rss feedDecades later, Fu Pei-Mei’s Chinese recipes (particularly tofu) still inspire. Who was she?
From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, Fu Pei-Mei demonstrated more than 600 recipes on her television cooking show in Taiwan. Photo printed in Pei Mei's Chinese Cook Book Volume II. Copyright Chiu-Yu Printing Co. Ltd.
She has been described as the Julia Child of the Chinese culinary world.
Over her nearly 40-year televised career in Taiwan, Fu Pei-Mei demonstrated how to cook more than 4,000 Chinese dishes.
She was fluent in Mandarin, Japanese and English. She traveled the world, and particularly in Asia, to help others improve their gastronomical skills.
I came across one of her cook books, Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book Volume II, as I do other things in life. I stumbled upon it. I was visiting my parents in California and grabbed it to read at home.
I thought it was a cookbook that I bought in Hong Kong or Southern China years ago.
It turned out, thanks to a name written inside, that it once belonged to my aunt. I quickly found Fu’s recipe for tofu sandwiches.
But only recently did I set time aside to make them. They turned out better than I expected.
Fu’s life reads like many others of an earlier generation in which boundary incursions in Asia were more common.
She was born in Shandong province, according to her biography in Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book Volume II.
She studied at a Japanese high school in Dalian, located in a region that was once referred to as Manchuria.
Her father was a successful businessman. As a child, she became interested in the “culinary arts.”
Her cooking tutelage came from various well-known chefs throughout China, according to Pei Mei’s Chinese Cooking Book Volume II.
From the book:
She also went to Japan for advanced study on food nutrition. Through endless practice and eager research, she has perfected numerous Chinese recipes in line with the trend of the modern cuisine development in the world.
In the 1950s, she had arrived in Taiwan and had established the Chinese Cooking Institute in Taipei.
The early 1960s saw the start of television in Taiwan. She began her televised cooking show at the Taiwan Television Co.
She judged cooking contests in Hong Kong, conducted lessons and demonstrated her culinary skills to groups ranging from the Chinese American Cultural and Recreation Association to the Taiwan Tourist Bureau.
Back when airlines in general cared about serving satisfying food in their cabins, she served as a special consultant to China Air Lines in the 1970s.
Her task was “to improve the food service on its overseas flights.”
Her cooking career did especially well from the 1970s to the 1990s, the Taipei Times reported.
In online reviews of her Volume I cookbook, her fans rave about her work. One person who goes by J. Wang from California writes in an Amazon review:
There are many dishes that are now lost (due to lack of being made in restaurants), and these are invaluable to any serious foodie collector.
She passed away in Taipei on Sept. 16, 2004. She was 73.
UPDATE: If you’re a fan of Fu Pei-Mei, here’s a blog devoted to her cooking, Pei Mei a Day.
Thanks for the shout-out! The tofu sandwiches are definitely one of my favorites – tasty and so cute. I also like the Cantonese stuffed bean curd from Vol. I, but it’s a little more complicated to make.