Sunday, July 13

This was my fifth trip to China, the first being in 2000. This trip was mostly work, but I did have time to take a few pictures and have a few extra-work experiences. My job entailed working in the kitchens of two hotels, producing product that demonstrated the use of whey derivatives, giving two seminars on the use of whey, and then two chocolate-making demonstrations.

It all started Saturday, July 12, 2008 in San Luis Obispo, CA. I boarded the plane around 10:45 AM, 75 minutes after arriving at the airport. The flight had been delayed due to smoke from the forest fires which had been plaguing the Central Coast. The plane then sat at the end of the runway until 11:30 AM, as permission to take off had been delayed. We arrived in SF at 12:30 PM, only 1 hour before departure. I grabbed a quick bite to eat and boarded the plane 25 minutes before departure time of 1:30 PM.

The flight lasted about 14 hours. The sun never set because the earth was turning underneath us in our direction. We arrived at 5:30 PM. The hotel car was there to pick me up and the drive from the airport took about 60 minutes. The Shanghai international airport (located south of Pudong) is flanked by the customary three layers of vegetation: low, green bushes, higher red bushes, and modest sized trees, probably in the poplar family. Occasionally, there were walls of bamboo. All the vegetation is hand-trimmed and hand-watered.

At about 7:30 PM, Sunday, we arrived in Shanghai—at the JW Marriott. The hotel lobby is at the 38th floor and extends upwards from there. My room was on the 46th floor.

Monday, July 14

The following morning, Monday, I met Shirley and Liu. Shirley works in the Shanghai USDEC office and was my email contact during the months before the trip. We sat in the lobby of the hotel and for two hours, I gave the lecture while Liu translated. Liu, or more properly described, “Dr. Liu”, who has a PhD from the Department of Food Science, Washington University in Pullman Oregon (wrong). She now teaches at the Food Science department at xxx university in Wuxi, China, about an hour away from Shanghai.

We went out to lunch next door, in a very nice restaurant. I don’t have pictures of this meal, but the highlights was a pyramid of with four layers of seaweek, several colors of green and yellow. And little durian mice, stinky on the inside and crispy on the outside, Durian, as you may know, snuck onto the ark when no-one was looking. It is truly foul smelling—somewhere between dog excrement and vomit. Both, actually. When baked, the flavor is “special” and one gets hooked on it over time.

After lunch, we took the elevator into the bowels of the hotel, where we prepared the pastries and breads for the next day’s presentation. We walked down long corridors lined with paintings straight out of kindergarten exhorting the workers who were pictured as round faced nebbishes lacking facial features save big smiles, each wearing a different uniform corresponding to their particular task. Each painting, about 4 feet high and 20 feet long, exhorted the staff to practice Courtesy, Honesty and a myriad other desirable behaviors. JW Marriott paternalism.

The bakery was small and very crowded. Liu and I worked together. The head baker (Peter?) was extremely accommodating and assigned us our very own assistant. He started by weighing out the control recipe of White Pan Bread. I put the ingredients into the KitchenAid and after 2 minutes of mixing, the mixer broke. From then on, I was obliged to mix everything by hand: doughs for White Pan Bread, croissants, doughnuts, and pie dough. We worked from 2:30 PM until 8 PM. Sometime in the middle of our culinary adventure, the chef stopped by. He was wearing a pitch-black uniform. Only time I’ve ever seen that. He looked me up and down, the corner of his mouth sneering Dick Cheney style. He said, “You know, we have sanitary standards to uphold at this hotel.” (I was wearing a t-shirt and old pants). He then made some statement about how the “agreement” was that we’d only be using the kitchen for 4 hours the first day and just finishing up the second. He embodied the warmth of Madame LaFarge and the sensitivity of Benito Mussolini. After he left, the head baker assured us that we were welcome and that we were his guests and that if we needed the bakery a little longer, that he would do everything he could to help us accomplish our task.

We were able to bake three versions of the bread, make three versions of croissant dough, two versions of apple pie with streusel topping, and three versions of doughnuts. At the end of the day, we were well positioned to finish the task the following morning.

