Archive for the 'Curious Legacies' Category

I’ve never appreciated roast turkey with all the trimmings. I find it bland and lacking in celebratory festiveness. I am especially not fond of brussel sprouts! So the traditional Christmas meal is a bit of an ordeal for me. Which is not to say I don’t like turkey as such. We often eat turkey steak or turkey escalope or diced turkey throughout the year - but cooked with wine Italian-style or soy sauce or curry Asian-style.

The problem with the traditional roast turkey meal for me is that when I was a child in Malaysia, Christmas food was just so much more - more tasty, more spicy, more varied, more exciting. We would spend Christmas with my grandparents in Taiping and the preparations would start weeks in advance. As a child, I never was aware of all the effort and hard work that Grandma put into it - with the help of all the aunties, great-aunties, cousins and second cousins all over Taiping. But everyone in the large extended family would have got involved in the vast cooking marathon that would have been needed to lay on the feast that fed over a hundred people.

In the heat of the tropics, we would have a full-blown Christian Christmas, complete with tree, Santa and carols.

The kids’ job was to decorate the house. The older second cousins would be in charge - tall, good-looking Paul who seemed so grown up to us and broad-shouldered, grinning Jason. They would be the ones up the ladders stringing the paper chains, placing the balls on the higher reaches of the Christmas tree. We younger kids would drape tinsel on the lower branches of the tree, balance cards on shelves.

On the day of the big party itself, the living room would be cleared and chairs set out for the carol service. There would be a churchful of people in there, singing our hearts out. One of the fat great-uncles would always dress up as Santa in the red suit and jolly mask, arriving at the end of the service when the lights went out. He would have a sack full of presents and ho-ho-ho his way round the room, scaring the babies with the strange staring mask.

But when it came to the food, we celebrated Malaysian-style - with curries and spicy fried dishes, rice and satay: and enough to feed an army. Memories of delicious Asia will always be associated with festivities and celebration for me so a pallid turkey for Christmas, no matter how moist you might claim it is or how Christmas-y just does not do it for me at all.

What are your memories of childhood Christmases? Please add a comment and let me know!

Photo: thanks to Mr_Woo from flickr.com (CCL)

Say Lee added a comment to my post about his blog last week, mentioning old fashioned games that he used to play as a child like spinning tops and collecting bottle caps. It started me thinking back to all the home-made games we used to play as kids in Malaysia. We had our share of Action Man and Barbie doll toys, Lego and toy cars etc so we were fortunate kids in that respect. However, we also had fun playing with home-made gadgets and toys, especially with other kids at school or cousins we visited in my mother’s hometown in Taiping.

Recently, my mum was clearing out our cupboards at home in KL and found a packet of “five stones” right at the back. “Five stones” is a picking up game rather like jacks but instead of a bouncy ball and plastic bits to pick up, you play with cloth-sewn packets of dried rice the size of marbles. You scatter them on the floor, pick one up and throw that into the air - while it’s in the air, you pick up each of the remaining four packets in different sequences, catching the flying one at the end of each move. These ones that my mum found were made out of cloth from old pyjamas and must be over 30 years old! They are rather manky and I’m a bit nervous about picking them up in case they crumble to dust in my hands. She had brought them over instead of chucking them straight in the bin because it was amazing that they had survived all these years and it was fun for us all to look back at those days together.

I would play “five stones” with my friends in break time at school in KL, sitting in a circle on the cement floor. We also used to play a skipping game with a “rope” made out of rubber bands woven together - I was never very good at that, not being terribly well co-ordinated, but I remember enjoying stringing the rubber bands together and marvelling at how a cluster of these little things could become a long rope.

When we were a bit older, there was that paper game where you folded a piece of paper into an opening and closing flower and wrote a “prediction” in different quadrants. Holding it in your two hands, you’d ask someone to pick one of the four colours you had coloured in on the top and then spell the colour out as you opened and closed the “flower”. They would then un-leaf a petal where the last word landed and find their future “predicted” underneath. I have no idea what the paper thingy game is called but I loved creating different flowers with different predictions and colours.

I guess these are all girly games. I wonder if they are still played in my old school back in KL (Bukit Bintang Girls Shool 2). Or perhaps other home-made games have been invented since then. Can anyone tell me?

