CHINESE COOKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 89, 14 April 1923, Page 5

CHINESE COOKS.

MOST INTERESTING SERVANTS

KEEP YOU GUESSING.

There may be a more interesting class of servant than Chinese cooks, but 1 doubt it, writes Mr. Bassett Digby, F.R.G.S., in the "Manchester Guardian."

"They've got the knack of keeping you guessing," is how one of my American friends sums it up. Their blandly inscrutable heads are capped with an aura of the unforeseen and the unforeseeable. "They are born cooks, but every cook I've ever employed, and I've lived in China thirty years, I've called Li, regardless of what his parents named him!" declared another man 1 know, who should be content with what the gods send to his table instead of poking his nose into the kitchen. If yon keep out of the kitchen you will be generally told the truth.

"You -disgusting fellow!" exclaimed Mrs. M. ono day when she found Ah Sing phlegmatieallv flaying a rat. "Vclly good chop. Makee hair glow!" exclaimed Ah Sing, who was going bald. "My wife made him throw the knife in the lire and abolish the rat. She reported him to mc for cheek —but they do eat rats to make the hair grofr, you know. The next day we heard loud laughter in the kitchen, and I found Ah Sing, with an expression of exaggerated disgust, handing a knife with which he had just cut butter to the scullion boy, with instructions to take it out and clean it thoroughly." Butter and cheese are just as obnoxious to them as rats to us.

It is generally best to give your cook pretty much of a free hand with the shopping and menus, but, especially in the case of a novice who is not used to white men's prejudices, it is best to schedule the foods at which we baulk. "No stews or hashes under any circumstances whatever!" is a 6afe maximum for the squeamish. There was a dinnerparty at a missionary's house in Amoy at which the soup was so good that a lady guest instructed her cook to call on the missionary's cook to find out how to make it. The same evening he dished up a delicious counterpart of the party soup. He was sent for and congratulated. "We'll have it every evening,' - said his- mistress. Whereupon he inquired if he should give a standing order for the silkworms, two heaped handful* of which went into each stewpot. "The sheer stark horror on that woman's face." said my informant, an artist, "would have made the Acaffem** picture of tbe year." A Hong Kong Englishwoman who had just had a baby made a wry face over the chicken broth sent up to her. "What on earth have you done to it?" inquired her nurse. The cook explained that he thought lie was being intelligent and considerate, as for a month after a Chinese woman's accouchement her food is lioiled in a strong solution of vinegar and ginger, which is held to have a tonic effect in hastening the return of her strength. Chinese cooks are as inveterate a secret society of borrowers as are English gardeners. As your gardener is always swapping seeds and slips and cuttings with his confreres, so tne Chinese cook with eatables and cooking utensils. The matron of an English hospital had a bulky visitor to her oook arresterl ns he was leaving the back door. Under his robe was found a large piece of the hospital's soup meat. The magistrate found both cook and visitor innocent of any thought of theft. They merely had a working agreement t»y wtiich when one ran short of meat for boiling down into soup he borrowed it from the other. Many a journey across town, hospital soup meat had made in its time. Two\Englishwomen in Shanghai, with large establishments of servants, next door to each other, used to debate the excellence-) of their respective cooks. They made* other women in the foreign settlement oiuite jealous.; One day Mrs. B.'S cook got run over and the police notified Mrs. S. No cook turned up at either house "that evening, and the following day Soth women discovered that their treasure was one and the same man. For more than a' year, in the cluster of cookJng outhouses at the back of the two houses, he had superintended the culinary work, receiving his wages from Mrs. S. on the first of each month and from Mrs. ft. on the tenth. "And the trouble is," Wailed Mrs. S., "that neither the servants nor the police seem to think it at all dishonest or extraordinary. They've sMch queer notions. I shall never know when they are making a fool of mc!" Even when hashes, minces, and stews are barred from your table, queer ant ** to your mind, shuddersome beasta arc apt to find their way into the kitchen pots and pans. You. do not like to think of demised "piecee pussie*," minced snake, kippered rat, dog chop«>» rice paddy worms, octopus, and similar* "tasty shacks" (as the public-houses call theml for the servants' meals being prepared in your frying-pans and saucepans. One family I knew dealt with the matter on novel lines. They hung in thei kitchen a list of prohibited beasts but instead of writing down names they stuck on little coloured pictures from a packet of "scraps" that an aunt in England had sent out to the children for their scrap-album. The children entered into the project with enthusiasm. One morning Billy stole into the kitchen with the paste-pot and a scrap picture of an elephant. It intrigued the cook and the numerous relations of the servants immensely. There were no scrap. pictures of worms or octopus, so they had to be drawn. One afternoon Carson came back with a full creel from a day's fishing and turned over the catch to the cook. -No eels came to table and he made inquiries. The cook, full of righteous zeal, pointed to the picture of. the serpent in the scrap gallery of Bad Beasts, and explained that the eels had promptly been bestowed on a brother-in-law of the scullion. The Chinese cook is patient and longsuffering. He accepts as inexplicable the indignation of the Englishman over a smelly egg and his master's injunctions to let the pheasants hang until they are "gamy." His own predilection is towards "gamy" eggs and fresh pheasants. When his master dotes on ripe Gorgonzola cheese and curses him for cooking a nice fresh cat in the iron saucepan he shrugs his shoulders and gives the things up as a dark mystery. Among tlie dishes offered to the Duke of Connaught on the occasion of his visit to Hong Kong were "Fish Gills" and "Fried Marine Delicacies." A man I know who sat near him relates that his Royal Highness winced when asked | if he would like a helping of the former, | and curtly declined the latter. "Marine Delicacies'." in China, opens ud £ vista of unlimited possibilities. j

The last time I happened to be in j Hong Kong there occurred the world's ! swiftest and most sensational slump in oysters simultaneously with the British I authorities' discovery, that the richest and fattest were being fed on dead horses which the Chinese oyster-bed owners were having towed out to sea and sunk where their sphere of nourishment would be most useful. The Chinese cook differs from the nigger cook in that while the latter steals from his master the former steals for him. Still, he is even more loath than a French "bonne" to see anything wasted. It is a frequent occurrence, though few British families in China realise it, for a group of native cooks to own a restaurant in the same town on what their white employers regard as natural and legitimate "dustbin fodder." No Englishwoman for instance, desires to retain the head, feet, and entrails of ducks, yet these '■ are among the pieces de. resistance of \ a Chinese food-shop. i ■ ! . !