East meets West in worldly chef Denice Wai’s fusion food
Splitting her time between Hong Kong and Vancouver, the culinary artist creates a multicultural dish for TAIWANfest
Denice Wai is the founder of 6 Senses Cooking Studio.
DENICE WAI’S FATHER was a traditional Chinese chef. Food was all around her growing up in Hong Kong. As the only girl in the family, she was expected to help in the kitchen at home, and she also assisted with her dad at his business, a small canteen inside a factory that supplied lunch and dinner to workers.
“I started cooking stir-fired rice when I was seven or eight,” Wai tells Stir in a phone interview, recalling one night at home when her parents were out. “I still remember the first time I made it. I was using the wok, but I didn’t know how to control the gas stove. The kitchen was on fire. When mom and dad came home, the kitchen was all in black.”
Wai has gone on to be a master in the kitchen, the professional chef having operated a catering business in Hong Kong prior to founding 6 Senses Cooking Studio there in 2004.
Splitting her time between Asia and Vancouver, Wai has worked around the world. She makes regular TV and radio appearances and has published award-winning cookbooks in Hong Kong, all centred on teaching people how to make healthy, delicious food.
She brings her culinary flare to TAIWANfest 2021, sharing a recipe that connects cultures. Her virtual presentation, one of three culinary programs at this year’s festival, is called Don’t Get Confused, It’s Can-Fusion.
The idea for her cross-cultural Korean Beef Rice Bowl sprouted from the theme of this year’s fest, Cultures Fermented, and its Dialogue with Asia Series—South Korea.
Wai chose Hong Kong-style stir-fried rice, with dried scallops and green onion, as the base of the fusion dish. Having visited Taiwan and fallen in love with its street food, she incorporated one of her favourites: Taiwanese tea eggs. Hard-boiled eggs are steeped in a marinade of soy sauce, cinnamon, tea leaves, fennel, star anise, and goji berry, and rock sugar. In keeping with the cross-cultural angle, she worked in Canadian beef tenderloin, marinated overnight in sesame oil, mirin, garlic, soy sauce, apple, and—notably, in a nod to Canada—maple syrup. She finishes the bowl with a spicy bibimbap sauce, made with Korean chili paste.
“TAIWANfest is a multicultural festival,” Wai says. “It’s about sharing. It’s not just focused on Taiwan but promoting different countries’ history, culture, and experiences.”
Denice Wai’s Can-Fusion Korean Beef Rice Bowl.
The festival’s other virtual food programs are Korean Foods in Taiwan (featuring Hanju Tofu Pot) and Let’s Savour Taiwan, a video featuring interviews with farmers in Taiwan working to grow non-toxic food and care for the land.
The best way Wai knows how to share culture is through food.
She admits that she initially wasn’t going to pursue cooking, as she didn’t feel she could ever compete with her dad, let alone measure up to his skill or standards. For a time, she focused on baking, then abandoned culinary arts altogether here in Canada, working a nine-to-five office job.
“I missed a lot of the traditional Chinese food that my dad cooked for me,” Wai says. “I missed the taste of stir-fried rice. I started to pick up those dishes by memory—things like sweet and sour pork, all traditional dishes.”
She would call her father overseas to get advice when she didn’t have the seasoning or aroma in a certain dish quite right.
Wai began prioritizing healthy food in her work and life after seeing both of her parents become ill and later pass. She describes her style of cooking as fusion with the best of East and West, maintaining the vibrant Asian flavours she grew up with while incorporating ingredients and techniques that health-conscious Vancouver has ingrained in her.
For Wai, food is also an act of love.
“When my father realized he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I asked him ‘what do you want to eat?’” Wai says. “I cooked for him. That was the way for myself how I wanted to pay him back for what he taught me.”
For more information see TAIWANfest and 6 Senses Cooking Studio.
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