Preface &
Historical Notes

Original signage in 1969.

The Golden Hour Restaurant was located in Turlock, a small town in the San Joaquin Valley of California. The restaurant was one of tens of thousands that served a “Chinese-American” menu that featured dishes common to most of the restaurants that identified with that particular designation. By Chinese-American, it truly only signified Cantonese-American. Until recently, other Chinese cuisines such as Mandarin, Taiwanese, Sichuan, Shanghainese, Fujian, Xinjiang, etc. were virtually unknown to the American public at large. The ubiquitous Chinese restaurants to which I refer is a relative and asynchronous term. Almost all Chinese restaurants before the 1980s were Cantonese. Why? The history of Chinese immigration to America was expertly laid forth in Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America: A History. (She covers all Asian immigrants, not just Chinese. This a must-read if you are interested in this topic.) Lee explained that immigration of the Chinese people into America for a hundred years originated nearly exclusively from a single source, that is, Southern China. The Guangdong province, where Hong Kong is situated, was China’s designated source of western contact for many years. Significant Chinese immigration began with the lure of “Gum Saan” or Gold Mountain with the titillating promise of wealth emanating from Sutter’s Mill in 1848. The subsequent Cantonese rush was on. It was quickly followed by the importation of Chinese laborers by the Union Pacific Railroad for the construction of the transcontinental railroad going eastwards from Sacramento beginning in 1863. The consequential rise of Chinatowns in San Francisco, New York, and other enclaves of Chinese laborers frightened American politicians and the general White public. The majority ascertained that the Chinese were “unassimilable” and a threat to America’s western European heritage. This assumption culminated in federal anti-Chinese legislation. The Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 began with the phrase, “...in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities…” The source of these “endangering” immigrants was almost exclusively from southern China. Most of these immigrant people were Cantonese. The dialect they spoke and their culinary customs were predominantly Cantonese. Today, Chinese immigrants predominantly speak Mandarin and their culinary background isn’t Cantonese. My father and mother and the San Francisco that I knew growing up, all spoke Cantonese. I learned Cantonese before I could speak English, even though I was born in America. My parents didn’t know English well themselves, they spoke to me in Cantonese.  Cantonese is the language most spoken in Dim Sum establishments even today, reflecting Dim Sum’s geographic origins. However, the most popular Chinese restaurants today are not the southern-styled Cantonese. Current popular Chinese restaurants’ cuisines hail from a variety of provinces. If you juxtaposed the popular Chinese establishments of today with the Chinese restaurants of the past one hundred years in America, your comparison will note a fundamental difference. And the difference is not merely one of geography. The Chinese food of the earlier period was Americanized, whereas today, the most popular Chinese food is mostly authentic. The popular Chinese restaurants today do not include the word “American.” They are authentically Chinese. They may specify the region of the cuisine’s origin, like “Sichuan” or their culinary specialty, like “dumplings.” Indeed, the restaurants that still serve Chop Suey, Fried Wontons with Sweet and Sour Sauce, and Egg Foo Young, with Egg Drop Soup as an appetizer are nearing extinction. However, in its golden era, this type of Americanized-Chinese style of food reached from the lofty heights of fashionable restaurants in San Francisco and New York to tiny towns like Turlock, California and Lindsborg, Kansas. The Empress of China in San Francisco and the venerable Madame Wu’s in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara were mainstays of Chinese dining in their heyday. Hollywood celebrities and Presidents were among their clientele.  But the popularity of Americanized-Cantonese cuisine in the twentieth century has been replaced by more authentic fare in the twenty-first. This book celebrates the old Americanized-Cantonese cuisine in which my brothers, cousins, and I came of age. This cuisine not only kept a roof over the heads of three families but also sent ten kids to college. This style of food helped fulfill not only the American Dream for our immigrant parents but also laid the foundation for their Chinese Dream of economic success and social acceptance for their children.

