NEW ORLEANS NOSTALGIA Remembering New Orleans History, Culture and Traditio Ns
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NEW ORLEANS NOSTALGIA Remembering New Orleans History, Culture and Traditio ns By Ned Hémard Don’t You Know Yaka Mein Yaka Mein is a Chinese-influenced dish extremely popular in the African-American community of New Orleans, a soulful beef noodle soup steeped in mystery. It usually consists of beef or shrimp in a soy-salty broth, served over noodles and topped with chopped green onions and half a hard-boiled egg. Flavor-wise, Creole seasoning gives the dish that something extra. Food Truck offering YET-CA-MEIN on the Indians’ Super Sunday Called “Old Sober” by local expert “Ms. Linda” Green, the Yaka Mein Lady, and others for its potency as a hangover remedy, it has become perhaps the quintessential street food staple at second lines, as well as fairs and festivals, such as Jazz Fest and the Mardi Gras Indians’ Super Sunday. In fact, it was served in 1970 at the first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, familiarly known as Jazz Fest, held in Congo Square. After the Festival’s second year it was no longer offered, but was reintroduced to Fest goers in 2005 when “Ms. Linda” brought it back. One origin theory states that Yaka mein was brought back home to the U.S. by African American troops who had served overseas in the Korean War and returned with a desire for some of the noodle soup dishes they had experienced there. Trouble with that hypothesis is that I have found numerous references to the dish in American newspapers, appearing earlier than the Korean conflict – much earlier. The oldest reference I was able to discover was an ad in the Springfield, Illinois, Daily Journal, dated October 10, 1905, which announced that “Yet-ca mein” could be had at the Shanghai Café for only 20 cents. Yet-ca mein available as early as 1905 As you can see, Yaka mein, or Yet ca-mein, has innumerable spellings. The list includes: Yetka mein; Yock a mein (or just “Yock”); Jakemein, Yakameat; Yakamein; Yakamee; Yakimi; Yacamein; Ya ka mein; Yatka mein; Yet gaw mein; Yat gaw mein; Yaca mein; Yakama; or Yaka may. These various spellings occur with and without hyphenation, and mein (which is the Chinese word for noodle) is often rendered as mien. New Orleans jam band Galactic even named an album Ya Ka May because, just as the dish is a blend of Chinese and African-American culinary cultures, the band’s efforts on that album blended two very different musical genres. And as you may also observe, Yaka mein, rendered in the 1905 ad as “yet-ca mein”, takes its place on the menu with other “simple” Chinese dishes, such as chop suey, culinary offerings intended as meals suitable for American palates. In Chinese, the term for food cooked to American taste is meiguorende kouwei. Yaka Mien (as it was spelled then) was explained in an article in the Portland Oregonian, dated January 4, 1914. A writer asked for “the recipe for making real Chinese noodles” and also “the broth in which they may be eaten” and “what kind of meat is served”? The answer: “Real Chinese noodles, or ‘Yaka Mien,’ as I have seen them prepared, call for white of egg, salt and a special kind of flour mixed to a stiff paste. The exact proportions vary with the kind of flour. The important feature is two hours’ heavy and continuous working of the paste with different kinds of rollers. You would, I think, need a special lesson or series of lessons in the manipulation of the paste and you would need untiring muscles. Even if you had the skill and the muscles, you would still find (if your time has any value at all) that it would pay you to buy rather than make these noodles. An excellent brand of Yaka Mien is to be had in Portland from the larger grocery stores at 10 to 15 cents a package. They are boiled in salted water and drained before being added to broth or served with sauces and meats. To tell you ‘what kind of broth they may be eaten in and what kind of meat is served on them and how it is prepared’ would be to write a fairly large Chinese cook book, which I am not prepared to do at present.” The article continued: “Strong, rich chicken broth, or broth of chicken, ham and pork or different kinds of vegetable broth, may be used.” It’s interesting to note that beef broth, most often used in New Orleans yaka mein, is not mentioned in the recipe above. The 1914 Portland version is further explained: “Little strips or minced balls of chicken-meat, duck-meat, goose- breast, Chinese pork, Chinese ham (different flavored from ours) and various sorts of fish go with Yaka Mien. Bamboo sprouts, Chinese celery, Chinese mushrooms, green bean sprouts, and different Chinese spices and