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Hey, it's Francis Lam and you're listening to our Culinary Masters Collection conversations with some of the food world's most iconic chefs.
This week, the man that brought Chinese cuisine into the homes of millions of Americans, the one and only Martin Yan.
Have a listen.
So I don't remember what age I was exactly, but I remember this birthday party I had when I was five or six or so.
You know, when I was a kid we didn't really have playdates or invite friends from my school over to our house very much.
So it was a big deal for me to do that.
And I remember going outside to the yard to play with them and my parents setting up a table on the deck for a proper meal.
They had never heard of just ordering a pizza and calling it a day.
And like how much fun it was.
And I also remember how nervous I got when it was time to bring the food out.
Like were all these kids going to be weirded out by Chinese food?
And actually, now that I'm thinking about it, it's sort of funny because I say I remember playing and having a good time, but really what I remember was the feeling that I was having a good time and that I didn't want that feeling to turn weird when the food came out.
That's the thing I really remember.
That nervousness about our food and how my friends who weren't Chinese would react to it.
Well, it turns out they liked it.
My grandmother mercifully decided not to steam the whole fish you know, with the eyeballs and the head and everything and instead just made a massive pan of fried rice.
And it turns out everyone likes fried rice, so disaster averted.
But right around that time in 1982 there was a new TV show called Yan Can Cook that started broadcasting over American airwaves.
Martin Yam was 33 years old, an immigrant from Hong Kong, where my parents are from, and was teaching Americans how to cook Chinese food with a mix of goofy jokes, slapstick and feats with a cleaver his audience had never seen, including his very famous demo on how to debone a chicken in 18 seconds.
Martin Yan was one of the very few I think maybe only Asian television hosts with a national audience for years.
And it is absolutely impossible to say how many people he's introduced to Chinese and Asian cooking over the last four decades.
He's written dozens of cookbooks.
He's opened restaurants and now actually travels back to China as an ambassador for American foods.
But man, you know, I bring it back to being a kid and watching Yan Ken cook and just being amazed that here was this guy showing a room full of white people how to cook the stuff that I was eating at home and how he had everyone in the audience oohing and aahing over it.
Almost 40 years later, he's still teaching people about the food he loves, and I'm so happy to get to spend the hour with him here today.
Chef Martin, it is such an honor to talk with you today.
How are you?
I am fine.
I'm busier than ever during the pandemic.
I can't believe that you could be busier than you've already been.
You know you had TV shows, you've had restaurants.
You know you're hosting your own shows on YouTube right now.
But I want to start with you.
To see if we can go back all the way to the beginning.
Can you tell us what you remember about growing up in Guangzhou?
Do you remember what you ate?
What was that like?
Well, I was born and raised in Guangzhou, China.
When I was growing up, Guangzhou is only about 1.6 million people.
And when I was growing up.
Actually, it's the most difficult, the most challenging and the most turbulent time in modern Chinese history.
Because after Mao's three five-year plan Everything you know a lot of people are really starving and famine and all kind of stuff.
So nothing to eat.
Everything is rationed and food is very scarce.
And just give an example.
We only have about maybe 18 pounds of rice a month.
18 to 20 pounds, and four ounces of oil.
That means quarter of a cup of oil a month.
And then two pounds, two and a half pounds of meat.
Meat normally referred to pork.
There's no beef.
There's no chicken.
So in one month each one of us can only survive on a few ounces of oil, maybe about four, eight tablespoon of oil for the whole month.
So it's very, very difficult.
And a lot of people have problems because there's not enough nutrients.
So then my mom, being a capitalist, Because we have a little store.
Because we have a grocery store.
And my father had a restaurant.
So we are basically considered to be capitalists.
So capitalists, you got to have to go to meetings.
Brainwash meetings.
You got to...
Every night.
What they call re-education.
Yeah, re-education.
Basically, to change from capitalist ideal to communist ideal.
And she never really come home until maybe seven.
So I used to help to go down to the wet market about two blocks away, and pick up some of the vegetable.
And then I come back and I help even when I was about eight or nine years.
So I was helping everybody helping my mom to wash the vegetable, pick up the vegetable in the market.
So we know all the little vendor, vegetable vendor in the in the wet markets.
Every time i show up they will.
They will give me some leftover because when you go over there and buy in about after school i go to the wet market.
They call it wet market because uh, The floor is really wet.
That's why they refer to it as wet market, because they don't have refrigeration.
