A Tiger in the Kitchen (9 page)

Making
kaya
was simple, she said. We quickly got to work in my uncle’s modern kitchen, which he’d kitted out with sleek appliances and a large, gleaming countertop. First, we cracked ten eggs into a large bowl and whisked them together. Then we added about a cup of sugar and the coconut milk, mixing it all up well. Next, Ah-Ma instructed us to place the mixture in a glass bowl, add a few knotted pandan leaves, perch that bowl atop a rack in a wok, and just let it steam for forty-five minutes or so. Auntie Alice and I looked at each other. “Mummy ah, we don’t need to stir it, meh?” Auntie Alice gently asked. Ah-Ma shook her head and hands vigorously.
“Mieng, mieng!”
she said in Hokkien. Auntie Alice and I looked at each other again. This just didn’t sound right.
Kaya
is supposed to be smooth, creamy, and easy to spread. I hadn’t spent that much time cooking at this point, but I did feel I knew enough to predict how steaming a bunch of eggs, untouched, for forty-five minutes would end up. Just letting the eggs, sugar, and coconut milk steam for forty-five minutes without any stirring was likely to produce a dense, cakelike custard—one that I envisioned us being able to cut up into neat slices, not spread easily over crusty, hot toast. Could Ah-Ma—who had spent the morning telling us that she couldn’t quite remember how to make the dishes she had been known for—possibly have misremembered?

I had been afraid of not having enough
kaya
for three households—my mother’s, Auntie Alice’s, and Ah-Ma’s—so I’d brought enough ingredients for two batches. “Well . . . ,” Auntie Alice finally said, giving me a meaningful look, “since we have enough for another batch, why don’t we just make one batch Ah-Ma’s way and one batch that we stir during steaming? Just try lah—experiment!” Ah-Ma shrugged, giving us a distinct “you’re wasting your time” look. Auntie Alice and I immediately got to work, whipping together the second batch of
kaya.
Onto the steamer that went, and we started stirring it periodically. Looking at the two
kayas
side by side, we were glad we had decided to try the second batch our way. Ah-Ma’s method was yielding a
kaya
that resembled a pudding. The yellow-green custard was puffing up slightly and looked distinctly solid. The
kaya
that Auntie Alice and I were diligently stirring, however, was looking nice and soft. As the smell of coconut and vanilla-like pandan seeped into the air, we were feeling good about our
kaya.
I began to envision the breakfast of
kaya
toast, hot and buttery, that I’d have the next day.

After forty-five minutes, however, our impressions changed. When we removed the two bowls of
kaya,
Auntie Alice and I smiled knowingly at first, as we noticed that Ah-Ma’s remained pudding-like while ours looked like a chunky rubble of jam. Then Ah-Ma gestured to us to stir up her
kaya
. It yielded easily to our spoon, forming a creamy, silken mass as we stirred. The version that Auntie Alice and I had concocted, however, remained lumpen and unappetizing no matter how much we tried to whip it into a smooth froth. And when we spread both
kayas
on bread, ours had an alarming grainy texture while Ah-Ma’s was perfectly smooth. Just as it should have been.

Ah-Ma didn’t say anything. Auntie Alice and I winced. The students had been arrogant enough to second-guess the teacher—someone who had brought decades of experience to the kitchen counter only to be given the fish eye and sidelined. And we had learned a lesson, indeed. Silently, I vowed to listen to my grandmother more.

Quietly, we packed up our
kaya
and hugged Ah-Ma good-bye. Just before letting me go, however, my grandmother gave me one final instruction: “Next time, bring a baby for Ah-Ma.”

CHAPTER FIVE

My father was skeptical.

