Year: 2008

Fortune Cookies and Starving Cyborgs: Sweetness on Film

With SFIAAF 2008 in full swing, I’ve managed to munch popcorn with yeast for dinner more times than I care to admit during the past few days. And with another week of films ahead, it looks like I’m going to need to restock my supply of dental floss.

Fortunately, it’s been worth it. Over the weekend, two titles that food and film lovers should add to their list were screened to sold-out crowds.

THE KILLING OF A CHINESE COOKIE

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Who among us can resist opening a fortune cookie? No matter how jaded or snobby, no matter how much you may hate that dry, tasteless joke of a dessert that sits on your bill after a meal at the Golden Imperial Jade Wok Garden, I dare you to leave behind, unopened and unread, that little strip of paper and its peek into your future.

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World Snack Series: Books for Young Palates

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From Tricycle Press, that little imprint of our very own Berkeley-based Ten Speed Press, comes the World Snack Series, a cheerful set of children’s board books about sweet and savory treats enjoyed around the world.

Author and illustrator Amy Wilson Sanger provides both the books’ sing-song text and the artful, colorful sculptures that grace their pages. Adults and children alike will love the parade of scrumptious snacks: cha siu bao, bhel puri, tamales, hamentaschen, little polpetini, and even temaki with uni roe. One of my favorite lines, from Yum Yum Dim Sum, sent me straight to the closest teahouse: “Why, oh why, my little sui mai, why do I love you so?”

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Dong Po Rou: Melt-in-Your-Mouth Pork

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For those who love both poetry and pork, the recitation and the recipe, Dongpo Rou’s silken layers hold a potent blend of both. This famous dish of Hangzhou, a city tucked near where the Qiantang River spills into the Yangtze Delta of eastern China, is named for its creator, the celebrated Chinese poet, Su Shi. Also known as Su Dongpo, he gave his name to the much-loved dish.

Stories are still told of how he forgot his simmering pork while playing chess or of the misunderstanding among his servants when he called for pork with wine. He was thinking a nice cup of spirits; they were thinking boozy stew. I like to think that while the pork belly simmered gently in wine and soy sauce and spices, the poet-cook composed or recite an afternoon’s worth of verse.

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Cooking with Banana Leaves

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Once a month or so, my mother sends me a box from home filled with food. The last one, timed perfectly for lunar new year, included a batch of rice cakes. Before I even saw them, though, I knew there was treasure buried somewhere deep beneath her homemade peanut brittle, gingery mustard pickles from the last greens in her garden and bags of candied coconut used as packing material. The distinctive green-tea aroma of banana leaves had emerged as soon as the packing tape was cut.

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Pho Ga: Vietnamese Penicillin

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Lucky me, the flu came visiting last week. Even after three days of sleeping in bed and swallowing nothing more than bananas and Advil, I could tell my uninvited guest had no intention of leaving. Time to get serious.

Cooking was out of the question — I could barely stand up straight with the long, invisible spikes piercing both sides of my brain — so I smiled as sweetly as possible at my husband and said three words: Pho ga. Please.

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