Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [97]
The cooks eventually flavor the shrimp with ginger and fry them in batter to go around the base of the dragon centerpiece along with two kinds of fried balls, one of fish and the other combining shrimp and pork. As the banquet time approaches, four hours after our arrival at the hotel, Fang extracts the whelk from its shell, slices it paper-thin with his cleaver, lays it out in a fan pattern, and glazes it with oil. He adds carved vegetables to the plate plus a section of the shell that shows the beautiful spiral pattern.
The producer escorts Patty, John, Vicky, and us upstairs to a private banquet hall and seats us at the larger of two round tables. The Olivers ogle the china, claiming it’s some of the finest from the area. Chefs Fang and Su join us, and everyone else takes a chair at the other table, where our leftovers go when we’ve had our fill of the fifteen or so dishes. The servers bring us Iron Buddha tea first, to sip with stir-fried peanuts with a crackling sugar glaze and tangy, spicy pickles of cabbage and other greens with black olives. Then comes a Chaozhou specialty we didn’t see in the kitchen, goose braised in black vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, cinnamon, star anise, and ginger. The skin-on slices taste overly fatty to us, but the vinegar makes a superb foil for the rich meat and the aromatics in the braising sauce have fully permeated the goose.
Our favorites among the dishes are the flowery squid, the simple lobster dumplings, and the fish with the ham and mushrooms. Both the lobster and the fish have absorbed a surprising amount of their gentle seasonings without losing any of their own delicate character. Steamed, vividly green baby bok choy decorate the fish platter, and the intact lobster shell, along with a garnish of orchid sprays, sits beside the dumplings. Cheryl says, “I swear the lobster antennae are still wiggling.” A halo of deep-fried morning glory leaves surround the pristine white squid, now topped with fried garlic as well as the garlic vinegar, making it a garlic lover’s dream.
The whelk is also tasty, but both of us have trouble holding the large, slick slices with our chopsticks and decide that restraint is the better part of valor in this case to avoid making a mess. An oyster omelet, cleverly arranged to display the yin and yang signs, arrives near the end, moist and creamy with just a touch of crispness on the edges. It’s good enough for a full meal, but we can’t manage more than a few bites each. Bill sums up our feelings when he tells Fang, “This is one of the most incredible experiences of my whole life.”
It’s our turn to perform, however, and the salsa idea, so brilliant last night, now looks like a recipe for cultural disaster. To offer it as any kind of counterpart to the Chinese feast seems totally insulting, so we start trying to weasel our way out of it, saying there isn’t enough time to do both the demo and a formal interview, the more critical element to them. After all, what was planned as a short morning appearance has already taken us into the middle of the afternoon, leaving us scant hours with our friends before our departure early the next day. The producer pleads, “One more hour,” even though he knows the taping would take longer. John and Patty come to our rescue, promising that they will come back to the station another day and prepare an entire American Thanksgiving dinner for them. The compromise satisfies everyone, and the TV crew starts setting up for the interview.
The producer seats us and Vicky at a round table with Miss Cheung and a gentleman in a suit who does nothing except serve us Iron Buddha tea. Demure to the point of silence up to this point, Cheung suddenly shows a confident, assertive charm, reminding Cheryl of Katie Couric. While her sidekick constantly refreshes our tea, and Vicky scrambles successfully to handle the back-and-forth translation of everything,