Chinese Food

There were too many cooks in the narrow kitchen aisle in Chinatown's Grand Star Jazz Club on Saturday, but they cheerily squeezed past one another to peer into the braising pot where chunks of pork shoulder simmered in a piquant sauce of red wine, rice wine, garlic, scallions and ginger. In front of an industrial-size wok, Jet Tila, a restaurant consultant and radio and television chef, demonstrated how to steam whole striped bass.

When I was growing up in Brooklyn, going out to eat meant going out for Chinese. Moo shu, chow mein, kung pao -- these exotic-sounding words gradually became part of my vocabulary, just as they became recognizable all over the United States. The dishes themselves did not really taste so foreign, once I mastered my chopsticks. I found them appealing and even comforting.

It's too bad you can't just crack open a fortune cookie and find out who invented the fortune cookie. Then there wouldn't be a controversy. Oddly enough, no Chinese cities claim the honor, but a couple of American burgs do: those feuding cousins, Los Angeles and San Francisco. L.A. boosters have long held that the folded vanilla wafer was invented in 1918 by an Angeleno named David Jung, founder of Hong Kong Noodle Co.

Did you know that the Chinese lunar new year begins on Feb. 18? You and your book club can celebrate by reading "In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson" by Bette Bao Lord. It's the funny and exciting story of Shirley Wong's move from China to Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1947. Everything in America is strange to Shirley: the language, the apartment buildings, the way people receive compliments, even her new name, which she chose in honor of the famous 1930s child star, Shirley Temple.

AT Mission 261, in the century-old building that once served as San Gabriel's first city hall, waiters in suave gray suits are taking orders for steamed chicken breast rolled around bamboo pith and custard-filled dumplings shaped like tiny rabbits -- a very au courant sort of dim sum in Hong Kong. Now that a quarter of a million people of Chinese ancestry live in this area, our local Chinese food scene is buzzing with energy.

Surrounded by fruits and vegetables from around the world, Annie Rong dug diligently through a tall pile of Chinese ginger roots in the produce section of an Asian supermarket in Monterey Park. Tossing a full bag into her cart, the 71-year-old immigrant from southern China said that nothing, not even news that imported ginger from her native country was believed to be contaminated, would stop her from eating the spicy root.

Chinese exports of foods including garlic, honey and fish fell sharply this summer as Beijing officials tightened health and safety regulations. That has meant increased revenue for some American growers whose products are now in greater demand -- but also higher prices for U.S. consumers.