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^^^Inrtlanb CObseruer
Asian Food Delights
March 3, 2010
Chinese dish is beef and broccoli;
there s nothing exotic. The only
thing that might be .exotic is the
oyster sauce. If you don t have oys-
ter sauce, you stir fry the beef with
garlic and ginger and then throw in
the broccoli and put in some soy
sauce and it tastes good anyways.
Some of the simplest home cooking
doesn't need any exotic ingredients.
Thirty years ago, Asian food was
F om have an interesting hack
Are there any exotic ingredients
an exotic and rare cuisine for the story. Has that influenced your
or dishes you 'd like a western au­
American palette. Fast forward to work?
dience to try?
today, and the Asian food aisle is
When my father went back to
I always tell people when you go
present in almost any grocery store, China he opened a restaurant, and 1
out to a Chinese restaurant the key
and eateries featuring lares from the basically grew up in the restaurant
is to look at a variety of cooking
Far East are perhaps as prevalent as business. My mother ran a grocery
techniques too, not only ingredi­
fast food.
store. So throughout my life I’ve
ents. Everything in Chinese, in
Martin Yan has helped introduce been associated with food, hanging
lifestyle and food and cuisine and
Asian food to American audiences around with food and restaurants
cooking is about yin and yang. Ying
serving as host of PBS’ “Yan Can and the kitchen.
and yang are contrasting force, but
Cook.”
at
the same time you put them to­
Did you have any challenges
With a thick Cantonese accent presenting Asian fo o d to Western
gether and they are harmonious.
and infectious enthusiasm for Asian audiences?
You put that little water chestnut
food, Yan has steadily un-shrouded
with tofu. Tofu is very soft very
I basically make it very main-
exotic fares for American audiences, stream. I try to demystify Asian and
moist and water chestnut is very
always ending the show with, “If Chinese cooking. I use whatever is
crunchy, so it s a contrasting force,
Yan can cook, so can you.”
available in the market place. Now if
but you put it together it's a perfect
Portland holds a special place for you go to super market, you can find
balance. Cooking is common sense
Yan. whose father spent years work- soy sauce, hoisin sauce, sesame oil,
with imagination with some under­
ing in Chinatown making money bokchoy, wonton egg roll wrapper,
standing of the yin and yang force.
before returning to China. Yan was all kinds of stuff. I think that cooking
The big thing in Portland is the
in town for a cooking show at Wong Chinese food you don't always need
local fo o d movement. What are
K ing’s Restaurant on Division the exotic ingredients. You might
your thoughts on it?
Street, a place the chef has high need some more traditional ingredi-
Chinese cuisine is the best to use
regards for.
ents. Here's an example, a typical
local food and organic food. You go
to China, they have a lot of farming,
a
lot of fish, farms that are all sus­
Portland holds a special place for Martin Yan of ‘Yan Can Cook’
tainable. When they raise the poul­
on PBS because his father spent years earning a living in
Portland’s Chinatown.
try and the ducks and chicken they
just use scraps, rather than feed
them hormones, like wild animals.
Free range, they run around and
grab the insects, and bugs, and
worms. They're the best tasting
chicken. The Chinese have learned
to recycle things years and years
ago. And the Chinese always say, if
it's not fresh, if it's not in season,
don't eat it. Any local tomato is
much better than a green tomato
packed in a container with chemi­
cals and ripened for weeks. They're
tasteless because when they pick
they're green, and they ship it to the
warehouse where it ripens, but it's
not ripening under the sun on the
vine with the heat. Where I live, I go
to the farmers ’ market twice a week.
I only buy ugly looking tomatoes.
The uglier it is, the better the taste.
VW/tf/ did you have fo r Chinese
New Year?
Chinese New Year is probably
the most important celebration and
holiday in the Chinese calendar.
During this time most of the Chinese
would celebrate with a lot of food.
Food is the main focus of celebra­
tion. And Chinese New Year has a
lot of symbolism. You see a lot of
tangerine, a lot of orange, a lot of
chicken, a lot of fish. I have twin
boys and I invited a couple friends
and I cooked a big rooster and I
marinated it in soy sauce, hoisin
sauce, five spice power, a lot of
garlic and ginger, and stuck it in
underneath the skin and marinated
it. I rubbed my seasoning under­
neath the skin because if you do it
on the skin it's tasteless, so I put it
underneath the skin, and I roast it. I
had some glutinous rice with some
Celebrity chef has Portland ties
w w w .n e w s e a s o n s m a r k e t.c o m
you click, we deliver, (or pull up for pick up)
continued
on page 19