The reason is because they don't have refrigeration.
So they would spray the produce and the vegetable Throughout the day.
So the floor, you go to the wet market in Asia, they're always wet because they spray.
Just like you go to a supermarket, they have mist to mist the produce.
And they do that by spraying all over.
So that's why the floor is always, always wet.
But anyway.
Is that really why it's called a wet market?
Yeah.
Another thing is they sell seafoods, live seafoods.
And then they have the little tank all over the floor and even buckets all over the floor.
So the fish splash all over the place.
So you go to wet market in Asia Singapore Malaysia Philippines, anywhere in China, Hong Kong the floor is always wet.
I didn't know it was so literal.
I just thought they call it that because of the name.
Literally, it's really, really wet.
So basically, I help my mom.
I helped my mom to cook a little bit and get everything ready, prep.
So even when I was really young, I was exposed to a lot of these things identifying vegetable, what is in season and when I can pick up spinach and cauliflower.
I never, never was exposed to it.
Broccoli, asparagus, and avocado, and all of those things.
So everything is about gai lan, choy sum, and all the traditional vegetables.
Yeah, of southern China, yeah.
So that's how you started cooking.
You started cooking in the home.
But then you went into professional culinary training.
Yeah.
Tell us how that started.
Then shortly after that, my father passed away, and then I stayed a few more years in China.
And then one day, my mom basically realized we got to get – get you out.
So he actually encouraged me to left China and went to Hong Kong.
So I went to Hong Kong by myself and I have a little red tent, a little rattan carry-on with a couple of socks and my shorts and a little underwear.
And I just took a little boat on the Pearl River, Delta Pearl River.
Take a little steamboat to Macau.
From Macau.
I take another boat boat, a ferry from Macau to Hong Kong.
In fact, I still remember when I was so small and so little kid and I carry five dollars in my pocket, five US dollar in my pocket.
When I was going out the ferry and somebody squeezed me.
I almost fell down to the water and uh, and then?
And then when?
Then I have no relatives.
I have no direct relatives in Hong Kong.
But I have my father's village buddy operating a restaurant, a very popular restaurant in Hong Kong.
So I actually marched right into his restaurant and helped out in the restaurant business.
After high school, I was attending high school in Hong Kong.
So how old were you during this time?
I was about 13, 14 years old.
Between 13 to 13 and a half, I left China.
Okay.
So at 13, you left Guangzhou and took yourself to Hong Kong by yourself.
I left Guangzhou because my father used to live and work in Portland, Oregon.
And then in those days, there's a lot of discrimination. particularly towards the Asian and Chinese.
So most of the Chinese have no choice but went back to China.
And my father, that's why my father opened a restaurant and opened a grocery store for my mother.
So when I was growing up, I have a lot of exposure in Chinese seasoning and what is good, what tastes good, what smells good, even when I was growing up in China.
Well, I had no idea your father had spent time in the U.S.
Yeah.
Okay, so sorry.
So you're in Hong Kong.
You walked into your father's friend's restaurant and said here I'll help out.
And tell us about how you learned to cook professionally.
You know that traditionally among the Chinese, particularly from southern China, if you have Village buddies, you know you came from the village and you call all the people older than you.
You call them uncle and aunt.
So they take you in.
They took me in because my father and my little distant uncle from the village they grew up together when they were little kids.
So that's the reason why they take me in.
Because my mother called this village uncle and said, hey, you've got to help my little baby.
So they take me in.
Actually, after school, I actually help out.
And I work in the kitchen.
I bone the chicken.
I fillet the fish.
And I wash the bean sprout.
And I pluck the...
The vegetable.
So this is how I was – I was basically not truly an apprentice.
I was kitchen help because I was too young and too short to try to get close to the walk station.
But then how did your skills grow?
I know old school Chinese restaurant chef training is –
Very hard.
Yeah.
Basically, it's apprentice.
Apprentice.
You work underneath, under a chef.
But when I was so small, in the first few years, I can only work and help out to wash things, to wash vegetables, to cut up something and help to bone the chicken.
So that's why now I can bone a chicken in 18 seconds.
I've seen the demo.
It's unbelievable.
Yeah.
So basically, you know, you just have to work in different stations.
Whenever they need help in different stations, I carry the stuff, making the sauce.
So I get a chance to really learn to understand a lot of things.
Even when I was about 14 15 16, throughout the kitchen.
