Fujian Pork Noodle Soup

Ong gave me the recipe for pork noodle soup, which he’d scribbled on scratch paper, a printout of a coupon from a sporting goods store (he and his wife have a couple of kids, both boys). Ong was born in Malaysia, though his dad has Fujianese roots, and this soup is the simplest and homiest of things: pork Ong minced with double cleavers as we talked, stir-fried with ginger and garlic, hot bean paste and fermented mustard greens, with stalks of yu choy, the slightly more delicate cousin of Chinese broccoli.

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Read John Birdsall's Crawling Back With Cleaver: Alex Ong’s pork noodle soup reminded me that cooking is a skill of diligence, of the unglamorous work of getting things ready, of honing. My soup was fine, not as good as Ong’s, not even close. My single, sort-of sharp cleaver made the mince tough and a little dry—I was battering the pork fibers, bruising as I chopped. My soup was a failure, not of cooking, but of patience.Fujian Pork Noodle Soup, was published in the Spring 2015 issue of Edible San Francisco Magazine. © 2015 Edible San Francisco. Illustration © 2015 Dan Bransfield.