CHINESE COOKS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17039, 12 May 1923, Page 1 (Supplement)

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. t 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 L know, who should be content with what the gods send to his table instead of poking his nose into the kitchen. If you keep out ot the kitchen you will be generally told the truth. “ Y r ou disgusting fellow!” exclaimed Mrs M. one day when she found Ah Sing phlegmatically flaying a rat.

•' Velly good chop. Makee hair glow!' : exclaimed Ah Sing, who was going bald.

' My wife made him throw the knife i..i the fire and abolish the rat. She reported him to me for cheek—but they do eat rats to make the hair grow; you know. The next day we heard loud laughter in the kitchen, and I found Ah Sing, with an expression of exxagerated 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. SILKWORM SOUP. 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 go white men’s prejudices, it is best i.j schedule the foods at which we baulk. ‘ No stews or hashes under any circumstances whatever!” is a safe maximum for the squeamish. There was a dinner party at a missionary’s house in Amoy, at which the 30up 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 handfuls of which went into each stewpot. “ The sheer stark horror on that woman’s face,” said my informant, an artist, “ would have maoe the Academy picture of the 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 he was being intelligent and considerate, as for a month after a Chinese woman’s accouchement her food is boiled in a strong solution of vinegar and ginger, which is held to have a tonic effect in hastening the return of her strength. INVETERATE MOROWERS. Chinese cooks nr.e as inveterate' a secret society of borrowers as are English gardeners. As your gardener is always swapping eeds and slips and cuttings with his confreres, so the Chinees cook with eatables and cooking utensils. The matron of an English hospital had a bulky visitor to her cook arrested as 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 by which 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 excellences of their respective cooks. They made other women in the foreign settlement quite jealous. One day Mrs B.’s cook got ran over and the police

notified Mrs S. No cook turned up at either house that evening, and the following day both women discovered that their treasure was one and the same man. For more than a year, in the cluster of cooking outhouses at the back of the two houses, lie had superintended the culinary work, receiving his wages from Mrs S. on the first of each month and from Mrs B. on the tenth. “ And the trouble is,” wailed Mrs S“that neither the servants nor the police sem. to think it at all dishonest or extraordinary. They’ve such queer notions. I shall never know when they are making a fool of me. ” DISHES THAT ARE BARRED. Even when hashes, minces, and stews are barred from your table, queer and, to your mind, shuddersome beasts are apt to find their way into the kitchen pots and pans. You do not like to think of demised “ piecee pussies,” minced snake, kippered rat, dog chops, rice paddy worms, octopus, and similar “tasty snacks” (as the public-houses call them) 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 the kitchen a list of prohibited beasts but instead of writing down the names they stuck on little coloured pictures from a packets 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 pnste 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 coo-k 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 lie shrugs his shoulders and gives the tilings up as a dark mystery. “MARINE DELICACIES.” Among the 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 up a vista of unlimited possibilities. The last time I happened to be in Hong Kong there occurred the world’s swiftest and most sensational slump in oysters simultaneously with the British 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, lie is even more loatifc-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 “ dust-bin ” fodder. No Englishwoman for instance, desires to retain jthe head, feet, and entrails of ducks, yet these are among the pieces de resistance of a Chinese food shop.