WORLD'S GREATEST CHINESE LOVER

After arriving from China, Choon worked as a cook in Dinah's Shack, for thirty years. When I met him he was in his 60's, a small, bowlegged man -- from malnutrition as a youth, no doubt -- and with his stooped posture and quick, scurrying movements about the large kitchen, he always looked to me like someone trying to round up a flock of chickens in a barnyard.

The chicken-chasing illusion was further dramatized if Choon was empty-handed. Then he scurried about the kitchen holding his hands away from his body on both sides, bouncing off stoves and walls, as if ready to fly the coop himself. He had the curious gait seen in many old-time cooks who have learned the hard lesson of how to walk on wet kitchen floors while carrying pots full of hot liquid -- short flatfooted steps, which give greater security against surprise grease spots on the floor.

I saw Choon slip just once. He was carrying a big pot full of hot chicken gravy across the old planked floor. His feet went out from under him as he walked up to place the heavy pot on a table. The pot stayed on the table, but Choon went under it, flat on his back. He thought a minute, then said, "I go home now."

Choon’s round, smooth-skinned face might have appeared guileless as a boy's had he not over the years laboriously cultivated a sparse number of long black hairs which dangled from the outer edges of his lips and from his chin. He was pleased to refer to these brave strands as his beard. Choon was immensely vain about this sinister-appearing facial hair and often described it to me -- an innocent young man who didn't understand these things -- as the secret of his heroic success with women.

The old Chinese cook treasured his pots. This high regard for his pots is what started the whole thing off and nearly got Angelo killed. I came to work one afternoon and found Choon's meat cleaver stuck in the ancient door of the walk-in. The wood looked fresh in the sharp-edged wound. I pulled out the shiny instrument of death and held it up. "Hey, Choon, this your cleaver stuck in the door?"

"Yes, that my cleaver. I throw it at that son of a goat, but I miss."

"Which son of a goat? Angelo? Where's he at?"

"I pretty sure he leave. If he come back, I get him sure."

"What happened? How come you threw your cleaver at him?"

Stooped over his scarred, workworn table, Choon sucked his teeth, a sure sign of his displeasure. He turned his face up to me, his eyes mere slits.

He stroked his dangling mustache. "Hah! He mess with my pot all the time. One day I fix him good and teach him to mess with my pot. Every day he come in, he steal my pot. I need those pot to fix all thing." The old Chinese cook's voice turned into a soft caress as his tongue and lips tenderly spoke the familiar, much-loved words. "You know I have to feex the riiiicce, the cheeeeckin, the sweeet and sourrr porrrk and all those thing."

Choon had definite methods and definite pots he used to fix each dish. I think he must have used the same special pots and pans for all of his thirty years in this busy old landmark restaurant.

Chicken. Nobody but Choon ever fixed the hundred or so orders of fried chicken we sold every night at Dinah’s Shack. He fried the chicken in big roasting pans. We had eight of those pans. Each pan was large enough to hold two 22-pound rib roasts comfortably, three in a pinch. But two of these roasting pans were special--- they were the pans Choon used for fried chicken, and that's probably all they had ever been used for.

We all knew they were Choon's pans and kept hands off. Angelo, being the new man and not recognizing the vast importance of these pans to Choon's industry, probably figured one was the same as another and just grabbed the nearest one to braise off some short ribs or to roast that nights prime ribs. It looked like Choon had taught him different.

Choon's time-tested method of frying chicken never varied. He needed two of the pans to produce his artistry.

He worked with five-gallon cans of lard, scooping big gobs into his blackened roasting pans, then melting the lard on top of the eight-burner stove, four burners under each pan. He kept the grease in the two pans at different temperatures. Nobody but Choon knew what the temperatures were -- he never used a grease thermometer -- and maybe he didn't know himself. But it was obvious that the grease in the first pan was not as hot as the grease in the second, or finishing, pan.

The grease was never thrown away. At the end of his shift, Choon strained the used grease through a china cap lined with a towel into empty lard cans. The next day he poured the used grease -- dark now from days of use -- into the roasting pans and replenished the grease to its proper level with fresh white lard.

He worked with half chickens, split the long way down the backbone, never chopping the chicken into serving pieces until the waiter appeared to pick up his order.

Here's how he fixed his famous chicken.

He dipped the chicken halves in a special batter which contained only, as far as I was able to determine, flour and water, salt and pepper, some milk and a handful of baking powder. Maybe he sneaked something else in, but I have since tried my own version of the batter and it came out about the same.

He dunked the half chickens in the batter, coating them thickly, then -- carefully grasping a wing tip -- dropped them one at a time into the first pan where they would sink to the bottom of the grease. After they cooked for about ten minutes but were not yet browned, he transferred the chicken halves to the second, hotter, pan, where they browned nicely and finished cooking while he turned them a couple of times.

From the effect each pan of grease had on the chicken, I would guess the temperature of the first pan at about three hundred degrees, and the second at maybe three-sixty or so. The finished product was full of juice, the crust crisp and puffy.

Choon kept the cooked chicken in a warming chest. When he got an order, he just grabbed one of the cooked halves, chopped it up with his tin Chinese cleaver (bam!bam!bam! never more than three strokes, never missing the joints) and arranged the pieces on a dish, always with corn on the cob, mashed potatoes and country gravy. Then to complete his performance, with a deft, practiced motion, not even looking, he spun the dish up on the shelf over the steam table, where a bored waiter calmly laid a hand on the plate to stop it from spinning and entered into a contest with Choon to see who could look the most bored over the process.

