Crossroads, No. 5: Joanne Chang's Tuna Fish Floss
An innovative workaround for dried pork floss
Crossroads is a column about cooking and eating at the crossroads of multiple cultures. We explore dishes created from immigrants’ resourcefulness and creativity as they create the foods of their homeland while having to make do with the ingredients they have available to them in their new environment. This isn’t “fusion cuisine” (as in, the kind of stuff that would be served at a restaurant or marketed to the masses), but rather, food that’s part of a quirky, in-between cuisine reflective of where they’re from and where they currently live—something rooted simultaneously in tradition and innovation. You can check out TOD’s archive of past recipes here.
If you missed the last couple editions of “Crossroads,” check them out at the links below. Earlier in the summer, I spoke with Masala y Maíz’s owner Saqib Keval about the crispy tacos that have become a beloved part of his multicultural upbringing. Even earlier, we learned about native Brazilian Marcela Ikeda’s rendition of feijoada that employs adzuki beans in lieu of the traditional black beans—a swap made out of necessity when she was living in Japan. Do check them out below if you haven’t already :) And now, without further ado …
Though raised in Oklahoma and Texas, Joanne Chang’s way of eating growing up was quintessentially Taiwanese—“red braised roast beef with eggs and star anise, scrambled eggs with chopped pickled radish and scallions, pork lo mein with Chinese chives, pork and chive dumplings, spiced tofu with pork and celery, fried rice, ginger-braised chicken, salmon with soy and sriracha, mifen noodles with dried shrimp and Chinese greens,” she recalls to me over email. “So many wonderful dishes and memories.”
Joanne’s mother, who grew up with a live-in cook, didn’t start preparing her own food until she moved to the United States for school. Slowly but surely, she learned to cook traditional Taiwanese dishes from her mother and sisters whenever they visited her from overseas. Though there was a small Chinatown in Houston where she could find some select Asian vegetables and condiments, sourcing authentic Taiwanese ingredients was still a feat generally easier said than done at the time. This meant that creating her favorites at home while acclimating to life in the States required some creative chops—and a notable example of this involved her workaround for pork floss.
Pork floss (also known as rousong), are fluffy, cotton candy-like matted tufts of dried pork seasoned with soy sauce and sugar that add an addictively flavorful kick to whatever you sprinkle it over. You'll often find this stuff served over bowls of rice porridge (congee) or atop soft milk buns in Chinese bakery display cases.
“[My mother] would buy it in Taiwan and bring it back with her for us for our congee,” Joanne reminisces. “The congee needed the flavor from the floss.” While pork floss can be found at just about every Asian supermarket these days (often in small plastic tubs, sometimes in comically-large jars that'll surely last you years), this certainly wasn't always the case. “When she couldn’t find it, she’d make her own tuna floss—she’d fry up cans of tuna fish with some soy sauce and sugar, and sometimes a touch of garlic,” she adds. “It would get fluffy and crispy and salty, and it was the perfect addition to the bland rice.” While tuna floss isn’t necessarily an idea unique to Joanne’s family, it’s still a nifty and delicious swap-in for its more traditionally-used porky counterpart—not to mention, more attainable at the time since it could be made with the considerably easier-to-find canned tuna.
Today, Joanne’s a James Beard award-winning pastry chef and the proprietress of Flour Bakery + Café (which has multiple locations across Boston and Cambridge), where brigades of people come every day for their famous sticky buns and hearty BLTs, and stay for their brown butter cinnamon rolls and pop tarts. Her restaurant, Myers + Chang, in the South End dishes out “Asian-ish” fare like wild boar dan dan noodles, grilled corn and sriracha butter, and scallion pancakes fashioned from Flour’s focaccia dough. Cooking, baking, and hospitality has run through Joanne’s veins for most of her life—from when she sold chocolate chip cookies for 25 cents each for the late Leverett House Grill while in college (thus earning the affectionate moniker, “The Chocolate Chip Cookie Girl”), to when she eventually departed a career in strategy consulting to go to wholeheartedly pursue a culinary career. These days, even as she’s working tirelessly in her test kitchens putting a creative spin on Caesar salad (the secret is shrimp toast croutons and creamy miso dressing!!) or perfecting basque cheesecakes for Flour’s line-up, Joanne’s work continues to be guided by the fond memories of her mother’s cooking; her Taiwanese upbringing informs the way she eats, even now.
“I have rice every night with dinner!” Joanne adds. “Dinner isn’t complete if I don’t have rice. And no matter what we eat, we eat it with chopsticks—even non-Taiwanese meals like pizza and roast chicken and lasagna.”
This recipe is inspired by the tuna floss Joanne’s mother used to make in a pinch when she didn’t have pork floss (rousong) on hand. These pack the kind of sweet and salty punch that make it a perfect accompaniment to things like plain rice and rice porridge, over toasts or in sandwiches. The best part? All you need is a couple cans of tuna.
Makes about 2 cups
2 (6 ounce) cans of tuna, drained
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons tablespoons white sugar
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
Put drained tuna in a nonstick pan over medium heat and add soy sauce, sugar, and black pepper. Stir continuously, pressing down on the tuna with the blunt end of a spatula so that it breaks down into smaller shreds, until the meat has browned turned into dry, frizzled shreds, about 20 minutes.
Remove from heat and allow the tuna floss to cool before serving.