When James Beard award-winning food writer Kevin Pang got an email from his parents, telling him to check out a video, he promptly ignored it, as people occasionally do with parental media recommendations.
But his mom followed up. So he begrudgingly clicked on the video link only to find that his Seattle-based parents had started their own cooking channel on YouTube with more than a million page views. They were teaching people how to cook Chinese food and drawing in more viewers than he was as a digital media professional. Their awestruck son’s essay, “My Father, the YouTube Star,” appeared in the New York Times Magazine in 2016.
“A Very Chinese Cookbook” by father-and-son coauthors Kevin and Jeffrey Pang shares a collection of more than 100 recipes aimed at making Chinese cooking more accessible for home cooks. (America’s Test Kitchen, $35)
(America’s Test Kitchen)
Today, Pang is the digital editorial director at America’s Test Kitchen and, since January, general manager of ATK’s Cooking School. He and his dad, Jeffrey, have an ATK cooking show called “Hunger Pangs.” And the duo recently published a new cookbook — “A Very Chinese Cookbook: 100 Recipes from China and Not China (But Still Really Chinese)” — with America’s Test Kitchen that invites Chinese food fans everywhere to make everything from Shu Mai and Cold Sesame Noodles to Sticky Spareribs with Chinkiang Vinegar and Red-Braised Pork Belly.
We caught up with them recently to talk about family ties, recipe testing and Lunar New Year celebrations.
Q: Can you walk us through the process of writing this cookbook? It sounds like a ton of testing went into each recipe.
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Kevin: America’s Test Kitchen has been around for 30 years, and the thing that really sets us apart from other recipe and food media sites is the way that we test and come up with recipes. It’s almost aggravating how rigorous it is. On average, every recipe costs $11,000 to develop, and that’s because when we test a dish, we’ll make versions upon versions of it, send it out to home testers who offer us feedback, and then come up with more versions, until the version that we end up publishing is really bulletproof.
What happens when you take our family recipes and then apply the same level of rigor? In some cases, the versions that our test cooks came up with improved upon the versions that my parents made, like my dad’s Taste of Szechuan beef shank.
Jeffrey: I was inspired by my mother — she taught me how to cook — but she never told me how much sugar, salt or cornstarch to use. With America’s Test Kitchen, they test and test and repeat and repeat again. I loved my recipe, but after they modified it a little bit and asked me to try it, it tasted better than my recipe.
Q: What do you want readers to take away from this book?
Kevin: There are a lot of people in the U.S. who love to eat Chinese food, but they might be afraid to cook it. There’s always been this intimidation. How do we convince those folks who love Chinese food to just try (cooking) it once? We rank every dish from a one to four difficulty scale, but there are some that are super simple, made with ingredients that you already have, even if you’ve never cooked Chinese food before. We want to tell folks that it is way simpler, tastier and more healthful than you think. Even if you’re intimidated by Chinese food, give us a chance. The water is warm, and we hope to change your mind.
Q: Lunar New Year is coming up very soon. How does your family celebrate?
Kevin: One thing I find very interesting is that during Lunar New Year, for the Chinese specifically, we eat food that contains a lot of symbolism or that sounds like a word that has good luck. I’ll give you an example: We like to eat these crispy fried sesame balls. It’s a tradition to make them on Lunar New Year’s Eve — in the shape of a ball to bring gold and silver rolling into your household. We eat tofu because tofu is shaped like a cube, which looks like a plot of land, (so) we’re going to have a bountiful harvest. And we eat fish, because “fish” sounds like the word for “surplus” in Chinese. So if we eat fish, we’re going to have a surplus of money.
The thing to remember about Lunar New Year is that, yes, it’s about family. It’s about gathering. It’s about the tradition of just being together. But it’s a very aspirational holiday, because we want a lot of things in the new year. We want to be prosperous, we want good health, we want safe travels and good business, and we think that food can help us achieve that.
Jeffrey and Kevin Pang make shumai together.
(Courtesy Kevin White / America’s Test Kitchen)
Q: How has working together affected your relationship?
Kevin: Well, we haven’t fought in three or four years. We grew up in two different cultures — I grew up in North America, and my dad is from China. I like baseball and listening to U2, but my dad isn’t really interested in those things. Food is giving us a reason to connect. When our minds are occupied and thinking about food, we don’t have a chance to bicker. We’re still not talking about U2 and baseball, but we are talking about food and that has kept us busy and not fighting the last three years we’ve been working on this show and this cookbook.