Throughout my high school year I helped out after school.
In the summer and on the weekend.
So I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, in a professional kitchen.
Very rough, very hot, very humid.
The weather in Asia is so hot and humid.
No air conditioning.
So it's a very, very tough.
Working in the kitchen is very, very tough in China.
Yeah, for sure.
And at that point, did you think, oh, yeah, I want to keep doing this.
I want to learn.
I want to be a great chef.
How did you get from that 14, 15-year-old to having the skills to be a chef?
Well, first of all, I tell the very truth.
That's for survival.
I really don't have any choice.
Okay.
It's unlike the young people here in America.
You know, their parents say, you know, have a dream.
Plan your future.
You know, you want to be a doctor.
Work hard.
You want to be an engineer.
But over there in China, and also during that time, Hong Kong is still not very well developed.
And there's a lot of hardship.
And economically, it's really in bad shape during that period of time in the 60s and the early 70s.
A lot of problems.
And the living standard is very low.
And a lot of people are actually unemployed because there's not much job.
And I just have to survive because I have nowhere to go.
So actually, I slept by putting a board on top of the booth and sleep at night.
There's no other place.
Everybody actually, if you work in a restaurant, you sleep in a restaurant.
You work in a factory, you sleep in a factory.
There's no apartment.
There's no accommodation provided by anybody.
So all the service staff and the chef working there, if they're married, they go back home.
All of us.
Single we stay in the restaurant Wow very tough so and then and then I really I
I really don't get into this because I love it and I enjoy it.
It's just a man basically a survivor.
Besides, I have no direction.
My father passed away.
My mother never went to school.
So I didn't get any kind of inspiration or direction from my parents and my relatives.
So I just have to learn to survive as a young kid.
That's Martin Yan, the star of Yan Ken Cook.
We'll be back with more with him in just a minute.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.
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I'm Francis Lam, and this is the show for curious cooks and eaters.
We're spending this episode with the iconic Martin Yam, the groundbreaking star of Yan Ken Cook.
We've talked with him about how he moved to Hong Kong when he was just barely a teenager and worked in a restaurant to survive.
But how did he get from there to hosting his own show on television?
Let's get back to him.
And then you moved to Canada, to Calgary.
How did you do that, and how did you get started in TV?
What happened is, during that time, I tried to learn English.
So I went to a church and talked to the little kids so I can pick up some English.
And then the church leader in a Baptist church said When I graduated from high school, she actually sponsored me to get a visa to come to North America.
Originally, I had a choice to come to America first.
And then later on, I found out that if I go to Calgary Alberta, I don't have to pay for any tuition fee.
So end up going to a college in Calgary, Alberta.
And then, unfortunately, that particular year is the coldest year in 40 years.
The coldest year in 40 years, minus 40 degree.
If you live in Hong Kong and all of a sudden go to a place that minus 40, you just couldn't take it.
So after three months, I just finally, this is ridiculous.
So then I heard that one of my friend's sister and brother also came to school and went to UC Davis in California, right next to Sacramento.
So I took a little Greyhound bus and come down and visit them.
And I found wow, you know so many bikes in Davis because Davis is a huge campus, 4000 acres.
Bikes all over the place.
And I look at the bikes and I feel so much at home, because When I was growing up in China, they don't have cars, they don't have anything.
Bikes all over.
Everybody has a bike.
It was the bicycles?
The bicycles sold you out in America?
Right.
So I look at, wow, you know, this looks like my hometown, China, Guangzhou.
So I never went back to Calgary.
And then I didn't even pick up my luggage.
I asked them to just throw them away.
So I started.
Later on, I attended UC Davis and got my bachelor's degree and master's degree in food science.
And through that period, I actually have another life experience, life journeys now.
I start teaching cooking class.
It's a very interesting story that how I get the opportunity to teach cooking class.
Yeah, tell us, please.
Well, what happened is when I came down being a foreign student, I have to pay about three to four times as much as Intuition.
Right, intuition.
So what I do is...
One day, and we have five of my friends and myself, six of us, get a two-bedroom apartment.
We don't have beds.
We just have little sleeping bags.
So three of us stay in one room.
We take turns to cook and then I like to cook and these five guys doesn't know how to cook, so I end up doing most of the cooking, and they do the shopping, the washing and cleaning and I do the cooking.
And then, while we're eating, we used to watch Graham Care, Galloping Gourmet, and also Julie Child, French Chef.