And this was fairly new to me. Now, this was a man who had never been stingy with praise for my grades or Chinese brush paintings, which he’d proudly framed and hung in his office when I was a child. And yet, whenever I produced something I’d slaved over for hours in the kitchen during his visits to the United States, he’d chew quietly and say almost nothing. Knowing that he adored chocolate mousse, I once searched online for days for a recipe that had the largest number of positive comments and spent the better part of an afternoon making the mousse just before he arrived in New York. The mousse was met with silence. When I tried out my
tau yew bak
on him during another dinner in New York, there it was again: silence. (Prompted by Mike’s
mmmms
and other effusive and overcompensating grunts of enjoyment, however, my father finally said, “The meat was a little tough.”)

It wasn’t that my father thought cooking was a waste of time; he’d given me a lecture in my mid-twenties about my inability to make much besides ramen for dinner, after all. It was just that his mother’s food was seared on his heart; nothing else could possibly come close. (My mother never even tried to impress him in the kitchen, leaving everything up to her maids.) And I knew that, of all the people who would be sampling my attempts at re-creating her dishes over the following year, he would be my toughest critic. I began bracing myself for the silence.

It was May in Singapore—the days were getting more and more fiery as the hot month of June approached. And I was about to learn a rather difficult dish—
bak-zhang,
the pyramid-shaped dumplings filled with pork and mushrooms and wrapped in bamboo leaves that had been one of Tanglin Ah-Ma’s signature dishes. The dumplings were an annual treat for my family, although they can now be found year-round in Singapore. They’re traditionally eaten in June around the time of the Dumpling Festival, or
Duan Wu Jie
, which commemorates the death of the Chinese poet and patriot Qu Yuan, who became distraught over the state of his country and committed suicide by throwing himself into a river. When his supporters learned of his death, they threw rice dumplings into the river both as a sacrifice to his spirit and to feed the fish so they wouldn’t nibble on Qu Yuan’s body. Now, every year, Chinese all over the world celebrate the day by eating
bak-zhang
—which is more commonly known by its Mandarin name,
zongzi
—and having Dragon Boat races. (Those also stem from Chinese lore. As one story goes, Qu Yuan’s admirers, after learning of his suicide, immediately hopped into boats and paddled out into the river, hoping to rescue him or find his body.)

In my family, store-bought versions of
bak-zhang
were taboo, of course. The only dumplings that mattered were my Tanglin ah-ma’s. As the years passed and her reputation grew among neighbors, friends, and friends of friends, she began taking orders and selling them. I’d disliked sticky rice as a child and had not really looked forward to eating
bak-zhang
every year. My father, however, had always adored the dumplings, having grown up eating only the best, of course. “Daddo,” I said to him one day in May. “Auntie Khar Imm is going to teach me how to make Tanglin Ah-Ma’s
bak-zhang.
” There it was again: silence.

“Oh?” he said after a moment, looking bemused. “Okay.”

The pork was what got me.

By the time I arrived at Auntie Khar Imm’s home in Hougang, a traditional working-class neighborhood in Northern Singapore that has been a Teochew enclave for decades, she’d assembled all the ingredients. Her kitchen was a few times larger than mine in Brooklyn and crammed with appliances, pots, pans, and baskets. This was a kitchen for a serious cook. I had some of the same appliances—the Cuisinart food processor, a large black wok—but mine looked brand-new compared to her weathered pieces. I wondered how many dinners they’d put out. Even though it was mid-morning, the kitchen was fairly dark—being on the third floor of a building surrounded by many other tall apartment towers. What it lacked for in light it had in space, though—enough for two large refrigerators filled with homemade sauces, stews, vegetables, and meats. I imagined both those refrigerators in my own kitchen; there wouldn’t be room for anything else. The garlic cloves and shallots had been set out, and the dried Chinese mushrooms were already soaking in water and were well on their way to softening. As Auntie Khar Imm pulled out the slab of pork belly she’d bought, I couldn’t help but wince. Although I prided myself on trying to be fearless in the kitchen, I had largely stuck to cooking with meat that didn’t resemble an animal in any remote way. I’d make exceptions for fried chicken (my absolute favorite food) and once a year for Thanksgiving, but even then, I delegated any
touching
of the turkey to the heroic Mike. Generally, I like my meat or fish faceless and in the form of a rectangular slab. All the better if there’s not a whole lot of blood, which gets me to thinking of the animal that once owned that flesh. On Auntie Khar Imm’s kitchen counter, however, lay a large brick of pork belly with a thick layer of fat. And on top of that fat was skin bearing bright pink markings—Chinese characters that had been branded on the poor pig at whatever farm it had spent its relatively short life. I started to feel ill.