The recipes contained in this book are from my recollections of having grown up within the sweltery kitchen of The Golden Hour Restaurant. My first “job” there was as a dishwasher on weekends, then Dad let me try my hand at prep cook, and finally as an assistant cook as I was growing up from elementary school through high school and a bit through my college years. My father did not write down a single recipe. He taught my uncles how to cook these dishes, in the same manner he was taught when he was an apprentice in a Chinese restaurant in Ogden, Utah and a year later in Oakland, California. My father followed no printed formulae, and no written instructions. I could only recall that there was only a single, metallic measuring cup in the entire restaurant, and it was used infrequently.  The measuring cup was employed when a cake or pie crust needed to be made, usually for staff consumption, like for a birthday. When there was a single order for chow mein, Dad cooked only a little - grabbing a handful of bok choy and a handful of bean sprouts. When there were ten orders for chow mein, he cooked more. But I’ve never seen him measure anything with teaspoons, tablespoons, and measuring cups. I don’t think most professional chefs use these implements of measurement. They “measure” with their experience, wit, and instincts.  I watched him dip the corner edge of his wok spatula (the flat one) into a square container of sugar, taking out just the right amount for the amount of food he was cooking and stirring it in. Similarly, he would take his wok scoop (called a ‘hauk’) and ladle in just enough soy sauce into the chow mein he was cooking. Everything was to taste. If he wasn’t sure, he would dip the spatula into the sauce and swipe it with his index finger for a reconnaissance taste. When he was in a hurry, he would just dip the tip of his finger into the sizzling wok to sample its flavor. There were no written reminders, let alone a recorded recipe to follow. There was nothing written down anywhere. I have mixed emotions about jotting these recipes down. I fear setting down a culinary inaccuracy based on faulty memory. I like to imagine that Homer was similarly reluctant to transcribe the oral traditions of The Iliad and The Odyssey. (The similarity between Homer’s writing and this book is found exclusively and solely in the act of transcription.) These oral and “learn by cooking” recipes were handed down from kitchen to kitchen, from cook to cook. I originally wrote, ‘from chef to chef’ - but I’m not sure they regarded themselves with such an ostentatious label. They did not picture themselves cooking for celebrities in four or five-star establishments. They hoped to make a living. They were immigrants seeking to survive in a new land by any means possible. For instance, my father loved to tell how he trained as a lawyer in China, but he became a cook in America because that was the opportunity afforded to him when he landed in the home of the brave, having fled the Communist takeover of mainland China. He could have easily become a laundryman had his friend in Ogden worked in a Chinese laundry. (See Erika Lee’s book for further exposition of vocations open to Chinese immigrants.) Most Chinese immigrants landed in one of three vocations: grocery stores, Chinese laundries, and/or Chinese restaurants. My dad learned the restaurant trade. He learned to cook first by observation, then by doing. There were no culinary schools in which to learn the craft of Chinese-American cooking. There was no required reading. He consulted no cookbook, neither in Chinese nor English. He told me of his professional culinary progression. First, he was hired to wash dishes and to bus tables. When he wasn’t busy with dishes, he did prep work like chopping vegetables and peeling the shells off shrimp. Then he started cooking - the beginning dishes. Simple cooking like frying battered shrimp which only takes half a minute or preparing sweet and sour sauce which is very forgiving. This was the incipient pathway leading down to the road of Cantonese cooking. These simple tasks were difficult to screw up as long as one’s attention was focused on the hot wok. From there, the cooks progressed to more and more intricate dishes and flavors.

My father once asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. I was about nine or ten years of age at the time. I replied, “I want to own a restaurant and be a cook.” My dad looked at me with a slight smile and said thoughtfully, “Owning a restaurant is good because you know that your family will never be hungry. There’s always something you can fix to eat that you can’t use in your menu.” (He meant things like chicken necks, gizzards, pig’s feet, fish heads, and the like.) Dad continued, “But I didn’t come to America for you to follow my trade. I became a cook because I had to. If you choose to be a cook that’s fine, but we want you to think about becoming a lawyer, or doctor, or an engineer.” My inadequate response to him went something like, ‘Those people have to study too much.’ Those words were blisteringly disappointing for my dad to hear. I had insulted him with my lazy-butt rejoiner. But the truth was that I was not a good student in those early years of my education. I struggled profoundly in elementary school. I was a “later gator.” I was in the dumb group. How did I know this? The teachers did not have to tell me. I could see it imprinted on my reading books. My friends were reading at grade level. I was one grade below. When my reader should have said ‘third grade’ like all my friends’ readers, the reader I was assigned said ‘second grade’ – right on the cover. I could read well enough to discern my inadequacy. I did not catch up with my classmates until junior high. The problem was I didn’t speak English when I entered Kindergarten, even though I was born in Oakland, California. I was playing catch-up throughout elementary school. There were no ESL classes in those days. Hence, I wanted to take refuge in a place in which I was comfortable. I had always thought the Chinese-American restaurant to be a safe haven for me. I understood it. I like the skills I was learning when dad took me to work with him. I cannot honestly say I enjoyed washing dishes, but there was a sense of pride when I was able to handle the dishes on the busiest night of the week and my dad gave me a smile and a Kennedy half-dollar.  I can now say that I appreciate all that I had learned, although I was less appreciative at that time when my friends went to weekend parties, and I went to the restaurant to peel shrimp in my high school years. Shrimp peeling was a tedious task because one had to be careful to leave the shell on the tail for that attractive red color when the crustacean was exposed to the heat of the wok. The tail also provided a convenient handle for the finished product. However, there’s also a thorn-like protrusion at the end of each tail that can easily pierce the fingers and hands of someone not paying sufficient attention.

