Culinary Resilience, Forgotten Foods, and Cocktail Evolution

Key Quotes

"chinatown was created as a self sufficient community its own ecosystem so that immigrants who arrive to san francisco can find a place where they can get on their feet you know as an outsider who comes in some people may say wow this you know this feels like a whole another world it's loud it's bustling there's people yelling there's all kinds of interesting aromas that some may not be accustomed to but that to me was my entire childhood upbringing"

Evan Kleiman explains that Chinatown was designed as a self-sustaining ecosystem to support immigrants in San Francisco. This environment, though potentially overwhelming to outsiders with its noise and aromas, represented a familiar and formative world for her childhood.

"my dad has always loved food and cooking ever since he was young growing up in shanghai his mom was the caretaker and his mom was an incredible cook was always kind of just thinking out of the box you know for example she went and tried russian borscht for the first time at a famous russian restaurant called the red house and she came back and said wow you know there's there must be like a way that i can kind of make this not using all the traditional ingredients that i can't possibly find such as beets and so she ended up making her own version by sautéing tomatoes and she thought that there was a little bit too much acid in the way that the soup came out so she added a little bit of milk to the to the broth so she made her own version of russian borscht that like my dad would describe to me in detail and how oh my mom used to make all these dishes that were just a little different from other families and always so good"

Kathy Fang shares that her father's passion for cooking was inspired by his mother's innovative approach to food. Her grandmother, when encountering Russian borscht, creatively adapted the recipe using available ingredients like tomatoes instead of beets and milk to balance the acidity, demonstrating an early influence of culinary experimentation.

"my dad had to make his version of shanghainese food right he had to make a twist because when he made the traditional version it was a little too new for people and he would take essentially like shanghainese dishes things that he felt were very delicious about it and then combine it and fuse it with local ingredients so in shanghainese cuisine they often times use this sesame sauce right they use sesame paste and it goes on noodles they use it for dumplings and so my dad said okay i can make this version but i'm going to use peanut butter because he'd never had peanut butter he came to san francisco tried skippy for the first time and said oh my god this is so delicious i can see why americans like this he put it on dumplings except he decided to fry it instead of steaming it and people loved it they loved that sauce then he thought okay i can use this sauce on something else such as fried onion cakes he likes to follow like okay if they like this then how do i apply this to something else so that became a best selling sauce that applied to several heavy hitter appetizers that put us on the map"

Kathy Fang explains how her father adapted traditional Shanghainese dishes for a San Francisco palate by fusing them with local ingredients. She highlights his innovative use of peanut butter, a flavor he discovered in the U.S., in place of traditional sesame paste for dumplings and fried onion cakes, which became signature dishes that established the restaurant's reputation.

"okay so that's an interesting question right there so i've been fascinated with uh seeds and grains for many many many years but it's it's quite a complicated subject a lot of it has been forgotten and i came across that because uh if you think about it you're a forager in southern california most of the wild food will show up in spring time and summer time but starting fall everything turns into a desert and for the longest time i really didn't know what to do because everything looks completely dead i mean you look at the hills around los angeles everything's kind of like brown and looks brown and burnt a little bit and the more i started to learn about my environment the more i realized that everything i was looking at was actually food but food that is quite different in the sense that it's kind of like the invisible food and and i say that because you know people go hiking for example in fall time or even winter time and they look around and just you know things look dead but they don't realize that mustard or barley wild barley wild oats etcetera all those plants are going to seeds and this is really a subject that we've forgotten thinking that there is nothing there but the reality is that in southern california for example i can find i have found so far up to 90 90 edible seeds and grains in my environment"

Pascal Baudar discusses the "illusion of scarcity" regarding wild food in Southern California, particularly during fall and winter. He explains that while spring and summer offer visible wild foods, the landscape appears barren in cooler months, yet it is teeming with "invisible food" in the form of seeds and grains from plants like mustard, barley, and wild oats, a knowledge that has largely been forgotten.

"well i think um i think it's rather intuitive if i'm honest i think the approach like you know um that cooking that you talked about in the introduction of sort of southern french and regional italian cooking is really comes from within it's very simple it's very seasonal seasonally led it's rather sort of humble and i think you know it leads with the ingredient and um we try to do very little to it and sort of celebrate it for what it is um and so with that really just comes um a thoughtful approach to you know what what is this ingredient we're using and how best do we celebrate it on the plate"

Jess Shadbolt describes the culinary style at King restaurant as an intuitive aesthetic philosophy rather than a strict technique. She explains that their approach is rooted in simple, seasonal, and humble cooking, prioritizing the ingredient itself and aiming to celebrate its natural qualities with minimal intervention.

"well cassoulet i mean that is a real feast it's a celebration and you know i think those are the times where you might want to spend a little bit longer on something but it still doesn't have to like leave you locked in the kitchen for hours you know nobody has any time so i think there's a way of really kind of breaking it down and we actually did it last night at our cookbook party for 200 people so um it was it was the ultimate celebratory feast so we just approached it as we you know as we say to you in the book you know we cook the we soak the beans like the week ahead we cook them a few days out we confit the legs a few days out the duck legs cook the belly until it was the pork belly um to the it was like you know barely barely holding itself together and then just really brought it all together all the different components together"

Jess Shadbolt explains that while cassoulet is a celebratory dish, it can be prepared without being overly time-consuming by breaking down the process over several days. She details how components like beans, duck legs, and pork belly can be cooked in advance, allowing for