Chapter 1 -
Ducks and Gardens
Sheldon, Justin, Sherman, and Ray are harvesting onions in their parent's garden in 1969.
Growing up in the rural Central Valley of California, I often felt like one of my family's ducks. The ducks lived in a large caged enclosure in our backyard. I didn't think it was a cruel existence. There was a very small, cemented “pond” for the ducks. The pond was not large enough to swim in, but large enough for our four or five ducks to douse themselves and paddle around in, one duck at a time, on those long, hot summer days in Turlock. The cage was large enough for a short flight, although the ducks seldom availed themselves of flight when a simple waddle would take them soon enough to their desired destination. My family was one of maybe a half dozen Chinese families living in town. I think my dad moved us there to start his second Cantonese restaurant because, in some respects, it reminded him of his rural home in China. Although we lived in town, it was the "edge" of town. At one time it was the very edge, but the town had grown around it by the time we moved in, but it was "edgy" in the sense that it was situated like a farmhouse. It was not yet hooked up to the town's sewer system and it had a large backyard wherein my parents planted a sizeable vegetable garden. The garden wasn’t your typical American garden growing the usual corn, squash, tomatoes, and beans. In our garden, my parents also seeded flora that were harder to get in rural California in the Sixties and Seventies. They grew water chestnuts, bok choy, Chinese winter melons, bitter melons, tong-ho, and other Chinese vegetables. Of course, some common onions, corn, and tomatoes would push their way through to the surface, alongside the bitter melons. They purchased the seeds of these “exotics” from the Chinese specialty shops that dotted Chinatown in “Dai Fau,” which translates to “The Big City,” in other words, San Francisco. For years, my father and mom and aunts and uncles had a single day off each week. Tuesdays were the days they had designated for sleeping in and relaxing a bit from their toils. Why Tuesdays? They were the least busy day of the week at the restaurant. As all restaurateurs know, they are busiest when everyone else has time off and they are idle when people are busiest. Thus nearly all the chefs, wait staff, prep cooks, dishwashers, hosts/hostesses, bartenders, and valets, in the industry, work in the evenings and on weekends when most other people have ended their toils. My dad and uncles chose Tuesdays because that was the least busy day of the week and gave the entire restaurant the day off because they didn’t yet trust the staff to operate the establishment without my dad who was the Chef de Cuisine or principal cook. (Dad would not have known what the culinary French term meant.) My dad was still teaching everyone the trade. After they had acquired their skills in the kitchen, the Golden Hour opened seven days a week and my dad and uncles rotated multiple days off early each week with everyone working the busy weekends. On those Tuesdays off, when I was still in grade school, Dad would sleep in while we kids went to school. On the Tuesdays when Dad and Mom wanted to go to Dai Fau, they would come to the school and pick us up early. We would miss the afternoon instruction, and we would drive off to San Francisco for Dim Sum followed by some gruesome shopping. Dim Sum is traditionally served in the late mornings and early afternoons. But my dad knew of places that served Dim Sum until at least 3 p.m. if not later. He would have previously called his Dai Fau friends and they would meet us at the appointed restaurant. We, the kids, loved eating the har gow, sui mai, chai sui bao, haam sui gok, and fung jaow (respective translations: shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, bbq pork buns, fried glutinous rice dumplings stuffed with pork and mushrooms, and duck feet, which were euphemistically called dragon claws. It's much more exotic to tell your friends that you munched down on dragon claws than on ducks’ feet.) When we were young, Dim Sum restaurants served duck feet. Today they serve chicken feet because all the duck feet are shipped to Hong Kong where they are willing to pay a lot more money for the delectable duck appendages than Americans. So my son grew up munching on chicken feet while I had luxuriated with duck feet in my youth. After we kids were done eating our har gows, we had to sit still and wait for my dad to finish talking to his friends who had met my