The Golden Hour Restaurant taught me life skills that I still use on a daily basis. My cooking skills notwithstanding, for I do all of the cooking at home. My wife did not grow up in a restaurant and lacked those culinary skills. I not only learned to cook, but I also learned dedication to complete a task, determination to achieve a goal, and duty to people and family.  Professionally, I used these skills to teach at the high school and college levels for over thirty years. I acquired these “soft-skills” at The Golden Hour Restaurant.

The Golden Hour always fed the entire staff a meal at the end of each shift, typically after 1 p.m. for lunch and after 9 or 10 p.m. for the dinner meal. The times fluctuated, depending on how busy the restaurant was on that shift. The foods served were not the same dishes the customers enjoyed. The meals the staff ate were more authentic, more rustic, more Chinese, and less American. This was the food typically eaten by the less genteel in China, but they were still mostly delicious.  But I didn’t like everything as a kid (see Bitter Melon recipe in Chapter 10). Most of the kitchen staff was Cantonese speaking and were very pleased to be eating the dishes prepared for staff consumption. However, most of the dining room staff were not Cantonese speakers and were not Chinese. While the entire staff was invited to partake in the meal prepared by my dad or one of my uncles, not everyone elected to consume what was proffered. They were welcomed to eat whatever was leftover from the shift. For example, the daily soups and steamed white rice were kept hot on the kitchen’s steam table. The staff could elect to consume anything still warming on the steam table. Leftover chow mein, fried rice, white rice, sweet and sour, etc. were available for staff. There were, at times, leftover fried shrimp which would not be good the next day. However, there weren’t that many of these items left over because they were mostly cooked to order. But -  Dad’s generosity only went so far - anything that could be sold the next shift or day was off limits, such as the spareribs. Also, anything not yet cooked in the large walk-in refrigerator or the freezer was equally verboten. There was no going into the commodious walk-in and grabbing a steak to cook on the flattop. However, if a fresh turkey was being roasted in the oven, the old turkey’s wings would be made available if requested. So, everyone who worked that shift also earned a free meal along with their wages. Free lunches were available to those who worked the day shift and dinner for the evening.

This book will proffer recipes used at The Golden Hour Restaurant. Some of these recipes were for dishes served to the customers, others only to the staff. It should be noted that the measurements offered in the recipes will be approximations or estimates because the dishes were cooked to taste and preference. They were never written down at The Golden Hour. However, the needed ingredients are provided. Cook the dishes to your preference and taste. If you have proficient skills in the kitchen, these cooking instructions will be sufficient. If you are a novice, there might not be enough precise information for you to cook these dishes to your liking by just following the recipe. Experimentation is encouraged and needed. A sense of adventure is a prerequisite for both cooking and dining any cuisine. The Golden Hour and most Cantonese chefs created dishes to taste. You will need to do some culinary investigations to cook according to your own personal taste. All the recipes are scalable, just increase or decrease the amounts proportionally to feed the number desired. Most of this book’s recipes will make a single dish designed for about three or four diners.

The spelling I used for various words will follow what was printed on The Golden Hour’s menus even if they are spelled differently conventionally. For example, The Golden Hour used the word “spareribs” as opposed to the conventional “spare ribs.”

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Chapter 1 - Ducks and Gardens