Jeffrey: I have no idea what he’s talking about when he talks about baseball. He’s always talking about the Mariners or Red Sox, and I have no idea — we only had soccer in Hong Kong. But one day, he called me and wanted to know something about a sesame ball. So we started to talk more and more.
Kevin: It didn’t take baseball, but it took a sesame ball for us to start not arguing with each other. Who would have thought?
Q: What’s next for you?
Kevin: We’re still in the midst of this book tour. I’m doing some cooking classes around the country. We’ll see if we’re going to do any more episodes of ‘Hunger Pangs,’ but right now we have 24 or so episodes. Our wish is to proselytize Chinese food and let people know that it’s not a monolith. Chinese food is not just General Tso’s chicken and orange beef, as delicious as those things are. Gastronomically speaking, China is more like a continent than it is a country. Cantonese food is very different from Sichuan food. It’s very different from Shanghainese food, and it’s very different from American Chinese food. We don’t make a judgment about which one is better. We celebrate instead that Chinese food can take so many forms and so many dishes.
The recipe for sesame noodles is one of the easiest that can be found in the pages of “A Very Chinese Cookbook.”
(Courtesy Kevin White / America’s Test Kitchen)
Sesame Noodles
While Kevin Pang was a college student, every time he’d come home to Seattle, he’d ask his dad, Jeffrey, to bring cold sesame noodles to the airport when he picked him up. These were made with cold poached chicken, from Green Village, a family-run restaurant . “Sometimes at the airport, he’d jump in the car and, without a word, immediately start eating, greeting me hello only after a few bites!” Jeffrey says in the new book. “It’s easy to understand why it’s a favorite. It’s inexpensive, filling and supremely delicious.”
Makes 6 servings
INGREDIENTS
- 5 tablespoons soy sauce
- ¼ cup Chinese sesame paste
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 4 teaspoons Chinese black vinegar
- 1 tablespoon chili oil
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
- 1 pound fresh thin white wheat noodles
- ½ English cucumber, cut into 3‑inch-long matchsticks
- ¼ cup fresh cilantro leaves
- 2 scallions, green parts only, sliced thin
- 1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted
DIRECTIONS
1. In a blender, process the soy sauce, sesame paste, sugar, vinegar, 1 tablespoon water, chili oil, garlic and ginger until smooth, about 30 seconds, scraping down sides of blender jar as needed; transfer to a large bowl.
2. Meanwhile, bring 4 quarts water to boil in large pot. Add noodles and cook, stirring often, until just tender. Drain noodles and rinse under cold running water until chilled; drain well.
3. Transfer noodles to bowl with dressing and toss to combine. Adjust consistency with extra water as needed until sauce smoothly coats noodles. Transfer noodles to shallow serving bowl and top with cucumber, cilantro, scallions and sesame seeds. Serve.
Note: If fresh thin white wheat noodles are unavailable, substitute fresh lo mein or 12 ounces dried wheat noodles. In a desperate pinch, spaghetti will work. Also, this dish is wholly satisfying as written, but you can add any topping. Poached chicken is a natural pairing. In Hong Kong you’ll find deli ham, red bell peppers and sliced egg omelet served on cold noodles.
Red-braised pork belly is a Hunanese dish.
(Courtesy Kevin White / America’s Test Kitchen)
Red-Braised Pork Belly
Red-braised pork belly is a quintessential Hunanese dish, and one that delights in pork fat, according to Kevin Pang. “There’s no subtlety about what you’re enjoying: distinct striations of skin-fat-meat-fat-meat on the pork, enrobed in a warmly spiced, caramelized and sweet deep-red glaze so luxuriant it would make rubber tires taste good,” he says of a recipe developed for the book by test cook Carmen Dongo at America’s Test Kitchen.