And I was joking to my roommates, I said gee, they're not only very, very educational, they show you, they teach you how much fun it is, but they're also having fun.
Yeah.
They're so entertaining.
They're having so much fun on television.
And I was like, well, maybe, hopefully one day I'll be on television.
Then I heard that Madam Wu in Los Angeles is teaching cooking class at UCLA.
I'm sorry, who's Madam Wu?
Madam Wu is actually a chef proprietor of a very famous Chinese restaurant, also named Madam Wu.
And she actually opened the restaurant and she taught cooking class at UCLA.
But she taught in her own restaurant.
Oh, right on.
So I took another greyhound and I went down to visit her and asked for her advice and said hey, I'd like to teach too.
Because I heard that they're paying about $18 an hour.
And those days, the average wage is 60 cents, 65 cents an hour.
So I figure out, if I can teach cooking class, I'll be able to make enough money to go to college, to stay at UC Davis.
So when I asked for advice, she said This is how I did and I work with the extension, the university extension.
So I came back, and I talked to the director of extension.
I said, I really want to teach.
And they asked me, are you a master chef?
And I said, no.
Are you a hash chef?
How long have you worked in a restaurant?
I said, I've worked in a restaurant for several years.
But are you a hash chef?
I said, no, I'm just a cook.
So he said no, you know, university extension is a very, very much teaching profession, a special skill or special subject matter by experts, by professors or the local experts in the field, like accounting or whatever.
And since you don't really have a teaching certificate, you don't have anything how can you be accepted in our program and teach?
And I said, look, I love to teach.
I love to cook.
And you've got to give me a chance.
But after a couple of conversations, he said, look, you're not qualified.
We can't give you the opportunity.
But I kept bugging him for a couple of days.
And he didn't want to see me.
And I wait for him in the parking garage at the back door.
Finally, he got so frustrated that, OK, I'll give you a chance.
I'll put an ad in a little small ad in the local newspaper and if we can get more than 15 people, i'll give you a chance.
If you don't get 15 people, don't ever come back to see me in the office.
I just, you know just too much.
And it was really mad actually, because during that time i was actually working in some of the um.
So I talked to all my friends, all the friends that I know, all my professors.
You got to help me out.
You got to sign up for this class.
And otherwise I can't stay at UC Davis.
So when the ad came out, within a few days, actually 43 people signed up.
The hustle.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Forty three.
And I told I go back and I look, look, you know, everybody loves Chinese food because you know what?
That's timing.
That's perfect.
Because that's the time that a couple of years after Nixon and Nixon went to China went to China and people just started to be curious about things Chinese.
And the Chinese restaurant, there's only one Chinese restaurant usually at Davis.
So I get to know the guy and sometimes I go inside and help them out a little bit.
And I start teaching during my undergrad and also graduate school and make enough money to actually go through college.
Because I was making $18 an hour.
And sometimes I would teach two classes a week at the height.
And then at the end of the sixth week, the classes last for six weeks.
At the end of six weeks I would take the whole class to Chinatown to tour Chinatown to have dim sum and everything.
And I would buy a whole bunch of stuff.
And when I come back, I'll sell it to the students.
This is how I make some extra money.
I'll buy the wok.
I'll buy the seasoning from Chinatown, because those days supermarket doesn't have any of those.
The supermarket doesn't carry any Chinese items, except maybe bean sprout and spring roll and bok choy at the most, and nothing else.
And at the most soy sauce.
Now you go to any supermarket, the entire aisle is Chinese items.
Entire Irish, Southeast Asian, entire Irish, Japanese, and Korean items.
It was amazing.
It's total transformation nowadays.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I definitely want to get to what people knew about Chinese food when you were teaching classes, specifically when you really started in television.
So tell us about how you got started, how you went from teaching the classes to being on TV.
Well, first of all, when I first teach cooking class, it's only maybe in the US, probably about two or three thousand chop suey chow mein restaurant.
There's no upscale restaurant.
There's no regional flavors.
All you need is basically Americanized style Chinese food.
You know, most people only know chow mein, chop suey, fried rice, and spring roll.
And very basic.
And not even hot and sour soup.
And nowadays, you know, throughout this year, you know that there are 52000 Chinese restaurants of all kind of wonderful regional cuisines.
So basically, after I...
During the four or five years of teaching I was actually get so used to talking to people in front of people.