UPDATE: Oh wow, I was just searching the internet to find a picture of “five stones” and the Singapore Museum shop is selling a set (with pouch) as “traditional toys” for S$8.00! The online store description says: “Five stones (or four, if you prefer) would be played by a group of children sitting in a circle in the hot afternoons and taking turns to throw the stones in the air, catching them with one hand, in a variety of patterns.”

I wonder if they’d like to receive my historic, genuine antique “five stones” to display in the museum?

Marina Mahathir, the internationally respected Malaysian writer and journalist, circulated an email to Malaysian bloggers for International Womens Day. She writes, “March 8 is International Women’s Day. In solidarity with women all over the world, we would like to invite all Malaysian women bloggers ( and pro-women men bloggers) to celebrate this special day by appending the attached IWD logo and linking your blogsite to the IWD website (this is a condition of using the logo) at http://www.internationalwomensday.com. We would also like you to dedicate a post (or more) to yourself, the women in your lives or simply to ruminate on the state of women today. Let’s do it collectively and simultaneously on March 8.”

This post is dedicated to the eldest daughters who came before me.

My Grandma, my Mum’s mother, had always been for me a strong, dignified presence in the family. We did not always see eye to eye and as a girl, I sulked whenever she tried to correct my posture whenever I slouched. But I always loved and respected her and loved to hear the stories she would tell about her childhood in China, the clever eldest daughter of a Presbyterian minister. She passed on that love of storytelling to my Mum, her eldest daughter, who also filled my childhood with stories about her own childhood, about our family and also about the books she had read and the films she had seen.

I did not know my Great-Grandmother very well although she lived till I was a young teenager. She spoke Teochew, a dialect of Chinese that I did not speak and I was most comfortable communicating in English. The strongest image I have of her is the story that Grandma told me of how her mother was a young girl washing clothes in a river in China when my Great-Grandfather, a young man studying at the nearby seminary, came upon her while on a walk with his friends. Their eyes met across the dancing waters and well, here we all are, generations later.

I found this photo below of the four eldest daughters. On the far left is my mother, aged 24 at the time. Next to her is my Great-Grandmother, Grandma’s mother, who would have been around 80 then. Then there’s Grandma in the polka dot cheong sam, aged 49. Finally, there is me - just under 1 year old then. Today, I am not far off the age Grandma was at the time of the photo - but still slouching, I’m afraid.

Grandma loved this photo of us all and she would often look at it with me over the years. She would say to me, “You are the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter.” It makes me feel proud still.

This post continues my series on potato recipes, inspired by the International Association for Potatoes and Onions as a Main Dish.

Years ago, my favourite restaurant used to be Nineteen at 19 Mossop Street where I used to go with my then-boyfriend Jean-Paul (not his real name). It was just off Sloane Avenue and seemed THE place to be as young would-be yuppies back in ’80s London. There were lots of dashing young men in button-down shirts and ties with willowy young women in Hermes scarves and Alice bands - it was a subset of ’80s youth culture: preppy style as interpreted via Oxbridge. The restaurant seems to have burnt down. Jean-Paul is now a leading commercial law QC at chambers in Inner Temple with a family of his own and as you know, I’ve become somewhat more arty, boho and alternative in my lifestyle choices.

Anyway, Nineteen did a great Potatoes Dauphinoise dish, which is essentially potatoes and onions - but not as a main dish. I’ve been adapting it incrementally over the years and it’s most recent incarnation in my kitchen (this weekend, in fact) turned out as follows:

1. In a medium-deep dish (deep enough for 3-4 layers of sliced potatoes) lay down a layer of sliced potatoes - 2 each per person is about right.

2. Then spread a layer of sliced onions (full or half rings; red onions add great colour) and chopped garlic.

3. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and dried herbs (rosemary or thyme or sage or mixed herbs or herbs de provence or whatever of your choice) and dot small knobs of butter around.

4. Repeat 1, 2 and 3 until the dish is almost full to the brim.

5. Add the final layer of sliced potatoes on top. Repeat 3.

6. Add a small pot of cream (single is fine, double is extra yummy and if you’re watching your weight, skimmed milk will just about do)

7. Drizzle olive oil evenly over the whole lot.

8. Bake in medium oven for an hour.

You should have crispy, golden brown potatoes on the top and succulent, flavourful soft potatoes underneath saturated with a delicious flavour of herbs and cream and onions. I think, technically, you’re meant to add grated cheese on top - which would be very yummy, too - but I don’t.

