Chinese Cooking for Diamond Thieves (21 page)

Corinne found her own spot at the table and helped herself to the platter of dumplings. She picked up the ceramic teapot and poured a cup for Langston, peered over into mine and saw it was still full, then poured for herself.

“Hung's soy sauce chicken?” Langston said, after he'd swallowed a bite of the dumpling.

We both shook our heads at that one. “And
mapo
tofu?” I said.

“A sentimental favorite,” Langston said. “But the judges are going to want to go with something that's a little more exotic.”

“Chinese-y,” I said, “but not too far-out.”

“Yep,” Langston said. “You know them. They're thinking of what kind of publicity they can get out of this. They'll hope for a write-up in the paper. It's great publicity for all the Chinese restaurants.”

“But it would sort of defeat the purpose if the winning dish is something like hot and sour cat,” Corinne said. “It's got to be Chinese. Just not too Chinese.”

“Right,” I said. “That would not bring in lots of business.”

The homey sounds of eating temporarily suspended conversation: slurping tea, sucking air to cool off the hot dumplings, the clack of chopsticks.

“You know, I've heard that all my life,” Langston said, after he swallowed a dumpling. He reached for another. “But do you think there's some place in China where they really do eat cat?”

Corinne shook her head. “Maybe the Cantonese. You know the saying about Cantonese. If its back is to the sun, eat it.”

“Never heard of any Cantonese dishes that have cat in them,” Langston said. “I don't think anybody, unless he was starving, would eat cat. Especially not a Chinese.”

I turned to Thuy. “Vietnamese do, though, right, Thuy?”

“Shut up,
fan tong,
” Thuy said. It was the first time I'd heard him speak Chinese. He called me a rice bucket. It meant I wasn't good for much. As Mandarin insults go, it was mild. He'd heard one of us say it in the kitchen, I was guessing, and added it to his repertoire. Now he was trying it out for the first time.

“You're starting to fit in just fine around here,” Langston said.

“Eat shit,” Thuy said to him, reaching for a dumpling.

Rule #23: Never be predictable.

 

I lost.

By three seconds. It had been the mile run we made in sixth grade PE. And I lost, to a guy named Ry Grant, running back for the North Andover Middle School Eagles. Which ruined, with those three seconds, the plan I had to impress Addie McDaniel with my speed, so much so that she would want to go out with me over the upcoming summer. And two days later, Doug Armand told Langston and me he'd seen Ry and Addie eating pizza together in Papa Gino's at Shawsheen Plaza.

“Pepperoni or just cheese?” Langston had asked.

Pepperoni or cheese?
I had a ball in my throat that tasted like I'd been trying to swallow clay. A summer I'd already had planned with Addie was dissolving right there as I walked along Lowell Street. I didn't feel like crying—and I'd have rather had my arm cut off than have cried in front of Langston and Doug—but I felt that maybe life was going to be a little tougher than I had ever considered it. In the face of that kind of realization, crying wasn't going to help. By the sixth grade, I already knew that. The thought of Ry and Addie sharing slices didn't make the realization any easier. I was, though, completely confident in one thing: I wasn't about to show I was bothered by it.

“Pepperoni or cheese?” I said, as nonchalantly as I could. “What difference does that make?”

“I'm hungry,” Langston said. “Helps me visualize the scene better.”

I'd never said a word to Langston about my crush on Addie McDaniel. And a lot of times Langston seemed like he wasn't really dialed in to much that was going on around him anyway. So I figured it was my secret, and I intended to keep it. At other times, though, it was hard to tell just how much Langston knew. Because a while later, after Doug had peeled away from us to head for his house, right out of nowhere, Langston said, “Hard to figure what some people see in other people.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You know, Addie McDaniel, for instance. Hard to figure how she'd be interested in a guy like Ry Grant. Guy's a jerk.”

Nine years later, it was me shrugging, standing over a wok sizzling with chunks of pork and little, dark green trees of Chinese broccoli. It was Monday, the first night of the competition.

“Take a break,” Mr. Leong said to me. “We no busy now. Go down to Din Ho watch.”

“Pass,” I said.

