The Measure of My Powers: A Memoir of Food, Misery, and Paris

by Jackie Kai Ellis

  I was amazed at how Lau’s blunt hands were equally adroit at using an embroidery needle on fine fabric as they were with a cleaver cutting thick bones. But of all the seemingly impossible feats she performed, as a toddler I marveled most at how she could tie me onto her back with nothing more than a bedsheet. It was like magic how the fabric folded so my little body hung there carefree with my cheek against her back, drifting off to the sound of her beating heart as she bustled in the kitchen.

  II

  ONE SUMMER WHEN I WAS ABOUT TEN, WE DROVE UP the coast of British Columbia for a family camping trip. We spent a whole afternoon digging clams together on the beach. My parents showed me how to look for little air holes in the sand, a sign that the clams were hidden deep beneath them. After we had filled several buckets, my parents found the only Chinese restaurant in the rural town of Campbell River and asked for the clams to be sautéed in a savory black bean sauce. When enormous plates were placed on the lazy Susan in front of us, I ate and ate until I couldn’t possibly hold any more, slurping each shell with its driblet of pungent sauce and little plum of flesh, gradually piling the empty ornate shells on my little plate, but keeping the prettier ones to one side.

  The following morning, our car packed up with our summer belongings, we headed back toward the city. After an hour of driving in our sky-blue minivan, my mom noticed something out of the ordinary in a ditch along the highway. My father pulled the van over, got out, and walked briskly toward the trench. He knelt down and picked a blade of green growing from it, and then returned to the car and said to my mom in Chinese, “It’s watercress.”

  The entire family was forced out of the van, given black garbage bags, and directed to pick watercress. We picked for hours along the highway until not only did we have more than we could realistically eat, but there was none left to be found. After that we ate watercress for many days, but I didn’t mind much, as I liked the bitter taste of it sautéed with garlic and its stringy softness in soup.

  III

  FOR ALMOST EVERY SPECIAL OCCASION THROUGHOUT MY life—Christmases, Thanksgivings, birthdays, and especially each Chinese New Year—my family made dumplings. Come to think of it, we made dumplings for many regular occasions as well. My family had roots in northern China, known for being the best cooks, and dumplings were our specialty. We made all sorts of dumplings: pork and chive, fish and cilantro, vermicelli and wood ear mushroom for the years in high school when I decided I was a vegetarian.

  Making dumplings was a day-long affair that started at the markets, where sui choy, meat, shrimp, chives, and cilantro were bought. Then the entire family would gather in the kitchen, half hotly debating whether the dough needed more water, the other half deep in a fury of chopping. The meat was always cut by hand, never pre-ground, as the slight inconsistencies gave a better texture to the filling. The shrimp were peeled and the sui choy was finely diced, heavily salted in a bowl and squeezed of its excess moisture, using the palms as a muscly press. After all the ingredients were thrown into a bowl, seasoned, and whisked using a bundle of chopsticks, the entire family, men and women, would surround the filling, smelling it, inspecting it, and arguing about whether there was the right amount of salt. When I put my nose into the bowl, it was aromatic with mingling scents of toasted sesame oil and green onions stinging my nostrils.

  “It’s enough!” someone would say.

  “How would you know? You always make everything so bland!” someone else would rebut.

  With a coy smile, another would pick a side. “I think your nose is just for decoration; you can barely smell a thing.”

  “Who needs to smell if I can taste better than anyone?”

  After a few more playful jabs, my grandmother would chime in with the final word: “It’s fine.” And then we’d start.

  As a young child, I would watch this production of dumplings intently for hours, hoping that one day they would let me help, too. They would roll the dough into long snake-like ropes that wiggled on the floured table. Then, as though they were swiftly tearing off the snake’s head, they would pull little bits of dough off until they reached its tail, each piece pressed with the base of the palm into a little round. Two others would rock slim rolling pins over the edge of each round, turning it as they moved until it was thin and smooth like a sand dollar. As the wrappers were made, others dropped in dollops of filling, and stretched the ends together. In one orchestrated movement, thumbs and fingers would wrap tightly around the package to form frilly crowns of dough atop plump bellies.

