Culinary Mystery

The Last Chinese Chef, Nicole Mones, 2007

The Last Chinese Chef

A novel combining the story of a family of chefs who last served in the imperial court with a mystery surrounding the death of an American food writer’ s husband, against whom a paternity suit has been filed in China. This work serves primarily as an introduction to Chinese culture through the cuisine. Each chapter begins with a quotation from a book written by the last Chinese chef:

As men we are the sum of our forbears, the great thinkers, great masters, great chefs. He (Plato) teaches them that food is the opposite of art, a routine undertaken to satisfy human need, no more — worse a form of flattery. We Chinese look, instead, to the Analects of Confucius, where it is written that there is “no objection to the finest food, nor the finest shredding.”

Traditional Beijing House Beijing House

The chef’ s grandson, an American with a Jewish mother has returned to China to learn cooking and open a restaurant in his family’s traditional house in Beijing. He is entered into a contest to select the two best Chef’ s representing the cuisine of Beijing for the upcoming Olympic games.

ancient Chinese_feast painting

On designing a menu for a banquet:

The hors d’oeuvres should amuse while they set the them of the meal and fix its style. Then the main courses. Start with something fried, light, gossamer thin, something to dazzle. Then a soup, rich and thick with seafood. After that an unexpected poultry. Then a light, healthful vegetable, to clarify, then a second soup, different from the first.

After this you reach the place where the menu goes beyond food to become a dance of the mind. This is where you play with the diner. Here we have dishes of artifice, dishes that come to the table as one thing and turn out to be something else. We might have dishes that flatter the diner’ s knowledge of painting, poetry, or opera. Or dishes that prompt the creation of poetry at the table. Many things can provoke the intellect, but only if they are fully imagined and boldly carried out.

To begin the final stage, the chef serves a roast duck. Then a third soup, again different. The last course is usually a whole fish. The fish must be so good that even though the diners are sated they fall upon it with delight.

Shanghai Style Feast Shanghai Feast