A Tiger in the Kitchen

by Cheryl Tan

  And so that Saturday morning, at the temple in Singapore’s Hougang neighborhood where my grandparents’ ashes are kept, I arrived teetering under the weight of a massive pineapple, the largest I’d been able to find. Auntie Khar Imm looked amused.

  The temple was packed the moment my family arrived. Amid the hum of activity, dozens of people bustled about, setting out food and drink for their dead loved ones with great care. Swirling, slender plumes of smoke from incense filled the air, seeping into our hair. All along the walls were little rectangles of yellow paper, each crammed with Chinese characters—names of those whose ashes were housed in the temple—and serial numbers that were almost like apartment numbers indicating where those ashes could be found. Addresses for urns within a columbarium—it was almost too precious.

  We found the spot bearing the serial number of my Tanglin ah-ma’s urn and started putting out the feast. We’d brought noodles, spring rolls, a vegetarian tofu stir-fry. There were little sweet cakes, capped with tea served in three thimble-size, delicate cups. And, of course, there was my giant pineapple, which suddenly seemed more than a little out of place. I looked around at the spreads of cookies, cakes, and noodles that everyone else was setting out; no other pineapples were evident. I wondered if I was being gauche. But then I thought, Screw it. The queen of pineapple tarts really deserves to be having a pineapple.

  When we were done, we took turns lighting joss sticks as an offering to my grandmother. And the waiting began. The dead had to eat, after all—we couldn’t rush them. A procession of chanting monks passed through the grounds. I wasn’t sure what they were chanting—Teochew not being my forte—so I found myself pressed into a corner, trying to avoid the general hubbub, along with Auntie Leng Eng.

  “So your auntie Khar Imm is teaching you how to cook?” asked Auntie Leng Eng, generally a woman of few words. I hadn’t seen her since my quest began, and I’d been a little nervous about it. As the vice principal of one of the top girls’ schools in Singapore for many years, Auntie Leng Eng prized education and professional success. Her school, Singapore Chinese Girls’ School, had churned out many female leaders in the country, after all. Auntie Leng Eng herself did not cook, having spent her time on her career instead of in the kitchen. I knew she had been proud of my success in journalism, and I wasn’t sure what she would think of my cashing that all in to learn how to cook.

  “Well, yah,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to make Tanglin Ah-Ma’s dishes. I always regretted that I never did.” She nodded, silent for a moment. I told her about the dishes that I’d learned and wanted to learn—pineapple tarts, salted vegetable duck soup, braised duck—noting that I’d brought the pineapple because I thought Tanglin Ah-Ma would have liked it. “Anything very sweet or very salty, she just loved,” she simply said. “Your ah-ma had a very sweet tooth,” she added, smiling at the thought. I was relieved to think of my grandmother enjoying my pineapple, even though it was unlike any other offering. As we spoke, it was a little disconcerting to imagine us standing there casually talking about soup and cookies when spirits were supposedly all around us, gathered at tables, stuffing their faces.

  Soon enough, it was time to pack up and head home. Auntie Leng Eng gave me a big hug. “Stop by and visit sometime,” she said. “If you have time.”

  A few days later, I got more marching orders. An e-mail from Jessie arrived: “U can come by 29 Aug Sat early we are making the pink rice cake and braised duck.” The e-mail warmed my heart. Niceties in our communication had been dispelled—I was truly beginning to be treated like family.

  Soon enough, I was back in Auntie Khar Imm’s kitchen. This time, another aunt was there as well, Auntie Sophia, the wife of my father’s adopted brother. I’d met Auntie Sophia only a few times before—at Chinese New Year, during cursory visits her family made to my house, and at my Singapore wedding, which had been a blur of food, way too many toasts, and 250 guests, most of them friends and associates of my parents whom I absolutely didn’t know.

  “Hello, Auntie!” I said brightly when Auntie Sophia arrived.

  “Not Auntie lah!” Auntie Khar Imm said. “You must call her Ah-Sim.” Even as a child, I’d been mystified by the very specific Chinese names assigned to relatives. Auntie and Uncle were too simple to be acceptable; each person had a specific title based on gender and birth order. My mother’s younger brother, for example, is Kuku to me, a name that indicates very specifically that he’s my mother’s younger brother. Beyond that, I had no idea how to address everyone—and Auntie Khar Imm was determined to school me on that.

