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[链接]http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/world/asia/03chef.html?_r=1&em
[标题]中国厨师的漫长曲折的三星之路
[翻译]krypton
香港 ——世界米其林星级知名人士——Robuchons 、Ramsays、Ducasses——通常通过辞职后自己经营以自己名字命名的餐馆，继以开分店，写烹饪书籍、电视节目和其他知名厨师的点缀取得成功。
Chan yan-tak则不然。这位中国厨师上月获得最高等级的三星厨师称号。他所在的餐馆从属于香港众多豪华海港酒店之一的LungKingHeen，其意思是龙的视野。陈先生，这个50出头、矮矮胖胖，性子直摔的汉子，是在一个偶然的机会才成为焦点的。2002年他已经辞职成为一个居家男人，此时，四季（酒店名）正为其新酒店寻找广东菜大厨，因此他们找到了他。程先生童年就成为厨房帮工，开始了他的职业生涯，但却是通过其美味的，融合了一丝法国风味，缀以松露和鹅肝的广东菜而赢得其三星厨师的称号。——对此，这个严肃对待食物的城市并非没有争议。
在此之前，世界上最著名的餐馆领导者几乎忽略世界最著名的烹调风格之一的事实没有发生在米其林主管 Jean-luc Naret 身上。近年来，这些领导者因为没能信任顶级美国和日本餐厅而一直受到批评，Naret先生不希望这种情况在中国土壤上发生。
他说：“ 在陈先生去四季之前，我们一直关注着他。我们今年就去了Lung King Heen 12次。”
但是，可能无法避免的，批评之声依然存在，他们认为米其林没有将三星资格授予现存的家庭是餐馆，而是一个的用材料吸引外国人特别是法国人的酒店。荣誉颁发以来，这个餐馆一直否认这个印象，他们表示大部分客人都是中国人，而所用的材料是创造力的标志，而非仅仅吸引顾客的烹饪手法。
米其林在表彰文章上以简洁而闻名，他对lung king heen和其食物公开的表彰分别只用了一句话：这里的材料质量极高——特别是海鲜，新鲜十足；所有的器皿都是艺术品，以优美祥和的姿态呈现。
陈先生在厨艺界登顶的历程是漫长和艰苦的，他没有在祖母传统菜肴中成长的动人故事，也没有在厨艺界创造伟大的野心。
他母亲在他很小的时候就去世了，他在13还是14岁的时候（他没有记清）就被送到厨房当帮工，这不是出自一个擅长厨艺的家庭式的爱护，而是出于生活所迫。
洗菜、拔鸡毛、打鸡蛋是他的工作。那时，他不能动刀，更不用说做菜，这也不是什么课后兼职。
他大笑一声说：“那时候我们一天工作很长时间，如果你想休息一天，你的找人替班，可能是个失业的人或者别的什么人，你得掏空口袋请个人来替你的班。我猜那时候还没有劳动法吧”
20世纪70年代，陈先生晋级成为一名厨师，在一个当地餐馆工作。香港的餐饮业没有西方那样正式，程先生不可能去高级（烹饪）学校（学习），有的只是城市里的餐馆和街道。他说“你首先模仿大厨的手艺，你也可以通过出去品尝别人的菜来学习，我现在还这么做”
1984年，程先生去了瑞金酒店的当时被称为Lai Ching Heen的餐馆，在那里他成为装饰提供给世界旅客的广东菜的师傅之一，并使这个餐馆世界闻名。他在那里呆了16年，从未想过离开寻找自己的财富。
妻子去世后，他决定永远放弃厨师生涯。他不担心自己身在大学的20岁的儿子，但他得照顾自己12岁的女儿。
他说“我的童年很辛苦，很早就出来谋生了，做厨师就像百米赛跑一样，而且我比多数人起跑得早，跑得快。我想的厨房生活已经结束了。”
:“没人照顾他，我得给他做饭，给他烫校服。”
2002年四季新酒店宣布开张时，程先生并无意回去工作，他说：“起初，我不想回去，他们只是要我去检查特菜，提些建议。我一些老朋友，老同事开始猜我什么时候回去工作，我当时以为他们在开玩笑”
最后，他被劝服回归做全职工作，如今他手下的23名员工都是以前的老伙计。
其中三个人正忙着把小白菜切成花状，其他人在一个用于蒸点心的大竹篮前擀饺子皮。墙边，舞动的火花舔舐着七个巨大的不锈钢锅底，一个厨师从其中一个锅里柃出一串热气腾腾，不停滴油的猪肉。
陈先生解释说“慢煮之前要先快煎一下，我们不会用那些，你们叫什么来着，煎锅，你们把食物放到那个盆里面，就可以不用理了”
陈先生的厨房里没有什么机器。
但是有个鱼缸，里面养着龙虾和鱼。
陈先生把他的菜描述成特制的广东菜，与他所说的“外省”菜——粗糙的翻译为外省菜，一种中国烹饪手法——有明显的区别，
他说：“外省菜比较油腻，调料也比较多，更辣，广东也有味重和味清之分，甜辣之别，但是都比较温和。这就是我所说的味觉文化的区别。
广东厨师要达到的目标就是所说的“清爽”——看上去简单的菜式是经过技术和微妙的细节做成的，这样才能带出材料本身的味道和口感。
Lung King Heen的菜单主要是广东菜：烤肉（猪肉，鸭、鹅、鸡 鸽子）数十种汤和各种海鲜。
陈先生经常给一些标准菜式加上一丝异国风味——洒些黑松路或鱼子酱——如蛋白龙虾或者蟹肉煎蛋卷。
他在他的招牌菜上更大胆。香槟炖大虾，盖以金叶。半个盘子大的鹅肝简单蒸至皮软，淋上黑色浓汁，配以南非鲍鱼。
他说“贵的东西并不等于好吃，我们不该用这种方式来划分菜单，但这里有两种菜式：一种用于博取客人的印象，一种用于和家人享用。”
陈先生——一直是个兢兢业业工作的人，却从不是一个炫耀的人——对获得米其林星级厨师的荣誉只是表示感谢四季，并将继续在哪里工作，除此在外在没说什么。
随后，他脱下为照相而带的帽子，回到他的厨房。
［原文］
The Saturday Profile
A Chinese Chef’s Long, Diverted Path to 3 Stars
By JOYCE HOR-CHUNG LAU
Published: January 2, 2009