  My favorite part was right at the end. Nothing went to waste: with the leftover dough they would make flaky scallion pancakes. I preferred when my uncle made the pancakes because he would add little salty gems of Chinese bacon, making them doubly delicious.

  When the table was finally set, we ate rounds of dumplings, steaming hot and dipped in black vinegar mixed with minced raw garlic alongside. The table also held dishes of pig ears braised in soy sauce, cucumber jellyfish salad, fried chicken wings, and soup made of dried oysters and hair moss. Conversations were always loud and rose even noisier with boisterous laughing or debating, and at the end of the evening I was always full, satiated.

  IV

  SHORTLY AFTER I RETURNED FROM PARIS, LAU SUDDENLY became ill. I walked into her hospital room, apprehensive of what I might see. I had been so heartbroken by my cousin C’s death. I remembered how strange and watery C’s body looked in her coffin, a sharp contrast to the sparkling soul secured with vibrant eyes and virile black hair she had when she was alive.

  Lau was in her nineties, and the doctors prepared us for the inevitable. My family explained death to me as if I were a child and referred to it as “falling asleep” in order to cushion the pain, like my heartsick aunt did when C died. But in my aunt’s case, she had done it to soothe herself and not me.

  For weeks, I stayed by my grandmother’s side, holding her hands still in mine as she deliriously made sewing motions and mumbled to herself about things that happened long before I was born. Forced into poverty during World War II, she had worked as a seamstress after immigrating to Hong Kong, and so these movements, like deeply trodden paths, resurfaced in her unconscious state. Whenever her eyes opened, she would recognize few people, instead seeing in us loved ones from her memories. She remembered me; I don’t know why. And when she was restless or anxious from hallucinations, I would place my thumb in the little space between her eyebrows and stroke her smooth skin until her eyes closed to peaceful sleep.

  Day after day I did this, along with many other members of my family, silently and patiently waiting for death to take Lau. And then one day, she opened her eyes. I could see that she was lucid. She began to speak again with that sassy, devil-may-care attitude. She repeated the exact same things she’d said to me since I was little: she told me to cut my hair and then wondered why I had such a dark tan. She explained that only peasants working in fields have dark tans—which I guess was true in China when she was young.

  I went home and made her a chicken ginseng soup, which she refused to eat, as her appetite hadn’t returned. The next day as I was putting spoonfuls into her mouth, she looked up at me with a characteristic scowl and said, “Why is this so bitter?” I hadn’t realized the effect that reboiling the soup had on its pure flavor. Lau had just come back from the brink of death, and she was still critiquing my cooking.

  V

  AFTER LAU LEFT THE HOSPITAL, WE QUICKLY DEVELOPED a daily routine. I would arrive at the seniors’ home in time to take her out of bed, help her get dressed, and wheel her out to the common room for breakfast. I would feed her oatmeal mixed with warm milk and scrambled eggs with toast and jam. She would complain about the thickened water she had to drink, and I knew she longed for a cup of hot Chinese tea.

  As I fed her, I would exercise my diminishing Chinese and relay all the gossip I had heard about anyone. At times I would embellish the story if I knew it would make her laugh.

  This went on for many months: me taking
her for walks and engaging her mind. It gave me an excuse to be out of the house. The tension between G and me had escalated, and our marriage was nearly broken. By this point we had barely spoken to each other for months, not for lack of wanting to—we just didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t tell Lau, but maybe she could sense something was wrong, as she would give me ancient marriage advice that seemed to have emerged from some time capsule.

  “When will you have children?” she would ask daily, forgetting our conversation from the day before.

  “He told me he no longer wants to have kids. What am I to do?”

  “Just ‘remove the block’ and have one anyway. He will love it all the same when it comes out.”

  I laughed. “I can’t do that. It’s different nowadays.”