  “Ah-Sim,” I echoed. And Auntie Sophia smiled.

  We got to work right away. On the menu that day was beng gway, which means “rice cake” in Teochew. The bright pink cakes are basically squishy glutinous rice flour shell in the shape of teardrops filled with glutinous rice that has been stir-fried with shallots, pork belly, mushrooms, and dried prawns. (Sometimes peanuts are mixed in for added crunch.) These are usually eaten for breakfast or a daytime snack—with generous dollops of fiery red chili sauce. And they’re often presented as offerings to the gods or to loved ones on the other side—the festive pink color making them lucky food.

  I hadn’t had beng gway since I was a child, largely because they’re fairly hard to find in the United States, even in New York City. And since I’d never been a big glutinous rice fan, these cakes had never been a favorite of mine anyhow. But with the Hungry Ghosts Festival still on, make them we must. Auntie Khar Imm was the teacher in this instance, Auntie Sophia having a busy job with the government’s housing agency that generally prevents her from spending much time in the kitchen. She’d heard that Auntie Khar Imm was giving me cooking lessons and asked to tag along, however. So there we were. Auntie Sophia and I rolled up our sleeves and tried hard to follow along as Auntie Khar Imm demonstrated.

  Auntie Khar Imm had chopped up the shallots, the pork belly, mushrooms, and dried prawns, and had boiled the peanuts in water for three hours to soften them a little. Standing beside her, we watched as she fired up the wok, pouring in gobs of cooking oil and then frying the shallots until golden brown. Removing the shallots, she preserved the oil, adding the mushrooms, shrimp, pork, then peanuts and frying it all up with a little salt, white pepper, and a dash of monosodium glutamate. Once that was all mixed up, she added the glutinous rice she’d soaked for hours and then drained and steamed, stirring it all together. When that was done, she set the mixture aside to cool as she prepared the dough, mixing several cups of rice flour and tapioca flour with nine rice bowls of hot water and generous dashes of bright pink powdered coloring to form a paste. Once that cooled, she placed the dough in a stand mixer for several minutes of kneading.

  When the dough was done, our assembly line began. Auntie Khar Imm showed us how to make the cakes using the one neon pink plastic teardrop mold she had. First, she took a small ball of dough, rolled it out into a flat square, and covered it with glutinous rice filling, then folded over the extra dough to cover the top, and sealed it, forming a small pink purse. Then the person in charge of the mold took this ball and pressed it into the mold, smoothing it out at the top before giving the mold one solid whap on the side to dislodge the cake. And there you had it, a perfect pink teardrop filled with rice and pork. Auntie Sophia and I got to work mimicking Auntie Khar Imm. Because I had already learned to make bak-zhang, beng gway was easy for me. Auntie Sophia was struggling a little. “You want to learn,” Auntie Khar Imm said at one point, “you must come more often, like Lu-Lien.” I felt my cheeks flush with pride as I tried to quicken my hands to make her even more proud.

  When the pink dough ran out, Auntie Khar Imm made more dough, this time choosing not to add pink coloring and instead showing me how to dot the plain beng gway with liquid red food coloring so the cakes wouldn’t be just white, the color of death. “Luckier for praying,” she said. And when the rice filling ran out, she thought for a moment before rummaging through her fridge and chopping up some cabbage
, lightly salting it, and adding a few dashes of minced dried shrimp for more flavor. “You can use the dough to make dumplings,” she said, pressing a small amount into a circle, filling it with cabbage and shrimp, and then folding over the dough and crimping it deftly and beautifully to form a perfect half-moon.

  Try as I might, however, I couldn’t get the crimping down. Auntie Khar Imm’s creases were tiny and perfect, far prettier than those of any dumplings I’d seen at the best dim sum restaurants. And she did them in a flash. I had to ask her to slow down several times so I could actually see what she was doing. Mine, on the other hand, were clumsy and fat, and I probably made one dumpling for every four she was turning out. I was that slow.

