He wore that same expression while he battered chicken tempura in the deep fryer, rolling the thin pink strip of poultry into the tempura bits floating on vegetable oil, like snowflakes atop an ice rink.

Nor did it change when Big Chef scolded him for being stupid or incompetent. His glassy eyes absorbed the brunt without blinking, like they couldn’t fathom the situation – or didn’t want to. It was the same when Alan – skinny, Sushi Chef Alan – bullied him for the Chinese newspaper or for his seat on the empty soy sauce container. Chen’s wrists were thicker than Alan’s neck, and he could wring him out if he set his heart on it.

Instead, he acquiesced, but not without that unwavering stare, which forced Alan’s glare to the ground, his mumbled words directed at the floor as he snatched the inky paper or assumed his position on the makeshift chair.

Chen sang while working, the expression pouring from his voice compensating for its absence in his face. You often heard Beijing opera from the basement, while he wrapped large scoops of green tea ice cream into fluffy, yellow pound cake, but mostly he sang contemporary songs, while cutting vegetables or scrapping burnt scraps off the stove.

Allison asked me once, bemused, “What is he singing? Like, Chinese folk songs?”

I pictured the accompany music video to the particular tune; one of those videos with shaking bottoms and bare mid-riffs. I shook my head.

Not really, I told her.

It was Tuesday, though – his one day off a week – which explained why his blank slate of a face bobbed its way to the supermarket. As far as destinations went, he didn’t have many other options in Slingerlands, during the middle of the week. Especially without a car, and armed only with vegetable names and versatile English expressions like, “No good,” “Thank you very much,” and “What the hell?”  These days, all the chefs from The City owned laptops, so they could stream Chinese programs or movies, but realistically that kept them occupied for only so long. Even after sleeping in late and the luxury of a long, hot shower, they needed something else to occupy their time besides staring at a laptop screen with a viewable size of 12.35 inches and pixel pitch of 0.25mm.

Hopping on bus line 86 took them to the mall, but that got old (and expensive) after a while.

So besides heading to the supermarket – which lacked temptations like the Express store and the fancy gadgetry of Brookstone – what else was there to do? He’d rather work, honesty, to earn more money. Boss already told him no, though, he couldn’t work seven days a week. He wanted him to rest.

Inside the supermarket, he wandered through the bright, clean aisles. He stared at row after row of cereal boxes, canned soups, bottled Spaghetti sauces, salad dressing, and ice cream. Dessert boxes with pictures of sinful chocolate cake. Packages of uncooked chicken, categorized in seemingly infinite permutations: bone-in or boneless, skinned or skinless, thighs or breasts or drumsticks, farm raised or local or all natural – it all extended far beyond the way he used to buy his poultry (“dead or alive?”)

Every English word, every recognizable brand and vibrant packaging, the wealth of it all, reminded him of why he was here, in upstate New York. It reminded him why a 14-hour plane ride and a $1200 ticket separated him from his wife. Why 95 percent of his pay, earned through 12-hour works days, he wired across the ocean, where he’d never see it again. Why when his son married a few weeks ago, he was absent from the wedding. Instead, he was working two skillets, trying to catch up with the dinner rush.

He certainly wasn’t here because they needed his valuable cooking skills. He wasn’t a talented chef; he knew that. The first time he cooked them dinner, pork loin with bok choi in oyster sauce, the dish came out so salty, it was barely edible. The other cooks ruled it out to differences in style. He probably wasn’t used to the southern style of cooking, they figured.

For lunch the next day, he made wheat noodles in a peanut sauce – a distinctly northern dish. He spent an hour pulling and cutting his own noodles, then another 30 minutes refining his sauce, tasting it with his index finger after every ingredient, trying to get it just right.

The finished product tasted like plain spaghetti noodles doused with watery peanut butter.

He wasn’t getting paid for his culinary talents. So he compensated for it by doing anything you asked him to do.

Start keeping inventory of all kitchen items? No problem.

Wash dishes and scrub the walls? Absolutely.

