A Tiger in the Kitchen

by Cheryl Tan

  My father and I followed this woman, wending down narrow lanes, dusty and quiet. Her name was Tan Neo Soon—we all had the same last name in this village, it turned out—and she was just twenty-two. With bright eyes and an impish smile, Neo Soon looked far younger than her age. She appeared to belong more in a mall on a Saturday, trying on lipstick with her high school girlfriends. Instead, she was here in a small Chinese village, balancing a three-year-old son on her hip and nipping away to a nearby room that was her makeshift work studio whenever she could. There, she unpacked large boxes of plastic and glass parts, assembling coffee presses by hand to be sold in larger cities nearby.

  When we got to her home, my father and I suddenly felt like giants. Neo Soon, her husband, her sister, her parents, and her grandmother all lived in a row house so tiny even Hobbits would not have found it a luxury. Their living room, I realized, felt slightly bigger than my closet of a kitchen in Brooklyn, which I often complained about. Their “kitchen” was in an open-air back alley, next to a well from which all their water came. Neo Soon’s son sat on the stone paving of this alley, playing with a utensil, while his father started on lunch. “He’s the one who cooks,” Neo Soon said sheepishly. “He learned from his mother.” Neo Soon and her husband, Cai Chu Ju, had met while working in a stainless steel factory years ago, and when they’d gotten married, they’d made the unconventional move of having her husband—who was from another village, as indicated by the fact that his last name was Cai and not Tan—move in with her family instead of the other way around. This was simply a practical matter; her family had more space. I looked around at the miniature living room and the alleyway kitchen and wondered what “less space” looked like.

  Working quickly, Chu Ju chopped a whole cabbage into slender, long slivers, heated up a little cooking oil in a wok, and stir-fried those slivers. After they’d gotten a little soft, he added a bag of cooked noodles and stirred it all together before adding soy sauce, a smidge of monosodium glutamate, and a few shakes of a chocolate brown powder I’d never seen in any of my aunties’ kitchens. “What’s that?” I asked, pen poised, notebook in hand. “Sha cha fen,” Chu Ju replied, showing me the packet. I continued to be perplexed—sha is the word for “sand.” I had no idea what cha was, and fen is powder. When my father saw me panicking, he swooped in to help, taking off his glasses so he could squint at the ingredients, listed in Chinese characters. “Well, I think it’s five-spice powder mixed with onion powder, garlic powder, ground peanuts, and a few other things,” he finally said. It also turned out to be the main flavoring agent for the noodles, which were done in a matter of seconds. Once the ingredients had been adequately heated through and stirred, lunch was ready.

  Their tiny dining table was only large enough for three people to comfortably sit down to eat—and Neo Soon insisted I sit the moment the noodles were set out, practically shoving me onto the seat when I began to politely resist. With her grandmother, sister, and husband watching carefully, I took a small bite of the noodles. It wasn’t the most flavorful dish I’d had. I imagined trying it back in my New York kitchen jazzed up with shrimp or slivers of pork belly perhaps. And maybe a few dashes of oyster or chili sauce. In Neo Soon’s home, however, I realized they had to make do without these accoutrements. This was all they had—and it wasn’t much. “Hen hao chi ah!” I said to Chu Ju, praising his food. Then I wiped my mouth and said I wasn’t very hungry after all, gesturing to Neo Soon’s grandmother to please sit down and eat. The platter of noodles wasn’t huge, after all—and there were many mouths to feed that day.

  Standing out on the road, my father reflected. “My grandfather’s wish was to come back to the village and die here,” he finally said. “I told my grandfather I had come back for him.”

  I nodded, silently. All these years later, we had fulfilled his wish.

  Surveying motorbikes and cars racing by in terrifying zig-zags, my dad suddenly smiled. “Imagine if I got knocked down and died here,” he said. “I’d also be fulfilling my grandfather’s wish.”

  “Choi!” I said, suggesting that it was time that we go back into the great hall for the annual picture-taking session.

  In the Singapore clan association building, and throughout the village’s meeting rooms, I had seen these pictures. In them, rows of stern-looking men in stiff suits are seated on benches, staring straight at the camera, largely unsmiling. When the camera was whipped out, I was unsure whether I should join them—even though I desperately wanted to. My dad moved aside, making room for me. “Of course you should be here,” he said.

