The Gospel of Food: Lessons I Learned from Eating around the World

By Sharwin Tee

You can learn a lot about becoming a better cook just by eating. A lot.
Chef Sharwin Tee shares the most important lessons he's gained over the years from each mouthful of food that he has eaten around the world. For him, each dish has been an exploration of the world, and a step towards a better understanding of different cultures and people. In The Gospel of Food, recipes accompany each learning, lovingly prepared and developed to perfection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9789712736704

Book preview

Prologue

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, June, 2012

Chef, should we put the steaks in the oven?

I am standing at the pass, the counter on which I inspect food before handing them to the servers, looking out into the slowly filling dining room, and trying my best to drink in this calm before the storm. Pedro, the hotel’s sous chef from Chile, is waiting for my answer, but I indulge myself in a moment more of silence. There are just some tasks you have to relish as you do them, and cooking Filipino food at the Sheraton Hotel, Abu Dhabi for a group of diplomats is one of them.

Not yet. I think we’re going to start a little late, I finally answer.

Yes, Chef.

I am left alone at the pass again, to my reverie. Tonight, my host, the ambassador of the Philippines to the United Arab Emirates, will be dining with her fellow diplomats to celebrate the upcoming Filipino food festival that will run a buffet in the hotel for one week.

I spy the ambassador and her colleagues near the dining room entrance as they chat over some cocktails. In my calculation, they should be heading to their table in five to ten minutes.

I leave the pass to do a final check on my mise en place.

My first course is salmon smoked with green tea in a guava sinigang broth. It’s a dish with multiple components, so I make sure each one is ready. The salmon fillets are fresh out of the smoker, and they are cooked perfectly. I give Ahmed, the line cook from Pakistan, a high five; he assured me a while back that the fish would be perfect at fifteen minutes. I taste the broth to check for flavor. It’s tart with a hint of sweetness. It just needs to be boiling hot. The cherry tomato confit is done and the greens and string beans are ready to be warmed when we begin.

Chicken tosilog is the next course and each component is ready as well. The java rice, flavored with garlic and annatto seed oil, is cooked and being kept warm, while the six-minute eggs are peeled and ready to be reheated in boiling water. I taste a piece of chicken tocino; it’s sweet, salty, and sticky. Perfect.

The steaks, like Pedro said, have been seared on both sides, just waiting to be finished in the oven. I’m serving those with bistek onions—red onions caramelized and cooked down with soy sauce and calamansi. That’s being served with cauliflower puree.

Before I could check on dessert, the ambassador and her friends find their seats, and the kitchen jumps into action. A small but dedicated team, we churn out course after course in rapid succession. I am at the pass, calling out the courses, directing traffic, and inspecting and wiping plate after plate. Behind me, Nando and Michael, two Filipino cooks, plus Ahmed and Pedro, all work silently but efficiently. The United Nations would be proud.

As soon as the last plates of the steak course leave the kitchen, I turn to Eddie, the Filipino pastry cook who had silently prepared my dessert course, chocolate and chili leche flan. The thing about flans is that, until you turn them over, you don’t really know how well they will turn out. I hold my breath as the pastry cook upends the chafing dish onto a large tray. When he lifts up the dish, a small section of the flan sticks to it, leaving an imperfect, broken flan on the tray. I see the crestfallen look on the faces of the young cooks, but I assure them we would be fine. We made a large serving for this reason; we have extra. They slice the flan into perfect squares, and I finish each plate with a spoonful of raspberry coulis, a quenelle of whipped cream, and some pili nuts cooked in sugar. This is my secret weapon. The ambassador, a proud daughter of Bicol, would bring packets of pili nuts everywhere, giving them to anyone she meets to promote Filipino products. Last night, I asked for five packets, telling her of my plan to use it for dessert. She was thrilled.

I thank my team for working so diligently with me, then I bring the last plate of the dessert course to the ambassador’s table. She warmly greets me and introduces me to the table. Over the next twenty minutes, I answer their questions about my menu and Philippine cuisine in general. As I excuse myself to start kitchen cleanup, the ambassador takes me aside to thank me. I make sure that everything went as well as it could. She assures me that it has and she can’t wait for the festival tomorrow.

