diner serving Vietnamese comfort food…and it’s very comforting.

If you like pho, check out Mmm…Pho!

Serve the People…Serve them Chinese Food! Notes on 641.5951 LIN

 Serve the People: A Stir Fried Journey Through China, by Jen Lin-Liu (641.5951 LIN at Edmonton Public Library) is not only the best piece of food writing I’ve read, but it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read–on any topic.  This is not a book review, as I’m not entirely sure I posses enough thinkology to properly review this work, and calling this piece a book review would be an insult to people who can actually craft a proper book review. What follows are my thoughts on Lin-Liu’s work.

This book is great. This book is an excellent piece of culinary journalism, it’s one of the most entertaining and engaging books I’ve ever read. It’s not just another book about chinese food, it’s not a cook book, it’s not a culinary history of China, it is a personal journey through China’s culinary culture. Lin-Liu chronicles her adventures through China’s culinary world, starting as a student at a seedy Beijing cooking school, to a “noodle apprentice”, to a sous chef at an upscale Shanghai hotel, and then back to Beijing as the owner of a new cooking school.

Lin-Liu gives the reader a unique perspective on Chinese cuisine and customs. As an Chinese-American, raised in Southern California and fluent in Mandarin, she can “blend-in” in China and observe first hand how the business of food is conducted in China. On a recent trip to China to adopt our new daughter, our family was constantly drawing stares, smiles and stunned looks everywhere we went. I know we were treated differently. Jen Lin-Liu, I’m sure, didn’t have this problem. While outward appearances suggest she’s a native of China, she’s still 100% American, something she can’t hide. This fact comes to light early on in the book as she describes her cooking classes in Beijing:

Teacher Zhang and I had an uneasy relationship. Most of the time, he spoke with a guttural Beijing accent. But when he turned to me to ask a question, he enunciated very carefully. “Miss Lin,” he’d say with a hint of condescension, as if he were taunting me. He’d pause and take a sip from his glass jar filled with tea or wipe his hands on the sleeves of his ski jacket. “How is food different from cuisine?” Occasionally he’d look at me with his beady eyes and let out a little laugh, shaking his head. The teachers and students were baffled as to why I called myself “Chinese American,” a fuzzy concept in their heads. They seemed unable to conceive that it meant that I knew English better than I knew Chinese, much less that I could be more American than I was Chinese. My Mandarin was not bad, but it was far from perfect. I could hold fluent conversations, even if my tones were a little off. But I had neglected to work on my reading and writing skills after my first year of living in China, and nothing in my previous experiences had prepared me for the nuances of discussing fish guts. While my classmates dutifully copied down what was written on the board, my pen often hovered above my notebook, midcharacter. I had trouble finishing basic culinary words like “sauce” and “steam.”

A month into the class, after about the fiftieth time Teacher Zhang had turned to me to ask, “Do you understand?” and received a blank stare in return, something seemed to dawn on him.

“Miss Lin, Chinese is not your mother tongue, is it?”

The revelation rocked the class, setting students atwitter.

Never mind that I had clearly informed the administration of my identity and my purpose when I enrolled, and that the information had been funneled and disseminated in the usual bureaucratic Chinese way. “Miss Lin is a Chinese-American writer, and she wants to spread propaganda about Chinese food to the American people,” an administrator had proudly announced to the class on my first day.

I had needed assistance to fill out the registration forms. I had assumed that when I interrupted Teacher Zhang to ask questions, he and the students understood that I had to process the information in Chinese first and then mentally translate it into English. Apparently, however, they had simply thought I was retarded.

Probably one of my favourite lines in any book “…they had simply thought I was retarded.” The rest of the book is filled with this style of honest, often self-deprecating humour and observations on the culture of Chinese cuisine.

My favourite chapter is entitled “Noodle Apprentice”and describes Lin-Liu’s stint at a small, Beijing noodle shop. I got the impression that the noodle shop was analagous to a donair shop or a hot dog stand with a few tables. Not very glamourous. Lin-Liu’s description of the work is secondary to her story about the proprietor, Chef Zhang. A man from the country who journey’s to Beijing to try to make a better life for him and his family, he’s a man with a soul. When Chef Zhang’s family comes to visit him in Beijing, you feel the scene as if you were there. Want to know more? Read the book.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in China, food, Chinese Food, or anyone who just wants a good read. Five stars out of five, 10 out of 10, 2 thumbs up, 100% certified fresh, etc…

Baking Bread with Grandma

During a visit with my grandparents in the summer of 1990, my grandma gave me an extremely valuable gift, a gift I can pass on to my daughters as well. My grandma taught me how to bake bread.

We had just finished a game of cribbage, my grandpa was going to have a nap, and my grandma said she was going to bake some bread for dinner. I asked if I could help and told her I’d always wanted to learn to bake bread. I never thought I’d be able to make my own bread without a bread-maker, the whole process looked so complicated and getting an edible result wasn’t guaranteed.

Grandma didn’t have a recipe, she had been baking bread for close to 50 years at that time and added ingredients until “things were right”. I mixed together flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Grandma added water and told me to stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture started to clump together. I continued to stir using my hands when the dough became to hard to stir with the spoon.

Grandma then showed me how to knead the dough right in the bowl. She didn’t want to mess up her clean counter-tops. She threw the dough down and punched it and folded it, claiming the exercise kept her in shape. After the dough proofed, she showed me how to form it into a loaf. She flatted out a rectangle of dough, rolled it up and then plopped it into a loaf pan where she let it proof again until the dough was almost oozing over the sides of the pan.

We put the bread in the oven, a “hot oven” according to Grandma (I checked, it was 400°F) for 10 minutes, and then lowered the temperature to 375°F and let it bake for 40 minutes. I was eager to try my bread, but Grandma said we had to let it cool because the loaf was “still baking”.

10 minutes later, I had a slice of most delicious bread I’d ever tasted.

If you’ve enjoyed my green onion cakes, pizza, pita, naan, or my cinnamon buns, you’ve got my Grandma to thank.

What is a Universal Chan?

Homo Universalis, Universal Man, Renaissance Man, polymath, Universal Genius. All terms used to describe one with proficiency (not necessarily expertise), knowledge and understanding in a wide array of subjects and fields of study. Leonardo da Vinci is frequently held up as the original Universal Man.

I am not the 21st century’s version of the Universal Man. I am the Universal Chan. I have an “executive summary” knowledge of a great many subjects, and of those numerous subjects I only have an understanding of a small handful. Of those subjects I actually understand, I’m only an expert in one or two…and that expertise is regularly questioned. I am not the new version of the Universal Man, but I’m trying.

To fulfil the requirements of a Universal Man, the Universal Chan will discuss a wide range of subjects, all from the standpoint of a 37 year old, bald, half-Chinese, Unitarian Universalist, engineer, husband and father of two. Expect to see posts on politics, science, environmentalism, religion, city planning, arts, music, and most importantly food.

Excelsior!