Get on the 8-foot ladder and hang Christmas lights around the building in 15 degree weather? I’d love to.

He compensated with his good temperament. By never getting upset. By singing.

Chen picked something out of the grocery store – something for dessert, something foreign that looked deceptively delicious, like a chunk of Angel food cake or sweet cherry pie. He braved the cold once more, and crossed the intersection back to the unheated dormitory, where he prepared his dinner, and grimaced as he downed his own cooking. Then ate his dessert, and grimaced at how sweet it was.

He watched his second movie for the day.

He sang a little.

Then, more out of boredom then exhaustion, he laid down on the mattress with the sagging middle. The mattress where countless other chefs before him had laid their tired bodies. He pulled the sleeping bag he used for a blanket over his body, and tried to sleep, eagerly awaiting to return to work in the morning.

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He switched to the rectangular strainer – a squirrel-sized hockey stick, with a steel mesh blade instead of wood. He dipped it into the yellow oil, and lifted it out, covering the surface with an even layer of tempura flakes. His left hand reached across his body, and with two quick plunges into the white batter, coated the long strip of shrimp. It looked like French fries in Europe; long, slender, dipped in mayonnaise.  He laid it atop the tempura flakes, and placed it back in the oil. Gently, he pressed it against the wall of the deep fryer, and as he released the pressure, angled the strainer so it slowly rotated, giving the entire surface area the opportunity to be coated with flakes. He repeated the rotation a few times, before letting the shrimp fully cook in the hot oil.

When he finally pulled the shrimp out, we examined his battering technique. The entire surface was coated, but not in a single, even layer.  Tempura flakes stuck out in odd places, like a Bart Simpson haircut.

“Like I said, it takes some skill,” he repeated.

Tempura Batter

1. Fill large metal bowl with 2 ½ pints of tempura batter powder.
2. Add an egg.
3. Add water, mix. The mix should be free of lumps, and a smooth, even consistency.
4. The batter serves as both the flaky coating on tempura dishes, and the coating layer on the meats and vegetables.

Tempura gets a bad rep. Partly because it’s deep-fried, and any yahoo at the County Fair can work an Oreo or a Twinkie in his deep-fryer. And partly because the responsibility falls onto the sous chef, while the head chef handles the stove. But there are enough intricacies that not only make it a valued skill, but one that requires knowledge and practice to become proficient.

The coating on the protein you serve must be light and even. There have to be enough flakes for consistency, but not so overdone that all you can taste is the batter. Coating the vegetables requires hand speed and efficiency, dipping from powder to batter to the oil with the fewest number of movements.

In fact, the whole process of creating a tempura dish was meant to be done slowly, with meticulous precision. But the popularization of Japanese cuisine has made speed a necessity.

###

Chen sifu watches me pour the batter into the oil – I keep the ladle high above my head, and the liquid seeps off the top, slides over the sides, and gravity gives it a one-two boot. It plunges into the pond of hot oil waiting calmly below, splashing and breaking serenity like the alcoholic uncle arriving late to Christmas dinner, in a fanfare of fizzles and flair. Immediately, pale yellow flakes bloom and race across the surface. The flakes drift in even, concentric circles outwards, carried by bubbles and small waves reverberating throughout the deep fryer, resembling a patchwork quilt of crisp autumn yellow.

I watch these flakes cook for a few seconds; some pieces clumped up into large, continental land masses. They’re no good to me, so I scoop them into the trash. This batch isn’t made to coat anything; they go directly to the sushi bar, and will eventually put the “crunch” in crunchy rolls. The flakes that remain are still a bit thicker than I remember, but the batch looks close enough. I scoop and place them into a large strainer resting above the other deep fryer, to let excess oil drip before giving it to the sushi bar.

It’s not until after the third batch does Chen sifu examine my handiwork.

He inspects the flakes straining to the side. He flicks his wrist once, twice, sifting through the contents.

“No good,” he says. He dumps it into the garbage can. He ushers me out of the way, and examines the batter I’m using.