  Michael and the elders looked at me with disapproval. I knew I really shouldn’t have been in that picture. But I was my father’s firstborn, after all. I had my great-grandfather’s blood. Ignoring the stares, I stood unflinching as the camera flashes went off.

  I had asked many questions during my time in the village. Why do overseas Chinese call Shantou or mainland China dengsua, which means “long mountain,” for example. “Perhaps because as their boats sailed away from Shantou, they’d look back at the long mountain range in the mist and wonder how long it would be before they saw it again,” someone had volunteered. (It was also likely that it referred to Chinese people, called Deng Nang in Teochew, and the mountain range from which they came.) Where did the Teochews in our village come from? “A family of seven brothers who emigrated from Fujian Province centuries ago and formed seven small villages—ours was one of them,” the village chief had said.

  Before we left, however, I had one final question. I hadn’t been sure whether I would ask it. But it was one of the few Teochew phrases I had heard while growing up. I had to know if it was something that was commonplace here or just something said in Singapore.

  “Lau chek ah,” I said to the village chief as we made our good-byes. He already looked a little miffed by my refusal to pry myself from his all-male photo session, so I figured I had little to lose.

  “We have a funny Teochew saying in Singapore,” I began. “It’s Teochew nang kacherng ang ang. Do you say that here also?”

  His face instantly puffed up. “I’ve never heard of that before!” he sputtered out.

  “Oh, okay, thank you,” I said, gathering my things and getting ready to scurry out. “For everything.”

  The trip back to dengsua had been as eye-opening as I’d hoped. My first instinct had been right; we may have come from there, but there certainly wasn’t a place for us in that village anymore. Definitely not for me. My great-grandfather had given us, given me, a tremendous gift when he left almost a century ago to find a better life in Singapore. As our car sped away, I looked out at the long mountain range in the blackening sky and said a silent thank-you to the great-grandfather I’d never before known.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  My love for all things Italian had been etched on my heart decades ago.

  Granted, the seeds had been planted by the smoldering Roberto Baggio and formidable Walter Zenga of the 1990 Italian World Cup squad. But the love affair continued through little discoveries: a hearty bowl of cioppino, filled with fish and delicately balancing briny sea flavors with sweet, sweet tomatoes; an effervescent Bellini, sipped at Harry’s Bar in Venice after a long twilight stroll along the city’s picturesque canals.

  It was through baking bread, however, that this affection truly deepened. Through the Bread Baker’s Apprentice challenge, I was introduced to casatiello—a light, spongy loaf that came studded with dry-cured salami cubes and heavenly pockets of melted provolone; and pane siciliano—hearty, pecan-hued, crunchy breads in the striking shape of giant S’s. The week I met panmarino, I knew this was it—the bread I had been looking for. This garlicky bread made with mashed potatoes and fresh rosemary was intoxicating from the moment the dough hit the oven and its scent began invading the crevices of my apartment. By the time I slipped the first sliver into my mouth, I knew I had found it. This was the one I was bringing home.

  I had tried to explain my bread-baking quest to my aunties
and mother—making homemade loaves was something I’d never considered within the realm of my abilities. Bread was something you bought at a store—an item so basic that it didn’t warrant the (sometimes) days of effort that went into each loaf. This was certainly something my mother believed, too, even though she was a great lover of bread—buns filled with red-bean paste or airy clumps of sweet pork “floss” (dried pork that’s somewhat akin to beef jerky), or topped with shredded cheese and baked to crispy perfection, had been staples in my Singapore home since I was a child. And while I had always favored heaping plates of salty noodles for breakfast, my mother liked nothing more than to begin her days with a cup of Nescafé coffee and a slice of toast with a hefty layer of salted butter scraped on and a generous Chinese soup spoon of sugar sprinkled on top. “Bread? Might as well just buy, right? So leceh,” she would say, using the Malay word for troublesome, when I told her of the wheat breads and braided loaves I was attempting.