  I was beginning to feel that perhaps I hadn’t been deserving of Auntie Khar Imm’s recent praise. “Aiyah,” she clucked after watching my brow furrow ever more with frustration. “I’ve been doing this for so many years already. You just started.” And so I kept going. I didn’t get discernibly better, but I did get a little faster. I was starting to feel better.

  As the day came to an end, we packed up the rice cakes and the dumplings for steaming. Auntie Khar Imm picked up one of my later dumplings, inspecting it. “This one’s not bad leh,” she said, smiling. “Just practice.”

  I began to feel like I was getting somewhere.

  When I think of the family feasts of my Singapore girlhood, there’s always a duck in the picture.

  To say that my people—the Teochews—adore duck would be to make a major understatement. In Shantou (also known as Swatow, which is its Teochew name), the area in Southern China where my great-grandfather lived as a boy, duck and goose are inescapable at many dinner tables.

  So it’s more than slightly sacrilegious to say that duck simply isn’t one of my favorites. I do make an exception for some versions, however, and Teochew-style braised duck is one of them.

  While I’m really good at eating it, making it is another matter altogether. But this was something auntie Alice was intent on fixing right away. “Cheryl ah, do you want to learn how to make lor ar [braised duck]?” she called one day to ask. My mother’s side of the family is Hockchew, not Teochew, but Auntie Alice’s husband, Uncle Yong Hai, was one of my kaki-nang (own people). “Your uncle Yong Hai’s sis taught me how to make it. I can teach you if you want,” Auntie Alice said.

  If I want? “How soon?” was the more appropriate question.

  A few days later, Auntie Alice arrived at my Singapore home armed with two ducks and a bag of ingredients, and the tutorial began. First, we peeled and sliced galangal, peeled and bashed several garlic cloves, and measured out some sugar and dark soy sauce. (This sauce is thicker, much sweeter, and has a more intense flavor than regular soy sauce.) Then we cleaned the duck, which entailed chopping off its behind and head, carefully washing it inside and out, and snipping off as much loose skin as we could get to. (Duck skin is incredibly fatty and will make the sauce very greasy.)

  For a moment of full disclosure, when I say we, in some instances this would actually mean my mother’s maid, Erlinda. Auntie Alice was whizzing through the steps so fast that she was directing Erlinda to chop off the duck’s skin, behind, and head, knowing that she would be much quicker at it than I would likely be. Auntie Alice had arrived with her one-year-old granddaughter, Bernice, in tow, after all. She had little time to spare.

  Next, “we” mixed together some five-spice powder and salt and rubbed it all over the outside and inside of the duck. Then we stuck the duck in the fridge to let it marinate for at least two hours.

  Once the duck was marinated and ready to go, we heated up the wok over low heat and added some sugar, stirring until it melted. Then we tossed in the sliced galangal and bashed garlic and stir-fried it until the mixture turned brown. Next, in went the dark soy sauce. Then we lightly rinsed off the duck and slid it into the wok. Using a metal spatula, Auntie Alice carefully coated the duck with sauce, turned it over, and poured enough water into the wok so that the liquid covered half the duck. Once the liquid came to a boil, we covered the wok.

  Every fifteen minutes, we uncovered the wok and turned the duck over before covering it up again. As we waited for the duck to cook, Auntie Alice and I watched over Bernice, who had an endless curiosity about her surroundings, picking at invisible objects on the carpet, slipping her tiny feet into the massive wooden clogs my parents had bought in Holland decades ago.

  Inevitably, of course, the question came. “You don’t want one yourself, meh?” Auntie Alice asked. Immediately, I launched into the same litany of excuses—I was too busy, Mike was too busy, I didn’t have family near me in New York, I was traveling too much. She didn’t want to press the issue, so instead she just let me watch Bernice play. It wasn’t as tiring as watching Giselle jump and sing ceaselessly, but I felt a tremendous responsibility nonetheless. If we looked away for just one second, who knew what Bernice would pick up off the floor and put into her mouth? I still wasn’t convinced I was up for this. No, I decided, at the moment, the freedom to go out to dinner—or Rome—on a whim and be able to stay up all night playing Scrabble was far more important. I understood my family’s concerns that, being so far away, I’d have no one to look after me when I was older, especially if Mike passed on first. Yet having a child remained far too abstract an idea for me still.