“Go,” Li said. “We're covered here. Every table booked all night. So, busy but no surprises for us.”

I knew Li was being optimistic. Everyone in the kitchen
had
gone over the reservation book; we knew most of the names, had a good idea of what they'd be ordering. I knew, too, that Li was willing to take the risk of the “anthill” getting too busy, the Eastern Palace getting swamped with some unexpected orders, if it allowed me to go watch the competition. Which that night was at Din Ho, where Parker Huang was leading off in the batting order of the contest, preparing his Buddha Jumps Over the Wall soup.

“No thanks,” I told them both. I said the same thing the next night, when Jiangguo Wen made his
mapo
tofu. After that, they stopped asking.

The week went by slowly. Waitresses were talking about the contest, scoring it according to their own evaluations, most of which seemed about as reliable as Mr. Leong's strategy. The other cooks mentioned it, those in our kitchen and those who dropped by after work. We didn't talk as much about it, though. It was part of our image, as cooks, not to seem too eager or too invested in the contest. On Thursday I was up. I cleaned two big carp and carved deep slashes in their silvery flanks. I put each in a bamboo steamer, stacked the steamers, then balanced them over a wok bubbling with boiling water. I could smell the sweet, meaty aroma of the fish and the delicate woody scent of the bamboo as they began cooking. I shredded carrots, black mushrooms, and big, dark green leaves of pickled Chinese cabbage and fresh slices of bamboo shoots that had just appeared at the Chinese market where I bought the carp. I slivered a couple of thumb-size knobs of ginger. I'd had the stock going since about noon—made from chicken bones, slow simmered until it was glossy and thick. I added a blob of rendered chicken fat for richness. Once the stock was just hot enough to send some bubbles floating slowly to the surface, I added the carrots, mushrooms, pickled cabbage, bamboo shoots, and ginger. That's the tough part, really. If the stock is too hot, bubbling, the individual vegetables get their flavors all mixed together as they cook. They need to be separate. They were.

I plated the carp, then added the five ingredients in neat clumps along the flanks of the fish. I thickened the stock, not with the cornstarch or arrowroot starch that most Chinese chefs use. Instead, I did it with water chestnut flour, which gives the thickened sauce just the right texture, not too gloppy, not too thin. I ladled the sauce just lightly over the fish. Ready to go.

I delivered the fish, their heads in opposite directions on the platter, like they were swimming around in a circle, and presented them to the six judges. I recognized most of the panel. Eric Tsang was president of the Chinese-American Association. He was big, with a wide, smooth, and florid face. Tsang was a major booster for the Chinese community, leaning on local businesses to sponsor lion dances at New Year's and regular street fairs, and the Chinese Language School. Mrs. Zhao, sitting beside Mr. Tsang, was the director of the Language School. Her hair was done up in an elaborate swoop, with strands of gray showing. She had the very high, pronounced cheekbones that a lot of Chinese associate with the far Western regions of China. Dr. Luo was on her other side. He ran a medical clinic where all the older Chinese women in the area went because they were comfortable only with a Chinese doctor. The others I didn't know by name. I recognized their faces; knew who they were. A couple of young hotshot lawyers and the wife of a guy who owned a Lexus dealership.

I stood by the table while they looked over my presentation, murmuring “ummmh” and “ahhh” and “hmmm.” Dr. Luo peered at me though thick glasses and said, “You steamed it instead of frying it.” It was an implied question.

“Yu-er-pu-ni,”
I said. “The taste of fat without being oily. If I'd fried it, the flavor of the fish would have been lost. You couldn't taste all the vegetables with it.”

“People like five willow fish fried nowadays,” Dr. Luo said.

I didn't say anything. Which I thought was elegant.

Eric Tsang reached over and slowly spun the heavy glass lazy Susan so the fish platter stopped in from of Mrs. Zhao. As the Language School's director, her status as an educator made her the senior-most of the group. She had the first serving. She used her chopsticks to lift some of the meat from the flank of the carp, up near its head. Bad luck to eat a fish from the back to the front. The first bite should come from the head. In fact, the first bite should have come from the cheek of the carp. I was guessing Mrs. Zhao was being humble, not taking the choicest bite. The lazy Susan rotated; each of them took some of the fish, lifting it in their chopsticks, looking it over, then tasting it.