“Too thick.” He adds water and mixes. Then he begins pouring it into the oil, ladle high above his head, using a small circular motion so the batter doesn’t just strike one area in the deep fryer. Among the chefs who work the deep fryer, Chen sifu is the most skilled.  No matter the volume of orders, all his protein come out evenly coated, cooked till crispy and not a second longer. Not an easy thing to manage.

I watch his flakes blossom. His don’t clump together, and are in noticeably smaller pieces than the ones I managed to come up with. The thin layer of flakes that eventually float to the top form almost a crystalline structure on the oil, a web of tempura, bonded like ionic.

“Oh,” I say. “That’s good?”

He shakes his head. “No. Still not good.” With quick flicks of the wrist, he uses the rectangular strainer to slash through the oil. He pushes the flakes towards the wall of the fryer, and cuts at it by pressing layer by layer into the steel. There are no continental land masses. He dumps the batch into the steel strainer.

“Now, not bad.”

###

I try explaining to Asuk the best I can. The words are gibberish, a guttural mix of Chinese, Cantonese, and English. It’s not pretty but it gets the point across.

Look, when you put the flakes on the strainer, it’s too clumped together. Spread it out more – it needs to be one even layer. When you start pushing towards the wall, start further away; you’ll collect more flakes that way. Don’t spend five minutes rotating; either you did it right  or you didn’t – you have to move on.

His dark, grizzled hand grasps the strainer like it’s a miniature teacup. It’s impossible to tell if his skin tone is from dirt or labor.

No, I tell him. Hold it like you mean it. I push the handle further into his hand.

He nods, readjusts, and we continue.

It’s frustrating watching Asuk work. It’s not so much he hasn’t learned properly, but he wasn’t taught properly. Chinese people, they think practice make perfect. So they’ll let you struggle on your own, barely taking note of your mistakes, only noticing if your end result is passable. If it isn’t, you’re berated. If it is, you’re grunted at. Chef barely pays him any attention when he starts his pour, so no one notices the batter’s too thin.

Practice doesn’t make perfect.

Perfect practice makes perfect.

He dips one piece of shrimp into the batter.

No – both at the same time. I demonstrate. How are you going to do 10 pieces, one at a time?

He scoops out flakes from the oil.

Too bunched up, I tell him. I redunk the strainer for him, spreading out the flakes. This is what it should look like.

He starts to place the protein onto the thin layer of flakes I collected for him. I guide his leathery mitt. Move the strainer close, so you don’t drip more batter into the oil.

When he puts the shrimp in, he remembers to start from a distance, at least. But his rotation is slow, and the long shrimp just plunges into the oil, without first getting its coat of pre-cooked flakes. He tries futilely to save the protein; thrashing and rotating, like a toddler trapped in the deep end. When he pulls the shrimp out, it’s clear the lifeguard didn’t reach him in time.

Asuk look dejected.

Don’t worry about it, I say. I pat him on the back. Just do it again. You know, tempura takes the most skill in Japanese cooking?

He pours the batter, ladle high. The flakes blossom. They march across the oil. We watch. We try again.

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I took another bite. I was sympathetic to Chen Sifu’s cooking, since I’d been told my own cooking was pretty bland. But Danny was right; whenever Chen Sifu cooked, it required hibachi hot mustard to make it an enjoyable experience. I nodded.

“Yeah. See, this guy, no good.” He shook his head, then glared at the contents of his bowl. “I think no one teach him. He just learn by watching. He…” Danny paused, and struggled for the word. He barked something at Tracy, the server, in Fukienese.

Tracy’s eyes didn’t stray from the flat screen television mounted against the wall. “Like a job. He cook like a job,” she mumbled. Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations was on. He was eating clam testes or snail gizzards or something.

“Yeah. He cook like it just a job. He only use his mind, you know? He doesn’t use his heart.” He put down his chopsticks, and placed his hands at the center of his chest. With curved pointer fingers on both his hands and jutted thumbs, he formed a small heart to illustrate his meaning. “The Old Man, he uses his heart, and that’s why his food taste better. This guy, you watch him cook, you never see him taste his food, right?”