  “Then what will you do without children?”

  “Maybe I won’t have them.”

  “Crazy,” she dismissed.

  I would then ask her about my grandfather, Lau Ye, and how they met. She told me that after her marriage was arranged at sixteen, she snuck into a neighboring village to spy on him. She needed to know if he was ugly or handsome.

  “Were you scared?” I asked.

  “Of what?”

  “That he would be mean, or that you would hate him.”

  “I had no choice, so why think of those things?”

  And day after day, we had this same conversation, until one day I changed my response. It had become so clear that with G, with or without children, I would never be able to live the life I desperately wanted—my own. I had grown so much, so far away from him, and I knew the only way to bridge the gap was to move toward him and away from myself. But I didn’t want to lose myself again, and unlike Lau, I had a choice.

  “When will you have children?”

  “I’m going to leave him.”

  VI

  WHEN MY GRANDFATHER, LAU YE, DIED OF CANCER, I WAS eighteen and living in Toronto, a fine arts student pretending to be an adult for the first time. I was angry with him for something I’d heard he had done in the past and refused to go back to Vancouver for his funeral. It was an honest anger, but now I see that I only felt it so passionately because I was young and didn’t have the maturity to see that life is ambiguously made up of elegant grays, and that nothing truly exists outside of compassion and people bumping into each other, trying so hard to figure it out themselves.

  The night he died, I had a dream so clear that I never forgot it. In the dream, instead of using words, I remember he took me to beautiful places, each scene more overwhelming and breathtaking than the last. At the end, we stood on a beach watching the sunset in silence. The sky glowed with vermilion, coral, copper, rose, and lilac. He held my hand, and I knew he was helping me let go of the past and giving me the gift of a good goodbye.

  VII

  AH LAU WENT IN AND OUT OF THE HOSPITAL, IN AND out of death for a couple years. Each time, I would rush to her, running as fast as my legs could move, even though it felt as if I was fighting through water. Family from around the world would fly in and surround her bed with mournful looks and naked sobs, and I would arrive, panting, my chest burning. I’d wait by her bed for days. She would come to life again, but then we would watch every other part of her body and mind decline into death.

  Each time, I held her hand and said goodbye; and each time I let her go, my heart shattered into many pieces. Then one day after she had recovered from the brink of death again, my heart just couldn’t—it couldn’t break anymore. So I walked away and left her before she had left me. I stopped visiting her, stopped seeing her, and in my mind, I pretended she was gone because I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye again.

  The night she actually died, I drove to the hospital more slowly than usual, knowing she would be gone before I arrived. I walked up to her darkened room, along the shadowed hallways, lit by the odd flickering fluorescent light. When I saw her in her bed, she was departed, her eyes closed and mouth agape, my aunt still holding her hand. I walked into a dark corner and cried.

  Each time someone close to me dies, I see them in my dreams shortly after just like Lau Ye, to say I’m sorry and to say goodbye. With Lau, I waited night after night for her to come, but she never came, so I cried for that too.

  PORK AND CHIVE DUMPLINGS

  This is my family recipe, which has evolved over too many generations to count. We are still trying to perfect them. This recipe is a large one, so I recommend getting your friends and family involved, or feel free to halve the recipe. It makes enough for a large feast with some left over to freeze for later.

  FOR THE DOUGH

  480 g all-purpose white flour, plus more for dusting

  750 g cake and pastry flour

  710 g of water

  (Slightly less or more water may be needed to achieve a smooth dough that is soft and pliable but not sticky after it is kneaded. It should feel like a baby’s bottom when you poke it.)