You could eat this dish as a main meal on its own, I suppose, but for the truly gourmand experience I’d recommend having it with grilled steak…

Photo: thanks to the b bc

My father has recently been inspired into a spate of creative activity. He submitted a Fusion Story a little while back, about his first experience of coming to study in England. He is of that generation of men - particularly in the Chinese tradition - who were never encouraged to share personal moments publicly. And he has never been known to write much creatively. So I am really touched that recently, he has been sharing his personal reminiscences with us in writing - and really proud of him.

This piece about his grandmother also gives us a flavour of a Malaya of a different time - before the freeways and high rise buildings and Starbucks.

He writes:

My earliest memory of Grandmother was when I was four or five when we moved to Cheras. I had gone with her to clean the house before the family moved in. Some day she would buy durians from the Malay vendors who came with a huge basket of the fruits stacked on the back of his bicycle. We would eat them squatting at the front door. She was very fond of durians.

In the little garden in the front of the Cheras house there was a pomegranate tree to which she seemed very attached. She would water it with water which had been used to clean fish and would hang empty crab-shells on the branches because they would help the tree. It seldom bore fruit and when it did she was very pleased with it.

She doted on his grandsons and I think particularly me. She would make sure to buy Nyonya kuih from the Indian vendor who would come around with his 2 huge baskets on a pole across his shoulder hawking his wares. And very often he had a pot containing assam curry with a charcoal stove underneath it - for making assam laksa. A word about this Indian gentleman. He was already quite old then, I would say at a guess about 50 years. He would carry these two baskets and the pot and walked many miles a day to sell his food. It must really be a very hard life. I still remember his gaunt but cheerful face wearing a brown felt hat like an inverted flower pot. He would disappear every now and then for 3 months or so and then he would appear again saying that he had gone back to India.

There are two things which Grandmother wanted me to do which caused me some pain - as little boys would have when they are asked to do things which caused them to stand out amongst their peers. The first was to part my hair on the right side because she said that if I used the left side all the time, the hair along the line would drop out. The second was to wear braces to hold up my shorts. It was, of course, a sensible thing to do but little boys did not do sensible things when the others do not do it. I can’t remember how I got her to allow me to revert back to normal. May be I complained to Mother who must have stepped in.

She would tell very earthy stories to AHC and I heard some of them which I can still remember but it is not suitable for re-telling as my secretary types all my letters.

When Mother went out with Father she would bring back Hokkien mee about 11.00 at night and Grandmother would eat the mee with me in the bedroom. As far as I can remember my brother BT never joined in the eating. Was it because of my known greedy nature that I was that she woke me up. Grandmother was full of common sense and it was she who told us that Queen Victoria had lots of children whom she married off to all the royal houses in Europe and thus she was related to them making the likelihood of disputes or war less likely. (Although it did not prevent the First World War.)

I had always thought she had a noble face with good cheekbones and bone structure. She did not chew betel nut but she smoked self-rolled cigarettes but did not have the dirty habits of the smoker. I remember using up my savings of Japanese paper money to buy her, just before the Japanese surrender, tobacco in packets and the cigarette paper.

Later on when we were in secondary school she lived in the Imbi Road temple and we would see her when we visited the temple on the first and fifteenth day of the Chinese month and other feast days of the Gods. Still later on when she lived on top of the dispensary we would see her on Friday evenings after going to the Rex and Madras cinemas.

She was so effacing that she would not stay with anyone of us for fear of disturbing our lives. I remember saying to myself on her death which occurred on a Saturday that she is so understanding that she would not want to inconvenience anyone and have them to take leave to come to her funeral.

Written by Guestblogger: Ooi Boon-Leong

When I was growing up in Malaysia, we always had tasty, spicy, aromatic food. Day in, day out. Garlic. Chilli. Turmeric. And for fruit we always had delicious, flavour-ful mangoes, papayas, rambutans, starfruits. Dripping and juicy with taste. So far so ho-hum.

What we craved was really exotic and exciting foreign food, dishes that were really difficult to achieve in the humid tropical heat. Tastes that involved dairy and foodstuffs that would go off in the rank mugginess. Fruits that were from a cooler climate.

