when loret was a grad student at ucdavis, her classmate and his wife had invited us to dinner. after hearing their daughter wendy give a stirring rendition of 'lightly row' on the violin, we sat sipping our drinks: water, lemonade, tsingtao beer. sun poured in the window of their tiny married student apartment. having tried to stir-fry for years - skinny idealistic vegetarian that i was - i'd usually muster something vaguely edible, occasionally even 'not bad.' without a doubt, his question intrigued me.
'no, i don't; i'd love to hear it.'
he got right to the point - 'bean sauce: that the secret!'
i nodded, smiling, then narrowed my eyes. bean sauce? sounded like some kind of delicate and savory condiment you could only find in chinatown: just go down the alley between waverly and stockton blvd., open the iron gate on your left, rap a secret code on the door. ask for taitai lin. cash only.
before i could ask, he pointed to a bottle on the table: 'kikkoman.' of course, soybean sauce. ba dump bump.
'thanks wu-seng, now i know the secret!' i reached for another beer.
later i heard the wok tool click-clacking; i went back to the kitchen, perhaps i could learn from his technique. as he scraped and stirred with his right hand, his left occasionally took a spoonful of granular white substance from a bowl on the counter, and tossed it in.
'so, are there really bicycle traffic jams in china?' davis claimed to be the bicycle capital of the u.s., but i imagined our transit system was even further from the chinese variety than my bland stir-fry was from the meal he was about to serve up. he stirred in another heaping white spoonful.
'every day, sunday too! bicycles -very slow - cars better. american system, much faster!' bright smile, one silver crown on each side of his mouth. i kept my dark cloud opinions from raining on his automobile exuberance. and i continued to wonder about the mysterious white substance. msg is white, i knew, but i thought it was much finer - a powder. i could no longer resist the temptation and took a pinch, sprinkled it on my tongue.
'sugar, you like? wendy very likes candy, much sugar!' he said.
'sweet jesus!' i felt like columbus sighting land, i'd just discovered the real secret: so hidden the chinese didn't even know it was secret.
the meal was fantastic, especially the deep-fried tofu (another good secret). i've learned from dining at chinese restaurants - certainly not by my own cooking efforts - the art is to find a balance of flavors salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. a balance, or middle way, emblematic of chinese philosophies through the ages, from confucianism to buddhism. a balance that, with the ascendance of maoist-industrial-capitalism, seems to have been lost.
hopefully it's not too late to get it back: maybe a bit more sugar would help? or maybe less?
