by You Jin
The first few years after we moved to Singapore, our life was like a boat run aground, a sort of indecisive struggle. As the tides began to rise, the boat rose too. The winds came, and at last the sails caught hold of it and put the boat back on its course, ultimately bringing it safe to harbour.
And of course, as our financial circumstances turned around, the food we ate also grew much richer. On Sundays, we often had friends over. My father always got up early and accompanied my mother to the market, loading up their basket with fish, meat, fat prawns, crabs and all sorts of brightly coloured fruits and vegetables. When they had loaded up the basket and their hands with all they could carry, they brought it all home.
When they got home, the pair of them enthusiastically busied themselves with the work of preparation, steaming, deep-frying, boiling and stir-frying. Amid steam and smoke, dish after dish of delicious food was carried out. At one glance, it was bright, fragrant and flavourful. In my childish mind, I felt my parents were like powerful magicians, turning simple ingredients into amazing dishes. When the guests devoured the food, we realised from our parents’ contented faces the meaning of the saying “it’s better to share one’s joy rather than to keep it to oneself”.
My mother and father each had their own special dishes, each with their own splendid quality. When my father cooked, he did everything in grand style. If he grilled, it was a whole row of meat that spread its fragrance through the neighbourhood. If it was stewed mixed vegetables, it was a pot as huge as a well, offering an endless supply. Chilli crab came on several huge plates, sufficient to feed an army. Despite his plump build, as soon as he went into the kitchen, it was like he became the scrawniest, hungriest fellow ever. He could pick up the huge, heavy wok without much effort, and he held the big, round chopping board like it was a pizza. When he was stir-frying vegetables, his hands moved like a flywheel, and when he was butchering meat, the hand that held the knife moved up and down with lightning speed. Tongues of fire and flashes from the knife were all you could see. It was a very lively scene.
When my mother cooked, she was more elegant. Every dish was unique, with a excellent combination of colours. It was not so much like cooking as like knitting together the perfect meal with absolute precision. A favourite of ours that we still talk about was her “Three-coloured Eggs”, which included an inky black century egg, a golden-yellowy egg, and a reddish salted egg, all laid out in a lovely pattern, smooth as silk, and flat as a mirror. She also made a Rainbow Cake. On the surface, it just looked like a plain butter cake, but when we broke into it, to everyone’s surprise, we found strawberry, chocolate and vanilla fillings to create the rainbow effect. In the mouth, it was soft, silky, light, moist and wonderfully sweet. The taste lingered in the mouth. Once when I was living in the desert, I really missed my mother’s Rainbow Cake, so she baked one and sent it with a colleague, asking him to carry it all those miles. In the desert, I cut small pieces from the cake and savoured them slowly. What I consumed was not just cake, but also familial affection. Each bite was accompanied by tears, and that feeling always remained with me.
So with my parents’ subtle influence, my siblings and I all became real food connoisseurs too. All of us really love to eat. Our upbringing taught us to take joy in food, an enjoyment that will stay with us all our lives.
Fortunately, my husband is a good cook. Before we were married, during our dates, he boasted about his culinary skills. “In Australia, I busied myself every holiday by having a dozen or so friends over. All would sit around a long table and eat the food I had cooked. It was full of flavours—sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy. My guests gobbled up every last bite, leaving each plate so clean I didn’t even need to wash it.”
I couldn’t help but tell him what I suspected: “That’s only because you prepared such small portions…”
“No!” he objected. ”Everyone praised my cooking.”
“Well, when there is no officer around, one of the enlisted men might as well be put in command.”
“Hmph!” he sighed, but said nothing more.
A week later, he invited me to his apartment in Newton Circus for dinner. He was obviously trying to impress me with all the food he had prepared, including braised sirloin, stewed pork, vegetarian dishes, sea cucumber duck, and one dish that was extremely difficult to prepare. It was made by scraping the meat out of the chicken wings, leaving the skin intact, then mixing the chicken meat with pork, and chopping them up and stuffing them back into the chicken skin, before finally frying them. It’s embarrassing to admit, but after I ate four of them, he looked at me, smiled, and asked, “You want some more?” I nodded, then took the last one on the plate and ate it too.
Before long, he asked me to marry him, and I thought, “Hey, if this master chef is my partner for the rest of my life, I don’t have to worry about having good food to eat.” So I smiled and nodded my consent to marry him. Obviously, he was a real schemer.
When we were first married, as far as cooking went, I was quite a useless wife. In all honesty, before I was married, I just had to open my mouth to be fed, or reach out my hand for a drink. After I was married, I did not even have any idea how much water to add in order to cook rice, much less how to cook a variety of dishes.
For my personal happiness, James patiently taught me how to cook. It wasn’t “a tablespoon of salt, half a tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of soya sauce, a half tablespoon of sesame oil” or that sort of lesson, but more passing along a concept. He taught me that, when you fry beef, the fire should be high, and you have to stir rapidly, while stewed pork has to be done under low heat, with little water. When you fry fish, you heat the wok first, then heat the oil, so that the fish skin will not be stuck to the wok. When you boil soup, the last thing you do is add salt, so as to retain the freshness of the soup. Though it was all quite basic, having an experienced cook trying to pass along this knowledge to a complete novice was very valuable.