Like lemon meringue pie. Specifically, the home-made lemon meringue pie made by Koo-cheh, my little aunt. She was my father’s youngest aunt and came to live with us with my grandmother when my grandfather died. Kooch was only ten years older than me and she was my favourite aunt. The family called her Mary Poppins as she could always be relied on to keep an eye on us kids.

Making lemon meringue pie in a hot sticky kitchen in the tropics is no joke. It was hugely labour intensive because you had to make each of the three components from scratch. Once a year, for a special occasion, Kooch would spend a whole day in the furnace to make this exquisite dessert. She would make the shortcrust pastry base and bake it blind, with a layer of grease-proffo paper and dried beans to weight down the rising crust. Then she would make the lemon filling, grating the rind of two lemons and boiling it up in their juices, adding sugar and egg yolks and cornflour. She would fill the cooked pastry base with the gluey liquid and let it set.

Finally, she would beat the egg whites with sugar to form a thick, mountainous white fluff that she spooned over the whole lot and the pie would go into the oven to brown the meringue. Later, it would cool on the counter, protected from flies by a half-domed basket and then go into the fridge.

That evening, we would all be abuzz, my parents, grandmother and us kids, saving space for dessert. She would finally bring out the pie and and slice into the soft cloud of meringue, cut down into the rich yellow of the lemon and at last, into the crumbly crustiness of the base. No shop bought lemon meringue pie has ever compared to this home-made tangy, fresh taste blended with the bubbly yet crunchy yet chewy foam of meringue and the bland buttery taste of the baste, all cool and fresh on our palates.

We would regularly beg Kooch to make the pie but she would refuse. When I thnk back on it, she would have been around 17 or 18 and with better things to do than spend hot days cooking for her greedy family. We were lucky she made it for us once a year! But, this reluctance made her a legend in the family at that young age, like a five-star Michelin chef who would only occasionally deign to make her signature dish - and then only when the whim struck her.

Kooch now lives in Canada with her own kids who are around 17 or 18. I have the old Penguin Cookbook of hers, the pages brown and fragile and falling apart. I’ve made lemon meringue pice form there and it always, consistently tastes just as good as if we were tasting it for the first time. This is partly because I’ve only ever made it once every 8 years or more - it is that labour intensive. Or perhaps I’m that lazy…

Still, no matter if I make it or anyone else does, to my family and me, it will always be known as Kooch’s lemon meringue pie.

When I was a child in Malaysia, my father would sometimes take us to the Club for Sunday lunch. The Club was an old, low slung wooden building in central Kuala Lumpur, with a long verandah and cane easy chairs. It used to belong to the British, a cross between a gentlemen’s club and a cricket pavilion. You could sit on the verandah with your gin sling and watch the chaps on the padang (the green) in their cricket whites bowling and making runs. The Moorish-style court and government buildings stretched across the green, a backdrop to the game. To the left was the small white Anglican chapel, in the shade of the raintrees. For the British, it must have been home away from home, laid out like any Engligh village - the town hall, church and pub around a village green.

My father would take us to the dining room, where the doors opened out onto the verandah. I remember white table cloths and side plates and knives and forks. There would be curled pats of cold butter in a small plate, gathering dew in the heat. We got soft, white rolls to start. It was all very Western and strange. My mother showed us how to tear the rolls and smear on a dab of butter, keeping the side plate on the side at all times.

I always had Chicken a la King - dainty pieces of skinless chicken breast in a white sauce with red peppers, served with buttered rice. The waiter would come round with a two trayed dish, the rice in one hollow and the chicken in the other. He would painstakingly dish the rice onto my plate with a spoon and fork held in one hand and then painstakingly dish the creamy meat onto the rice. It seemed to me a very inefficent way to serve the meal - why didn’t they just put it all onto my plate in the kitchen and bring it out to me? Or, as the Chinese would do, plonk a bowl of rice and a bowl of chicken on the table and I could help myself?

They served Chicken a la King in two other ex-colonial places, the Golf Club and the Coq D’Or. My father didn’t play golf but we kids loved the huge swimming pools at the Golf Club. The Coq D’Or was in an old Chinese-style mansion and seemed to my childish eyes the height of smart back then in the ’sixties. These were the sorts of places where the waiters wore white jackets and people drank aperitifs and wine. So, Chicken a la King seemed to me the epitome of Englishness.