HONG KONG — The world’s big Michelin-starred names — the Robuchons, Ramsays and Ducasses — generally achieve success by breaking free of former employers and opening restaurants named for themselves, followed by offshoots, cookbooks, television shows and other trappings of the celebrity chef.
 Philipp Engelhorn for The International Herald Tribune
"You learn at first by copying the big chefs. But you also learn just by eating out. I do that even now," said Chan Yan-tak.
Not so for Chan Yan-tak, the first Chinese chef to earn, last month, a top ranking of three stars. His restaurant, in one of Hong Kong’s many plush harborside hotels, goes by the name Lung King Heen, or View of the Dragon. And it was only through an odd stroke of luck that Mr. Chan, a stout, plain-spoken man his late 50s, was in contention at all: He had already quit the industry to be a stay-at-home dad when in 2002 the Four Seasons began looking for a master Cantonese chef for its new hotel here and coaxed him out of retirement. He began his career as an under-age kitchen hand but won his stars — not without a dollop of local controversy in this city that takes its food very seriously — on the strength of his delicately flavored Cantonese seafood creations, with a touch of French fusion, truffles and foie gras.
The fact that the world’s best-known restaurant guide had practically ignored one of the world’s best-known cuisines until now was not lost on Jean-Luc Naret, Michelin’s director. The guide had been criticized in past years for not giving credit to top Japanese and American restaurants, and Mr. Naret did not want this to happen with its first ranking on Chinese soil.
“We followed Mr. Chan for years, before he went to the Four Seasons,” Mr. Naret said. “We went to Lung King Heen 12 times this year.”
But there has been some sniping, perhaps inevitable, that Michelin granted its first three stars not to one of the city’s lively family restaurants, but to one in a hotel with ingredients that would appeal to foreigners, and maybe especially the French. The restaurant has fought that impression since the stars were awarded, saying that most of its customers are Chinese and the ingredients a sign of creativity, not culinary pandering.
Michelin is famously terse in its write-ups. It affords one sentence to the views and interior at Lung King Heen and one to its food. “Ingredients here are of the highest quality — particularly the seafood, which is impeccably fresh; all dishes are expertly crafted, nicely balanced and enticingly presented.”
Mr. Chan’s trek to the top of the culinary world was long and hard; he has no heart-warming stories to tell about growing up with Grandma’s traditional recipes and aspirations of culinary greatness.