I was never afraid.
I never felt uncomfortable talking to people.
So what happened is.
One of the summer, I went back to Calgary to help a friend to open a restaurant.
And my friend is a high school.
Only in the summer.
Yeah, only in the summer.
I went back there because in the summer, there's no cooking class.
The university town, everybody left.
So I went back to help a friend to open a restaurant.
And this friend studied at Canton, but he wanted to bring his family there, so he had to open a restaurant in order to bring his family from Hong Kong to Canada.
So I helped him out because I have some basic skills in cooking and kitchen.
So literally, I helped him out.
And his restaurant is very close to a television station, CFAC in Calgary.
So a lot of these people actually come to the restaurant to eat.
And when they come, I always tell them, hey, tell me how much you want.
I'll cook you a lunch or dinner.
If you want to have $20 a person, I'll cook you $20.
So get to know some of these producer, director, and cameramen.
But I never thought of doing television.
And then what happened is on Friday, they have a talk show, an everyday talk show.
And then each Friday they have a chef from Intercontinental to do a little cooking segment.
And one day on Thursday, the producer called me frantically, can you come?
Can you come to the studio?
Our chef got sick and we need somebody tomorrow.
And I said...
I don't know how to cook on television.
I never phased a television.
I never phased a camera before.
You better ask somebody else.
No, you got to come because they would love your food.
You got to come.
So, but what happened is, I would say, okay, because you helped me out.
You helped my friends.
So I'll do it.
I'll do it.
But I guarantee you, I may not be very good.
Don't worry.
Don't worry.
So what happened is I put the stuff in my trunk, in the trunk.
And it's also 30 degree minus.
And then what happened is I cannot even open the trunk. and get my foot out.
Finally, the engineer, they pried over my trunk and get the stuff out and everything is frozen.
And then it's only about half an hour before the show.
In the old days, there's no microwave oven.
You cannot even defrost a darn thing.
So I told the director and the host, I said, look, You know, all this food is frozen.
Even the oil is frozen.
So what do you call it?
So I said, well, you know, maybe we can show them how to do frozen food.
Because when I was in college, frozen food is very popular.
Frozen dinner is very popular.
I'm going to show you how to do some frozen dinner.
So I used my knife to chop up some of the things and chop up the frozen vegetable.
I just throw it in the wok and just stir it.
And I said, look.
You know, I don't know about you.
I love frozen dinner.
So this is frozen dinner for you.
So I put it in and heat it up and put some seasoning and let the wok melt all the stuff.
And then it turned out to be a lot of water.
And I said, you know what?
This is frozen dinner in broth.
So this is how I start my television.
And then what happened is also timing.
That most television stations, if you know that the manager or the programmer would have television, about six or seven television in the office.
They want to catch people competitors, and see what kind of programming this and he normally don't watch his own station, cfac that that day was happened.
He happened to catch a little glimpse of what i'm doing.
I was so crazy running around and talking about frozen food, frozen dinner, and then say Tell the director, ask him, ask Chef Martin, to come back next week.
We'll give him a half an hour rather than about 20 minutes.
Give him a half an hour.
I said, I didn't want to go.
I said, look, you know, it was a disaster.
I don't want to embarrass myself, right?
He said, no, no, no, come back.
We love your food.
Even the frozen dinner, we love it.
So I came back and I tried to impress the host and I said, last time was a frozen.
So this wine is not frozen.
I said, I have in half an hour in the restaurant, I can cook a lot of dishes in half an hour.
I'll show you how to do three dishes in half an hour.
But he was asking question and this and that and said All you have to do if you want to talk to the audience, all you have to do is look at the camera over the red light.
But they've got three cameras, right?
The red light is jumping from one camera to another.
I have no idea which camera to look at.
Everything is life.
And then this time, I think the general manager actually watched me.
And he said, this guy is crazy.
So I said, okay.
Ask him to come back again next week and do another one.
So this one, they give me an entire hour.
So I, this is the beginning of my career.
After I finished the third time, they asked me.
The director said you know, our manager want to talk to you.
So I go up there and talk to them and say, hey, Martin. how would you like to do television?
I said, well, I just did three already, you know.
I have never done it before, but I did three already and I haven't really feel very comfortable because I have no idea how this red light jumping from one camera to another.
He said, you know what, I would like to ask you to do 130 shows.
130?
Yeah, 130 shows.
That means it's a daily show.