Makes 6 to 8 servings
INGREDIENTS
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- ¼ cup (2 ounces) rock sugar, crushed
- 2 pounds skin-on center-cut fresh pork belly, cut into 2-inch pieces
- 1 (4-inch) piece ginger, sliced into thin rounds
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
- 2 star anise pods
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- ¼ teaspoon table salt
- 5 cups water
- 2 scallions, sliced thin
DIRECTIONS
1. Heat an empty, 14-inch flat-bottomed wok over high heat until just beginning to smoke. Reduce heat to medium-high, drizzle oil around perimeter of wok and heat until just smoking. Add sugar and cook, stirring constantly, until sugar has melted and mixture is amber-colored, about 1 minute. Carefully add pork belly and cook, tossing slowly but constantly, until fat begins to render and pork begins to brown, about 7 minutes.
2. Stir in ginger, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, star anise, cinnamon sticks and salt and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in water and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until paring knife inserted into pork offers no resistance, 70 to 80 minutes, flipping pork pieces halfway through cooking.
3. Increase heat to medium-high and vigorously simmer, uncovered, stirring frequently, until sauce is thickened and begins to coat pork, 10 to 25 minutes.
4. Off heat, let pork rest for 5 minutes. Using a wide, shallow spoon, skim excess fat from surface of sauce and remove ginger, star anise and cinnamon sticks. Sprinkle with scallions and serve.
Note: Look for pork belly that is sold as one whole piece, about 2 inches thick, with a decent amount of fat. We prefer skin-on pork belly to achieve traditional textures and flavors; if you cannot find skin-on pork, you can use skin-off.
The recipe for sticky spare ribs with Chinkiang vinegar is one of many that can be found in the pages of “A Very Chinese Cookbook” by Kevin and Jeffrey Pang, a son and his father who co-authored the America’s Test Kitchen cookbook. (Courtesy Kevin White/America’s Test Kitchen)
(Courtesy Kevin White / America’s Test Kitchen)
Sticky Spareribs With Chinkiang Vinegar
This particular recipe comes from Shanghai, where Catherine Pang — Jeffrey’s wife and Kevin’s mother — is from. Catherine’s great-grandmother used to make these pork ribs, but by the time the family reconnected decades later in New York City, the older woman had forgotten how to make the dish. “Catherine and I eventually worked out the recipe, and it’s become a favorite,” Jeffrey writes. “But that’s not what’s important. The lesson is that if there’s someone you care about, don’t leave anything — whether a recipe or how you truly feel — unsaid.”
Makes 4 servings
INGREDIENTS
- 1½ pounds pork riblets, trimmed, cut between bones into individual ribs
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 2 tablespoons (1 ounce) crushed rock sugar
- 1 (2‐inch) piece ginger, sliced into thin rounds
- ½ cup Chinese black vinegar
- ⅓ cup Shaoxing wine
- 2 teaspoons dark soy sauce
- 1½ teaspoons chicken bouillon powder (optional)
- 1½ teaspoons toasted sesame oil
- ½ teaspoon white pepper
- 1 teaspoon sesame seeds, toasted
DIRECTIONS
1. Bring ribs and 2 quarts cold water to a boil in a 14-inch flat-bottomed wok or large Dutch oven over high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer gently for 5 minutes. Drain ribs and rinse well, then pat meat dry with paper towels.
2. empty wok over high heat until just smoking. Reduce heat to medium-high, drizzle vegetable oil around perimeter of wok and heat until just smoking. Add rock sugar and cook, stirring constantly, until sugar has melted and is amber colored, about 1 minute. Add ginger and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, 15 to 30 seconds. Stir in ribs, ½ cup water, vinegar, Shaoxing wine, dark soy sauce and bouillon powder, if using, and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until ribs are just tender but still have slight chew, 15 to 20 minutes.
3. Uncover, increase heat to high and vigorously simmer, stirring frequently, until sauce is thickened and coats pork, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in sesame oil and pepper. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Serve.
Note: These ribs aren’t tender to the bone; they have a purposeful chew. Eating them involves a bit of mouth maneuvering to remove the bones and cartilage. But that’s the joy of the dish. Pork riblets are spareribs cut flanken-style, across the bone, into 1- to 2-inch-wide strips. They are sold in Asian markets and elsewhere; check with your butcher. Chinkiang (Chinese black) vinegar and rock sugar give the ribs a complex, subtly earthy sweet-and-sour flavor.
Recipes courtesy of Kevin Pang and Jeffrey Pang, “A Very Chinese Cookbook: 100 Recipes from China and Not China (But Still Really Chinese).”
Bradshaw writes for Bay Area News Group. This article was provided by Tribune News Service.