His mother died when he was young, and he was sent to be a kitchen hand at the age of 13 or 14; he forgets exactly which. It was not out of any particular familial love of fine cuisine, but raw economic necessity.
He washed vegetables, plucked chickens and beat eggs. At his age, he was not allowed to use a knife, much less to cook anything. Nor was it a casual after-school job.
“Back then, we worked long days,” he said. “If you wanted a day off, you had to go find a replacement yourself, maybe an out-of-work guy or a casual, and pay him out of pocket to cover for you.” Mr. Chan said with a gruff laugh. “I guess that was before Hong Kong had labor laws.”
In the 1970s, Mr. Chan caught on as a cook, working his way up at local restaurants. Hong Kong’s culinary industry is less formal than that in the West, and there was no greater school for Mr. Chan than the city’s kitchens and streets.
“You learn at first by copying the big chefs,” he said. “But you also learn just by eating out. I do that even now.”
IN 1984, Mr. Chan went to what was then known as the Lai Ching Heen at the Regent Hotel, where he became part of the opening team that dressed up local Cantonese food into something presentable to world travelers, and made the restaurant internationally known. He stayed there for 16 years, never leaving to seek his own fortune.
When his wife died, he decided to give up his chef’s whites for good. He was not worried about his 20-year-old son, who was already in college, but he wanted to care for his daughter, who was 12.
“I had a hard time as a kid, starting work so young,” he said. “Being a chef is like running in a race, and I’d started younger and run faster than most. I figured I’d done my time in the kitchen.”
“There was nobody to look after her,” he said. “I cooked food for her. I ironed her school uniform.”
When the Four Seasons announced in 2002 that it would open a hotel in Hong Kong, Mr. Chan had no intention of returning to work. “In the beginning, I didn’t want to,” he said. “They just asked me to check out the kitchen specs, maybe give them some advice. And some of my old guys, my old colleagues, started teasing me about when I’d get back to work. I thought they were joking.”
Eventually, he was persuaded to return full time. Today, many of his 23 kitchen staff members are old-timers who had worked with him before.
Three of them were busy cutting baby bok choy into flowers. Others rolled dumpling skins in front of giant bamboo baskets used for steaming dim sum. Against the wall, leaping flames licked the bottoms of seven giant cast-iron woks. From one, a cook lifted a steaming side of pork, dripping with oil.
“It’s flash-fried before it’s slow cooked,” Mr. Chan explained. “We don’t use those — what do you call them? — deep fryers, where you throw your food into a basin and then don’t pay any attention to it till its done.”
There is a refreshing lack of machines in Mr. Chan’s kitchen.
But there is a fish tank, from which he can pluck live lobster and fish.
Mr. Chan describes his food as specifically Cantonese and draws a distinction with what he calls “oi sang” — roughly translated as “other province” — types of Chinese cuisine.
“Oi sang food is heavier on the oil, heavier on the sauce, spicier with chili,” he said. “In Cantonese, there is also the strong and the weak, the sweet and the spicy, but the contrasts are quieter. It’s a difference of what I call ‘taste culture.’ ”
THE Cantonese chef’s goal is to achieve what is referred to as “clarity” — seemingly simple dishes executed with skill and subtlety, to bring out the ingredients’ natural flavors and textures.
The foundation of Lung King Heen’s menu is built on Cantonese staples: roasted meats (pork, duck, goose, chicken, pigeon), more than a dozen broths and a wide variety of seafood.
Mr. Chan often adds an exotic rarity — a sprinkling of black truffle or caviar — to standard dishes like lobster with egg white or a crabmeat omelet.
He is more daring in his signature dishes. A jumbo prawn is simmered in a Champagne sauce and topped with gold leaf. A foie gras half the size of a dinner plate is barely steamed to a soft smoothness, topped with a thick dark sauce and served with South African abalone.
Until asked, Mr. Chan had not mentioned the choices listed at the front of the menu, which are dedicated to very expensive ingredients like shark’s fin and bird’s nest.
“Just because something’s expensive doesn’t mean it tastes better,” he said. “The menu’s not divided up this way, but there are two categories of dishes here: one for impressing your guests, and one for eating with your family.”
Mr. Chan — always the workhorse, never the show horse — had little to say about being a newly minted Michelin-starred chef, except that he was grateful to the Four Seasons and would stay there.
With that, he took off the hat he had donned for the photos and returned to the kitchen |
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