JLoeats.com

hello gastro friends-
i’m just going to jump right into my first post :) how exciting! how controversal! (and thanks for all the support thus far! <3 u’z!)
So in the middle of my parent’s annual xmas office BRUNNER party the other day (jlo term ‘brunner’ use #1: since i was so stuffed afterwards that i didn’t eat anything else all day afterwards), I realized a couple of things:

A) It was certainly an event, yay for a banquet!
i hadn’t had one of these in a while! and in toronto at one of the fancier upscale chinese restaurants near YYZ. all my mom needed to say was “office lunch tomorrow. shark fin. u in?”
“umm, hell yeah! wake me up!” (boy does mom know me well…hmm shark fin, haven’t had that in ages… always did make me feel special.*smirk*)
i was groggy and still in bed when my mom barged into my room that morning and gave me the one hour warning (usually these office parties are dinner banquets) but none the less i rolled out of bed and put on my town pants, some fancy heeled boots, and braved the below freezing cold weather. man, canada sure makes a girl jump in and out of a car! brrrr

i felt like the different one for once all grown up and sitting at a big round “adult’s” table with ten realtors sharing a 3 hour 10 -14 course chinese banquet meal. well, to be honest, nothing was really that new to me this time since i grew up going to these office parties and being gawked at by all the “aunties” and “uncles” oooh-ing and aghh-ing all my life (what did i have something on my face?) But it sure was a good year the time i moved from the “kids table” to the adult table where the FOOD WAS and IS ALWAYS BETTER. (don’t rip me off with the sweet and sour pork mom, like the rest of the kids, gimme the goood stuff!! what you’re eating over there?!)

So this was another chinese banquet to add to the books as one of those many and countless chinese banquet meals — from weddings & xmases, birthdays, one month old baby birthday celebrations (“moon yuit”s), to my grandpa’s 90th, chinese new year, and etc….
so it was interesting to actually be able to critique it this time, as a chef, as a cook, and as someone who’s pallet has changed. yay! excitement! let’s see what this chef is doing to put a spin on this wide spread traditional lengthy meal. bring it on baby! bring it!… i didn’t eat a thing or even drink any water before i left the house. (one must prepare for these lengthy meals… yeah you know what i’m talking about winston – one word – manna’s in LA – all u can eat kbbq. lol.)
mmm, so new things i noticed that was unique to this upscale T.O chinese chef:
- round cut and shaped daikon stuffed with a dehydrated rehydrated sea scallop, and a plop of what i called “tow fat” as a kid cuz it actually looks like black hair – i believe it’s some sort of seaweed – nothing new about the flavours really but the presentation was cool and clean.
- a take on the “birds nest” dish with a fried whole flat fish that served as the bowl/nest to the sauteed/stir fried fish and leeks, (again awesome presentation)
- stuffed “curried” conch shell, portion was a bit much, but it was fun to dig out the tiny what seemed like small diced / bruinoised mushrooms and conch sauteed and baked in the shell
- the shark fin “soup” was thick and gooey like it should be with a heaping portion of the fin itself (nice). mmm pass me the red vinegar.
- roasted baby piglet (head included in presentation of course) was perfection – with home made hoisin sauce that was grainier but subtler than usual (nice)
- sauteed conch and aspargus (i think they had left over conch)
- “hong jo” /red jujube stewed chicken – with the pan chicken juice/soup/gravy…
- fried rice at the end as usual, with orange coloured tobiko to be extra fancy
- red bean dessert soup with seasame glutenous rice ball “tong yuin”

B) I need a whole new vocabulary to describe chinese food – western/french cooking techniques just won’t do here

C) IT WAS SO NICE NOT TO HAVE TO DEFEND MYSELF for ONCE for choosing a non traditional/unconventionally asian female career path. I AM A COOK, i am a FOODIE. and i LOVE to talk about food. “hallo!”
and my parents were so proud to announce that i was trained in new york and worked for the food network last year ;) awww. go mom and dad!

but since i was defenseless (my two other sisters are usually with me, and B is the cuter one) during all the “in between course” real estate & economy talk, i jumped into whenever i could on conversation that wasn’t about real estate.
“hmm, vacations, where are you going? oh back to china? cooL…”
“yeah have you been?”
“yeah! sure! when i was younger,”
“so the last time i went to china with my daughter, we were walking down the street in quang zhou and saw a meat shop that was displaying two skinned and hanging dogs in the window”
“they look revolting”
“omg, i can imagine”
“so gross, so wrong!”
“yuck”
just then the waiter walks out of the kitchen doors with the plate of chicken, places it down on the turn table, and spins the lazy suzan so we can “admire” it first before he portions it off in the corner table behind us. he had done this to every course so far. we look at the plate, admire, and my dad being the rebel and provoker that he is — says,
“ok, so let me ask, what is so wrong about eating dog when you will eat other animals?
“because they’re domesticated! they’ve been pets, or can be pets, and they can be part of the family!”
“so can cows, pigs, and chickens! what’s the difference in seeing a cow carcass and a dog carcass? both mammals, both dead and bloody, are we just used to it and desensitized to the picture of eating meat!?”
“yeah but they look so gross and uglier hung up in the window like that all skinned and bloody”
“umm, have you seen slaughter houses in america? in canada? in europe? — that stuff is hidden on purpose”

OPPP WHAT HAVE WE HERE?!?! all of a sudden,
— A conversation about how wrong it is to eat “domesticated animals” vs. traditionally “farmed” animals.
JUMP IN JLO JUMP IN!!!!!

let us first define what ppl’s concepts are of domesticated animals:
hmm, animals you can have as pets, that live with or life like humans and that humans have put at the same level as themselves?! …. maybe we’re getting somewhere here.
to which i link you to george carlin’s “why is it when it’s us it’s abortion, but when it’ a chicken, it’s an omlette?!”
(i for one do not want to put animals below humans, or see them as anything less — cuz all animals are animals. we are animal too – like the song, ‘i like to live, like animaL, careless and free, like animaL…” -SG, oh i wish they were careless and free…)

so do domesticated animals include:
dogs, of course
cats…
hamsters?
mice?
rabbits?
a pet monkey?
a pharret?
a canary?
a snake?
a baby?
(i can go on…)

versus the camp of ‘traditionally’ farmed animals — i.e, i’m going to go with how children books categorize animals since this is what we’re teaching them in the media, literature, and ideas of food/farm culture (and by observing my baby cousin niece’s books and toys and dvds this is what i’ve gathered as food and farm animals:
cows,
horses,
chickens,
pigs,
sheep,
roosters that cockadoodledoo in the morning, eat corn and hop around talking to spiders

so i leave you with this:
Q. Do you think it’s wrong to eat dog? if so WHY? and do you eat other forms of MEAT?
Q. Do you think animals are below humans since we eat them and we place them below us in our food chains?
Q. And If you eat meat, would you still eat meat if you had to learn how to kill it, de-gutt it, de-feather/shave it, clean it, butcher it, age it, store it, and cook it yourself each and every day or as often as you want to eat meat?