Chef Ah-Chung:Revisiting Jiujia Cuisine

Huang Te-chung, known as Chef Ah-Chung, is the executive chef of the restaurant Top-Chef and a lecturer at Chinese Culture University.

Ah-Chung's uniform, which he designed himself, is nearly as elaborate-and as much of a personal calling card-as his haute jiujia cuisine.

Ah-Chung's parents ran an eatery in Yi-lan's San-xing, so he was steeped in the restaurant business from a young age. As the saying goes, "A restaurant requires three generations to get busy." At nine, he began helping out. At 14, he started to work for catering chefs. Then at 17 he left for Taipei, where he has been working in restaurants ever since.

At the Guang-hua-lou restaurant, he studied Chao-zhou and Fu-zhou cuisine from a retired soldier who was a Chao-zhou native. At Hong-bao-shi he studied Cantonese food. At -AoBa, he learned Taiwanese cuisine. At Mei-li-hua (a Chinese-Western fusion restaurant) he studied Western cuisine. And finally at Xing-huage, he developed expertise with the food served in jiu-jia (upscale restaurant-bars catering to middle-aged businessmen and employing hostesses to accompany diners).

"When you're learning to be a chef, you can't complain about the hours," says Ah-Chung. "If you piss off your boss, there's only one outcome: Hit the road!"

Early on, he learned by stealing glances at his superiors. Ah-Chung preferred chefs who liked to gamble. To ease their escapes to the mahjong table, they were prone to issue oral directions, allowing Ah-Chung to grasp their culinary secrets faster.

Take the classic jiu-jia dish stuffed river eel. There are complicated techniques involved in making this dish. First, you've got to remove the bones. Then you fill the eel with mushrooms, bamboo shoots, strips of ham and other ingredients before cooking it. Ah-Chung reveals a secret he picked up to remove the bones more easily: deep-fry and steam the eel first.

To make deep-fried ice cubes, first put a clump of ice shavings into a mochi (a Japanese-style sweet glutinous rice ball), wrap it in a webbing of pork organ fat, dip it in flour and beaten egg, and finally deep-fry it.

"To please your clients, you've got to pull out all the stops," says Ah-Chung. That's the essence of jiu-jia culture. If there's nothing special about the food, you won't have any customers. Jiu-jia restaurants put a higher premium on innovation than regular restaurants. They demonstrate remarkable variety.

The use of unusual ingredients is one way for their food to stand out. Chicken kidneys, coxcombs, duck tongues, duck feet, chicken feet, pig eyeballs, pig gums, pork tripe and so forth all must be exhaustively collected. "When you've got to assemble the tongues of 20 or 30 ducks for one plate of food, how can the dish fail to be precious?" asks Ah-Chung.

Apart from the rarity of the ingredients, jiu-jia cuisine, which is complicated and delicate, also puts an emphasis on technique. "A lot of thought is given to the color, fragrance, aroma, appearance and even utensils," says Ah-Chung. Just as proper Buddhist statues demand gold plating, he explains, culinary dishes likewise want to be dressed up. Take "peacock spreads its tail" or "centipede rainbow crab." Such banquet dishes are a test of a chef's craftsmanship and patience.

"Peacock spreads its tail" is made with shrimp marinated in alcohol, roasted duck, squid, liver, ham, asparagus shoots and other ingredients, which are decoratively sliced, carved and assembled into the beautiful image of a peacock spreading its tail. "Centipede rainbow crab," on the other hand, requires one first to toil at removing the meat of a crab before working with a variety of red, green, black and yellow ingredients, including ham, mustard greens, hair moss and shredded fried egg. Finally, you add the crab meat and crab legs to create a colorful centipede. It looks impressive and is easy for guests to eat.

"Deep-fried ice cube" is a dish that a customer nagged him into making. The showy dish involves taking ice shavings and pressing them into a ball that is stuffed into a mochi (Japanese glutinous rice ball). You then wrap this in a thin, web-like layer of pork organ fat and put three layers of "clothing" on the outside: flour, egg, and bread crumbs. Finally you deep-fry it for two minutes in oil heated to 130?C. When brought to the table, the outside is crispy, the middle portion warm, and the ice in the middle unmelted.

Ah-Chung notes that jiujia customers are affluent and willing to spend money so long as they are shown a good time. The material costs for a deep-fried ice cube probably only run to NT$80-90, but the guests often leave tips amounting to NT$10-20,000.

To make deep-fried ice cubes, first put a clump of ice shavings into a mochi (a Japanese-style sweet glutinous rice ball), wrap it in a webbing of pork organ fat, dip it in flour and beaten egg, and finally deep-fry it.

Now, many years since he worked at a jiu-jia, Ah-Chung's creativity remains undimmed.

When Chen Shui-bian was president, Ah-Chung helped on two state dinners, preparing such Yi-lan specialties as meat rolls, smoked duck and sun-dried pork liver. For a state dinner held since Ma Ying-jeou became president, Ah-Chung used ground pork and eggplant in a dish called "the famous horse crosses the bridge." (The president's surname Ma is the Chinese character for "horse.") He also used tilefish ("horse head fish" in Chinese) in a tilefish hot pot. It was all extremely creative.

Ten years ago Ah-Chung opened his own restaurant, Top-Chef, which specializes in Taiwanese cuisine. Because the restaurant is near the National Palace Museum, the National Revolutionary Martyrs' Shrine and other tourist attractions, it draws guests from Japan, Korea, Europe, the United States, Singapore and Malaysia. Recently, more and more tourists from mainland China have come to sample local food: smoked duck, sun-dried pork liver, free-range chicken, lo-ba-bung (滷肉飯/rice with braised pork), youyu luorou suan (魷魚螺肉蒜/squid, turban snail and leek soup), "three-cup" chicken, fo tiao qiang (佛跳牆/Buddha jumps over the wall), ang-jim-bi-go (紅蟳米糕/serrated swimming crab and glutinous rice cake), pork with red yeast, and other colorful dishes.

Chef Ah-Chung says that until the mainlanders all started asking for soy sauce, he didn't realize how much seasoning mainlanders prefer in their food. Unaccustomed to the sweeter flavor of Taiwanese soy sauce, however, they typically went on to request salt instead. Now Ah-Chung keeps various sauces at the ready for his mainland customers. "It's like how we Taiwanese, when we first started going abroad, would bring bottles of fermented tofu with us!"

As for the technical virtuosity he acquired making jiu-jia food, when customers give him advance notice, Ah-Chung can still whip up some of the highly creative and unique dishes on which he built his reputation.

To make deep-fried ice cubes, first put a clump of ice shavings into a mochi (a Japanese-style sweet glutinous rice ball), wrap it in a webbing of pork organ fat, dip it in flour and beaten egg, and finally deep-fry it.

To make deep-fried ice cubes, first put a clump of ice shavings into a mochi (a Japanese-style sweet glutinous rice ball), wrap it in a webbing of pork organ fat, dip it in flour and beaten egg, and finally deep-fry it.

To make deep-fried ice cubes, first put a clump of ice shavings into a mochi (a Japanese-style sweet glutinous rice ball), wrap it in a webbing of pork organ fat, dip it in flour and beaten egg, and finally deep-fry it.

To make deep-fried ice cubes, first put a clump of ice shavings into a mochi (a Japanese-style sweet glutinous rice ball), wrap it in a webbing of pork organ fat, dip it in flour and beaten egg, and finally deep-fry it.