  From the time that I pulled my very first bagels out of the oven, however, I’d realized that there was true magic in the smell and taste of freshly baked bread, still hot from the oven. And I had hoped to be able to share that revelation with my skeptical family. After a steak and potato dinner left me with a mound of leftover mashed potatoes, I decided to pull out Peter Reinhart’s recipe for panmarino. The bread is incredibly easy to make—on the first day, you make a biga, mixing flour, yeast, and water, and let it sit. On the second, you cut that biga into pieces, let it rest and rise, then mix it together with more flour, salt, black pepper, chopped fresh rosemary, roasted garlic, mashed potatoes, olive oil, and water; then you knead it, form it into two round boules, and let it rest some more to rise. And then into the oven it goes. It was so easy that I started to wonder whether it would be any good. The combination of the sweet, softened garlic with sharp bits of rosemary and the slightly salty, potatoey bread was just perfect, however. You could set this bread out with cheese and ham for a pre-dinner snack but, really, it’s more than flavorful enough to stand on its own.

  Shortly after making—and rapidly devouring—my first panmarino, I began whipping together more mashed potatoes for several more loaves. And, shortly after that, I found myself wedging myself into a seat on a plane headed for Singapore, carefully tucking away a large tote bag stuffed with bread and absolutely reeking of garlic. I was a true hit on that plane with my fellow passengers, I’m sure.

  From her first bite, I could see that my mother understood. She’d carefully toasted a small sliver and buttered it slightly. Her eyes grew large as she thoughtfully chewed for a moment. “How did you make this?” she asked, listening quietly as I quickly walked through the steps I had taken. “Wah, so clever ah,” she added, before leaping up to quickly bundle up the rest of the loaf. “Daffy and your daddy must try this,” she said. “Better keep it for them.” She proceeded to guard over her loaf with great ferocity, instructing Erlinda not to serve it to anyone. Only my mother was allowed to slice it up and parcel it out in tiny, buttered slices—it was that precious.

  I thought back to the days I had spent sweating at the counter in my Brooklyn kitchen, kneading pillowy mounds until my arms and fingers hurt—or desperately trying to hang on to my jumpy KitchenAid mixer and prevent it from jitterbugging off the counter as it strenuously mixed massive gobs of dough. I thought of the failures I’d encountered, the whole days it had taken to get the smell of smoke out of my living room—and the fact that I’d kept at it even though the quest had seemed, at times, plain silly. Watching my mother and her prized panmarino, I knew it all had been worth it.

  One day, my mother said the words I never thought I’d hear. “I think you should meet your father’s new wife.”

  It had been a few weeks since I last saw my father, when we had traveled to Shantou together. With the holidays approaching, however, Ketty and my father had some errands to run in Singapore and were due for a short visit—a trip that pained my mother, I knew, from the way she never spoke of it. “Well, I’m not sure that I want to,” I said. But someday soon, I knew, this woman who had entered our lives would be in charge of my father’s life, should his health weaken. “You don’t want to regret not having a relationship with her if she’s suddenly the one who decides who gets to see him if he gets really sick,” Mike had suggested. “I’m just saying . . .”

  I wasn’t sure what to do—so I consulted with Willin.

  “You know,” he said as we sipped glasses of sauvignon blanc while sitting in rattan lounge chairs at his hilltop bar, Wild Oats, before his dinner shift one night, “I have this friend whose elderly uncle married this very young Chinese woman less than half his age. The uncle was the eldest son, so he was in charge of the family assets—everything was in his name—and they had this big house in China that belonged to the family. After he married this woman, he went to China to see the house with his new wife. And then, mysteriously, he fell down the stairs and died!” he added, dramatically using his fingers to punch quote marks in the air as he said the words fell down. “And then the new wife inherited the house and now the rest of the family doesn’t have access to it anymore!” he finished, practically shrieking.

  “Maybe,” he said firmly, quietly, “you should meet your father’s new wife. Just so you know what she’s like.”

  That settled it. I immediately called Le Bistrot du Sommelier, a little French place I thought my pâté-loving father would like, and made a dinner reservation.

