Buddha Jumps Over the Wall | Ying Chang Compestine

Suzy Chase:                   When two podcasts collide, magic happens. Welcome to Dinner Party, the podcast where I bring together my two hit shows, cookery by the book and decorating by the book around here. We're all about cooking, sharing stories behind recipes, and creating a cozy home. I'm your host, Suzy Chase, a West Village wife, mom and homecook. Inspired by Martha Stewart trying to live in a Nora Ephron movie, surrounded by toile, plaid, cookbooks, decorating books and magazines, cooking in my galley kitchen and living my best life in my darling New York City apartment in the cutest neighborhood in the city, the West Village. So come hang out and let's get into the show.

Ying Chang Compestine: Hi, I'm Ying Chang Compestine. I'm here to talk about my new book, Buddha Jump Over the Wall.

Suzy Chase:                   What inspired you to combine a graphic novel with a cookbook for this 27th book of yours?

Ying Chang Compestine:For a long time I keep thinking, what can I do to combine my two passion food and the illustration? And when I saw Vivian the artist work, I just thought, wow, she is perfect for this book to work with me. So I'm just so thrilled. She helped to bring my stories to life.

Suzy Chase:                   A graphic cookbook. That's what it says on the front. I love that.

Ying Chang Compestine:Yes, yes.

Suzy Chase:                   That's so cool. So tell me about the title, which shares its name with the Chinese delicacy called Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.

Ying Chang Compestine:The legend said there's a traveling scholar and one day he was hungry, so he stopped outside the temple to make lunch for himself. So he was making the stew with some meat, with some fish, tofu, and a vegetable, and the Roma would smell so good and drift into a temple. So the little monk was chanting in the temple and he was so hungry he can't help himself. So he jumped over the wall. He was forbidden to eat meat. He asked the dollar to share the lunch with him. So that basically say if the Buddha would jump off the wall to eat it, that's how good this dish is. ew

Suzy Chase:                   Now, growing up in Wuhan China, you would follow Nina, your grandmother, into the kitchen to sample every dish. She cooked dishes like ants climbing a tree, doggy buns, or mapo tofu, which means bean curd made by a pockmarked old woman. And one day you said Why such strange names. And so what was her answer?

Ying Chang Compestine:I grew up in China during the Chinese cultural revolution for those of that part of history is the food is ration. So I had two elder brothers for me to get to the food before then I follow my grandmother in the kitchen, not because I really like to cook or I want to be helpful, I just want to get to the food before they did. And I love my grandma's stories, so I often ask her why it's so strange to the name. So she would tell me the story behind the dishes she's making like ants climbed the tree. It was a really memorable dish for me for when my grandma cooked this dish for us the first time, my brother will scare me saying, oh, those are the ants. Really? They're the men meat. So I was a little hesitant to eat it, but after I find out what it really is, I just know they were trying to trick me. I ate as much as I can as fast as I can.

Suzy Chase:                   China is home to 56 official ethnic groups. So talk about how Chinese culture places importance on food and the connection to a legend famous person or historical event.

Ying Chang Compestine:So the famous person, General Tso, that's a really, that's one dish called General Tso. One day he was taking a break from the battle and the villagers cooking that dish and he loved it. And after that, people named that dish after General Tso.

Suzy Chase:                   So could you chat about the edamame story and its significance?

Ying Chang Compestine:Back in China, the on man I ate was in the shell fresh from the market. It's cheap, it's a protein, so we eat a lot of that. The problem is it take hours, hours to shell those soybeans and sometimes there's warm inside. So that tend out to be my job as a little girl in the summertime, sit under the tree to shell the soybean. I hate it. So one day I find the worms and one of the soybeans I had idea, I ran to my brothers and the other boys playing the accord says, look, there's something really cool inside this. So I tricked them to come to, I said, there's a lot of more worms in the soybeans. So they went there. They all helped me to shell the beans really quickly, but I only did that once because we didn't find anymore after that. So they refused to help me next time.

Suzy Chase:                   I bet you were thrilled to find the shelled edamame in the frozen section at the grocery store.

Ying Chang Compestine:Very much so. The first time I saw that I just can't help it, I said, oh my goodness, this one bag of soybean, it would have take me hours to shell them back home.

Suzy Chase:                   Some of these recipes are pretty involved with hard to find ingredients. So how have you simplified these recipes like your beggars chicken or ignored by doggy buns?

Ying Chang Compestine:I always think about what can I make simplify this dish but still keep the original flavor and make it more healthier and also use the ingredient that's readily available. And most importantly was Vivian's Illustration I think is so fun and easy for people, just follow her drawing to cook these dishes.

Suzy Chase:                   So I thought it was really interesting that in your recipe for ignored by doggy buns, it calls for canned biscuit dough.

Ying Chang Compestine:If you're busy, they're nice, weak, nice. I want to make some steam bun. I just use canned biscuit. You can replace that and it tastes almost as good. Not exactly, but it save you a lot of time.

