Day 6 in Xiamen - The Cooker

When we first started talking about coming to China, Christine asked me what I might like to do with my days while she and Kynza were at work and at school. Thinking that it would be helpful if I could at least cook dinner for the three of us, I replied, "learn Chinese cooking." Well, Christine took that to heart, and arranged for me to come to her work and observe the woman who cooks lunch for all of the office workers (about 15 in all). She comes in every morning at 10:00, laden with groceries, and by 12 she has a first-class meal on the table. The office has a lovely kitchen for her to work in.

So today I started my three-month stint of observing "the cooker." I can't believe that I get to do this for three months. She's as sweet as can be, a bit shy, and speaks not one word of English. For some reason, everyone calls her the cooker, not the cook. The other gals in the office have all adopted Western names, and we address them by their western names. But the cooker only has a Chinese name, and so far no one has told me what it is. I'm sure they think it is beyond my Chinese skills to learn her name!

Every day she makes a big pot of soup (broth with some kind of vegetables),  a big rice cooker full of sticky rice, and four other meat, vegetable, fish, or tofu dishes. For my first day, it was pork with mushrooms, cucumber salad, squid with celery, and tofu with ground pork. Pork is big here!

The whole process is amazing. The cooker makes most everything with just a cutting board, a Chinese chefs knife, running water and a few plastic colanders used to rinse and clean continuously, a metal spatula, and a wok. The flame under the wok is gigantic.

 


This squid was first thrown in boiling water in the wok, and then drained, chopped, and back in hot oil in the wok with numerous cloves of chopped garlic.  Then out comes the squid and in goes a whole head of chopped celery, a bit of chopped carrot, and salt. Then the squid goes back in for the finishing touch.

The pork with mushrooms actually has more mushrooms than pork! A bit of sliced carrot, a couple hot red peppers, several cloves of garlic, and soy sauce. Delicious.

 I wish you could see how she pounded these cucumbers! They are the long, English cucumbers. She peeled them in one swoop from end to end, then pounded them with the chefs knife, presumably to knock the seeds loose. (A bit tricky when I can't ask what she's doing because of the language barrier!) It breaks them in half lengthwise, then she takes out a long strip of seeds that kind of just fall out, does a bit of cutting lengthwise so they are about in fourths, then chops them diagonally. The dressing is Chinese vinegar, sesame seed oil, several cloves of garlic and hot peppers that are first fried in the wok, a bit of chicken bouillon powder, and salt. Delicious! I think the sesame oil makes it!

Yes, garlic is in every dish. The stores all have packages with cloves ready for chopping like this. We used at least half this package in one meal!

Here's a little video of the cooker and her wok. She is so concentrated on what she's doing. Two very intense hours of chopping and woking!