If 130 shows is enough to broadcast daily for six months, they normally repeat it once.
That means people would watch me all year round.
And this is how I start my career from the top.
I start doing, hosting 130 shows.
And then they say, we'll pay you $100 a show.
And I said, wow, $100.
That's not bad.
So I finished all 130 shows by myself with a lady, an assistant cook from my kitchen.
Three of us finished.
We did five shows a day.
We finished all 130 shows in 26 days.
So I made $13,000 in 25 days, 42 years ago.
That's incredible.
So it's a lot of money.
Then after that, I left and went back to UC Davis, finished my school and teaching.
Three months later, they call.
Chef Yen.
You got to, we're going to talk to you.
Because everybody, they put a show on the air.
It's a commercial station.
And everybody called the station and asked for recipes.
Chef, you do have a cookbook?
I said, no, I don't have a cookbook.
You got to write a cookbook because everybody wants your recipe.
But I don't have any money.
How can you write a cookbook?
You got to publish a cookbook.
So I said, okay.
I talked to all my friends and roommates and asked them to each of them give $1,000 to $3,000.
I actually talked to somebody and published a cookbook myself.
And I printed out about 10000 copies.
With all the money, I get about 40000 from all my friends and roommates.
And it sold out in three months.
So my career is a string of unpredictable events.
Yeah, this is really.
I mean, I think you can probably realistically say that about most lives, but this is really.
This is top shelf unpredictable events.
So, okay, so then let me help fast forward the story a little bit.
Of course, your show started here in the States in 1982, Yan Can Cook.
But before 82, we actually did 520 shows in Canada already.
Then I came back here because I only go up there to do the show in the summer.
After that, so each year I go up there.
Each year I go up there and they double my salary.
The first year it's 100.
The second year I'll say, oh, 200.
And the third year, oh, 400.
By the time I finished that, I was making quite a bit of money.
Those days, that's a lot of money.
In 23 days, you make $50,000.
That's a lot of money.
That's incredible.
That's incredible.
Okay, so now you're in the States.
Yan Can Cook starts in the United States in 1982.
Yeah.
You're on public television.
Yeah.
What happened is a lot of the people on PBS close to Canada.
They were actually watching my show from Canada.
So that's why somebody on PBS and KQED, the station knows, heard about it.
Heard about it and say, hey, you know.
So I come down here and somebody contact me and say, hey, we would like to do a show.
So I start doing the show with KQED san francisco, kqed channel 9 at pbs.
I start doing the show, but we only do them out about 26 or 52 shows rather than 130 shows.
So since 1982 i've been working with public television station in kqed and sacramento for for the last 42 years.
40 years yeah, 40 years.
So tell me about this.
When you said you first started cooking just for your roommates watching Julia Child and then suddenly you're on, you're in the same.
You and Julia both have your shows on PBS.
How did that feel, even at that time?
Well, first of all, I never look at that.
As you know, in those days it's not like today.
You know, chefs are celebrities.
In those days, we're just cooking teachers.
We're cooking teachers.
We teach cooking class all over the country, like Jacques.
We teach cooking class.
Even Julia Child, Justin Wilson, and all of us teach cooking class.
And to us, we're just cooking teachers.
We're not really celebrities.
And also, public television is basically educational.
Everybody wants... It's a how-to show.
So we never look at ourselves as a celebrity.
So we just...
Go for it.
And I feel really good.
And throughout the year we work with Julia and Graham Care and Jacques Pepin and all these television star television hosts and to do fundraising for public television station all over the country.
So we always bump into each other.
And Julia and I love Chinese food and always take her out to Chinese Russian have dim sum because she spent some time in Kunming Yunnan province during the war.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let me ask this though.
So you know, from the very beginning of your TV career, you know you have, like you said 500, some odd episodes, and then you started your American TV career.
As you said, you've been around food your whole life.
Your father had a restaurant.
Obviously, you started in a restaurant young.
But to your point, you had never been a head chef.
You hadn't had a whole career as a chef in restaurants.
At some point, were you feeling like...
Were you researching the dishes you were showing on the show?
Were these dishes you already knew?
Were the dishes you were inventing?
Tell us about the food you were actually presenting on these shows.
Well, actually, as a chef, the most important thing is the basic skills.
And then I have acquired enough basic skills in my five or six years in the restaurant.
So I know how to cook, how to prep, how to marinate, and all the seasoning, the combination.