I worked hard to learn. With such great interest, I was able to pick up cooking quickly. Later, my learning extended to cookbooks. I began to collect cookbooks featuring delicacies from all over. I bought, read, then cooked. Some of the dishes I cooked according to recipes looked good, but tasted bad. But no matter how hard I tried, the results were no better than if I had never looked at a cookbook. Sometimes I spent a whole lot of time cooking or baking something, but it would taste so bad even I couldn’t eat it. It was very discouraging. About this time, I thought of throwing in the towel, but I didn’t. I kept working, trying my hardest, and never giving up.
For instance, when I was learning to cook “beggar’s chicken”, many fat, succulent chickens met a tragic fate, and many herbs were burned for naught. I experimented with a variety of herbs, and tried many cooking methods, including wok-steaming, slow cooking, and microwaving, but no matter what I used and what cooking methods I employed, I could not get the flavour right. I tried over and over, countless times, and finally I learned that the ideal combination of herbs for beggar’s chicken is wolfberries, Chinese angelica, ginseng, beiqi celery, codonopsis root, chuanxiong rhizome and red dates, and the best cooking method is to wrap it in aluminium foil and slow cook it over a low fire for half an hour. It was really sad when my family, who had tried so many failed experiments, made excuses when they smelled the food cooking, saying, “Mother, I had a big lunch, I’m not very hungry.” Worse, they sometimes made a last-minute run to eat fast food instead, leaving me alone to enjoy the delicacy.
Determined to learn to cook better, I eventually signed up for a class. What I really wanted to learn was not what to do, but why we do what we do. I believed good cooking involved many elements so, if one were to master the foundation, she could continually build on it. As a result, while others obediently learned to cook three dishes in each class, I learned to cook several dishes by asking why. I made friends with my fellow students during the class, and we learned a lot from each other. Whenever I sampled delicious dishes or desserts at the homes of these fri
ends, I nagged and begged until I got the recipes. Those who wanted to keep their family secret recipes to themselves trembled and tried to escape when they saw me.
I have always thought that the culinary arts have much in common with writing. When writing, one strings originally-unrelated words together, breathing thoughts and brilliance into them. When cooking, one combines originally-unrelated ingredients, producing colour and taste. They are two different things, but both are still forms of art.
The only difference is that the things one brings to writing are more enduring, while what goes into cooking will be consumed at one go. But then, come to think of it, when one uses literature to dress up delicacies, they can be spread far and wide through this “clothing”.
Someone once said to me, “When literary works use food as a subject matter, it isn’t very meaningful.”
The friend who said this did not know that I had used many culinary specialties to express the special features of a country’s scenery and customs, nor that I had often used food to illustrate people’s philosophy of life. No one likes didactic articles, but if I wrap ideas or opinions I want to convey within food, the reader will more easily accept them.
In 1997, China’s Qingdao Publishing House published a series of my articles in a book entitled Something Else in the Bowl. The book contains more than a hundred of my articles, all of which are related to food. On the surface, it looks like I am talking about food, but in fact, each article has a different universe wrapped within the food. In the preface, I lay out my thoughts about food, and also about literature. It says:
I have a beautiful bowl. It is very large, and has been filled with over a hundred dishes from all over the world. The written word is the chef of these dishes.
But this is not a cookbook. Even more, it is not a source of sacred culinary knowledge.
I have always loved to eat and been absolutely mad about food of all kinds. I do not bother about how oily the food is nor am I put off by a dirty environment. I don’t mind it too sweet or too hot. I like sweet or salty, hot or cold. Steamed, fried, grilled, boiled, braised… I love it all. Hard food, soft food, raw food, cooked food, vegetables, meat, seafood— there’s nothing I won’t try.
Some of my concerned friends, worrying about health and weight, caution me to take care, but I always think: You only live once. If you don’t like this or don’t dare try that, you will have wasted your one-way ticket on your trip through this world. In other words, if Zhao Feiyan, who was so light she could dance gracefully on a person’s palm, had a chance to live her life over, perhaps she would regret having given up all the delicacies in the palace for a thin waist. In comparison, Yang Guifei, who feasted every day, probably had a happier life than Zhao Feiyan.
Relying on a philosophy of eating everything and fearing nothing, I spent many years travelling the world. I ate indiscriminately. Anything that could walk on land or swim in the water was swept into my tummy. A whole world lives in my stomach.
Now, I have placed this world in a bowl. Attentive readers will see that the food in this bowl also represents something else: love, friendship, affection, teacher-student relationships, patriotism and love of travel are all a part of this cuisine. Or to put it another way, from here readers can see my way of thinking, my view of travel and of life, and from this bowl, they can sample the lifestyles of many different people.
Each of the dishes I wrote about had its own theme hidden within. When I mastered the art of cooking, I also captured the “secret art” of relaxation. Often when I bring a cake to a neighbour, colleague or friend, the recipient will ask in surprise, “You’re so busy. How do you still find the time to bake a cake?”
