BEST CHINESE FOOD IN SAN FRANCISCO: SWEET AND SOUR PORK

I can see you scratching your head, after reading the title of this post.
"What", you are wondering, "is he on about this time?"
And perhaps you are thinking that I have really lost it.
After all, sweet and sour pork is such a cliché.
Waspy people who live far from any large Chinese-American communities eat sweet and sour pork.
Large spongy white people with Scandinavian or German accents from the vast interior order sweet and sour pork.
Fercrapssakes, tourists in Chinatown LOVE sweet and sour pork!

Along with chow mein, chop suey, and egg rolls.
It's a glow-in-the-dark feast!
Perfect with fried rice, too!

Well, yes.


But sweet and sour pork is also probably the very first Chinese-American restaurant dish.

Imagine a bunch of nineteenth century Cantonese gentlemen in the High Sierras deciding that panning for gold may not be as rewarding as they once thought. And, having subsisted on some of the weirdest long-distance muck in their lives for over a year, deciding that what was really missing in that particular place was decent food.

So they open a restaurant.

Big Gold Mountain Refined Eats (大金山垃圾嘢食方).

This is the situation:
They're surrounded by miles and miles of barbarous waste.
No soy sauce. No hoisin sauce or oyster sauce - neither of those products had been standardized yet in the eighteen sixties.
No plum sauce. No rice wine. No sesame oil.
No fermented black beans, toban jeung, lajeung, or suen choi.

[Soy sauce: si yau (豉油). Hoisin sauce: hoisin jeung (海鲜酱). Oyster sauce: hou yau (蠔油). Plum sauce: suen moei jeung (蘇梅醬). Rice wine: wong jau (黄酒). Sesame oil: jee ma yau (芝麻油). Fermented black beans: dau si (豆豉). Toban jeung ('bean ferments' sauce): 豆瓣醬. Lajeung (hot sauce): 辣酱. Suen choi (sour vegetable): 酸菜.]

In fact, almost every comestible or flavouring ingredient that Cantonese people would like to have in their kitchen is singularly missing. California is still a sparsely populated and primitive place in that era, and both Chinese and European food-stuffs are brought in by clippers from across the Pacific or around the horn. Consequently, very few non-local ingredients are available.
The history of 'cuisine' in this state is the tale of Chinese and Japanese farmers and their market-gardens adding variety to the diet, plus all immigrant groups eventually manufacturing the necessary products for their own cooking styles.

But the very first Chinese American restaurants predate those developments.



大金山垃圾嘢食方
TAAI KAMSAN LAPSAPYEH SIKFONG

The Cantonese gentlemen of our tale are very far from civilization indeed.

They have a pig (yat jek fei chyu 一隻肥猪).
Plus sugar (tong 糖), salt (yim 鹽), vinegar (tsou 醋), lard (fan yau 葷油), and clothes' starch (fan jeung 粉漿).

[Don't ask why they have clothes' starch - complicated story.]

And there's a huge horde of hungry sweaty white men outside the door!

" 嘩, 外便有好多鬼佬嘅喎! 咁臭啊! "

You can see where this is going, can't you?
Desperation prompts invention.



甜酸肉
TIEM SUEN YIUK

A simple dish, in which meat is made magic by the addition of very common-place ingredients.
Nothing strange or unusual, no risk-taking by the customers required.

Along with a nice hearty plate of chow-mein you've got everything a gold miner freezing his tuchus off would want.
Flavoured and texturized animal protein, plus a savoury fried starchy substance.

The only thing missing is whiskey.

For nearly a century following that simple act of culinary prestidigitation, Chinese-American food advanced by inventing variations on the theme.

Tomato Beef, Lemon Chicken, Orange Peel Duck.
Fried Rice, Chow Mein, Chow Fun.

[Tomato Beef: fan-keh ngau-yiuk (番茄牛肉). Lemon Chicken: ning-mong kai (檸檬雞). Orange Peel Duck: chan-pei ngaap (陳皮鴨).
Fried Rice: chao fan (炒飯). Chow Mein: chao mien (炒麵). Chow Fun: chao f'n (炒粉) .]

The key to all these dishes is that they are essentially white folks food.
Very Anglo, in fact.
Meat sauced slightly sweet and tangy, and greased-up starch.
Plus one or two additions, for garnish and excitement.

The hamburger (漢堡包) that we all love embodies the same concept.
And like the previously mentioned dishes, the only thing missing is whiskey.

[Whiskey: waisikei jau (威士忌酒). One glas of whiskey: yat pui waisikei (一盃威士忌).]


Only Chop Suey (雜碎) is more American.
And it, too, is thoroughly familiar to everyone, including those who avoid strong drink.



MAKING IT, EATING IT

To make sweet and sour pork, simply stirfry sliced pig with chopped bellpepper, onion (洋葱) and celery (芹菜), then sauce it with diluted vinegar and sugar, plus the usual corn starch and water solution.
Red food colouring, ketchup, and pineapple may be added to taste.

Soy sauce is optional and may be omitted - most white folk will drizzle it over their fried rice in any case, so its absence from the entrée will not be noticed.

The meat can be coated first: eggwhite and water whisked together with a pinch of salt, meat therein, rested in the refrigerator for an hour, then dusted with cornflour, and evenly browned. Cook the meat, remove to a plate, then stirfry the vegetables.

Taste the sauce mixture before adding it to the pan - adjust the flavour with either sugar or vinegar. Pour it into the pan with the vegetables, dump in the meat, and heat through.


But to really enjoy this dish in its native environment, head up to Grant Avenue and look for a restaurant with a whole bunch of happy white people inside.
If they look big, pink, and corn-fed, so much the better!



AFTERWORD

Several years ago we were at a Chinese restaurant out in the avenues.
The menu had a six or seven pages of seafood dishes, and there were tanks with live fish and crustaceans along two walls. It was very obvious what they were proud of, and the several tables of happy Chinese American families feasting on poached, braised, fried, or stewed finned food were abundant testimony that such pride was justified.
Three Caucasians came in, sat down, and spent ten minutes poring over the menu.
Then they ordered three servings of sweet and sour pork over rice.

Doesn't that prove how deservedly appreciated this dish is?

Bon appetit!



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