I noticed that, and did think it odd. Or the fact when I first started learning, he never tasted my dishes, or instructed me to do so, before serving it.

“See? All great chefs: Japanese, French, Italian, always taste food. Ming Jai, you cook sautéed noodles, you gotta pick up noodle, and,” he mimicked slurping up a single noodle from a closed fist, “and taste. Listen, I know. My first teacher, he Japanese, he tell me: don’t give food to customers you wouldn’t eat yourself. Right? Japanese chef, they carry spoon with them, so they can taste all their food. They taste, then they say, ‘Okay, good.’ Problem with all Chinese chefs, man, all no good. All cook like just a job.” He simulated cooking in a wok, sautéing food with one hand and shoving the contents with a spoon in the other. “Put it down, don’t even taste it. ‘I’m done.’ Just a job to them. Stupid.”

When Danny got excited, his eyes, already large and playful, became enormous. I remember they were the size of our dinner bowls the other day, when he got carded trying to cash in a winning scratch-off ticket.

I told him it was because he looked like a 12-year old boy.

“No, Ming Jai, you don’t understand – I buy ticket from them! Shit, I give them money, no problem, no ID. I try and take money, they check ID. I like, ‘Fuck man.’”

Oh, I thought about that for a second. Fuck man, I agreed.

His eyes were like that now, and he appeared extra animated with his long, thick black hair jutting out omnidirectionally with a permanent case of bed head. The culinary arts were his passion, and he displayed it with every new dish he created. His Amazing Tuna Roll sold even faster than he anticipated, and backed up the sushi bar for an hour: he coated layers of ruddy, Big-eyed tuna with course black pepper, then layered it atop yellow soy paper that enclosed spicy crunchy tuna, white tuna, and fleshy avocado meat. When he seared the pepper into the tuna meat with the focused, blue heat of his handheld blow torch, the aroma of zesty grilled fish danced across our small dining room.

His Lobster Meat Summer Roll required no enticing to sell. Servers carried it to their table, and customers who spotted the cooked lobster meat wrapped in spring mix and orange mangos, peeking out of vinegar sushi rice and a rice wrap, simply pointed and said, “I want that.” One early Saturday evening, a table of six ordered four, and eighty-sixed our supply of lobster for the weekend. We sold 68 of those rolls in two weeks.

Of course, not everything worked out. The Grilled King Salmon Napoleon looked beautiful, with two layers of pink salmon, crisp tomato and jalapeno stacked high, then garnished with dill. But his special yuzu sauce lacked the punch he sought, and customers remarked it was a little bland. We quickly took it off the menu.

The Dancing Tuna also struggled. A cooked white tuna salad mixed with mayo and eel sauce was served in an ice cream cone, along with a “Tuna Dumpling” on the side: spicy crunchy tuna wrapped with layers of avocado, finished with a sweet chili sauce. The presentation received strange stares. Diners said they enjoyed the dish – though no one ever ate the ice cream cone, as Danny intended.

Regardless, Danny’s passion shined through every slice of fish, every garnish, his every motion behind that sushi bar; that was clear since he plated his first dish. He created height by stacking roll pieces, stylistically a French technique, instead of laying it out on the plate. He brought with him small LED lights the size of ice cubes, which he buried beneath white radish or smothered with ice, to light up sushi and sashimi platters with splashes of red and violet. The other day, he talked about a new special he wanted to try using stacked soup spoons, revealing more of his French influence.

To him, concocting cuisine required more than art, more than science. It required love in every detail. Anything less was unacceptable.

“You see even when I do sushi rice? Always, always have to taste first. Take a little piece,” he pretended to take a bite of rice. “Check to make sure okay-la. Good flavor? Okay.”

He touched his chest again. “Remember when you cook, Ming Jai, not come from your mind. Good cooking come from your heart.”

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