parents at the restaurant. While the adults enjoyed each others’ company, we kids endured the time by picking on each other in our futile attempt to assuage the passage of creeping chronology. We would often test how far we could go before my parents got upset enough to give us “The Look,” and we knew enough to back off the precipice to which we had transgressed. When the adult conversations finally terminated, it was time to shop. By shopping, my parents meant Chinese grocery shopping; we didn’t shop for clothes, school supplies, or playthings. Kids' clothes were bought at the local J. C. Penny’s or from the Sears catalog, not Chinatown. We bought stuff that we could not find in Turlock markets. My parents sought Chinese fish, both fresh and preserved, Chinese vegetables, Chinese cookies and snacks, Asian canned goods, packaged goods, and bottled goods. All the labels for these goods were in Chinese, so if there wasn’t a picture or if it wasn’t contained in glass, I had no idea of it contained. Back in those days, everything was ‘Made in China’ or Taiwan. Today, many Chinese items are made in America. My three brothers and I served as the beasts of burden for these shopping sprees. I can still remember the pain of the looped cords that were glued to the thick shopping bags which were heavily packed with these culinary basics. The burdensome bags cut into our fingers and palms as we lugged them through the streets of San Francisco. Being the eldest, I was often assigned to carry the heaviest four bags, two in each hand. We trudged up and down the hilly streets of Chinatown with our assigned burdens. We often parked in the garage underneath Portsmouth Square off Kearney Street. We would buy bags and bags of Chinese stuff; trudge back to our station wagon, unload, and then we traipse off to another specialty shop for more goods and products. Among these treasures were Chinese vegetable seeds that my parent planted in our large garden in Turlock. We sure could have used Amazon’s Prime delivery, but my parents relied on our legs instead. By the way, today, Amazon carries most of the items we bought, except for the fresh Asian vegetables. But back then, Amazon wasn’t even a foggy, bubble-wrapped package in Jeff Bezos’ preschool mind.
Getting back to our ducks, one of them was a pet. We never named her, but we knew she was female because one time my dad brought home a drake (I’ll admit it; I had to look the term up), and soon there were eggs and then ducklings that matured into fat, waddling ducks. One day we came home from school, and Dad was in the backyard with one of his meat cleavers. He whacked off the head of one of the ducks and gutted the poor thing. Sheldon, the youngest started to cry. The rest of us were equally shocked. We feared for the mother duck who had been with us since she was a duckling. We all loved mama duck, especially Justin. She was “his duck.” Justin looked very concerned for mama duck. Mom assured us that we would NEVER eat mama duck because she was our pet. But the other waterfowl were expendable. How did mama duck become Justin’s duck? Being from rural Turlock, we visited the farm of a family friend one day. We saw ducks all over the place. One duck was leading a line of eight or ten yellow ducklings. They were amazingly cute. The farmer saw Justin staring and said to him, “Want one? Go ahead and grab one and take it home.” So Justin chased the trailing duckling down and snatched her as she tried to get away. Then suddenly the duckling’s mother started quacking loudly and threateningly as she stalked Justin down the farm path. Justin ran for his life while he was clutching the duckling carefully, but firmly with both hands. He barely managed to escape the protective mother duck and successfully brought the duckling home. We didn’t discover its gender until she started laying eggs. The beheaded offspring was plucked and dressed, we had duck soup (recipe below) the next Tuesday night.
When western restaurants serve duck, it’s usually just the duck’s breast, thigh, and drumstick - the meatiest parts. That’s a waste for less affluent folk. To avoid such dissipation, Chinese folk make soup out of the entire duck. My parents dropped the entire carcass of the duck into a large pot of water and simmered it for hours. Even if a chef removes the breasts, thighs, and drumsticks, the frugal Chinese would throw the rest of the bony remains into a pot for boiling. There’s an amazing amount of protein still left on the carcass of poultry even after the removal of the meatiest members.
