This Week’s Film: Flower Drum Song
Cuisine: Chinese
What could be more Chinese-American than Chop Suey? An entire song was even devoted to it in this week’s feature film Flower Drum Song.
Its name means “mixed bits”, and there are many apocryphal stories circulating around the Internet regarding its origins. Many of them involve Chinese ambassador Li Hung Chang, who visited New York City in 1896, where he stayed at the Waldorf Hotel. As the legend goes, his personal chef created Chop Suey for the ambassador’s American dinner guests.
In another version of its origin, Chop Suey was invented by a San Francisco Chinatown restaurateur who ran out of food one evening, and used the kitchen scraps to create a dish for a group of late-night diners. Yet another version maintains that Chop Suey is a traditional Chinese dish from the Toisan region in Canton Province, the homeland of many of the first Chinese immigrants to the U.S.
A typical Chop Suey consists of a stir-fry of meat such as chicken, beef, or pork, along with an array of mixed vegetables including celery, onions, mushrooms, water chestnuts, and bean sprouts, served with noodles or steamed rice. However, when it comes to Chop Suey recipes, it seems that anything goes.
My Chop Suey recipe will be posted at the end of the week, along with my Flower Drum Song film review.
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