Mayor Fung shares his culinary talents in time for Super Bowl

Each year for the past 18 years, the Cranston Family Center/COZ has hosted a “Me and My Guy” special event just prior to the Super Bowl, with a celebrity chef entertaining the audience with their culinary talents. This year’s celebrity chef on Monday evening was none other than Mayor Allan Fung and the event was held at Park View Middle School, where 130 guests gathered in the auditorium.

Currently in his eighth year as Mayor of the City of Cranston, Fung was honored to be asked by Grace Swinski and her staff at the Family Center to share a favorite Super Bowl recipe. Swinski thanked Fung for participating and noted that he was a huge Patriots fan and asked the students and their guests if they, too, were big fans. Cheers could be heard through the crowd.

She also announced that each child who participated would receive a copy of “Pizza the Size of the Sun” by Jack Prelutsky, as well as a copy of the recipe Fung used.

“Thanks so much to Grace at the Family Center for having me tonight, I’m very excited to be here,” Mayor Fung said. “To be honest, I’m a little bit nervous, because usually when I cook, I cook at home, not in front of a big audience like this one.”

He introduced his assistant from City Hall, Paula Smith, who had also helped him to create an already-finished sample. Fung shared that he has quite the sweet tooth, sometimes enjoys ice cream, pie or cheesecake for dinner, and that therefore, his “healthy” Super Bowl recipe probably wasn’t as healthy as it could be, but he pointed out the addition of fresh strawberries to the recipe, in an effort to balance out the sugar, cream cheese, butter, white chocolate chips and Oreos. He also encouraged the students to start their healthy eating habits young, by listening to their parents, and eating all their fruits and vegetables before having their dessert.

Fung then took the students and their guests step-by-step through his recipe for the football-shaped Chocolate Oreo Cream Cheese dip, asking the assistance of two student volunteers, first-grader Mila Meruvia-Rico and fourth-grader Caroline Brennick from the audience for the very important job of each crushing ten Oreos in a Ziploc bag for use in the recipe.

As he worked through the recipe, Fung took questions from the audience about his job, his daily routine, and his childhood years having grown up working in his family’s Chinese restaurant. He thanked the families for their support in the Cranston community.

“What I love most about my job is the opportunity to meet many of you at events like this or at Boy Scout and Girl Scout events around the city,” he said. “I love helping you day to day through my job, making sure our police department is strong, that our athletic fields are in good shape, that we have great schools and programs, and that Cranston is the best community in which to live.”

When asked to describe a typical day, Fung stated that he gets up at approximately 6:00 in the morning to get a workout in, and to do some reading and catching up on local, national and world news before arriving at City Hall around 8:30 in the morning. He noted that he is often working long nights at events such as this one, all around the city.

Students asked the mayor if he enjoyed cooking and what the very first food was that he ever learned to cook.

“I do love to cook, but I don’t get to do a lot of it,” he said. “I am not at home a lot of the time to do the cooking, but I do love it.”

He shared that Moo Goo Gai Pan was the first recipe his father ever taught him to cook in their family-owned Chinese restaurant on Cranston Street.

“It wasn’t an easy recipe to learn, it was a chicken and vegetable dish,” Fung said. “Now though, when I’m cooking, I’ve gotten so good at it that I don’t even need to measure my ingredients. I can eye it and now I can experiment in the kitchen.”

As he worked through the recipe, he showed the students the proper techniques for using the stand-up mixer, starting at the lowest speed, and slowly increasing in order to avoid splatter, and he taught them a trick for decorating with melted chocolate after he made his dip into a football-shaped mold.

“This football can’t just be a pigskin all by itself,” he said. “What do we need? We need the laces. How do we get the laces? We melt some white chocolate chips in the microwave and use that to make the laces.”

Fung put the melted chocolate into a small Ziploc bag, clipped the corner off with scissors, and drizzled the laces onto the football. Once, finished, he proudly showed off the final product, complete with fresh cut strawberries and honey graham cracker sticks for dipping, and joined the crowd for samples in the cafeteria.

“It’s just that I love it so much,” said William Baker, a kindergarten student from Dutemple Elementary School, complimenting Fung’s culinary treat. His older sister, Olivia, a second-grader, agreed.

“It was so good I had to have three,” she said.

Both of Fung’s student volunteers gave Fung a thumbs-up for his performance and expertise at the event, and after having tasted the treat they’d helped to prepare, they both deemed it delicious, with the best part of all being the Oreo cookies, which were crushed to perfection, thanks to their handiwork.