I remember watching Chef Yan on TV when I was younger. Where I grew up there weren't any other Asian families besides mine so it was exciting to see a fellow Asian, even if it was only on TV. Nowadays Chef Yan is a lot older but still has a good sense of humor and is just as lively. On March 3rd Chef Martin Yan, from the show “Yan Can Cook”, visited  Stony Brook University to do a cooking demonstration.

For the first part of the show he played a Chinese New Year celebration song by banging his knife on  the bottom of a pot. He made several jokes which implied that all the Asians in the audience were his relatives so they had to pay $5 for autographs. I wasn’t too fond of those jokes though. Personally they made me feel somewhat excluded and it felt like he was favoring all the non-Asians so that they would buy his books. A majority of the audience seemed  to laugh at his jokes so maybe it was just me.

During the show he showed off his knife skills saying he could feed a whole army of people with one tomato because he could cut it into so many slices. At one time he showed off his chicken deboning skills. First he bounced the chicken around so it was nice and “relaxed” and then deboned it in under 16 seconds. I thought that was pretty impressive. I’ve had experience deboning chickens and it is not easy, but then again, I don’t have his expensive knife.

When everything was chopped Chaf Yan invited a guest from the audience to help him. I felt he was excluding Asians again when he purposely chose someone who was non-Asian, or rather “not a relative”, to be his guest. Together they fried up the food in woks and made some simple stir fries. I had the chance to taste some of it. The beef was nice and tender and it was a very simple dish. It probably did not seem very impressive to those who cook but I imagine it is difficult to cook very complex dishes on a stage with just a hot plate.

After the show Chef Yan signed autographs and posed for pictures with fans. Overall I felt the event was nice change of pace in between studying. His jokes left a bad taste in mouth but I guess it may be hard to not show any favoritism to any one group especially when one wants to be successful in America.

Yan Can Cook Official Website http://www.yancancook.com/