On family recipes

and why they die.

People always ask me how I learned to cook Cantonese food, which never made sense to me because I was around it all the time. When I was a child, my tiny fingers were used to pleat dumplings and roll spring rolls. In lieu of toys, my dad would show me how to season sauces and finish dishes. I’d watch him steam fish, pour boiling oil over aromatics, poach whole chickens and smash through their bones with a cleaver in a Chinese newspaper-covered corner that resembled Dexter’s kill room.

In a very irresponsible way, the process was very much: see one, do one, you’re on your own.

I also ate a lot of Cantonese food. I knew which flavours and textures complemented each other. I knew when too many ingredients would cool down a wok. I could see when something was under or over done. I could tell when something wasn’t quite right.

I just knew.

So, when it came to feeding myself when I moved out of home, I cooked Cantonese food. I would buy my rice in gigantic sacks I could barely carry from Asian grocers. I’d stalk the markets for cheap, seasonal produce and proteins that were on special in the meat hall. I’d go to Asian butchers and ask them to set aside quantities of offal for me.

It wasn’t until I moved into a share house that I realised that normal people didn’t cook. I had a housemate who lived off toast and anything you could spread on toast. One housemate survived on tinned things and whatever he could steal from the rest of us in the communal fridge. Another housemate relied on their brother dropping them burgers from Grill’d every time he finished his shift, and would ration them until their brother’s next shift.

The biggest shock of all was when I lived with another Asian and she had no idea how to cook anything. Her speciality was doing the dishes and getting all her sustenance from jaffles. Her parents would drive to our place once a week and drop off endless containers of food for her while making her a meal in our own home.