When I was growing up, Mum worked in a Chinese restaurant some nights, so Dad chipped in a lot with the cooking at home. I have plenty of fond memories relating to dishes that both of them made, which I never learned how to replicate for myself.
Mum’s from Taiwan, and a lot of the dishes she makes involve pastry or dough. I have a feeling that she won’t tell me her dumpling recipe because she knows deep down that it’s the one thing I’ll always have to go back home for. That, and she’s been making them for so long that she probably doesn’t even know how much of each ingredient goes into the mix. I don’t remember having measuring cups or jugs in the house – it must have been a combination of muscle memory, and the ratio of whatever felt right in her hands alone.
I used to love watching her make the wrappers for the dumplings – money was probably too tight to lash out on manufactured ones, or she was of the thought that processed wrappers were a waste of money if all it took was time to invest in rolling out homemade versions. The rhythm of the rolling pin, which was nought more than a thick dowel, would mesmerise me as I watched the small ball of dough become a circular shell for a dumpling. Then the steadily growing stack of wrappers would each receive a dollop of filling in its centre and be sealed off with several deft pinches from fingertips dipped in water.
Whenever I tried to help Mum out, on the very rare occasions that she’d let me have a go, I’d almost always stuff up somehow. Whether it was cutting out noodles and rolling too enthusiastically with the machine, or waiting to crack an egg into batter and clumsily landing some shell into the mix, or not sealing the ends of a spring roll adequately… Mum would sigh in exasperation and take whatever task I was attempting out of my hands. I was more of a hindrance than a help, no matter how good my intentions were.As I got older, I was allowed to assist with basic prep tasks. The kind of stuff Mum would do while watching the television – taking the tops and tails off snow peas and beans. I remember a few times when there’d be a big function coming up at work, and Mum would have to take stuff home to prep for the next day. Maybe I was a little too excited at the prospect of threading thousands of satay chicken skewers, but there was something that just felt good when I was being useful in the kitchen and not just a pain in the butt.
Dad was particularly overprotective of me when I was a kid, which frustrated me to no end because I think he must have known that I’d inherited some of his inquisitive and adventurous nature. I was never allowed to cut anything, or cook anything, while I was growing up. Sometimes I wonder whether my fear of knives and fire is actually something that I’ve always had, or whether it came from having so many lectures drummed into me about how dangerous a place the kitchen was. Of course, Dad probably had no idea that all his warnings against me messing about in the kitchen were like the psychological equivalent of a ‘Wet Paint’ sign.
I can’t remember how old I was, when we first got a microwave. It wasn’t long until my brother and I were allowed to graduate to two-minute noodles cooked on the stove, and I became a little more curious about expanding my repertoire. After much begging and pleading, Dad finally let me pick out some ingredients for a stir-fry, promising that some day in the week he’d show me how to cook it all up.
It was school holidays or something similar, and no one was home when I decided it was the perfect time to try and guess how to cook a stir-fry. Just imagine how impressed my folks would be that I had made lunch/dinner all by myself! I couldn’t wait for Dad’s vital masterclass on stir-fries, so I cobbled together whatever memories I had of the steps my parents took when cooking one. As it turns out, I probably should have paid more attention, and I believe that up until that point I had never seen them actually cook a stir-fry from start to finish – possibly because I had always been booted out of the kitchen for being annoying whilst they were trying to get dinner ready!
The good news? Well, I didn’t burn the house down. The bad news – it was a minor disaster. I had way too many vegetables, none of which were consistently sized enough to cook at a similar rate, I think I used too much sauce and not enough oil, and threw in uncooked rice for good measure. Oh, and my solo cooking adventure was also the first and last time I was allowed to do anything in the kitchen that didn’t involve the microwave, toaster, or two-minute noodles. No unsupervised use of knives and open flames for me!
I never got that lesson on stir-fries. Perhaps my folks decided then and there that hospitality was definitely not my calling. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always loved food, and was certainly more interested in what was for dinner and how it was made than my brother ever was, but neither of my parents thought it was a good idea to encourage me to cook. I actually didn’t learn a proper stir-fry method until I went to TAFE a couple of years ago – shameful, I know.
It often baffles people to hear that I can’t stand doing stir-fries, and although I love to eat a lot of different Asian cuisines, I get this weird mental block about trying to cook them. I suppose it’s comparable to how I feel embarrassed and uncomfortable whenever I try to speak the pitiful amount of Mandarin that I know. I went to classes for years to try and learn it properly, but often got tongue-tied even though in my head I knew what I was trying to say. Yet after studying Italian in school and working in a couple of Italian restaurants, I had no qualms about slipping in the odd Italian phrase here and there in conversation with customers and colleagues.
Perhaps it’s never too late to learn. Maybe I should go back home some time and spend an afternoon cooking with Mum or Dad, and take some notes on what they do and how. I don’t mean to lament that all their recipes are lost forever, because they’re not, but I guess it saddens me that they never saw it as particularly important to pass any of their culinary knowledge on to me. They were always happy enough to feed me, and even take requests, but now that I’m older and my visits to Melbourne tend to be more fly-by-night, it’s more likely that I’d stop by Mum’s just before dinner with friends… or I’ll catch up with Dad at our regular yum cha hangout.
Sometimes I wonder whether they’re proud of the fact that I made it somewhere in hospitality, despite all their efforts to keep me out of the kitchen. There are times when I’ve been chuffed yet still surprised to receive compliments about my cooking, almost as if I’m still that kid messing about with a wok while home alone, trying to prove something to myself as well as my folks about the kitchen not being the place for me.
I’ve been cut, bruised, soaked, splashed, and burned in the relatively short time that I’ve been cooking. I’m no longer scared of knives and fire – it’s the cutting and burning that I’m more worried about. What’s amusing is that a couple of birthdays ago, I received knives as gifts from three people, and last Christmas I got a blowtorch. Maybe I’m the most dangerous thing in the kitchen?
Well, I can’t say my folks didn’t try to warn me.