Suzy Chase:                   Yeah, it's a fun way to have pork buns at home.

Ying Chang Compestine:Yes. And then you can freeze it and then whenever you're busy you can just take it out, and warm it up.

Suzy Chase:                   So talk a little bit about the illustrations in here. It's so fun.

Ying Chang Compestine:Yes, Vivian, she has a lot of humor. When I look around and I worked with many illustrators for my other books and I just thought I really, really want to find someone that can really bring the humor out of the stories. And I just thought he did a great job.

Suzy Chase:                   One of her stories that she illustrated that I love is the Dan Dan noodle stories with Bao Bao and his grandmother. Could you share that story?

Ying Chang Compestine:Yeah, that's really in some way really she showed the Chinese transition, respect all and trying to care for your elders. So Bao Bao and the grandma, they have a little noodle stand in the remote part of town and they're not selling many noodles and the grandma is very worried. So Bao Bao feel bad for grandma. So he decided to carry the noodles and the ingredients on one end of his bamboo pole and the stove on the other. So he walk around town to sell the noodles. Soon he made enough money so they were able to open the restaurant in the nice neighborhood, so that made grandma happy. So it's more like grandson trying to do something nice for grandma to care for the grandma is spicy and numbing and a very flavor for, you can use tofu or you can use man's meat. It's very easy to make too. It is one of the most popular dish in Wuhan. So if you go to any Sichuan restaurant, this has to be on the menu.

Suzy Chase:                   So Mongolian beef has nothing to do with Mongolia?

Ying Chang Compestine:It's American Chinese dish, just like a fortune cookie. It has nothing to do with Chinese. It's invented in San Francisco. I think the name took to make it sound exotic, but it really has nothing to do with Mongolian cuisine.

Suzy Chase:                   At the end of the book, you have lots of interesting facts and tips and one is how to eat rice from a bowl with chopsticks. Could you please describe the proper etiquette for eating from a rice bowl?

Ying Chang Compestine:I know in Western custom is we are not supposed to live our plate of the table, but in China it's common for people. Actually people expect you when you eat a bowl of rice with chopstick, what do you do? You bring the bowl close to your mouth. And so it's okay to do that. But the one thing is you should never step your chopstick into the rice because it simple instant dick at the funeral. And it also sounded of bad luck and you should never cross your chopstick over the bowl. That's like a resemble of coffin. And another thing is considered rude is I know all my Western friends like to do that. When you share the meal with people, they would take off the plate, they would put a half off the food on in their bowl. In China, you're supposed to not do that. You're supposed to pick with your chopstick one piece at a time. You have a common chopstick, you're not supposed to get a half of the dish in your bowl.

Suzy Chase:                   Well, the pandemic impacted the entire world. Few truly understand what life was like at the epicenter and even fewer are familiar with Wuhan rich culture and the resilience of its people. So what's one thing you'd like to tell us about Wuhan and what's one thing you miss about home?

Ying Chang Compestine:I think Wuhan cuisine are the best among all the cuisine in China or in the world to me, because every time I taste the dish, it reminds me of home. During the Covid, I wrote a novel called Morning song in Wuhan and the featured all the famous dishes in Wuhan, they all very simple dishes. There's noodle the rice, but those are the daily dishes we eat in Wuhan. And Wuhan is in central part of China right next to the Ys river. So we get all kind of ingredients from all over China seafood and the meat and the fresh vegetable all year round. So we have a great cuisine, a lot of wonderful dishes.

Suzy Chase:                   So what are a couple of dishes I would recognize

Ying Chang Compestine:Mapo tofu that's very popular in Wuhan and there's a forbidden rice with egg and almonds. I added almonds, but in China when food was rationed almond with hard to come by. So sometimes we don't, but it is a black rice still fry with vegetable and egg. So that's a really common dish. And the most famous dish I would have to say is tea egg. In the suburb of Wuhan, we produce the best tea in the country. So every spring we have fresh tea come into the city, and then the family, my grandmother will cook dishes flavored with tea. And so one of the dishes a tea.

Suzy Chase:                   So now for my segment called The Perfect Bite, where I ask you to describe the perfect bite of your favorite dish in this cookbook.

Ying Chang Compestine:I would have to say tea egg just because it reminds me about my childhood. Bring me back to my hometown Wuhan.

Suzy Chase:                   Where can we find you on the web and social media.

Ying Chang Compestine:I have a website that's uc.com YING C.com. And I'm on Instagram . So if you just search my name, I'm there.

Suzy Chase:                   This cookbook is so unique. I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. I just love it.

Ying Chang Compestine:Thank you so much for having me.

Suzy Chase:                   Okay, so where can you listen to the new Dinner Party podcast series? Well, it's on substack suzy chase.substack.com. You can all so subscribe to Dinner Party for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Additionally, the episodes will be available on both Decorating by the Book and Cookery by the Book. Long story short, you'll be able to listen to it virtually everywhere. Thanks for listening. Bye.