In the years that followed, I found it absolutely crazy that I got to do that dinner in Abu Dhabi. Despite meeting me for merely thirty minutes for the first time, the ambassador took her chances and asked me to cook a Filipino dinner to showcase our food for diplomacy, culture, and education. In me, she discovered a kindred spirit. She saw food beyond just sustenance that fuelled manual labor. She saw food as a means to educate.

One of the more common questions I get asked when I speak to aspiring cooks and students is, What are some of the secrets to becoming a successful chef? My standard answer would include some form of practice or hard work, but lately, I’ve come to realize that, as much as chefs like me can help young cooks and chefs become successful, what we need to learn to become great cooks are taught by the very food we eat every day. The ambassador had been right all along. We can learn so much from each other’s food.

In this book, I’ve listed down many lessons I’ve learned over the years that have helped me get to where I am today. As much as I want to take credit for everything written in these pages—that I am somehow a fountain of unending culinary knowledge—I have to admit that majority came from my experiences eating around the globe. The years of hard work, sweat, injuries, and getting cursed at honed my cooking skills, but I would not have been complete without the knowledge I gained from all the food eaten all over the world without judgment. Each mouthful opened a crack in a wall, giving me a chance to explore a culture I would never have understood otherwise. Each bite has been a reminder, a correction, or a reinforcement of a universal culinary truth. Each empty plate is a symbol of a better understanding of the world and its people.

Yes. I am saying what you think I am saying.

You can learn a lot about becoming a better cook by eating. A lot.

Here’s how I did it.

P.S. I’ve kept the dates, conversations, and places as accurate as possible, but I changed some names in my stories, particularly those who’ve never been comfortable in the spotlight.

Chapter 1:

Is That Your Finger in My Tea?

Hong Kong, United Kingdom, May, early 1990s

I’m probably thirteen or fourteen years old and definitely tired as my parents march ahead of us. I remember my mother telling me she liked to hold my father’s arm, both as a romantic gesture and as a way of keeping up with his ridiculous walking pace. Competitive walkers would have welcomed the challenge presented by my dad. My younger brother, Malachi, trying to keep pace with me, is no less tired and on the verge of complaining. We have been up since six a.m., an ungodly hour, especially as we are supposedly on vacation. We have been walking the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui for thirty minutes, nonstop. Every street we turn into looks worse than the previous one. We are lost, I am convinced, and it’s only a matter of time before we get mugged. Finally, my dad stops and looks upward to his left. He surveys the place for a few seconds, takes note of the restaurant layout and kitchen, and declares it to be a good place to have breakfast. He seems excited. Everyone else was just glad we could finally sit.

Breakfast today is at a local eatery whose signage and menu bears no English. You see, one of the family rules is to eat local, avoiding fast food joints like the clown’s, unless we were, you know, in the USA.

"We’re going to have o hoon," my dad excitedly declares in Fookien Chinese, somehow sure that the place would serve them.

Ordering it was far from academic. An old man of about fifty approaches the table. He looks disinterested and even disheveled (quite an achievement at eight a.m.), which does nothing to ease any apprehensions I have about the cleanliness of the food. He looks pissed as he asks my dad what we wanted to eat. My dad orders "o hoon" in Fookien Chinese, as if we were in Binondo, Manila. There is a lot of confusion, so my mother translates in Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) and soon it becomes clear we are getting what my dad wants.

Four glasses of hot tea are dropped on our table. Amazingly, our server uses just one hand to deliver them. He places a finger on the inside of each glass and uses the thumb for balance. Of course, this means that one, if not all, of his fingers has touched the tea inside, the very tea we are to drink. I refuse and watch in horror as my parents take sips.

A few minutes later, our food arrives. On the large, orange melamine plate is a mound of flat, white things, which I would later discover as hofan noodles, or in Fookien, "o hoon." My dad grabs the soy sauce bottle and proceeds to drizzle some onto the noodles in a circular manner. The color difference is striking as the black soy sauce slowly trickles down onto the steaming, stark white rice noodles; and while I am terrified of putting anything our server touched in my mouth, my interest was piqued. I grab a pair of chopsticks and hesitantly take a strand. Malachi, as any younger brother would, is waiting for me to try it, but my parents are already tucking into the noodles, two or three at a time.