And also actually I missed telling you is right before I came, I actually spent about six months, eight months working teaching, learning from a master chef.
I'm taking cooking class because somebody actually told me if you know how to cook, when you come to America you can always get a job, a summertime job or when you go to school you can get a job.
You can always get a job as a chef.
I actually spent eight months.
So that was your plan B. Yeah, and that's plan B. I actually spent eight months.
But I don't have any money to pay for the school.
So I helped him to shop.
I helped him to clean up.
I'm a cooking assistant for him.
So actually, I learned a lot more from this MasterChef.
He taught me the art of barbecue, you know, the barbecue, spare rib.
And he taught me how to marinate, what is the traditional way of marinating.
So all the basic skills that I also learned from that eight months, even though I already have the basic skill, but I actually polished my skill under these two masters.
And he's the top chef in Hong Kong.
And then we actually kept connected. for years.
Every time I go back to Hong Kong, I will go and visit him.
And then throughout the years, I work in restaurant and I own my restaurant.
At one point, we have 12 restaurants.
And we just have one restaurant we run for eight years because of the pandemic.
We just recently closed it.
We have the restaurant for eight years.
We're packed day in and day out, called M.Y.
China.
Martin Yen's China.
So basically, I basically polish and continue to learn.
And throughout the year when I teach cooking class, When I travel and do television shows, I work with all the masters.
I always go in the kitchen and learn.
And I never stop learning.
I'm still learning.
In fact, last night I went to a Vietnamese restaurant and worked with a chef.
And he was recently competing with Bobby Frey.
And I went to his restaurant and I went right into this restaurant and talked to him about food.
So I'm learning, practicing my craft and learning every day.
Never stop learning.
I love it.
Yeah, I love it.
So what are some dishes that you remember in the early days that you loved cooking in your classes showing on television?
What were some dishes that you remember that would really be really fun to teach?
Well, I always tell people you know a lot of time people in America, most of them are professional.
Most of my students, when I was teaching at UC Davis, most of them are actually professional.
They're either doctors or lawyers or engineers.
And they want to learn something simple.
So my slogan is always, if Yan can cook, so can you.
So anything that I can do, you can do it.
It's nothing fancy.
It is very simple, very healthy.
And I basically teach people how to come up with a meal, a complete meal in half an hour.
If you put the rice in a rice cooker, when the rice cooker is done in 20 to 25 minutes, my meal is done.
So I basically show people how to make use of all the seasonal.
For the Chinese, you eat with the season.
You eat with the freshest.
You don't eat frozen food.
You don't eat canned food.
That's the reason why people go shopping, because no refrigeration in most part of the household in China those days.
So I basically teach people how to cook seasonal food, seasonal ingredient, fresh ingredient and, in a true sense, this is what we should eat.
Farm to table, right?
And most of the stuff I can do in half an hour, but particularly...
And stir-fried dishes.
Only takes about three or four minutes to cook.
You don't need to talk.
And also very exciting, you can see the transformation of the color, the flavor, the aroma.
You can sell it.
Other than you put something in the oven, it takes half an hour to two hours to do it.
And it's much more fun to do stir fry with a wok.
So wok cooking is a lot of fun.
And that's how I start my career.
And I'm still using my wok to do a lot of things.
I even bake the pizza in a wok.
How do you make a pizza in a wok?
Yeah, it's very basic.
A wok is like an oven.
You know, I heat it up at medium low so it's hot enough on the bottom.
And I cover it on top so let the heat, the dry heat to cook it.
So basically the wok turn into a oven, cooktop, stovetop oven.
You try this, it's very fast too.
That's incredible.
I will try that.
I will be very afraid of scorching the bottom of the pizza, but I'll try it.
No, you don't use high heat.
You use medium, medium-low heat, just enough heat on the bottom.
Okay, I will experiment, or maybe offline.
I'll set my phone up and be like, okay, chef, you got to help me out here.
Okay, but let me ask you this, though.
As you said, you've always been a student of Chinese food as well as a teacher.
And I remember watching your show when I was young and I would see a lot of the dishes that I remember eating in my home or would literally probably eat that night for dinner and seeing oh my God, here's this person teaching Americans how to cook this, where all my white friends in school were like I don't know what that is you eat.
It just felt so important to me to know that someone was out there teaching.
You know the parents of my friends about the food that I was eating at home.