When I came to England later, no restaurants served Chicken a la King. No English person I met had ever heard of it. How could this be? I was mystified and felt cheated. How could England be England without Chicken a la King?

And then I met my partner. I was in my thirties by now. We were coming up to the end of the millenium and soon, London would be gearing up for its grand New Year celebrations. Angie is from South Africa and when I told her about our Sunday lunches at the old colonial club where Chicken a la King was my favourite meal, she cried, "My father used to take us to the club on Sundays as well. And they had Chicken a la King there!"

In damp, drizzly London we compared notes from our childhoods. There I was in the heavy, close heat of the tropics and there she was in the dry, dusty African heat, both sitting at linen-clad tables with doors that opened out onto the verandah. A Chinese or Malay waiter with caramel skin spooned my meal while a dark Indian spooned hers. Both wore white jackets. Out in the sun, thousands of miles a part, men in white played cricket. Her father had been a young Englishman from Blackpool who had gone out to Africa to find a new life in the colonies. There in Durban, he could belong to a club, own a big house, be someone. My father was just starting out as a lawyer in newly Independent Malaya. With the British gone, he now could belong to the club that had once excluded him, own a big house, be someone.

Angie is also the only other person I know in England who likes evaporated milk in her tea and coffee - and who has ever had canned peaches in evaporated milk. Tins of Carnation milk. They must have been stock supplies for the British out in their far flung colonies. In countries where dairy products are rare because of the heat, Carnation milk must have been for the British the taste of home. And our creamy favourite Chicken a la King was probably originally made with evaporated milk. It strikes me that my generation is probably the last that will remember the quirks of the Empire.

So, for future generations, here is the recipe for Chicken a la King (adapted for cooking in the UK):

1. Boil skinless chicken breasts until cooked. One breast per person.
2. Remove cooked breasts from water. Do not throw away the water - we will use it to cook the rice. Cut the breasts into small pieces eg one inch cubes.
3. Cook white rice as you would normally, using the stock from the boiled chicken instead of water. (If there’s not enough stock, top it up with water).
4. Fry chopped garlic and chopped red peppers in butter until soft. Remove from frying pan.
5. Pour a large pot of double cream into the frying pan and heat slowly. When it starts to bubble, simmer until the quantity has been reduced to about half the original volume.
6. Put the fried garlic, red peppers and cooked chicken pieces into the reduced cream. Add salt and pepper and a dash of sherry. Cook for a few minutes to let the flavours settle into each other.
7. When the rice is cooked, stir into it a knob of butter.
8. Serve the rice with the chicken. Singing "Rule Britannia" before tucking in is not obligatory.

pic from flickr by Kenneth Kiffer; non-commercial use only.

[View of the administrative building across the padang from the Club]

Not many people know this but I was born again once. It was during a difficult and troubled period in my 20s when I hoped that God might save me from myself. I fell in with some American evangelists based in West London - wholesome, clean cut and corn fed young men and women from the mid-West who all looked like they had stepped out of a Doris Day movie and might break into song and dance at any moment. They were great ads for cheerful, healthy living - and perhaps that was what drew me to them. They attributed it to the blessings of the Lord but it might just as easily have been a healthy diet, the love of their close-knit families and lots of fresh air and exercise.

So I hung out and enjoyed their community activities - or fellowship, to use the correct terminology - but, after awhile, I died again. However, a delight that still remains in my life from that period is Sunshine Tea. Anna (not her real name) was one of the lay leaders. Her role was to evangelise and mentor the young women who came to the church. She was wholesome and charming in that open prairie and "Oh, what a beautiful morning" way that only Americans can be. She talked to me about many spiritual things but the only thing I can remember is her recipe for Sunshine Tea.

In the summer, her Mom would put a jug of fresh water with two teabags out in the morning sun (and here, I’m picturing one of those white wooden houses with a porch and a swing). The sunlight would filter through the tea and after a couple of hours, Mom would put it in the fridge (presumably one of those giant ones with the ice machine in the front). And when the family came in throughout the day (okay, now it’s the Waltons running through the house in dungarees), there’d be iced tea without the scum on top if you had used hot water.

At that time, I lived in a flat in Central London and if I had put a jug out on the balcony, I would have got Carbon Monoxide Tea. So I skipped the sunshine part and put it straight in the fridge - and that works fine. I’ve also adapted it, using herbal teas instead of regular tea - strawberry or blackcurrant and vanilla work very well.

