#FoodTuesday #WarSuGai #WorSuGai #HoeKow
Lo, these many long years ago, a handsome teacher asked a Red Cross office worker to join him and a couple of friends for dinner at a restaurant. That teacher was my late husband, that office worker was myself, and those friends were people you probably don’t know, unless you’re Barbara Greer, in which case, Hi, Barbara!
We went to the now-defunct Hoe Kow near Bowman Field in Louisville, Kentucky, and we got War Su Gai, and it was SO GOOD!!!! (Not enough ones and zeroes to make all the necessary exclamation marks upon the ether.)
ANYWAY, it turns out it isn’t a technically difficult dish to make, so I finally tried my hand at it.
The recipe I mostly used was by Laura Yoder, and I found it on a site called Just A Pinch, which is my kinda cooking measurement.
For some reason, I wanted celery in it, so I added celery. I had to buy chicken stock and chicken bouillon, since I don’t keep either in my pantry. Well, yeah, I had to buy chicken, too, shut up.
It was, as my grandpa would have said, messy but nourishin’.
I was three days getting all the grease off everything.
But it was good. Not Hoe Kow good, but PLENTY good. As for “not Hoe Kow good” goes, I like this explanation by Ron Mikulak on the Food & Dining website, which is how he explained the dissatisfaction of his readers regarding his inability (or, as they claimed, unwillingness) to help them EXACTLY duplicate the dish from their memories:
I said, in short, that there was likely no “recipe” as such, that the cooks at Hoe Kow were very likely trained by doing (likely by their parents); that their English-language proficiencies likely prohibited them from explaining, let along writing down, how they made the dish; that they very likely used very high temperature woks that a home kitchen could not match; that their ingredients were likely obtained from suppliers not available to a home retail customer; and that the real reason that this dish stands out in Louisvillians’ memories is that the cooks made it twenty times a night, seven nights a week, and had it down pat; and, very likely, it was one of the first “exotic” restaurant meals that the diner had enjoyed, and so their recollection of the dining experience was tinged with abstract qualities of time, mood and atmosphere that perhaps colored the memory of the taste of the dish. All of these factors militate against the possibility of re-creating the dish in one’s home kitchen, even if there were a “recipe” for the home cook to follow. So stop asking. There is nobody from Hoe Kow around to ask, and if there were, it wouldn’t help. Enjoy the dish in your memory, where it is safe and always delicious.
Ron Mikulak
I think he’s probably right, but it will always please me to order (or, VERY occasionally, to attempt to recreate) the Hoe Kow’s War Su Gai, just for the sake of that happy first date.
A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: A dish that needs just a pinch of something to make it perfect.
MA
Dan Antion
October 30, 2024 at 8:41amYour dish looks pretty darn good, and I’m glad you added celery. I think the writer is right. I’ve only ever know one person who asked at a restaurant for a recipe and was angry they wouldn’t give it to him. I don’t like that person, so there.
Marian Allen
October 30, 2024 at 10:35amLOL! Sometimes restaurants do give their recipes to food columns of local papers/magazines, probably BECAUSE they know it’ll be different from a home cook with different ingredient sources and different techniques. I have one from Shiraz Mediterranean restaurant that I like very much. It doesn’t taste exactly like it does in the restaurant, but I don’t expect it to.
Damyanti Biswas
October 29, 2024 at 11:46amI’ve never tried that before, but it sounds so good! I love the bit of backstory you shared, too.
Marian Allen
October 29, 2024 at 2:56pmI love it that the article writer totally GOT IT, too. 🙂