cooking by numbers

i first dabbled in cooking while in college. i learned how to make baked pork chops with apples, stuffed bell peppers, and sautéed banana with oj and grande marnier from my then girlfriend. i guess i wanted to be a good boyfriend.

i suspect it was also an unconscious act of rebellion. having grown up in an immigrant household where eating anything other than chinese food was always driven more by etiquette, like when our non-chinese friends invited us over for dinner, than any real interest or craving. i remember when i first made my ex-girlfriend’s recipes for my family; the meal was met with polite appetite (no seconds) and a lecture on how chinese food is superior to “foreigner” cooking.

as my family became more assimilated, our taste also became more forgiving. as result, my forays into non-chinese cuisine also became more welcomed, like when i’m home on break doing my my dutiful son thing so my mom can catch a breather.

but i didn’t really get into cooking until i met daphne. my culinary skills at that point were good enough to get over on a couple of chinese seniors, but unlikely to impress a girl from kansas city with an adventurous palette. so i took the easy way out and started checking out chinese cooking, or more specifically, my mom’s home cooking.

one of the first dishes i made for daphne was mom’s classic 5-4-3-2-1 spear ribs. she actually calls it the 1-2-3-4-5 spear ribs, but i flipped the numbers for effect; it’s just more exciting when you count down to something. it is exceedingly simple (i.e. hard to fuck up) and goes something like this:

ingredients:

2 pounds
pork spear ribs - cut to about 2 inch pieces

2-3 cups
reducing sauce that includes roughly:
1 part sherry
2 part sugar
3 part vinegar
4 part soy sauce
5 part water

cover the ribs first in water and bring to a boil. pour off liquid and rinse the ribs with cold water. return ribs to pot and add the reducing sauce. bring to a boil and lower heat to simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally, or until sauce thickens. serve over steamed rice.

like many of my mom’s best dishes, she doesn’t have an exact recipe for the ribs. but i’m told the ratio of the various seasoning is the key to its flavor. interestingly, the lack of exact measurements seems to invite personal interpretation. for instance, mom likes it with more vinegar and sugar while i tend to favor reduced sodium kikkoman soy sauce rather than the more potent chinese variety. and one infidel i've passed the recipe to had even used chicken instead of ribs, but hey, whatever.

doing a cover song is like doing your own take on a dish. ideally, you want to capture what attracted you to the song in the first place, but you also want to tweak it enough to make it your own. obviously, it doesn’t always work; not everyone has the necessary chops to pull it off. when it works, however, it can be sublime.

cake’s version of “i will survive” (volcano, 1996) is such a cover. gloria gaynor’s mirror-ball declaration of independence seems like such a natural for the emo set i wonder why someone didn’t do it sooner.

but the best cover i’ve ever heard i don’t actually own. several years ago in st lucia, we had dinner one night at a joint where 3 buena vista social club-types were working the room, serenading diners for tips. just as we started on the fresh tropical fruit salad, they played hot chocolate's "you sexy thing". accompanied by just an acoustic guitar, the men sang an unadorned three part harmony that was as emotionally honest as anything i’ve ever heard. it substituted the sights and sounds of the city with the smells and tastes of a sensuous caribbean night without taking anything away from the original's ecstatic embrace of new found love. i believe in miracles.

to better explain what it sounded like, try listening to the original and by imagining less urban leering and more pastrol innocence, you will begin to approximate that magical vibe.

Posted by cellpharmer at September 22, 2004 06:56 PM