  After fifty minutes to an hour, Auntie Alice pulled out a chopstick, showing me how to poke it into the fattest part of the duck to see how easily it would go through. The meat had been simmering so long that the chopstick pierced it with great ease; the duck was finally done. We let it rest for ten more minutes, and it was ready to serve. As Auntie Alice hoisted the duck out of the wok, it struck me: The whole procedure was so easy I started to feel cheated that I’d gone all these years without making Teochew braised duck.

  But I needn’t have fretted, because just a few days later, when I was in my auntie Khar Imm’s kitchen, she hauled out two ducks and announced that she’d be teaching me how to make lor ar. Her method, which she’d learned from my Tanglin ah-ma, was a little different. Instead of using five-spice powder, Auntie Khar Imm used actual spices—whole star anise and cinnamon sticks, to be precise. And she used those only in the braising part, choosing to rub the duck inside and out with salt instead and letting it marinate—at room temperature—for a few hours.

  Once the duck was sufficiently marinated, she carefully washed it inside and out—twice—to get rid of excess salt. Then she rubbed the inside of the duck with salt, stuffed it with four thick slices of blue ginger, and slid it into the wok, already bearing a simmering liquid of dark soy sauce, several rice bowls of water, star anise, cinnamon, and more blue ginger. While the duck simmered, Auntie Khar Imm prepared several hard-boiled eggs. “You can also put tofu into the gravy,” she said. As the simmering neared an end, Auntie Khar Imm pulled out a chopstick. She’d shown me her method of gauging the doneness of meat so many times that no explanations were necessary.

  Hearing Auntie Khar Imm mention the eggs and the tofu immediately brought me back to the special meals of my childhood. Back then, I’d avoided eating the duck, but I’d loved drenching bowls plump with rice with the rich, dark gravy and devouring the rice with a hard-boiled egg and tofu that had been steeped so long in the sauce that it had turned the color of milk chocolate. My mother had never known how to make it—so it was a dish that I looked forward to whenever we visited my Tanglin ah-ma’s home.

  And here I was, decades later, with not one but two braised duck recipes. Both were equally delicious; both were made and handed down to me with equal love and care.

  Someday, perhaps, I might have someone to hand these recipes down to. The thought suddenly didn’t seem so terribly unappealing after all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was around this time I discovered my maternal grandmother is a liar. Well, it’s not that she lies, per se. It’s just that she has developed a selective memory.

  Auntie Alice and I had decided to get to the bottom of our
collective family history. One afternoon, we took a break from cooking and met in my grandmother’s bedroom, sitting on the floor at her feet as we plied her with questions.

  That she’d lived a hard life was indisputable. All my life, though, I’d wondered why she’d made the decisions she had. Why marry my grandfather? Why bring his first wife and family over from China?

  This much we had known: My grandmother had come of age during World War II. Just as she was blossoming into a young woman, the Japanese occupied Singapore, renaming it Syonanto and beginning a reign of terror that poisoned daily life. “I was afraid to go out,” Ah-Ma says in Hokkien. “We were always afraid that Japanese soldiers would rape us.”

  It was around this time that a handsome man began calling. He worked in a coffee shop across the street and had befriended Ah-Ma’s brother. Soon he began coming by after work to play cards. Almost as soon, he began expressing interest in my grandmother’s hand in marriage. Fearing for her safety as a young, single woman during the occupation, my grandmother consented. “I was so afraid—just anyhow get married is safer lor,” she says, sighing. “Aiyah, I was so silly, everything also didn’t know.”

  Fast-forward to the picture of my grandmother on her wedding day, dressed in white, wide-eyed and tentative, with the faintest of smiles; a tall, dark, older man, fourteen years her senior, the protector she had sought, towering next to her. Then fast-forward yet again to the moment of discovery—that the man she’d married had another wife, another family back in China. Instead of anger, instead of frustration, Ah-Ma felt only pity. “People in China,” she says, “they were suffering at the time.” Besides, her own father in Xiamen had had four wives, she says. She understood how love, or something like it, could be sometimes. And so she cleared out a room in their home for this other wife, sewed together new pillowcases for her, implored her husband to bring over his first wife. “I thought we could all live together,” she says. “I was so, so stupid.”