Fresh Off the Boat (33 page)

I DIDN’T FIT
in any category, to be honest. I worked at a big firm, played ball after work, and hustled with the kids in the park late night. This Dominican cat Richie lived across the park from me and should have played D-1 ball but never filled out his papers. Instead he was the manager at Target but knew he could do better. Reluctantly, I hustled with him. That was always a predicament for me. I pitched, but it was short term. I never got too hot and I did it for insurance money. These kids looked at it as a career. I took Richie on the train one day to sign up for a JUCO that he could play ball at, but he changed his mind last minute and we just ended up going to Harlem to meet a new connect in the Taft Houses. No matter how talented Richie was or how much shit he talked about what he could do, deep down
he just didn’t believe it’d happen. He was living day to day: you talk about your dreams, you boast about your talent, and you cop the Foamposites the day they come out because life is simply a collection of small victories. I didn’t want to go out like that.

MEANWHILE, THE RECESSION
was working its way from the zoom airsoles to white-shoe law firms. On the day we were laid off, Major Abshed and I got stupid high at the crib. At first, Major Abshed’s sense of responsibility had kicked in and he worried about how he would pay bills, but he quickly realized that he could go home and regroup. And I realized something, too. It was the first day of my life. I was born again. My money wouldn’t last forever, but I had six months to set the rest of my life in motion. That night, I wrote down six things.

Those were the six things I wanted to do with my life. Clearly, quarterbacking the Redskins or playing for the Knicks weren’t options, but surprisingly, three through six were. There was something powerful about that, too. I was relieved that the things I needed to do were possible. In a way, I was proud of myself. The aspirations I had for my life weren’t things that I needed anyone for. The goals weren’t tied to how I looked, who I knew, or what others thought about me. Every single one of them had to do with some sort of physical or creative expression that was within myself: football, basketball, comedy, writing, designing, and food.

That week, I got to work and signed up for a “bringer show” at the Laugh Lounge on Essex Street. The promoters of the show were some weird B&T Jersey fools that dressed like Ellen Degeneres. I had to start
somewhere, y’all … I had five days before the show so I started writing. I didn’t need to watch too much stand-up because I’d already been watching my whole life. My favorites were always Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Rodney Dangerfield, and Mitch Hedberg. I noticed that as a comic, you don’t go up there and cover every aspect of your character. You pick out the most interesting/hilarious facet of yourself and turn that shit up to a hunned. After thinking about it for a few days, I realized there were a few sides to me so I made another list.

After laying it all out, I played psychologist. I figured the persona that would hit hardest onstage and create the best humor would be #3, the cynical nihilist who just wants to get paid. I called myself Magic Dong Huang and started telling jokes about the Hmong Deer Hunter and Binghamton Shooter. I called them delivery boys gone wild and explained how it was actually good for Asian-American identity. The humor came from the ridiculousness of some fool named Magic Dong Huang telling people that it was a good look for Asians to strike fear into the hearts of Americans since all they let us fuck with at this point was Hello Kitty and Yu-Gi-Oh. My only goal as a comedian was to stomp the life out of the model-minority myth and present a side of me to audiences that crushed their expectations of what it was to be Asian-American.

I talked about how Bin Laden could get more money if he exploited fat-assed Arabic women like Kim Kardashian for his videos. One of the lines was: “Ay yo, Bin Laden, let me tell you about this video shit, son. You got dudes with brown bags on their heads and your boys all standin’
around with AKs! Shit is extra ’mo! You know what you need, son? MOTHERFUCKIN’ CADILLACS. Cadillacs and fat-ass Arabic girls like Kim Kardashian, face down, ass up, that’s how you make a fuckin’ video, b.”

The subversive joke was that I wanted people to understand how “negative stereotypes” that stigmatized black culture could be used to empower Asian and Arabic people who had been considered model-minority types and vice versa. Our identities in America were polar opposites and by “trading places” we could see how ridiculous it all was. I always felt as if America took half the good traits of a person and impressed them on Asians and the other half on black people, since clearly, no person of color could be a well-rounded, intelligent, confident individual that served him- or herself. Asian men must be emasculated, Asian women must be exotic, black men must be dick-slinging thugs, and black women must be single moms. People think it’s funny, but the stereotypes have the power to become self-fulfilling prophecies if we aren’t aware.

