Archive for the 'Highlights from Previous Posts' Category

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

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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.

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