Choon was a master at his trade, but he had one terrible weakness that almost ruined his frail body. Women. And an exploding oven was to cramp his style in that department.

The consequences of Choon's weakness were always readily apparent after his day off. On returning to work he usually scuttled into the kitchen all bent over, sad-eyed and broke. The San francisco women got all his money.

"Gee, Choon," I said to him one such morning, "you look terrible. What's the matter, too many girlfriends?"

He held his head. "I din't have no juice left. I go to the herb doctor and ask him what is wrong. He ask me how many girlfriends, and I tell him only one No. 1 girl and five extras. He say, 'Well, no wonder.'"

Now I said to Choon, "How about your No.1 girl, did you go see her yesterday?"

"Yes, and I din't have no juice left. She plenty mad and yell at me like crazy woman. I tell her she plenty lucky have good man like me. Plenty more where that come from, too, I tell her."

The new cookk Angelo, short and bald, heavily muscled, sneaked in, avoiding Choon by walking clear around behind the ovens to where the pots and pans were stored. He stooped to choose a roasting pan for the prime ribs. Choon whirled around on his toes and watched him closely. Angelo made a big show of staying away from Choon's special pans. He held up one of the other pans and grinned.

"He learning," Choon hissed, scowling with satisfaction and fingering his scraggly musache.

But that morning disaster struck. If you have ever heard a gas oven blow up, you know it makes an impressive noise and packs a big punch. WHUMP!

In reconstructing the accident, we figured out what must have happened. The old Chinese cook was preparing to make biscuits to go with his chicken dinners. There was no thermostat in that ancient oven, and no pilot light. He always turned on the gas and lit it with a wooden kitchen match, then regulated the heat by hand and eye. I often saw him eyeballing the flame and sticking his hand in the oven to test the heat. His bare hand method was infallible.

But that morning he must forgotten how long he'd been standing there talking to me and guarding his roasting pans. When he lit the match and stuck it in the oven the explosion knocked him right back on his butt. I rushed over to help him up.

Other than a very red face, he appeared to be all right, though stunned. He turned his boyish-appearing face to me and said, "What happened?"

"It blew up, Choon. Are you all right?"

"I go home now," he said. But something else was wrong with his face -- he had lost his sinister look. What was it? Then, omigawd! his face was completely hairless. Gone was the forty-year growth of fifteen black strands which had bravely dangled from the side of each lip. Gone were the nineteen long black hairs growing from his chin. After all those years of cultivation, the pride of his manhood, the symbol of his crashing good fortune with women had vanished.

We hustled him to the Stanford ER where, in shock already, he discovered his loss and plunged deeper into black depression. We took him back to his little shack behind Dinah's and put him to bed. He turned silently to face the wall.

"Come on, Choon," I said, "it's not as bad as all that. Why, hell, it'll grow back in no time."

"No, I finished now. I go good anymore. It where I get all my luck with women. I ruined now. No more women, no more joss, no more Choon."

The old cook could not be consoled. He fended off all words of encouragement with sighs and moans and a weakly waving hand. Day after day, lying in his rumpled bed, he searched in the hand mirror for signs of growth. But his barren face refused to display a single whisker. For a week he could not be coaxed out of his room. And finally, when he returned to work, he seemed lost, unable to remember even how to cook his famous chicken.

He sat down on an egg crate and moaned, "Mister Angelo, come, take all my pot, I no care. You take them all. I finished now."

This was getting serious. When Choon didn't even care about his pots anymore, I knew drastic action was needed.

"That does it," I told him. "Choon, tomorrow you and I are going to the City. What you need is some confidence to get you out of the dumps and back in action. I will prove to you that you're still top dog, just like always."

He resisted strongly, saying the women would laugh at him, but I made him go anyhow. In San Francisco, I walked up to the first working girl I saw on Market St. Beautiful blonde hair, garishly made up.

"My friend Choon, here, wishes to escort you for the evening," I said to her. "Are you available, and how much?"

Certain of refusal, the old Chinese cook hung back, shielding his beardless face with an arm and blinking dark, fearful eyes over his elbow.

"Choon!" the girl cried. "Where have you been?"

"You know him?" I gasped.

"Why, of course," she said, smiling at Palo Alto's most famous ladykiller, "we all know him. Come on, Choon" she said, taking him by the arm. "You look real good, honey. I'm so glad you shaved off that terrible beard. You look twenty years younger." ##
Copyright Vince Johnson 2000
www.vincejohnson.net
vgjohnson@wizwire.com

THE PRIVET THAT WOULD NOT DIE

At 75 I have finally learned a valuable lesson which greatly simplifies my existence. When finished with a job, I put my tools away in the same place every time. No longer do I have to waste the first half hour of every job looking for the proper tools. It is just beautiful. I don't know why I never thought of it before.

Case in point: Today I needed my pruning shears to cut back that blasted privet shrub out back--you know the one, it's right next to the water faucet and it just keeps growing and always gets in the way when I want to hook up the hose.

That blasted privet is one of several that have volunteered in the yard over the years. One thing all gardeners know about privets is what I have learned at great cost, those greenleaf monsters will not die no matter how ruthlessly you grind them down, cut them back, break them off at the base.

But here's the point I wanted to make. I was glad I didn't have to waste any time looking for the shears to go after that privet shrub this time because I knew exactly where I had left those shears last time--stuck in the dirt under that blasted privet.

Wrote by hand,
www.vincejohnson.net
vgjohnson@wizwire.com