Why Simple Food?

Very often I get asked the question “what is your favorite food?” At the beginning years of Tribute I often ask myself that same question, thinking I really needed a better answer than what really was in my heart. I could say Italian or I could say Chinese; for both I appreciate the “straight forwardness” of the cuisine and how direct it is those foods are connected to life itself – the landscape, the sky and the seasons. The food becomes that imagination in the description of a life that encompasses a totality in a cultural process. It, the food, is the re-creation of a life one chooses to engage and embrace. The food becomes the gathering place of what is in one’s being and all those people and places connected to it. In a sense it is the memory of food that encapsulates one’s place in this world in a most tactile engagement on a daily basis. So “what is my favorite food?”

One of the most vivid memories I have of food had to do with how “hard” life was in Taiwan in the 1950’s. Not long after the Chinese revolution of 1949 the KMT had barely got to this place they called Formosa, in a new place with new politics and a rag tag of disbanded people they had brought to the island from the mainland. Most of them were in the army and now essentially homeless and looking in various ways to make a living. Cars were absolute luxury items at that time and the only way to get around, if you did not take the bus, is by hiring pedicabs – those three wheel bicycles with a cab made for two in the back. If you had to ride a pedicab as transportation (and not as a tourist novelty) it can be a very intimate experience. In the 1950’s Taiwan, the streets were narrow and one literally touches the life on either sides of the pedicab as you ride. It’s hard to forget the smell of the foods and the venders on the side of the street and how they carried their goods with bamboo poles and on bicycles. It is that urban mosaic I miss in cities now and it seems the wide avenues and pristine sidewalks had taken so much life away you have to look for it. But the thing about the pedicab that stuck in my mind was how lean and fit those drivers were from peddling all day long. As distances were short than in today’s standard, the travel time was always longer than you would imagine.

So one night at the top of the street where I lived, I went into a small food stall to get the pedicab driver who was having his dinner. Since he was the only empty pedicap around and I did know him, I sat down next to him and watched him eat his dinner. That meal was etched in my mind forever. As much as I am fortunate enough to have eaten many good meals in my life, what that driver ate I never forgot. As dismal that meal would be in today’s standards, I would consider it to be a very healthy diet and probably had influenced my thinking on food my entire adult life.

What that driver had was basically a broth – a large bowl of soup with some green vegetables in it and a few slices of meat. It had a few drops of sesame oil floating on top of that soup and that was it. Placed on the side of the soup was a small bowl of coarse salt, which in those years was a poor man’s spice. A few stalls of raw scallion was washed and placed on a plate with a large bowl of coarse rice that you could see where the rice was attached to the husk. That driver ate the rice with the soup and dipped the scallion in the salt and ate it as a vegetable. Then I thought about the food I normally had at home and I remembered the variety of meats and vegetables, and I thought about the difference.

In many ways I envied the simplicity of that driver’s diet and how direct his food was connected to his daily needs. So “what is my favorite food?”

“Simple foods.” I would always answer this question now.

Since the onset of “modernism” in art and architecture at the beginning of the 20th century we have too often heard that mantra of “Less Is More”. Whether one accepts that in the fields of art and architecture, it actually makes a lot of sense in cooking. My favorite meals are plain boiled foods with a dipping sauce. I love that simplicity translated through the many layers of flavors with a very monochromatic presentation. Thinking again about that pedicab driver, I do take pleasure of boiled foods. Add some vegetables to the broth such as winter melon and turnip and finishing with some chopped scallion on top of the broth is a comforting thought. A dipping sauce of soy and sesame oil and some chili sauce when the mood strikes and a bowl of plain rice is what I would consider to be a satisfying meal. Add some pepper and season with some course sea salt to taste is all you would need.

Recently I saw a TV cooking program on the perfect meat dish and the winner was a “Bolito Misto” (boiled mixed meats). Bolito Misto has always been one of my favorite dishes of all time. I was so glad that it had received recognition as the best meat dish. The end product was dish of very tender meats and beautifully poached vegetables with a very fresh salsa verde as sauce. This salsa verde consisted of fresh herbs, anchovy, lemon zest, capers, garlic, freshly ground black pepper, lemon juice & extra-virgin olive oil. If you just looked at the finished dish, the meats are pale but glistening, the vegetables firm and vibrant and the sauce a brilliant green and appetizing. A great meal doesn’t get any better than this. It is not fancy but to the point and very satisfying. “Bolito Misto” does bring me back to the pedicab driver in Taipei, some 50 years in passing until I realized the origin of my passion in food.


A SIMPLE DIPPING SAUCE

2 parts soy*
1 part oyster sauce
1 part sesame seed oil
½ part of white vinegar
½ part of maple syrup
Chili paste** (optional & personal taste)
Thinly slice scallion, white parts only (optional)
Small amount of cilantro, chopped (optional)

The amount for the “parts” could a teaspoon, tablespoon or Chinese soupspoon, as long as the measurement is the same for all the ingredients.

* The best soy to use is something to similar intensity of Kikkoman. The light soy or the dark soy would not balance the other flavors in the sauce

** The best chili paste for this is from the wonton shop on 98 Wellington Street, ground floor. Price is HK$20 per bottle.