But to tell the truth, baking is a good way to dispel weariness. Sometimes when I have written until very late at night and my mind feels drained, I will go to the kitchen and take out all the ingredients for baking a cake: eggs, flour, butter, sugar, baking powder and fruit. As I watch these unrelated ingredients come together slowly to become a nice fat cake, it makes me feel I have turned something ugly into something beautiful.
Then, in the quiet night, as I hold the warm cake and relish every bite I eat, I feel very satisfied with my life, being able to do as I please.
The Embodiment of Love
In speaking of my marriage, there is one person I cannot neglect to mention: my mother-in-law. I cannot forget the heartwarming scene of our first meeting. As soon as she heard that her fifth son had met a girl, she rushed over from Ipoh to meet me, though James and I were still just close friends at the time. As I stood on the train platform waiting for her, I was very nervous.
She stepped out from the crowd, her dyed raven-black hair as smooth and silky as the surface of a placid lake, not a strand out of place. She was wearing a neat blue Chinese blouse with white flowers. In one hand, she carried a black traditional handbag and in the other, a heavy mesh bag holding four fresh green pomelos. She walked quickly toward us, no trace of the tiring train ride on her face.
James took the pomelos from her, and she turned to look at me, smiling broadly. She warmly held my hand, and said, “You don’t look like your photo. It’s like…did you just perm your hair?”
Her careful observation surprised me. In fact, over the long period of our relationship, I constantly discovered that she had many qualities about her that sparkled like pure gold.
The first year of our marriage, I went back to Ipoh with James to visit his family, who lived in a six-bedroom bungalow. When the car entered the driveway, it was like all the bright flowers filling the garden were greeting us. My mother-in-law liked beauty, but was also practical. She grew orchids at the front of the house, whose flourishing beauty seeped into the heart and seized the spirit. In the back garden, she had a virtual orchard that included starfruit, rambutan, papayas, local lychees, pomegranate, sugarcane, chilli, ginger, limes and bananas.
The next day, I got up very early and went to have a look at the garden. I was surprised to find a wooden ladder next to the starfruit tree, my mother-in-law perched on it, picking ripe, juicy starfruit. She placed each piece of fruit carefully in the bamboo basket hanging from a branch. Looking down at me, a smile on her face and she said, “Hey, why are you up so early? There’s breakfast on the table—fried sticky cakes, eggs and milk tea. Help yourself!”
I asked, “Do you need any help?”
“No,” she said, laughing. “You know, taking care of this starfruit tree takes more time and energy than taking care of children. The birds like to eat the fruit, so when the fruits are first formed, I have to cover them up carefully with plastic bags. As the fruits pop out at different places, I have to climb up and down every day, checking to see if there are new fruits. Also, to prevent the fruits from getting too ripe and starting to go bad, I have to pick them as soon as they turn from green to yellow. It’s a lot of work.”
She deftly grabbed the basket and climbed down the ladder. When I looked inside, the starfruit looked plump and juicy, their skins shiny. She set it to one side then, carrying the ladder, led me to the rambutan tree. When I looked up, the sight took my breath away. It was a boastful tree. It flaunted its fruit in huge clusters of enticing, soft, fur-like spines and bright red skin. Just looking at it was enough to make the heart leap.
My mother-in-law took a pair of long-handled scissors in hand and climbed the ladder. When she had gone up several steps, she seated herself on a thick branch like a naughty kid, then started cutting off clusters of rambutan. As she cut, she laughed and said, “This tree bears plenty of fruit. It’s our prize tree.”
Having already harvested starfruit and rambutan, she continued to gather papayas, lychee, and pomegranates, carrying them all into the house. She said, “Our family has always grown a lot of fruit. We seldom buy any.”
She also raised her own poultry. “When you raise your own chickens and ducks, you know they’ve had a clean diet,” she said. “So you know their meat will taste better.”
She cooked a plate of gin
ger chicken especially for me, with crispy, golden skin. The soft white meat was fresh, the flavour unforgettable. Later, when I was in confinement for one month after my child was born, my mother-in-law killed several chickens, brought them to Singapore, and stewed chicken with wine for me. Friends who heard about it told me, quite admiringly, that many daughters-in-law were like dirt under their imperious mother-in-law’s feet, but I was treated like a pearl in my mother-in-law’s hand.
She was a magnificent cook. During Chinese New Year, her children, dispersed all over the world, brought their children back to visit her. With the help of one maid, she prepared a meal for three tables—thirty people. Each table was served with traditional dishes. Chicken, duck and fish were in abundance, with prawns, crabs, shark’s fin and abalone featured prominently. Everyone ate to her or his heart’s content.
While we were busy digesting after one New Year meal, my mother-in-law called me into her room, and put something shiny in my hands. She smiled and said, “Here, take this.” It was an exquisite and elegant toothpick made of pure gold, with fine patterns carved on it. Of course I could not bear to use it. Every time I put it on my palm to admire it, my mother-in-law’s love would flow like a brook into my heart.