Recipe: Duck Soup (or any poultry)
The soup may consist of the carcass from any bird like turkey, chicken, pigeon, quail, pheasant, or goose will work. It may be raw or previously cooked for another dish. The bones from our Thanksgiving turkey have never been thrown out at our house unless it was first subjected to boiling for jook (recipe below). If you’ve seen roasted ducks hanging in windows of Chinese BBQ Restaurants, those carcasses are especially flavorful and are often used for a noodle soup (recipe below). But first, duck soup. The Golden Hour did not serve duck soup to the customers. But the staff enjoyed duck soup when the fowl became available from either local farmers who were willing to trade their ducks for a Chinese meal, or one of the poultry suppliers, or from a local hunter who was willing to part with his freshly acquired ducks. (See Chapter 6 for a complete discussion on soups.)
Duck Soup
Ingredients:
Duck carcass or fresh/frozen duck (chopped into pieces)
Star Anise (two or four stars)
4 Slices of Fresh ginger (from a large node, each slice ⅛ inch thick)
1 bunch Green Onions (sliced 1 inch)
Salt (to taste, begin with 2 teaspoons)
White pepper (to taste, begin with 1 teaspoon)
2 teaspoons Five Spice powder
Water (enough to submerge the duck)
Dried Herbals: (Rehydrate before measuring)
1 cup sliced Shiitake mushrooms
1 cup Wood Ear,
1 cup Lily Flowers,
¼ cup Goji Berries,
½ cup Red Dates
Optional: ½ cup Pearl Barley
Fresh Vegetables: (Slice ½ inch thick, then measure)
1 cup Cabbage (Chinese or Napa)
1 cup Zucchini
1 cup Kale
Optional: 1 cup Iceberg Lettuce
Instructions:
Cover the duck with water and Boil for at least 3 hours with star anise, ginger, green onions, salt, pepper, and five spice powder. Skim oil. Remove bones from the broth and let the bones cool. (Alternative: before boiling: season the duck with salt, pepper, and five-spice in the cavity and on the skin. Roast for an hour at 325 degrees, save oil for cooking, and then boil the duck. This will retain duck oil and add a seasoned carcass to enhance the soup flavor with the aromatic roasted five-spice.)
Put Asian dried herbals - Shiitake mushrooms, wood ear, lily flowers, Goji berries, and dried red dates into the pot and boil for an hour. Add more ingredients if you like. For instance, I love Shiitake mushrooms and would use more than a cup. I always like to add the pearl barley.
While the soup is simmering and after the duck has cooled enough for you to work with it, remove duck meat from the bones and place the meat in a bowl. Discard cleaned bones.
Five minutes before serving, place the fresh vegetables into the broth along with the duck meat. Boil for 5 minutes and serve. (Green vegetables: lettuce or cabbage, Chinese or Napa cabbage, zucchini, whatever you enjoy. Most westerners have only eaten lettuce raw in a salad. Try adding iceberg lettuce to a soup for a delicious treat. Don’t slice it too thinly. Bigger pieces retain more lettuce flavor. Cooked lettuce has a flavor missed when eaten raw.)
Duck Soup with bones option: instead of boiling the duck for 3 hours, chop the duck into traditional pieces: breasts, drumstick, and thighs. Boil the duck for 45 minutes and then remove these pieces. Keep boiling the duck’s body cavity and follow the rest of the above recipe and instructions. The duck with bones option is much more chewy. The meat is always made softer with more boiling. It’s a matter of preference.
For most of its years, there was only one dish The Golden Hour served which contained duck. Many Chinese American restaurants did not serve Mandarin Duck because it was exceedingly work intensive requiring days of preparation. The Golden Hour’s earliest days included a few more duck dishes, but they were not popular in Turlock. The Golden Hour in 1968 served Mandarin Duck, Golden Barbecued Duck, and Hawaiian Duck. Only Mandarin Duck survived until the restaurant closed its doors. The other two duck dishes did not survive into the second printing of the Golden Hour menu.
Recipe: Golden Hour Mandarin Duck
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