Yan can donate: How the famous chef and UC Davis alumnus created a legacy

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Martin Yan’s groundbreaking PBS television show “Yan Can Cook” will celebrate its 40th year in 2022, with more than 2,000 episodes recorded. It’s been a career deserving of its own library archive, which the Sacramento area is fortunate enough to host.

Yan and his wife/business partner Susan are founding the Chef Martin Yan Legacy Archive in the UC Davis Library Archives and Special Collections, according to a university announcement on Monday.

The donation includes nearly 3,000 cookbooks (30 of which Yan wrote), his first wok and media and awards, as well as $20,000 for upkeep and digitization.

“It’s truly an honor and a privilege for me to be working with the library at my beloved alma mater to build this Chinese and Asian culinary archive,” Yan said in a media release. “I hope this will become a center for people to learn about Asian food and culture in a fun way.”

Born to a poor family in Guangzhou, China, Yan began working at a relative’s Hong Kong restaurant at age 13. He moved to Canada after graduating high school and visited UC Davis on what was supposed to be a weekend trip. Shortly after, he enrolled in the food science program, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1973 and a master’s in 1977.

Yan offset his student expenses by teaching Chinese cooking classes through a UC Davis extension, which he credited with giving him the stage presence later to reach audiences across America. Armed with a cheery nature and warm smile, he made fun learning how to make stir-fries, dumplings and noodles, while building a legacy that endured changes in society and TV cooking shows.

Yan was a 33-year-old Chinese American immigrant with an accent, hosting his own nationally televised cooking show in 1982. He arguably shaped the concept of Asian American cooking more than anyone else; Brandon Jew, a rising Chinese American star in San Francisco’s restaurant scene, called Yan “the Jackie Robinson of Asians,” in a New York Times profile last year.

His tagline “if Yan can cook, so can you!” made foreign dishes feel approachable and probably inspired a similar phrase in the Pixar movie “Ratatouille.”

Yan ultimately earned two James Beard Awards for Best TV Cooking Show (1994) and Best TV Food Journalism (1996), and has started cooking on social media more often since the pandemic began. San Francisco’s PBS member station KQED has also released old “Yan Can Cook” episodes on YouTube every Monday since January 2020.

Yan lives in the Bay Area and has frequently returned to UC Davis over the years, including a stint as the culinary advisor for the university’s Confucius Institute, which focused on Chinese food and beverage before shutting down in 2020. His and Susan’s son Colin graduated with a bachelor’s degree in exercise biology in 2015.

To celebrate the archive, UC Davis will host Yan for a book signing and cooking demonstration in May. Go to bit.ly/3H4DLSN to be notified when tickets for the event go on sale.

What I’m Eating

Indian restaurants around here tend to highlight dishes from the country’s northern half – like aloo ghobi, naan and samosas. But South Indian cuisine gets star treatment at Annachikadai, the low-key destination restaurant at 1167 Riley St. in Folsom (sister locations are in Mountain View and Pleasanton).

For the uninitiated, South Indian cooking tends to incorporate beans, fruit and spices such as cardamom and tamarind more so than North Indian. Hinduism is the dominant religion, and many items tend to be vegetarian-friendly as a result.

That natural reliance on meatless ingredients shined in dishes like idli with sambar ($8), where a fluffy, tangy rice cake was born to soak up the vibrant tamarind-lentil stew. The spicy gongura dosa ($9) was another vegetarian hit, a gigantic crepe dangling off the plate and filled with a tart-hot hibiscus leaf paste.

Among meatier options, fish curry with parotta ($11) rendered tilapia as melt-in-your-mouth as I’ve ever experienced, and I scooped up every drop of the deep brown tamarind curry with flaky, chewy parotta discs. A house specialty called idicha chicken ($11) featured tender boneless pieces coated in an exceptionally flavorful masala, simple but excellent.

Annachikadai advertises everywhere that its food is served on banana leaves. That’s the way owner John Annachi’s parents did after cooking in kadais (essentially Indian woks) at their restaurant in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. That presentation was absent on our visit, the only blemish on one of the best meals I had in quite some time.

Openings & Closings

• Two Hands Seoul Fresh Corndogs just opened its first area location at 2648 Watt Ave., Suite 117 in Arden Arcade. The Orange County-based company specializes in Korean-style corn dogs encrusted with bean powder, ground Flamin’ Hot Cheetos or potato cubes, among other options.
• Las Cabañas Mexican Grill & Taqueria closed down recently. It relinquished its space to Marisqueria Y Taqueria El Silencito Oseguera.
  
  
• Another local pizza favorite, Steve’s Pizza, has shut down in Elk Grove’s Laguna Gateway shopping center after 15 years, according to a Facebook post Sunday. But fear not: a new Steve’s location will open in the next few months at 9385 Waterman Rd., Suite 100, where It’s a Grind Coffee House once stood.

This story was updated Jan. 28, 2022 to correct the spelling of the Confucius Institute.

This story was originally published January 28, 2022 at 5:00 AM.