My Chinatown: A New York Sketchbook
At dusk, after the orchestra has packed up and the chess players have gone home, Cheron Tomkins, a British immigrant who lives in the neighborhood, walks her dachshund in the park. Although Tomkins – with her red hair and an unmistakable Cockney accent – is an outsider to Chinese culture, she insists she has never felt ostracized in Chinatown. Eastern medicine – like Chinese herbs and acupuncture – and lifestyle practices characterize her daily life and help her to attain physical and spiritual wholeness. “There’s a psychological barrier you break,” she says, petting her dog, “when you cross Canal Street.”
And Columbus Park? Its beauty, democracy and cultural richness, she says, make her “feel human again.”
Chinese Senior Orchestra of New York Incorporated:
Performs every Saturday and Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
All year round, rain or shine, free at the pavilion.
Mr. Jin’s Tai-Chi:
Meets every Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. $60 a month. Meets under the pavilion
Dr. Mou:
7-8 Chatham Sq. Suite 805, 10:00a.m.- 7:00p.m. Telephone: 212-349-1768.
4. Eat and Run
I first found Ling Kee Beef Jerky in late August last summer. I was walking down Ludlow Street following a Chinese funeral procession. Thinking back, I don’t know what made me eat dried and smoked skin after observing a funeral; maybe it was a repressed cannibalistic tendency I have hidden deep inside me, or, maybe it was the sweet smell of marinade in the air and my weakness for delicious meat. Whoever’s funeral it was that day I was sorry. Watching the hearse and line of limousines and a full marching band playing, I sent my condolences silently standing on the corner of Ludlow and Canal streets. I looked up at the cloudless sky and walked through the open door into a room full of smoke, and in the time since, I’ve packed on a few pounds.
Three rickety chairs around a cluttered table remain vacant all day, but business is brisk at Ling Kee Beef Jerky. A broken bug-zapper hangs from the ceiling— but maybe the Buddha shrine on top of the refrigerator is warding off any unwanted creatures. The cramped space is a sizzling serenade of grilling meat, aromatic smoke, and hurried customers. They run in, rattle off their orders in Mandarin or Malaysian, grab their jerky and get on with their lives.
The storefront is on Canal and Division Streets, where most signs are in Mandarin and no tourist hordes go after deals on crappy counterfeit handbags. This part of eastern Chinatown caters to the locals, mostly new immigrants struggling to make a few bucks and to spend even fewer. Ling Yan bought the jerky business from her aunt about fifteen years ago, with her sister-in-law Mai Yan. Every day, seven days a week, the two women prepare and cook fresh jerky, an elaborate process. Ling hardly has time even for a courteous gesture. “I’d shake your hand,” she says to a friend, “but I got beef all over it.”
Jerky is an early form of food preservation in which meat is dried to delay the spoiling process and does not need to be refrigerated. Ling Kee’s jerky is different from nearly all the other varieties sold in the neighborhood. The recipe comes from Malaysia, where this delicacy is a little sweeter and juicier than the Hong-Kong-style version more commonly available in Chinatown. Their specialty is mild and spicy-flavored beef, pork or chicken jerky, which sell for $15-$16 per pound.
Drying meat is the oldest method of food preservation. Although the practice’s precise origins are unknown, there’s evidence to suggest that people in ancient Egypt, Asia, and North and South America, have all been making jerky for thousands of years. The name comes from the South American Quechua word “ch’arki” which means dried meat. Jerky preparation has been practiced in China since the Tang Dynasty (618-907). During that time the inhabitants of the mountains and valleys would catch native green peacocks, cows, pigs and deer and slice their flesh, marinate it (for three nights) and then dry it on a string in the eaves of a house. Now jerky is made in more controlled and sanitary environments, but most jerky connoisseurs declare that the quality of product isn’t what it used to be.
The sisters-in-law Yan, however, appear to be worthy heirs to the classic jerky tradition.
Ling, the master chef, says she’s been cooking jerky for 30 years. Gray hair inches from the roots of her reddish-brown bob and eyes bead around nervously, as she opens a back door that reveals a room awash in blood, bone and meat. A meat grinder fills a gray bin with red lean beef with each crank of its arm. A steel table is spattered with blood, and holds splayed-open legs of beef still on the bone. Most workdays, Ling wears a dark-red apron, sits in the back room, and skillfully slices through slabs of flesh with a 10-inch cleaver.
Ling explains her craft as she washes her hands. “Every day I make it and I taste it,” she says. “I re-do the recipe to try and perfect it. Every day it changes.”
The process is long and involved. Ling grinds the meat she carefully sliced and then marinates it for one day. She then presses and flattens the meat together into thin sheets and cuts them into squares. Ling points out that they don’t store much meat on the premises, except what they don’t use from the day. “We buy fresh 100 pounds meat every day,” she says, “and sell 50 or more pounds.” After Ling slow-cooks it for three or four hours, the rest of the job is given over to her partner, Mai.
Mai cooks the four-by-four-inch squares of meat on the coal grill. The squares regularly catch fire, the shooting flames releasing the aroma of the succulent meats. Mai, half-owner and half-smiling, flips square after square with her metal tongs as smoke curls through the air. After about 30 minutes, she places the squares in a colander to dry and then stacks the dried sheets in the display case.
The Yan family recipe is for gold-standard jerky, which tastes and looks more like a slice of steak than dried meat. The packaged Wild Bill’s or Pemmican jerky found at gas stations are virtually inedible compared with the traditional Malaysian-style version. The juicy sheets release a sweet and tangy taste with a touch of burnt, smoky flavor. Its consistency is delicate and slightly chewy. Jerky is the closest to 100 percent lean meat you can sink your teeth into. After many visits, I discovered that the beef is a little tougher and not as sweet as the pork. Beef is more traditional, but pork is definitely the customers’ favorite. Both Mai and Ling snack on their creation while sipping tea; pork is their favorite too.
For many patrons, this jerky signifies tradition and gives rise to fond memories. “When I was little, beef jerky was always a treat,” says 20-year-old Brooklynite Leila Liu. Her mom would bring her to Chinatown to do their grocery shopping, and the draw for Leila was always the jerky. Delicately biting into a thin sheet of lean meat, she says, “It’s delicious and addicting.”
Now that she’s grown up, it’s Leila’s turn to lure someone from Brooklyn to Chinatown: her boyfriend, Ivan Li. They trade bites of jerky as it pokes out of their wax paper bags. “This is my first time,” he says, “but I’m a big meat fan and I’ll be back.”
Most of Ling Kee’s customers have frequented her establishment for years. They waste no time gazing around the shop. A man in too much of a hurry to give his name buys a pound of spicy beef and brusquely stuffs his purchase inside his messenger bag. Practically outside the door, he calls over his shoulder: “I don’t buy from anybody else. This,” he taps his bag, “is genuine jerky.”
“Genuine” isn’t the sole draw here; other jerky specialty shops in the area (like New Beef King Corp. on Bayard Street) are also genuine. The secret here, regular customers say, is in the Malaysian style of spicing and cooking. Charlie Tang, who works in an electrical supply store next door, says, “The best jerky is juicy, Yan’s pork is the juiciest.”
Ling Kee is not a place to dine. Tina Tang, an English-speaking friend of Mai’s, says emphatically: “Jerky with red wine and family at home is the only way to eat jerky!” Ling Kee keeps her front door perpetually open, and those seats perpetually vacant. “People don’t stay here,” Tang sulkingly reminds a reporter who is asking too many questions and has clearly overstayed his welcome. “They take their jerky and leave.”
Ling Kee Beef Jerky, 42 Canal Street, open till 8 pm seven days a week.