flavorings enter into composition of many different variations in serving Yaka Mien. Chinese soy is, of course, to be served with the noodles in any case. The meats are boiled, stewed or fried according to the ordinary rules for meat cookery, the difference being in form and seasoning. Some of the seasonings are unattainable by the ordinary American cook.” Ms. Linda and her Yaka Mein, in a bowl or to-go Styrofoam cups After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Herbert Hoover to head the U.S. Food Administration to ensure that the nation’s food needs were being met during the war. By 1918, Woo Bun, head cook at the Canton Restaurant in Denver, Colorado, was cooperating with the war effort on “meatless days”: “We have learned to make our noodles almost entirely of fine white corn meal to save wheat, and on meatless days, we use broth of chicken and other fowls as a basis for our war mein and yat ca mein,” Woo explained. In October 1921, the Chinese of Duluth, Minnesota, “attired in the flowing robes of the Celestial empire,” would do their part to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Chinese republic, according to an article in the Duluth News-Tribune, dated October 7, 1921. A great repast was to include “boneless duck stuffed with birds’ nests, chow mein and yet ka mien.” Still another spelling of yaka mein. In 1926, according to the Augusta Chronicle, Georgia readers learned a recipe for “Yet-ca-mein” involving either “chicken” or “pork shoulder” for the broth. “Chinese noodles” were added and boiled for four minutes. Removed, the broth and noodles were transferred “to soup plates” and topped with “match-like” strips of meat. “Serve with soy sauce if desired,” the recipe concluded. Making an appearance much further south in 1927, Tampa, Florida, to be precise, the dish was now spelled Yaka Mein. In ads from 1927 through 1929, the Mikado Inn in Tampa offered both Chinese and American dishes. Yaka Mein hits the South in the 1920s 1935 was a very important year in Yaka Mein history. It was the same year that then Senator Huey Long of Louisiana delivered the longest speech in Senate history, taking 15½ hours and containing 150,000 words. In a scene from the 1935 MGM crime drama Whipsaw, starring Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy, the “bad guys” (who happened to be staying in New Orleans) placed a take-out order for Chinese food: “I ordered three chop sueys and two yaka meins, right?” “Right.” For diners in Ohio, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, printed an ad, dated January 22, 1935, offering “luscious Yacamein” (this time with “diced baby veal”) for the “Ravenous!” for only 35 cents. This Chinese fare was provided by a restaurant with the most New England-sounding name, the “Cape Cod Room of the Bean Pot”. But perhaps the most significant 1935 event in the history of Yaka Mein, or Yet-Ca-Mein, was the printing of La Choy’s Chinese recipe booklet, entitled The Art and Secrets of Chinese Cookery and its inclusion of a simple recipe for “Yet-Ca-Mein”. La Choy Food Products, Inc., a company and brand name offering canned and prepackaged American Chinese ingredients, was founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 1922 by two friends who had attended the University of Michigan, Dr. Ilhan New, a Korean immigrant, and Wally Smith. The company, whose first product was canned mung bean sprouts, is currently owned by food giant ConAgra. Yet-Ca-Mein recipe, The Art and Secrets of Chinese Cookery, 1935 The La Choy recipe for “Yet-Ca-Mein” offered an affordable meal for almost any family’s pocketbook: “beef or other broth” and some inexpensive “noodles or vermicelli” topped with “halves of hard boiled eggs” and “green onions”. It was almost identical to to the New Orleans yaka mein of today. La Choy products were available in the New Orleans area as early as 1925 when Solari’s first began advertising these items. Established in 1864, Solari’s was one of the primary food destinations in New Orleans for both local shoppers and tourists for over 100 years. Solari’s La Choy ad in the Times-Picayune, May 7, 1926 A Mrs. Peterson offered a recipe for “Yet-Ca-Mein” in the Times- Picayune, October 28, 1933. Hers featured “flaked crab meat” as the major ingredient. Ms. Linda Green, who learned how to make yaka mein from her mother and grandmother, not only makes yaka mein with beef, but oyster yaka mein, shrimp, shrimp and beef, alligator, duck and even vegeterian versions. Free La Choy Cookery book featuring “Yet-Ca-Mein”, The Times-Picayune, April 29, 1955 Even in the 1950s, La Choy was making its Chinese Cookery booklet available to any interested homemaker who was willing to write La Choy Food Products.