My favorite set was called Rotten Banana. I talked about being picked on by white people as a kid and how my parents thought kung fu was the answer. I went through a series of jokes creating scenarios that white people could make fun of me for, like my mom sewing “Hollister” onto the back of my kung fu pants so I had something to wear at the beach. I talked about how Asian shawties had flat asses ’cause they were all drinkin’ soy milk. “How the fuck you gonna grow a bubble without whole milk, boo?” After cycling through observations of Asian America, I discovered something. “White people weren’t scared of kung fu, but you know what they were scared of? Black people!” I remember the first time I told the joke, this dred in the back of the room stands up with his drink in the air and screams, “THEY’LL FEAR US!” The whole room went buc wild and I dropped Jada’s line: “I’m in the hood like Chinese wings!” At the core, the set wasn’t about black, yellow, or white, but bullying. It applied to any and everyone who was ever picked on and felt like they were the Other.

Not surprisingly, Asians were put off by my sets. By this point of my life, I was used to it. Some of us understand how powerful self-deprecation
is, but others want no part of it. The Asians who organized events and experienced the bamboo ceiling would always encourage me to come back and perform in Chinatown, but I hated seeing those crunchy-ass Asian women turn sour every time I told the soy milk joke. I ended up doing a lot of urban shows at places like Latin Quarter and Laugh Lounge. My boy Imagine would introduce me as Duck Sauce and the hood loved it so we flipped the script. I would tell Chinese food jokes and started making and bringing fried rice and chicken wings during the cocktail hour before shows. People loved it and a manager that was helping me at the time suggested that I get an appearance on Food Network since they were always casting on Craigslist.

So one night in the spring of 2009, I went on Craigslist to find a casting for Food Network. There were tons of them every week and this week’s was for
Ultimate Recipe Showdown
. All I had to do was submit a bio and a party food recipe. Since all I did was sell tree I had a lot of time on my hands to work this shit. The next day, I got high with Richie and went to Whole Foods baked out of my face. Besides soup dumplings, my favorite dish was Mao’s red cooked pork but I always liked beef more than pork, especially oxtail. I would have done oxtail, but it’s not the type of thing that makes good party food. Sniffing around the display case, I saw a bunch of different cuts that I never tried to cook at home. For most people, you go back to the same cuts of meat you grew up eating. Richie and the other Dominicans I knew liked blade steak and flank steak. My family stuck to oxtail and shank but served cuts from the rib and loin at our steakhouse. We knew what customers wanted, but we never ate it at home. For my recipe, I decided to experiment with different cuts. I knew that I wanted something flavorful with good texture for a braise. I always liked the look of skirt steak rolled up in the display case on a piece of butcher paper with texture more similar to skate than beef. I had skirt at Mexican joints and Sammy’s Roumanian, but never cooked it myself. I was curious about it so I asked the dude at the counter for three pounds of skirt and took it home to red cook.

Going online, I found out that the meat had a liver-y essence, since it was the diaphragm of the cow, so it would be interesting in a braise. Red
cooking was always debated in my family. My mom and her family were from the north so they’d do a braise that started by throwing out the first. The pork was always flash-boiled until gray, leaving behind bubbles of gray blood in the pot. After it was blanched, they’d rinse the pork and let it rest. The water got tossed, the pot got wiped, and then the pork got browned with rock candy and aromatics. It was also their custom to not use chilis or peppercorns when making red cooked pork shoulder. My dad’s side did Mao’s style red cooked pork since they were from Hunan. They would cook the first by searing the pork and preferred using pork belly over shank or shoulder. When the pork was reintroduced in a braise, it’d be accompanied by chilis, peppercorns, and garlic. I seared a couple of skirt steaks with just salt so I could taste the essence without anything masking its natural flavor. I could tell immediately that it wouldn’t play with the green onions that we usually used in red cooking, so I decided to use white onions. The meat also had a nice flavor if you got a good high heat sear that left a char, so I decided to cook the first by browning as opposed to blanching.