Shirley, Fiona, Liu, and I walked a couple blocks to a Sichuan restaurant. They ordered a vast quantity of food, all of it pretty highly spiced. The most memorable dishes for me were: an enormous bowl of soup containing freshwater fish fillets cooked with 4 cups of hot chilies that were scooped out before we could enjoy the blazingly spiced soup. Another dish of note was the beef tendons--tender and beautifully flavored of course with ginger and garlic. A third dish was rice paddy eels, which were batter-coated, fried, then tossed in a lovely orange-scented sauce. Crunchy and moist. Fantastic.

Tuesday, July 15

Fiona and I started at 8 AM. I was able to roll out all the croissants on the sheeter, sticking just to my little corner and keeping the dough sheetpans on top of the electrical controlbox, located to the left of the walk-in. By 10 AM, I had made three versions of the pastry cream (control, WPC-34, WPC-80), and I have rolled out all the croissants and proofed them. They went into the oven at 10 AM. As they baked, Fiona and our assistant filled the doughnuts. The filling for the WPC80 version was a brilliant orange, due to my heavyhandedness with the yellow food color.

I, meanwhile, started making the cake--control and WPC-80. I needed some sort of berry jam to spread on the cake, a very thin Swiss Roll. Our assistant found 20-some teeny jars of unknown berry jam, and he proceeded to empty them all using the tip of a knife to scrape them out. I divided the jam into two portions and spread it onto the two cakes, then rolled them up tightly.

The day before, Shirley had purchased some plastic cups. I made both versions of strawberry mousse (actually, a mixed berry mousse from a large bucket found in the walk-in), one control and the other WPC80. Our assistant lined the cups with slices of the cake and dropped in blops of mousse. I made some chocolate grille (a grill made by piping chocolate every which way, allowed to set, then broken into bits) and we put them together.

At 1 PM, I hurried back upstairs, changed into my suit, and rushed down to the ballroom. It occurred to me that we didn't have a refrigerator onstage, which would make it impossible to set the chocolate up in the molds. A member of the hotel staff rushed off to garner one of those wimpy cold-bar refrigerators.

We kicked the thing off at 1:45. The room was completely filled with attendees. Shirley started by giving a 5-minute presentation about USDEC and about whey sales. From 1:50 PM until 3 PM, I spoke about the following topics:

Introduction
Why use whey?
What is whey?
Functional properties of whey
Nutritional aspects of whey products

We stopped for a coffee/tea break. I rushed down to the kitchen to get the ganache out of the refrigerator. I had left it there to harden. I set it out at room temperature and then proceeded with the talk at around 3:20 PM. The second half of the talk consisted of these topics:

Specific examples of functional properties of whey
Comparison of the five breads, pastries and desserts
Chocolate demo

For about 40 minutes, we tasted each of the samples, which had been displayed on plates at each table. I would give some general comments about the product, then go into how whey might impact appearance, texture, and flavor. Then I would ask them to consider whether the differences between versions--control (with whole milk powder), WPC34, or WPC80/lactose--were significantly different. I would then mention that WMP (whole milk powder) costs about $4,000 per MT and that WPC34 costs only $1700. My next question was, "Why continue to use a product that costs so much when you can make an equivalent bread or pastry with a less expensive and more nutritious ingredient?"

This is really the foundation of my sales schtick. The vast majority of SMPs and WMPs (skim milk powders and whole milk powders) sold in the Far East are non-American (New Zealand, European, Indian), so this is an opportunity for American products to compete.

At about 4 PM, I started the chocolate demo. Just as I started, it occurred to me that I didn't have any way to wash my hands! I started with the truffles, which involved scooping the ganache into balls and rolling them in cocoa powder. Stupidly, I had not thought of how to clean my hands, so I was obliged to wipe them on paper towels, of which I had plenty. I quickly rolled the truffles in chocolate and decorated them, then proceeded to demonstrate how to mold chocolate and how to make green tea filled chocolate leaves.

Two members of the Washington DC USDEC office had arrived during my talk, including Matt McKnight with whom I had spent several days baking in the Cairo Sheraton last November. After my talk, Matt, Charles, Dan, and I spent an hour drinking beer and talking. Matt and Charles were at the beginning of an Asian tour, talking with various dairy chemists at universities in China, Japan, and Korea.