  The night of our dinner, Mike and I squirmed in our seats, waiting for my father and his wife. Mike leaned over and stroked my back—my uncharacteristic silence was telling of the anxiety coursing through me. I texted Willin, telling him that Mike and I were bundles of nerves, wondering what on earth we would have to say to Ketty. “I’m not involving myself in this—I don’t want to get tied to this in any way. I’m on your mum’s side!” he immediately texted back. And then, right after, his final bit of advice, reminding me of his friend’s sad tale: “Quick, push her down the stairs before it’s too late.”

  We ordered wine and then decided not to drink it, feeling it would be disrespectful if half the bottle disappeared before our elders showed up. And soon enough, my father appeared, spritely and beaming as he effervescently pumped Mike’s hand and hugged me before stepping aside to introduce his wife.

  With her long black hair and smooth alabaster skin, this woman with the slender, girlish figure looked younger than I was. She spoke little English, I had been told, so I introduced myself as Rulian. There was little more to say. As we looked through the menu, my father spoke at breakneck speed, filling us in on her likes (shopping; The Gap; simple, healthy foods like fish and rice) and dislikes (anything ostentatious; rich, Western food like pâté, which she worried would shorten my father’s life). I suddenly recalled that I had known that about Ketty; I wondered if that had subconsciously been a factor in my choice of restaurant.

  “But you like pâté!” I said.

  “I know,” my dad said, “but I can’t eat too much of it.”

  We decided to get some for the table anyway, since it was a specialty of the restaurant. I was feeling better about this dinner. The man sitting across from us at the dinner table was still ordering like the father I knew, at least.

  With my Mandarin being so-so at best, I was unable to say anything much deeper to Ketty than, “What did you buy today?” (“Just a few T-shirts.”) and “What do you like about Singapore?” (“It’s very clean.”). And since Mike understood no Mandarin, the conversation largely took place in English, as my father enthusiastically filled us in on their life together in China, pausing every few sentences to translate what he said in Mandarin to Ketty. As dinner whizzed along, I realized it wasn’t going terribly, after all. My father was happier than I’d seen him in a while; Ketty, who was carefully watching his pâté and wine intake with a whiff of thinly disguised disapproval, didn’t seem like the shoving-down-the-staircase sort. Mike looked over and gently squeezed my hand.

  As M
ike signed the bill, my father leaned back, smiling as he sipped the last of his wine. “You know, Cheryl,” he said, “you’re actually supposed to call Ketty houma.” The Mandarin word for second mother. My mouth actually fell open in surprise. Ketty looked around the table nervously, then giggled and said, “Buyong ah!” I instantly agreed. There was no need for this. We had taken a step that night—but for the moment, it was just that, a step.

  Outside on the street, as Mike and I watched my father and his bride wend their way in the darkness toward their nearby hotel, I noticed they were strolling hand in hand. “Your father was so happy,” Mike said. “You did a good thing tonight.”

  I suppose it was just as well that I hadn’t listened to Willin.

  A few days later, I made my way to Auntie Khar Imm’s house for my final cooking lesson. With Christmas and then Chinese New Year approaching—and with the recent arrival of her second grandchild, a sister for Giselle—my aunt’s workload had increased. There was more cleaning, more babysitting. The cooking lessons, sadly, had to come to an end.

  The dish for the finale was an obvious one: pua kiao beng, my Tanglin Ah-Ma’s gambling rice. Or, as Auntie Khar Imm called it, “Landuo fan lah!” Lazy rice did seem like an appropriate name for it, given that it was designed for easy eating so that gamblers didn’t have to get up from their tables midgame in order to fill their stomachs.

  As always, Auntie Khar Imm had prepped the ingredients before I got there. the dried mushrooms had been soaked in water for four hours until they were soft enough for easy dicing. The pork belly had been cubed, the shallots had been minced, the cabbage had been shredded and was soaking in a basin of water next to her sink. “The prawns,” Auntie Khar Imm said, holding up a handful of dried shrimp. “You soak them a little in water until they’re soft.” I watched as she washed the rice she intended to use, rinsing it out a few times until the water she was swirling it in didn’t grow cloudy anymore. Placing that rice in a rice cooker, she pointed out that she was pouring enough water into the cooker so that the water level was three-quarters of an inch above the top of the rice.