I still make Sunshine Tea now in the summer and it’s great after a long day out in the prairie working in the garden. Since I died again, I don’t go to church or sing happy clappy songs and I don’t call it praying but when I’m in my garden or walking in nature, I feel the tranquility of it all and that’s God enough for me.

You come into the kitchen and find your boyfriend with a hairdryer blowing hot air up a dead duck.

Do you:

a) Back slowly out of the room and leave him to it - who are you to judge?

b) Grab your coat and leave, never to return

or

c) Pull out your box of sex toys from under the bed, gleefully crying, "Let’s play!"

I did none of the above but grabbed my camera instead. You never know when these pictures might come in useful…

It was my second year at Uni and Josh (not his real name) and I had been going out for almost a year. I was living in a shared house with 9 other girls from my college and back in those days, we liked to play at being grown up. A number of us and our men were throwing a dinner party and each couple had the responsibility for one of the courses. Josh and I had taken on the big job of the main course.

Josh and I had been great friends but this girlfriend-boyfriend thing did not really play to our strengths. The one strong bond we did have, though, was our love of food. I had brought a wok over from Malaysia and most weeks, I cooked curries and other Malaysian dishes involving lots of garlic and ginger. We had tropical dinner parties in the winter when I turned up the heating and made all my friends wear Hawaiian shirts or sarongs. We would eat nasi lemak on the floor, scooping the chillied prawns and coconut rice with our hands. In the days before many English people had heard of Thai green curry and chicken tikka massala, my Malaysian food was highly exotic.

And so it seemed was I. Josh took me home to meet his parents and family for his 21st birthday. At the party, his uncle made a speech about Josh’s love of travel and adventure and referred to me as "a dusky maiden" he had brought back - sort of like Christian Fletcher with a Tahitian girl over his shoulder.

So, the day of the big dinner party, it felt very exotic to me to have a man cook for me. Not just any man, but my man. It was the ’80s and the New Man was just emerging - I guess, from our generation, with guys like Josh. He was going to make Duck in Blackcurrant Sauce, which he had learnt from his mother. The key to making it crispy, he said, was to make sure that the skin was very dry - hence the hairdryer.

As it was the ’80s, we all changed for dinner, the men wearing formal black tie and dinner jackets and us girls in our loveliest cocktail dresses. It took me ages to clean the grease off the hairdryer and make sure none of it got in my hair or on my clothes! After all that effort, I am pleased to report that the duck was delicious and the dinner party as a huge success.

It didn’t work out between Josh and me and we lost touch for almost twenty years. Then one day, I was checking up on The Flame Tree listing on Amazon and he had posted a review on there. I emailed him: "Josh, is that you?" It turned out he is now a respectable banker in the City, about two buildings away from my office. We go out for lunch every so often and it feels right that we have become friends again.

I asked him about this recipe the other day and he said that he had not made it since that day. I had been making it ever since and every time I’ve made it I’ve thought of him.

So here is the recipe for Hairdryer Duck with Blackcurrant Sauce, adapted over time to my Eastern taste:
THE DUCK
1. Take one duck. Remove giblets from inside, cut off neck and parsons nose and any excess hanging bits of skin - save for making the sauce.
2. Place duck breast down on a baking tray in shallow water. Season with a dash of soy sauce (also adds a nice browning colour), pepper and mixed herbs.
3. Roast in oven at 180 degrees for 1 hour, then turn it and season breast side as above. Roast for another 1 hour.

THE SAUCE
4. Meanwhile, in a mug mix the following: a sachet of miso soup powder (much better than other powder stock); 3-4 generous teaspoonfuls of blackcurrant jam (raspberry or blackberry will do too); lots of soy sauce (I just shake it in until it looks right but let’s say, 5 or more tablespoons). I also add a teaspoon of Chinese chilli oil - it’s a shrimp based chilli oil that gives a good kick but if you don’t want it spicy you can leave it out. Now, mix up the whole lot in the mug with hot water to make a mugful of "soup".
5. Chop garlic (4 cloves) and in a medium pot fry the garlic for a minute or so in a mixture of butter (one generous knob) and olive oil (enough to coat the bottom of the pot).
6. Throw in the giblets and other bits and brown - about 30 seconds to a minute - stirring to get an even tan.
7. Pour in the mugful of "soup". Pour in a generous dose of red wine - quarter of a bottle should do it. Pour in a generous portion of port - up to you how much.
8. Bring to boil and then cover and let it simmer at a low heat. Simmer for 45 mins and then turn it off.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
9. When the duck is done, take it out of the oven and off the tray. Cut into portions as required.
10. Heat up the sauce. Take out the giblets and bits.
11. Serve with potatoes or rice. I find rice soaks up the sauce much better than potatoes.
12. I leave you to choose the greens to go with it but I like pak choi fried in garlic and a dash of soy sauce.
posted by: Yang-May Ooi

