Ahhh, to have real Chinese Food

Chinese food...specifically Dim Sum...upon my move to Virginia a few years back I thought that there would be a excess of Chinese food restaurants, why I thought that I have no idea, but the sad truth is that there are no authentic Chinese restaurants in my part of the world...now, in Honolulu it was a Sunday tradition to put on your finest gecko t-shirt, a pair of expandable shorts and your Nanakuli suede's (flip flops) and drive to Mr. Li's. This was a huge stone building sent in a courtyard and protected by a pair of stone Fu Lions that someone had spray painted 'rock rules' on one of it's enormous heads...a sad attempt at humor...inside there were huge round tables draped with white tablecloths and covered with circles of Plexiglas, thereby saving Mr. Li a bundle in dry cleaning...Mr Li was nothing if not frugal...There was always a line and as you stood slowly shuffling forward you could catch a glimpse of the stainless steel dim sum carts whisking by the doorway and catch an occasional redolent sniff of the goodies contained therein...now the Chinese are great believers in odd numbers, all Chinese wedding feasts have an uneven number of courses, five course meal, seven course meal and the belly splitting nine course meal...All accompanied by the requisite fortune cookies now made in Japan...The premise being that the odd number will bring good luck...I made this suggestion to my wife, that were I to have another wife, thereby bringing our number to three, we would achieve that state of 'good luckiness' so sought after by the Chinese...She graciously demurred: offering to move my person a few feet in a northerly direction with the swift application of her right foot...But I digress...Once we were seated Mr. Li always made a point of greeting us and saying something effusive in Chinese, for all I know he was probably swearing at me...He always said 'Aroha...Aroha' followed by something unintelligible and I always nodded sagely while tucking in my napkin...I would have agreed to bamboo splinters under my nails if he would just start the dim sum carts rolling in my direction.
But one they began...What a feast! Steamed buns filled with succulent pork, crispy tender Chinese broccoli under a blanket of salty oyster sauce, crispy egg rolls with hot Chinese mustard, tofu stuffed with seafood, steamed dumplings filled the chunks of lobster, crunchy green beans and sesame seeds...All of these and so much more accompanied by little bowls of sauces...I could have drunk them down, I often did...surreptitiously knocking back shots of soy sauce with aged Chinese black vinegar, sweet and tart plum sauce, oyster sauce shooters!! and for the finale...Melt in you mouth sweet custard in the flakiest of crusts...I was in goose bump heaven!
Now there are some things in the Chinese culture that even I have had the hold your nose and swallow attitude towards...One Sunday...in his stroll around the restaurant, Mr. Li clapped me on the back and congratulated me on my enjoyment of his fine cuisine, since they charge you by the little plates the dim sum are served on I figured Mr. Li was getting the better part of the bargain...He asked me if I liked 'Chinee Food'...I figured a smart ass answer would get me another offer from my wife to relocate my person so I just said yes...He offered me a little tid bit on the house and had my server bring out a 1000 year old egg...It was black and iridescent green and sliced open like a lotus leaf...The egg and I eyed each other dubiously...Wouldn't a 1000 year old egg be more wrinkled and smelly? Was it really 1000 years old? How many times had this egg been sent back to the kitchen? Mr. Li was saying something, but I wasn't listening, I was frantically trying to think of a way out o9f this, after all, I didn't want to insult the old man, but I also didn't want to toss up a meal that I had just paid $53.95 for...What to do? Now a 1000 year old egg isn't really 1000 years old and contrary to folk lore isn't cured in horse urine...Getting a horse to piss on an egg would be an acrobatic feat even for the Chinese...The taste is slightly gelatinous and gooey and if you dip it in enough soy sauce and swallow it quickly the taste doesn't linger, follow up with copious quantities of Chinese tea and the deed is done! I left him a big tip, Called him a little bastard in Russian and left with my dignity intact.

My personal odyssey; my culinary evolution

Hedonistic food soul that I am...I was a product of my mothers TV dinner mentality, happily gorging myself on her time honored recipes lovingly handed down from her mother...Kraft macaroni and cheese in a box, Swanson's T.V. Dinners and Hormel chili in a can...what more could a thirteen year old male ask for? Eating out was saved for special occasions and in the small town (no longer small) outside of Detroit where I grew up most restaurants were of your small town diner variety...my mother became big on the all you can eat buffet not only in the literal sense but unfortunately in the physical sense...thirty-five pounds later and two years older I came to the realization that not every one's mother took zip lock baggies to the all you can eat buffet and sugar actually came in five pound bags and not in those little pink packages...I blithely grappled through school and years of school lunches made with congealed fried bologna sandwiches and the occasional soupy rice pudding...I recently made a fried bologna sandwich, slathered with mayonnaise and slapped between two pieces of white bread, it was good for the first few bites...but then reality kicks in and you realize that you're eating something so bad for you, a cholesterol laden time bomb...in your youth your innocence protects you, there is no ten second rule, it falls on the ground, you pick it up and eat it, germs are not existent, you happily charge through childhood eating dirt and boogers (I deny the latter)...unfazed...Until you get older and start thinking like an adult and knowing...that's the key...knowing...that fried bologna sandwiches and their ilk are bad...bad...bad...! It wasn't until I moved to Honolulu and went to a restaurant called '3660 on the Rise' that I had my first gastronomical orgasm, I ordered the exotic mushroom ravioli, a wild and frivolous step for me, but I knew that I was in search of that elusive something that makes your mouth zing. Good...food...glorious food! I took a bite...I tasted..and Hallelujah, Mother of God and all his angels I had my first serious case of the food goosebumps! I have been in search of the goosebumps ever since... I became a glutton!...an epicurean hunter in search of goosebumps!!!...chicken long rice, manapua, lomi salmon, plate lunches with the obligatory two scoops of rice and macaroni salad, it became a challenge to hunt down the best plate lunch, which didn't necessarily come from a restaurant with white tablecloths and a waiter named Andre', but from the Mom and Pops food wagons that frequented Makaha.

Once I was the lucky recipient of a dinner invitation to a small Japanese family type restaurant in Moilili that featured a traditional multi course dinner called a Kaiseki...nine glorious food courses of artfully prepared and presented dishes with pared wines...I had also evolved into a somewhat of a food snob and began to appreciate not only the taste of what I was served but the appearance...not longer content to order from just any old fast food menu I began to search for food nirvana...of course all artfully presented! and then I met a local girl...no small feat for me! Whatever! and ....could the food Gods finally have smiled on me? could it be that...gasp! She was more of a food snob than I was! No first date jitters for us! Nimbly winding her way through the snobbiest of menu's, waiters deftly taking her orders, she pointed, she advised, she knew what she wanted...Chateaubriand for two, aubergines in a robust garlic sauce, delicate petit fours, saddles of veal...I was enthralled! I was hungry! I was in love!

But culinary life was not without it's faux paux, ahhh faux paux's...that happy state of ignorance!
I remember when presented with my first finger bowl, I treated it as an exotic cocktail thereby earning the everlasting derision of the waiter that no amount of a gratuity could erase...and so the quest began, tentatively at first...exploring an exotic menu item...a sample of this, a taste of that...feeling all the while like Oliver Twist in Charles Dickens when he held out his bowl and said "Please Sir...I want some more?"