And you know, you've been such a wonderful ambassador and you know introducing people to Chinese food, to people who didn't know it.
And then I remember seeing you at a conference, you know, 30 years later, this is a few years ago.
And I think you were introducing your chef from MY China.
And if I'm not mistaken, he's a noodle master among his many other skills.
And he was showing us, he was demonstrating.
Here's how he hand pulls noodles.
Here's how he makes noodles, noodles into a rope and he like, slices it super thin with a knife to create different kinds of noodles.
He does all these different techniques.
And all I could think was like this is a kind of mastery of cuisine that is so hard to find anywhere, you know, let alone this master of Chinese cuisine here in America.
But You and I were chatting to get ready for this the other day and you said that when you were growing up in China, the traditional culinary arts almost disappeared because of that period of famine.
So talk to me about...
How you think we can preserve those arts today?
And how is that something that Americans appreciate enough to really invest in?
Well, throughout the years, I normally tell people you know, China is such a vast land with different topography geography, climate factors.
So each region actually produce a very distinctive regional cuisine, regional flavor profile.
People always consider Chinese cooking as about four main regional cuisines, which is actually not really accurate.
Then they expand it to eight regional cuisines.
Actually, China has 30 two regional, very distinctive regional cooking style and regional cuisine flavor profile, and 118 different style of cooking.
Because people in old days, they don't travel.
So each county, each province, each city developed their own because it's available.
Like in Sichuan, they have the Sichuan peppercorn.
It is hot and humid.
So they have a lot of chili.
And they have dried chili, pickled chili, chili powder, Sichuan peppercorn.
You can make a dish not only hot and spicy, different layer and different flavor profile within one dish.
And sometimes one single dish.
Don't just use one chili, they use pickled chili, chili powder, chili oil and Sichuan peppercorn.
So it's very complex. because the diversity.
So basically what I try to do is just like in the early days you hardly see too many sushi restaurant, ramen restaurant or Cambodian restaurant or Myanmar restaurant.
Nowadays, you see a lot of regional dishes from different parts.
You can go to different places.
You can have a noodle restaurant.
Porridge restaurant only specialize in porridge.
And then past sticker.
You know they serve nothing but past sticker.
So now these people more and more exposed because of the technology, because of the media and because of the high tech.
You can learn things from all over the world.
Now we're learning a lot more, a lot faster.
You can spread the table.
You introduce Indian cuisine.
You introduce all kinds of cuisine to people.
And not The Indian cuisine, northern India, very different than southern India.
So, just like Vietnam, the pho, the noodle soup, northern in Hanoi The noodle soup is very different than Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City.
It's very, very different because of technology, because of travel.
We're all world travelers.
So now we got exposed to all of this a lot more than ever before.
So we are very fortunate to live in a century of technology.
We can learn a lot more.
We can expose ourselves to a lot more things.
Yeah.
It's meaningful to hear that from someone like you, who was there, you know, at the beginning of his career here, when you know, like you said, you know you would go to a store and you can't even find soy sauce.
You can't find, you know, no one has a wok.
And now these things are readily available.
And they're not just readily available because of technology but, because of technology, the work of people like you to have, you know, shared the love and the passion and, you know, expose people to these ideas and these cuisines.
And, you know, I'm really thankful for that.
So thank you very much, Chef.
Well, my pleasure.
All my life, cooking and food is my passion and my love.
And the better.
Yet, as a cooking teacher, as a host, you know that you're sharing your craft, your passion, with others, not thousands, but millions of people, because our show was broadcast at one point in 60 countries around the world, reaching close to potentially close to 2 billion people.
Because our show is in India, in southern part of China and all over Southeast Asia, in Japan, Korea and England and Ireland and Middle East, all over.
So we have been very fortunate and have such wonderful culinary journey that I can share.
Everywhere I travel, I get to know the chef and the author.
They always invite me to the kitchen and not only eating, but also a learning experience.
So every day there's a Chinese saying.
In Cantonese means When you work all your life and you learn, you never stop learning all your life.
Yeah.
Pretty good from a little boy from Guangzhou.
Yeah.
Thank you so much, Jeff.
My pleasure.
Martin Yan's show is, of course, Yan Can Cook, which is still broadcast today.
You can find episodes from its archives on YouTube.
Thanks so much for listening to me get to chop it up with Uncle Martin.
He's not really my uncle, it's what Chinese people call each other.
But man, that was fun.
We'll talk to you next week.
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