I’ve been collecting notes for a memoir of my childhood growing up in Malaysia and my coming of age in England. I got to thinking about all the people who have been in my life. Some of them, like my family, are a part of me and others, like friends and my partner, have become an important part of my life. Others have come and gone or just passed through. But many have left something behind - curious legacies that, taken together, make up the fabric of who I am. In these notes, I write about some of these curious legacies. Today: My Grandmother’ Recipe for Soy Sauce Chicken

~~~~

Just after Grandma died, I was in my flat in London and trying to remember how she made crispy garlic sprinkles to go on top of fried noodles. She had a great shortcut for it - she would put the chopped garlic in a jamjar of oil and put it in the microwave. I couldn’t remember if you were meant to cover it or how long you put it in for. I was about to pick up the phone to call her when I remembered she was gone.

Grandma had grown up in a small village in China, the eldest daugher of Reverend Quek. When I learnt the phrase "poor as church mice" at school, I pictured the Quek family of mice in Swatow. She told us stories of cold winters and walking to school through the fields, drawing water from the well and sewing her own clothes. Throughout her life, even after my grandfather’s success as a doctor gave the family a comfortable home, she was prudent with money and was shocked by extravagances. She did tasty things with leftovers and nagged us not to waste our food.

But there were also the stories of being top of her class at medical school, after the Quek family moved to Singapore where my great-grandfather was sent as a Presbyterian missionary, and being the first family in Taiping, where she and grandfather lived after they married, to buy an imported washing machine from abroad. My grandfather was the love of her life and together they travelled in the West as much as they could and brought back with them to Malaysia, the latest ideas and innovations. My grandfather imported a car from America, bought a 16mm movie camera, mail-ordered books from England. Grandma, blending innovation with her sensible nature, made dresses and shirts at home for her children based on the latest patterns and designs worn in America and England. Later on in her old age, she had a microwave and non-stick wok long before any of us "kids" did.

My favourite story about Grandma, though, is the one where she is still in Swatow, aged around seven. At her little village school, her teacher was unfairly dismissed by the headmistress - the reason behind it is now lost. Grandma was upset and wanted to make her protest known. She talked about it with her father and the Reverend said to her that she must act according to her conscience. The next day, she led the whole school in a protest march to the next village. The teacher was reinstated. There is something modern, daring and powerful about this image of a little girl who had the courage to make a stand.

I used this story in THE FLAME TREE to show Jasmine’s strength of character. But I didn’t think readers would believe it if I made this happen when Jasmine was seven. So, in the fiction of the novel, I made her older!

Grandma left us many recipes for dishes that have been in the family for years. They are old-fashioned and labour intensive, involving a lot of chopping and slicing and marinading to get just the right texture and just the right taste. In truth, I don’t think I have the hours it can take to make many of them in their original form in my hectic life in London. But I can say that the most useful recipe Grandma left me is not really a dish but an attitude of mind. It’s about adapting and innovating, taking what is safe and familiar and making it your own, moving with the times but on your own terms.

So here is the recipe that is Grandma’s legacy to me:

Take pieces of chicken, chopped garlic and ginger and place in an oven proof bowl. Mix in soy sauce and ginger wine and some pepper. Cover with a lid or tin foil. Put in oven and cook at 180 degrees for 1.5 hours, opening it in the last half hour to brown the chicken.

Serve with rice and pak choi fried with garlic and a dash of soy sauce.

Human input time: 20 mins. It certainly beats doing it the old fashioned way standing at the iron wok sweatily frying for ages and stinking up my home with grease and smoke! It tastes pretty good, too.

**************

Subscribe to Yang-May Ooi’s Lit Blog