I perked up at first bite. The noodle is bouncy and chewy, QQ as the Chinese describe it. It tastes of nothing, but the soy sauce gives it the perfect salty counter balance. It is an amazing experience. I quickly reach out for more. Malachi senses my approval and proceeds to get some for himself. The second bite is just as good as the first. The third is slightly less salty and I realize that I need to add more soy sauce. Once I do, the rest of the bites are as magical as the first. The large mound of black and white is reduced to nothing in three to four minutes. I secretly hope my dad orders more, but he knows we are going to find other places to eat at later.

Two tables away, an English couple sit and observe the tables. Only one other table apart from ours is occupied. They check out what we’re having and point to it, indicating they want what we’re having. As their food arrives, my dad leans in.

They ordered the same thing and I don’t think they’re going to like it.

He’s right. The couple, without anyone’s guidance, dig into the o hoon with no soy sauce, and are mystified at the bland noodles. I watch my dad look at them in amusement as a moment of inspiration strikes the couple and they drizzle some soy sauce onto the noodles. Still a no go. Without finishing their food, they pay their bill and leave. This confuses me. The dish was an epiphany for me. It was tremendously simple, composed only of three ingredients and had a texture I had never experienced before. I knew clearly, even then, that the memory of this dish would never leave me, yet the English couple had left their plate almost untouched.

They don’t understand. That’s why they don’t like it, my dad says as he shakes his head.

Hong Kong, China, April, 2015

I celebrate my birthday by having breakfast at a place called Australia Dairy Company in Mongkok.

Finally seated after a five-minute wait (there is a queue, after all), the menu is shoved in my face. A couple of decades have not improved traditional Hong Kong service in classic eateries such as this. At least, the server’s uniform looks clean and pressed. I know what I’m having as I have done my research. The breakfast special is a strange combination of ham and macaroni soup and scrambled eggs on toast. Apparently, the British occupation of Hong Kong has left some interesting mutated dishes that have become well-loved.

The soup is exactly what it says it is. The broth is a light brown color, almost like a consommé, with elbow macaroni and ham bits floating around. The soup is salty, with a slight hint of ham flavor. The noodles are way too soft, much like in the Filipino sopas. There is no discernible reason why this dish should ever see the light of day, but it is oddly comforting to have in the morning, as everyone in the background shout and talk over one another. The scrambled eggs, though, are truly another matter altogether.

One forkful and I stop cold. They are fluffy and creamy, clearly cooked in too much oil (which may or may not have been used to fry something else) and they are perfectly loose, creamy, and runny. The white bread toast underneath provides a contrast of texture and a hint of sweetness. Once again, two to three ingredients. But it is immediately clear to me that this is my most favorite plate of scrambled eggs. I don’t even want to know how they make it; I just want more. As with what happened with the plate of o hoon years back, though, I find some food and travel bloggers who don’t get why the lines at the Australia Dairy Company are that long every single day.

Hong Kong, China, May, 2015

Just try it and then I’ll tell you what it is.

I’m back in Hong Kong, in the streets of Sham Shui Po, just two weeks later to shoot for my travel and cooking show. My guide, Coco, stands in anticipation as I hold a skewer of some unknown offal. The cameras are rolling, but I hesitate as I look over the skewer Coco wants me to taste. It’s three pieces of meat, colored slightly orange, undoubtedly boiled tender in water or tea with red yeast. On the meat are some hoisin sauce and spicy mustard.

So, what is it? I ask again, hoping Coco would budge.

He remains tight-lipped so I take a bite. The first thing that strikes me is that it’s cold. The meat has a nice crunchy texture, but it was essentially flavorless. I realize it may have been boiled with no flavorings at all, but then I taste both the hoisin and mustard. They give me a combination of sweetness and spiciness, a slight umami flavor that quickly lifts up the previously flavorless meat. It is a wonderful bite. I ask Coco again, leading him to explain