Afterwards, we went out to a restaurant. The most memorable dish was cooked pork jowl--moist and tender and very flavorful.

Wednesday, July 16

In the morning, we took a car to the airport and flew to Guangzhou. The flight was 2.5 hours long and we arrived in the early afternoon. We checked into the hotel, The White Swan, located on Shamian island, right on the Pearl River. Matt had mentioned at dinner the night before that The White Swan hotel is THE place to stay if you're an American in the process of adopting a Chinese infant. True enough, as we're checking in, there were several American couples standing at the front desk.

A large, jade boat stands maybe 30 feet from the entrance.











A second interesting feature of The White Swan Hotel is its enormous waterfall flanked by a number of koi-filled ponds.











We checked into our rooms. Mine was a suite overlooking the Pearl River.



















As soon as we were settled, we walked across the street to the JM Chef restaurant. The front room was taken up with tanks of freshwater and saltwater seafood. I was especially taken with the geoduck, the water beetles, and the sandworms. Shirley was not keen on these, so we also ordered chicken and fish stomach soup, which is "good for your skin." We finished the meal with a sweet soup made of coconut milk in which were to be found Ginkgo seeds, cubes of papaya, and frog spawn (eggs.) The geoduck is basically a fine example of stupid design (or might it be--dare I say it--evolution???). Here's an animal that really is part worm, part clam. It has a shell, but it can't fit into it. What kind of goofiness is that? And how did it get on the Ark? And why?
























The stupidly designed geoduck...












We went back to the hotel and I took a 2-hour nap. We met in the kitchen at 4 PM and from 4-5, we discussed how we were to proceed with Chef Kirt. He was extremely welcoming and so happy to help us. We worked from 5-11 PM, essentially accomplishing the same as we had the first afternoon at the Marriott. This time, however, we had much more space and lots of really fine equipment. Chef Kirt not only supplies all baked products for the hotel's restaurant, but he also runs a very nice bakery. Just to give an idea of how busy they are, they run through 2,000 lbs of flour in a day.

A picture of some of the products sold in the bakery...














The chef offered to fry the doughnuts, so I stood there watching him. He used chopsticks to turn them.














The chef and Tom.











The chef and Fiona











We finished at 11 PM, too late to eat dinner. Eli Jiang brought me these desserts to eat. On the left is a dessert soup: quite black. It was wheaty tasting and mildly sweet. On the right are peanut dumplings--filled with peanut and the dough made with a rice paste.

Thursday, July 17

We started at a leisurely 10 AM. Once we arrived, four bakers whipped out the croissants in no time. The doughnuts were filled with pastry cream, and the cake and mousse were made and assembled into desserts. I focussed on making chocolate decorations in the cake shop, which is separate from the rest of the kitchen. Wearing of face masks is obligatory so people don't breathe their germs onto the surface of cakes. This is a level of sanitation not often seen in the U.S.

The products were all prepped and moved to the banquet room, which overlooked the river.

Here is a picture of the table and the products displayed.











Here are pictures of individual products...





Croissant










White Pan Bread









Berliner Doughnuts









Apple Pie with Streusel Topping









Charlotte Russe









Cardamom Ginger Truffles









Green Tea Leaves










Kevin Latner, Director of the Agricultural Trade Office, spoke for 5 minutes at the midway point in the presentation.




After the talk, we ate lunch in the hotel's restaurant. Quite a spread.



This was a "Hedgehog of the Sea" custard. AKA Uni Custard. Really excellent flavor. Cooked uni isn't nearly as good texturewise as raw, however.


Oxtail Soup. Always excellent. The broth is so flavorful, especially with shiitake mushrooms.

After lunch, we went to the airport and flew back to Shanghai. Nothing special happened that evening.

Friday, July 18

Today, I flew back to the U.S. The plane left at 12:30 PM. The flight took 13 hours and we arrived in SFO at 7:30 AM. All-in-all, an excellent culinary adventure. Many thanks to the Shanghai/Guangzhou offices of USDEC, especially to Shirley, Fiona, Liu, Eli, and Dan for their gracious hospitality and for a very well-organized trip!

Tom Neuhaus