Mar 21, 2010
You are what you eat
Food is never just food, is it? It embraces who we are, who we have been and who we want to be
On the fourth day of Chinese New Year last month, a horde of relatives congregated in my mother's home for dinner. First aunt, second aunt and fourth uncle were there, so too an assortment of cousins, nephews and nieces as well as their spouses and significant others.
They turned up, not because of the prospect of 'yu, har, hai' (literally fish, prawn and crab in Cantonese), a colloquialism meaning a right royal feast.
Frankly, most of us were pretty feasted out by then. You would be too if you had been gorging on various permutations of chicken, duck, pork, sea cucumber, mushrooms and aforementioned seafood at every meal since New Year's Eve.
In fact, mum did not prepare many dishes that night. There was lotus root and peanut soup, sweetened with pork ribs and red dates, which she brewed for several hours.
There was braised pork belly done Hakka style, marinated with, among other things, fermented red bean curd, five spice powder, ginger juice, soya sauce and Chinese wine, and then stewed and served with black fungus.
And there was what had brought everyone there: a big pot of choi geuk, Cantonese for leftovers. Yes, scraps of roast duck, fried chicken, chilli prawns, braised mushrooms, salvaged from previous meals and stewed with 3kg of mustard greens in a piquant broth seasoned with tamarind juice, dried chillies, bean paste and ketchup.
By the time the choi geuk made its appearance, everyone had already abandoned conversations, the idiot box and their mahjong tiles to gather around my mother's old formica dining table, bowl with chopsticks in hand.
It's a ritual, one which takes place every year.
Choi geuk is a humble dish but it's not hard to fathom why we love it so.
It's a deviously addictive conspiracy of flavours - sweet, sour, bitter, spicy - and textures. It's also light on the palate; you can consume bowls of it without being weighed down by that heavy feeling in the pit of your stomach when you take on more than you can chew.
But I suspect there is another reason why we are so hooked on it: It tastes of nostalgia, love and family.
It reminds us of our beloved grandmother, a superb cook who first introduced it to us. Over the decades, she served it up lovingly each Chinese New Year, a tradition which my mother took over when my granny passed on.
I was shooting the breeze recently with Chef Andre Chiang from Jaan par Andre restaurant at Swissotel. Considered by many foodies as the most accomplished culinary artist in Singapore, Chiang waxed exuberant about food and life.
Food, he declared, makes you feel alive as a person; it is also like a love song and can touch you in different ways.
I agree. Food has a soul. Ingredients, skill and artistry may yield a stunner on the palate, but other intangibles can add taste, tinge and texture. The person who cooks it and how, the people you eat it with, the place and your state of mind when you consume it... all these will affect the way flavours dance on your tongue.
I believe that food made with love tastes a lot better than food made without.
If you were to ask me what my idea of the perfect breakfast is, I'd say my late granny's mincemeat noodles.
She often made that for my sister and me, when we were schoolchildren living with her.
She would prepare a sweet broth from pork bones and dried anchovies the night before. At the crack of dawn, she would wake and beaver under a dim light in the tiny kitchen of her one-room flat - mincing pork, dicing chives, frying shallots - so that my sister and I would have steaming bowls of noodles when we woke.
There was so much love in what she did and so much attention she paid to detail. She knew exactly how many spoonfuls of her homemade chilli sauce I liked in my broth and how soggy my sister preferred her noodles.
And that love, more than anything else, was what made those noodles so nourishing and satisfying.
Food prepared with love is always eaten with love. We savour it, we dig in with our hands and we pay homage to the care which has gone into its making with wide eyes, slack jaws and delirious sighs.
Which is why I believe good food should always be shared with good friends and enjoyed in great company. It has the power to strengthen bonds, and deepen ties.
There is nothing quite like sitting at the sushi counter in Akashi with two of your colleagues, trying to outdo one another with orgasmic moans, when chef Melvin serves up a choice slice of toro or a sublime helping of uni.
Or making small work of an entire suckling pig at Beng Hiang with two friends as you trade gossip and discuss the woes of the world.
When I'm feeling particularly happy and gregarious, I like to invite good friends over for dinner.
Recently, I hosted one such gathering, serving a rack of prime ribs, which I roasted after leaving to sit overnight in a marinade of hoi sin and soya sauce, honey, garlic and Chinese wine.
I also dished up fried crabs in a thick sauce made from shallots, garlic, chilli and caramelised fresh tomatoes; as well as giant tiger prawns which I fried at very high heat and coated with a spicy tomato sauce my mother taught me to make.
Dessert was a batch of banana cupcakes - filled with pieces of walnut and bitter orange chocolate - baked and served with scoops of lychee martini ice cream.
The reaction was gratifying. It brought on smiles, it fuelled chatter and it filled the apartment with an affecting sense of warmth and camaraderie.
While the sight of empty serving dishes and mountains of crustacean shells on plates was great for the ego, what gave the greater satisfaction was the fact that in my own little way, I had spread a little happiness and given a little pleasure.
Food writer Molly Wizenberg wrote in A Homemade Life: Stories And Recipes From My Kitchen Table: 'When I walk into my kitchen today, I am not alone. Whether we know it or not, none of us is.
'We bring fathers and mothers and kitchen tables, and every meal we have ever eaten. Food is never just food. It's also a way of getting at something else: who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be.'
How true.
Sumiko Tan is on leave.
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