I stood and watched while they ate the fish. Mrs. Zhao looked up as she made delicate little chewing motions. Mr. Tsang looked down, I noticed, as he chewed. Nobody was making eye contact. Each seemed lost in his or her own thoughts, evaluating the fish. I could tell, for the lawyers, it was the first time they'd ever tasted five willow fish. They ate, tentatively at first, as if they wondered whether they'd like it. It was encouraging to see them go for second helpings, digging in with more enthusiasm.

“I must say it is amazing that you would know this dish,” Dr. Luo said, when the fish had been reduced to its skeleton and tail. “Where did you learn to make
wuliu
fish?”

“Old family recipe,” I said.

 

Two days later, Saturday, Corinne and I were both working through the lunch and dinner shift. Li had taken a couple of days off to visit his sister. Jao-long and I worked both shifts. Early on, just before we got busy, Mr. Leong pushed open the swinging door into the kitchen and held it there while he stuck his head through.

“Sorry, Tucker,” he said. “Bad news is you don't win. Good news is you friend Wu? He win.”

“By three seconds?” I asked him. He cocked his head and looked at me like I'd said something strange. “Never mind.”

Corinne, later that night, echoed Mr. Leong's sentiments.

“I'm sorry you didn't win.”

We were standing in the hallway outside her apartment. The whole building had a faint aroma like fresh ginger, lemongrass, and five-spice powder had all been put into an aerosol and sprayed. The building where Langston and I lived had its own particular aroma. There was a little less ginger in ours.

“Me too,” I said. I leaned against the wall.

“But you're not that sorry.”

“Well, I'm not racked with heaving sobs,” I said. It was warm enough that she hadn't worn a jacket or a sweater when we left the restaurant. The black dress she was wearing, the same one we'd bought at the mall a few months before, was cut low enough that I could see the creamy brown half-moon of her chest. Just a hint of cleavage, nothing more. It was enough.

“I'm a
laowai,
” I said. “My Mandarin is probably so perfect you forget that.”

“So what does not being Chinese have to do with it?”

“Not everything,” I said. “But a lot. I'm cooking in a Chinese restaurant. Cooking real Chinese food. I'm playing in their ballpark, playing by their rules.”

“Which are not your rules,” Corinne said. “Which must be tough for you.”

“Sometimes those rules don't seem to make much sense. Sometimes they really
don't
make much sense. They're unfair. They're stacked against you.”

“But you still play there?”

“Yes,” I said. “And that's where the fun is. It's hard to explain.” It was. I had thought a lot about it. I still couldn't explain it. Even to myself.

“I like being able to play in that ballpark,” I said. “I take a lot of pride in it. There aren't a lot of people who aren't Chinese who can play there. In fact, even most Chinese can't play in the ballpark of a Chinese restaurant kitchen. So sure, it would have been nice to have won. But in a way, for me at least, just being able to play the game is a kind of winning.”

Corinne nodded. She looked past me like she was thinking about something else. Neither of us said anything for a while. Then, all the sudden, she reached out and took my hand.

“We could,” she said. She looked up at me.

“Oh yeah, we could,” I said. “Easily.” I knew what she was talking about.

“Just as easily as we could have that night after those guys jumped me,” she said.

“More easily.”

“More?”

“Yes,” I said. “This time the evening didn't begin with you getting mugged.”

“That wouldn't have been the most romantic start of things, would it?”

I agreed with her.

She kept looking at me. “But we won't this time either, will we? Even though I didn't get mugged.”

“No, we won't” I said. “Although I wouldn't say ‘won't' in the sense of ‘entirely, never-a-ghost-of-a-chance won't.'”

“Just not tonight,” she said. “Not now?”

I nodded.

“It isn't because you're depressed about not winning, is it?”

“No.”

“Is it because you're still thinking about becoming a Shaker?”

“I was never thinking about becoming a Shaker,” I said. “I thought I made that clear a long time ago.”