I had vowed to be brave, however. Or at least learn how to be brave from my aunties. So I trained my eyes on the pork, readying myself for the inevitable
touching
. For distraction, I asked what time Tanglin Ah-Ma would typically get up to make
bak-zhang
. “See how much she is making lor,” Auntie Khar Imm said in Mandarin. “Make more then wake up earlier.” Which made perfect sense, of course. I was reminded of the futility of my pineapple tart interrogations. Perhaps I needed to not focus so much on the specifics of time and quantities. Living in New York, in all the jobs that I had had, I had found it hard not to be consumed with minutiae. When exactly was something supposed to happen? What exactly was to happen? What exactly were the details of Every Single Thing? I always needed to know—for work and also for my own sanity—before embarking on anything. Perhaps this had been the wrong approach to cooking all along. Perhaps it was time to start letting go.

With this new determination, the reformed, loosey-goosey me bellied up to the counter, ready to help. At first, this involved a great deal of watching. I watched Auntie Khar Imm mince the garlic cloves. I watched her dice the softened mushrooms. I watched her run the shallots through a food processor. Then I watched her bring a pot of water to boil, placing the pork belly and chunk of pork leg into the water for a quick boiling. After a few minutes, she whipped out a sharp chopstick and gestured for me to look as she jabbed it into the pork to see if it was cooked enough. “If it can go through easily, it’s done,” she said. I’d always wondered how seasoned cooks gauged how meat was done. In my own kitchen, my eagle-eyed staring at a grilling pork chop or simmering chicken never seemed to work out quite right. As I’d watch my guests start eating, I was never able to shake the feeling that, somehow, my meat had ended up overcooked or undercooked. (Eventually, I started delegating the monitoring of meat doneness to Mike—I just couldn’t handle the stress.)

“You don’t want it fully cooked,” Auntie Khar Imm warned, as she carefully hoisted the pork slabs out of the newly cloudy water. “You just want it cooked enough so it makes it easier to chop.” As I watched her chop up the pork belly with grace and ease, it looked simple. So I volunteered to take over and do the rest. Of course, the moment she handed the knife to me, chopping turned out to be anything but easy. Between wrestling with the squishy and slightly slimy pork belly while trying to angle the slender knife to slice the meat and worrying about using too much force and sending the round wooden chopping board flying off the counter, I was managing to cut up about five little cubes of pork a minute. (Or so it felt.) Auntie Khar Imm didn’t say anything. I didn’t dare look up to meet her eyes. If I had wondered before whether she doubted that I’d ever actually cooked anything in my life, I was pretty sure this display was confirming it all. Patiently, however, she watched. And slowly, I plodded, dicing and slicing until an eternity had passed and a mound of cubed meat lay before me. I’m convinced that process took about three hours—but I was feeling good about my meat. In fact, I was so pleased with myself that I stopped to take a picture.

Next, Auntie Khar Imm grabbed a massive bottle of cooking oil and turned it over, sending large ribbons of yellow into a large wok. I called out, asking her to stop and tell me how much oil she was putting in. And once again, the
a
words tumbled out.
“Aiyah, agak-agak lah!”
she said. “If you use more garlic, then you use more oil.” Which, of course, made perfect sense. Sort of. Until I started to think
But how much garlic should I be using? Is ten cloves enough? Not enough?
I was still determined to learn how to make the perfect
bak-zhang,
and my head was nearly exploding from trying to conjure precision from the imprecise. I reminded myself to breathe and let go. But not before staring really hard at the oil in the wok and thinking that the amount looked an awful lot like about a quarter of a cup. Slowly, it seemed, I was learning to
agak-agak
.