  Mix both flours in a large bowl with clean fingers. Add ¾ of the water and mix and knead the dough with your hands until it becomes a dry, shaggy mass. Add the remainder of the water to the drier parts of the flour mixture and continue kneading it in the bowl until the dough just comes together into a ball, the flour has been incorporated, and the bowl is relatively clean. Transfer to a table and knead just until the dough seems evenly hydrated and there are no more pockets of dry flour or wet dough. Do not overmix, though: it should not be smooth but rough-looking. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit at room temperature for at least 2 hours to rest. My family makes this in the morning and lets it rest while we go to the market for fresh ingredients. If you leave the dough longer or overnight, knead it again, as the gluten will have relaxed too much and there will not be enough structure to hold the filling properly. If you notice the dough is too stretchy or soft, re-knead it until it firms up.

  FOR THE FILLING

  The process of making the filling is divided into 3 parts. The results from each part will be mixed together before filling and technically, you could combine them all at once, but my mother swears that the flavor is much better when each part is done separately. She also says that it ends up being the perfect marinating time for each component when it is done separately, since the ingredients in Part A must be marinated longer than B and C.

  PART A

  670 g organic pork butt (or Boston butt, which comes from above the shoulder blade)

  670 g organic pork shoulder (which is below the butt, on the front leg quarter)

  40 g light soy sauce

  40 g chicken stock

  4 g toasted sesame oil

  1 tsp fine sea salt

  ½ tsp pepper

  Chop the pork into a coarse minced texture by hand. My mom uses a cleaver on a butcher’s block, cutting the meat into thin slices, then into small cubes. She removes any tendons. She then uses the cleaver to pass over the meat several times, folding the mince onto itself to ensure it is all evenly chopped. Chopping the meat by hand gives the filling a better texture when cooked.

  Place the meat in a bowl and marinate it by adding the stock, soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, and pepper. Mix well with 4 chopsticks used as a whisk and set aside in the refrigerator for at least 45 minutes.

  PART B

  645 g tiger prawns, peeled and deveined

  10 g light soy sauce

  6 g toasted sesame oil

  4 g grated ginger, including juice

  3 g Shaoxing wine

  ½ tsp fine sea salt

  ¼ tsp pepper

  Cut the tiger prawns into ¼-inch pieces and marinate them in a bowl with the soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, wine, salt, and pepper. Mix and set aside in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

  A NOTE ON SHAOXING WINE: This is a common ingredient found in any Chinese grocery store, but sherry cooking wine can be used as a substitute in a pinch.

  PART C

  765 g Chinese chives

  225 g scallions

  90 g cilantro


  425 g zucchini

  235 g chicken stock

  30 g vegetable oil

  27 g light soy sauce

  2 tsp toasted sesame oil

  2 tsp fine sea salt

  Chop the chives, scallions, and cilantro very finely and place in a large mixing bowl. Cut the zucchini into a 1/16-inch dice and add to the vegetable mixture. Add the stock, vegetable oil, soy sauce, sesame oil, and salt. Combine the marinated pork from Part A and the shrimp from Part B. Mix this very well using the chopstick whisk or by hand. Set aside until you are ready to assemble the dumplings.

  A NOTE ON CHINESE CHIVES: You can substitute regular chives for these, however Chinese chives, which you can find at any Chinese grocery store, are sturdier, and will have a different consistency after being cooked.

  A NOTE ON SOY SAUCE: There is a wide variety of soy sauce out there. It would be preferable to use a Chinese light soy sauce, but a regular soy sauce from the supermarket would be a good substitute if you can’t find light soy sauce. Just be sure not to buy a dark version, as the flavor will be too intense.

  FOR THE DIPPING SAUCE

  ½ cup black vinegar

  2 tbsp toasted sesame oil

  Mix together.

  A NOTE ON BLACK VINEGAR: This might be a difficult ingredient to find. To make your own substitution, mix equal parts white vinegar and light soy sauce.

  TO MAKE THE DUMPLINGS

  Cut the ball of dough into 4 equal pieces and cover the bowl with plastic wrap to keep it from drying out.

  Knead 1 piece of dough until smooth on a floured surface; we use an old wooden board that has been passed down for generations. Cut the dough into 4 strips, and roll each one into a rope about ¾ inch thick, lightly flouring the counter to keep it from sticking.