Why Do Foods Fall In Love?

Over time, I've had countless occasions to utilize the skills I acquired in a small Shaolin culinary temple in China, apprenticed as I was, to a Kung-Fu Master Chef. His name was Kang Wu, and he was an inscrutably steel-eyed seventy five year old when, protesting, he took a brash young American under his wing.

It is not generally known, but Kung Fu Cheffery is actually a martial art. It involves the use of kitchen implements to prepare a gourmet meal while warding off hordes of hungry invaders. At least that was the historical use of the art.

Today, Kung Fu Cheffery has only a very few remaining practitioners in the world. Sadly, the time of the hero-chef has passed in most of the civilized world. I am the oldest and most skilled of the remaining few, and even my prodigious talents are seldom called upon anymore. For the dwindling faithful, dedication to the art means giving up all else to follow the way of the serrated blade. My story traces an especially difficult path.

The Master considered me unworthy of his tutelage. I was simply a spoiled American kid who he believed, lacked the passion and the commitment to become a Kung Fu Master Chef . Just to prove I could be humble, I washed pots and pans in the temple for fully seven years. My reward for such dedication was to be unfairly labelled as having so overblown an ego that I felt it necessary to prove I was good enough to wash dishes. In showing I had worth, I had demonstrated in the old man's eyes an utter lack of it.

But I was not to be denied. I was eventually stuffed down the gullet of the culinary goose and my acceptance forced upon the master. It was through the efforts of my maternal great grand-father, the second cousin twice removed, by marriage, of the high priest at the temple. He sent a letter that eventually got me considered for apprenticeship. And then I still had to overcome centuries of Chinese food-centric bigotry. I couldn't possibly have either the discipline or the moral fiber to become a Kung Fu Chef.

I didn't speak the language aside from being able to passably name a few side dishes, so I don't know what great grandpa put in his letter. But he and the priest had been together on a United States gunboat sailing the Yangtze around the turn of the twentieth century. My great grandfather was an American sailor and the high-priest-to-be was the cook. They weren't exactly friends, but great grandpa was known to be a lavish tipper. Evidently, the High-Priest never forgot the sailor with the tattoo of an anchor on his forearm.

Master Chef Wu turned beet red when he was told of the letter and the High Priest's decision. He stormed off, stomping on a walnut as he departed and commanding me to gather up the nut meat. I stood defiantly in place. Actually, it wasn't defiance, though being a teenager, I looked kind of defiant. He was speaking Chinese. I had not the slightest idea what he was saying. When he returned, he scowled at me and gathered up the nut meats himself, then told me to clean up the shell. Again I was clueless and consequently, motionless.

The old man picked up a wooden staff and struck me on my head. Finally speaking in a kind of broken English, he said: "The student never questions the master." I answered: "Why?", and got whacked a second time. He made it clear that he was not happy with my presence and that at best, I might one day aspire to putting together a simple dessert...but more likely, only serving green tea. I learned much later that Wu had a touch of arthritis and didn't like cracking walnuts.

It took many years, but measure by excruciating measure, we came to understand each other. I might even say we became friends, this master and his pupil, though he never gave me any real indication that he actually liked me, only that he accepted my presence. I, in turn, came to embrace the recipes behind this man's martial arts cooking regimen and have applied it throughout my life since.

In time, we might have eventually bonded, but for the fateful night he tossed a tomato in the air to demonstrate slicing it in 13 perfect segments as it fell to the plate. Unfortunately, he'd sampled a little too much of the sake in which he was marinating the tomato. His first thrust missed and so threw off his timing that all his subsequent strikes as well, found only air.

Furious, he screamed at the top of his lungs something that, though in his native tongue, would have been an unprintable vulgarity in any language. The tomato meanwhile, came down upon a carving fork on the cutting board on which a meat muscle trimming lay. The trimming flipped into the air, came down into the master's open mouth and lodged there, deep in his windpipe. The Heimlich maneuver had not yet reached the shores of China. To the horror of all present, he choked and died a gristly death.

This kind of tragedy had never happened in the temple's 1800 year history. We had no menus...no guidelines...no way to deal with the sadness of the Master's passing. We wandered the kitchens flipping our spatulas and playing mumbledy-peg in the hanging carcasses of beef going to waste in the freezer.

Finally, the High Priest announced that to honor the memory of the Master Chef, each day at dawn, we would rise and make a 'mourning' meal. We would prepare and eat this instead of breakfast. That it consisted in its entirety of the same items as in our regular morning meal, was both convenient and a testament to the aged high priest's failing mental abilities. Out of respect and hunger, the students complied and we threw ourselves whole-heartedly into the endeavour every day.

Eventually, the Master was replaced with a young Chinese master from the Sorbonne. His style was different. And now, I had to learn yet another language. But at least the playing field had been levelled. No one knew what the Master was saying.

And then there was the Chen girl. I followed her about day and night like a lame puppy. She had the most beautiful cleaver I had ever seen or have ever seen since. And the beautifully sculpted cleavage in which she carried her cleaver made me tremble. I was horribly torn, not knowing for certain which I desired more, the cleaver or the sheath in which it as so lovingly cradled.


So long as I can still identify an aroma, I will never forget that night. We had been preparing an appetizer of braised Koi with a ginger Parmesan glaze and we just got a little too...close. My fillet knife, dripping with ginger, brushed her sleeve. Her cheese grater full of Parmesan slid languidly into my breast pocket. We fell into each other's arms, fillet knife and grater doing things to each other best left to the imagination. It was a culinary harmony fit for the gods. Even today, I can't prepare Koi without tears streaming from my eyes. And onions are not even in the mix.

That was all many years ago, and I have had more than my share of adventures. I have cooked for countesses and kings. I have saved many a monarchy from falling to a hungry horde. I have taught at the finest cooking schools...headed up the kitchens at the finest hotels from Dubai to Las Vegas and have passed on the magic to at least a few gifted apprentices. It is my hope that they will carry on the traditions and stand ready to take up their cheese slicers and rolling pins in defense of their homelands. For such is the path of the Kung Fu Chef. Such is the way of the serrated blade.

But for now...for me...the path has come to an end. And it has ended, it seems, at the fry cooker of McDonalds. The world has moved on to fast food. Trans-fats heated and soaked into anything remotely edible. There is no longer need for one with my abilities. Perhaps one day, but not likely in what remains of my lifetime.

I am sorry, but I have little time left. My lunch break is nearly over and I need to finish my Whopper. Would you like to share my fries?