<\/p>\n
Chef, restaurant owner, TV celebrity and now cookbook author Kathy Fang is also the daughter of San Francisco chefs and restaurant owners. In 1988 her parents started the legendary House of Nanking on Kearney Street, famed for its long lines and the many celebrities who\u2019ve enjoyed meals there, including Keanu Reeves, Francis Ford Coppola and Gary Oldman.<\/p>\n\n
The restaurant, a legacy business in Chinatown and among America\u2019s favorite Chinese restaurants, was named for a place her grandfather, also a chef, had visited in Shanghai. It is also the name of the new cookbook, reprinted just in time for Lunar New Year, which begins Feb. 17.<\/p>\n
\u201cHouse of Nanking\u201d features more than 100 recipes culled from three generations of Fang family dishes, inspired by the foods of Canton and Shanghai. Part history, part technique, part equipment list and part sourcing manifest, it\u2019s aimed at helping home cooks learn which tools they need to make some of the restaurant\u2019s favorite dishes, like sesame chicken with sweet potato fries, garlic eggplant, and shrimp in Tsingtao beer.<\/p>\n
Fang, a two-time \u201cChopped\u201d champion, star of Food Network\u2019s \u201cChef Dynasty: House of Fang,\u201d and a regular on national TV cooking demos, is also the granddaughter of restaurant owners, who had a small place on Jackson and Kearney. Despite her being immersed in the culinary world from birth, she sensed it left little room for anything else.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents would leave me in the restaurant while they were working, but when it got too busy, I would go my grandma\u2019s eight-seater and help her out. One of my friends was one store down, and we\u2019d hang out until my grandma closed at 5 p.m. She\u2019d take me to her house and cook dinner, and I would fall asleep and wait for my parents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Convinced that restaurants were not for her, Fang chose a different path, pursuing a career in the corporate world at Merrill Lynch and Johnson & Johnson. But it didn\u2019t feed her soul. She kept thinking back to what made her happiest, and that was cooking for her friends in college at USC, making them eggrolls from scratch instead of going to a fast-food joint. After attending Le Cordon Bleu in LA, she returned to San Francisco, knowing that she needed to go back to House of Nanking.<\/p>\n
She worried that she would feel all of the anxiety of being deprived of family time, as she had while she worked at the restaurant during middle school and high school. But this time was different.<\/p>\n
\u201cI worked there for full year and loved it!!\u201d says Fang. \u201cNone of those feelings came back. Instead, it gave me a deeper appreciation for the hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
And it fed her desire to embrace the business fully, which led to her and her father opening a new restaurant called Fang in 2009.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not House of Nanking 2.0,\u201d she says of the father-daughter venture, which boasts a menu that\u2019s 50-50 his and hers. \u201cYou can\u2019t make a comparison between the food we serve there and the food at Fang. It\u2019s a natural flow of ying and yang.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Food Network\u2019s popular \u201cHouse of Fang,\u201d which she applauds for capturing the dynamic of the father-daughter relationship, led to the idea of doing the cookbook as a way to further preserve the family history. What she didn\u2019t expect was how much she\u2019d enjoy the process of interviewing her dad and learning more about the forces that shaped his life as well as the lives of his parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up in China, his family faced food shortages,\u201d says Fang. \u201cHis best memories are of the one-pot meals his mother made without any fancy ingredients, like her curry chicken soup.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her grandmother was always trying to make something interesting out of simple things, including her version of Russian potato salad with cabbage, tomatoes and potatoes. \u201cShe added milk to Worchestershire sauce,\u201d recalls Fang. \u201cIt was very brothy and meant to eat with rice. In fact, when you eat Shanghai eggrolls, you use Worcestershire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among her favorite recipes are Scallion Oil-Tossed Noodles with Dried Shrimp; the Chinese version of the Italian staple Spaghetti Alio e Olio; and Bastard Eggs with Spicy Ground Pork and Ginger Scallion Sauce, all of which are found in the cookbook.<\/p>\n
And what of the next generation? Fang says she recently got her daughter a Miniverse Mini Kitchen for Christmas. \u201cIt has a mini kitchen and mini food,\u201d says Fang. \u201cWe\u2019ll order from her and she\u2019ll \u2018make\u2019 the food: mostly Chinese and Italian food.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fang says she\u2019s encouraging her daughter to pursue her own interests, which are currently trending toward being a chef.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe sees me at the restaurant and in the book and on TV, and it\u2019s so exciting!\u201d says Fang. \u201cHer dad is in the tech space. She can\u2019t figure out what he does. He is sitting at a computer all day, and that\u2019s just not exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n