I used the chilis, peppercorns, garlic, ginger, and white onions. As I smelled the skirt steak sautéed with the aromatics, I realized that I had to neutralize the liver-y quality with something. Digging around the pantry, I pulled out a bottle of Moutai, China’s finest grain alcohol, aka
bai joh
. No one cooked with this shit because it tasted like flaming Kim Jong Il’s asshole, but I had fucked around with Moutai before and knew that if you ignited it, the sorghum in it took on a sharp sweetness that would be perfect. A lot of people red cook with dates, but I wanted something different and knew the Moutai would work. I put in about five ounces of Moutai and ignited it with a lighter. Instantly, it enveloped the skirt steak in sharp vapors that finished with a hint of pineapple. I also hit it with some fermented sweet rice sauce that had a more rounded sweetness and nose while still being alcohol based.

The skirt steak needed a good ninety minutes to break down and finish so I added some soy sauce, rock candy, and water, turned down the heat, and let it simmer. I turned on my TV to watch the Knicks game and hit the Roor. After about thirty minutes of watching Nate Robinson and Jamal
Crawford throw the ball out of bounds, I passed out. I was totally knocked out when I smelled something burning. It took me about five minutes to realize the burning skirt steak was in my kitchen and not a fucking dream. I bounced up, ran to the stove, turned it off, and threw a quarter-cup of cold water into the pot just so it stopped cooking. Luckily, the entire sauce hadn’t caramelized yet. I pulled out a big chunk of skirt steak and peeled off the charred crust. Underneath this crusty, dark, fossil-looking piece of skirt steak was ill, tender, dark pink pieces of sweet, savory, aromatic skirt steak. I knew from that first burnt piece of skirt steak that I had a hit record.

I tell people all the time. Whether it’s a girl, a skirt steak, or a record, you know in the first five seconds if it’s a hit. That first time I ate red cooked skirt steak, I was blazed out of my face, the smoke alarm was going off, and all I smelled was burning sugar, but that first bite was the eye of the storm. It was complex, layered, and hit every note that you could ask for in a piece of braised beef. I had some short-grain sushi rice in the rice cooker, sautéed some onions with soy, sugar, and scallions, and ate them over rice with the skirt steak. That night, I wrote up the recipe and sent it into the Food Network. I didn’t even think about it ’cause I already knew.

About two months later, I was rollin’ around the Costco in Sunset Park with my boy Stephane. As I reached into a giant bottle of Cheese Puffs, my phone rang. It was Ning.

“Oh, my gaaawwwd!!!”

“What?”

“Food Network called!!!”

“Oh, word? Why they call you?”

“ ’Cause they tried to call you like ten million times and you didn’t pick up so they called your ‘emergency contact’!”

“For real? Hol’ up.”

I checked my phone and she was right. Somehow I had five missed calls. Oh well.

“Damn, Steph, did you hear my phone ring?”

“Yeah, but you never pick it up.”

“True story.”

“What’d they say, Ning?”

“They said they narrowed it down to six people and four of you will make it to the finals!”

“Ay yo, Steph, they got coconut Ciroc at Costco? We got to celebrate.”

“DIDDY LIQUOR!”

I
knew from the first moment I walked into the Food Network studios at 75 Ninth Avenue that the shit was gonna be cornholio. The show I got cast for was
Ultimate Recipe Showdown
, which took four home cooks from a national pool of more than thirteen thousand contestants to compete in various categories. Our category was “party food.” Initially, my recipe was for Chairman Mao’s red cooked skirt steak over rice, but the network asked for something handheld. I didn’t get it and said that rice usually goes in a bowl. I mean, that’s pretty fucking handheld, but they didn’t go for it. So … I did what every culture does when Americans can’t understand something: I put it on bread. From
banh-mi
to
baos
to arepas to Jamaican beef patties, it takes a little coco bread to make the medicine go down. Barack, I told you to put the health-care bill on some Red Lobster cheddar biscuits, dun!