I've never cooked so much before. My favorite food is spaghetti dipped in pasta sauce. Add frozen meatballs and homemade garlic bread to make it extra special.
This lack of cooking skills was unexpected and disappointing as both my parents were excellent cooks.
My father, Fung (Tony) Wong, worked for three decades as a chef at Chinese-American restaurants in the metro area, including LaJoy's and Silver Dragon in Milwaukee, Ming Garden in Shorewood, and Paradise Gardens in Wauwatos. He and my mother Susie owned Chopsticks at 54th and Center in Milwaukee for ten years before my father retired in 1994. I also worked in the canteen at Maria's hospital. Joseph nearly a quarter of a century before retiring in 2003.
While my father was a professional restaurant chef, my mother was an excellent home cook, cooking delicious meals for me and my three older brothers. Unfortunately, my parents' cooking skills never reached me.
In my nearly 30-year newspaper career, I worked a second shift so I rarely showed up at home for dinner, meaning I didn't have much opportunity or need to cook. My husband and I eat a lot. I performed several times a week before the pandemic hit.
While I can cook a decent amount of food for holidays or summer picnics and make desserts, regular home cooking is not a must.
As is typical for most Chinese parents, my parents cooked as a token of love. This meant that even as an adult, they would cook me gourmet meals every Tuesday, giving me enough food for the whole week.
When I run out of leftovers and want Asian food, I eat steamed eggs, iceberg lettuce in oyster sauce, and Chinese sausage served with boiled rice. This is about my Chinese cuisine. I didn't have the skills, knowledge or motivation to delve into the intimidating world of authentic Cantonese cuisine.
Everything changed on March 15, 2020 when my father died at the age of 90.
My parents moved to a nursing home after my mother had a stroke in 2018. At the time of his father's death, the COVID-19 pandemic had just begun and nursing homes had halted long-term visits. We brought my mother to my home for her health, safety and happiness and she has been living with me and my husband ever since.
Now I have to figure out how to feed them healthy and tasty seven days a week. A great spaghetti dinner will not work. Although my mother sometimes disliked Western food, she really liked Chinese food and wanted to eat it regularly.
So, out of necessity, I dived into Chinese cooking.
It used to be a simple meal prepared from memory, trying to replicate the dishes my parents had prepared over the years. For example ham porridge (rice porridge) with canned egg, stuffed shrimp and peppers and crab omelet.
My parents cooked without a recipe and my father never wrote or gave instructions. This is how the internet became my resource. I searched the internet for the recipe for the dish I wanted to make, searched dozens, and then found one that matched my parents' cooking method. After tweaking the recipe to my liking, I wrote down the instructions, printed them out, and placed them in my growing Chinese recipe folder.
As my level of comfort and confidence grew, I moved on to bolder dishes like sweet and sour pork in homemade gravy, shrimp in lobster sauce, and Cantonese chow mein with seafood. To avoid repeating my food week after week, I expanded my repertoire from American Chinese to more authentic Cantonese and Hong Kong dishes. (My parents were born in Guangdong in southern China, formerly known as Canton, and my siblings and I were born in Hong Kong. We immigrated to the United States in 1963.)
Some of these new exercises were dishes that my father, a professional chef, had neither tried nor mastered. Dishes like beef tendon and dakona soup, crispy pork broth, roast pork, and steamed dim sum like Chinese stuffed eggplant.
I also tried to make sweets like those served in confectioneries in Hong Kong. Tofu pudding with ginger syrup, sweet potatoes, ginger soup and steamed custard. And for my first try, I baked macaroons from scratch, which were way tastier than store-bought Chinese restaurants.
Fearless now, and with years of experience, I set my sights on more refined dishes: roast duck, tripe, beef noodle buns, steamed buns, and deep-fried Chinese pastries like congee krullers. The only limit for me was time: Feeding for hours every day and rehab with mom were priorities.
I was fortunate that I had more successes than failures. But of course there are obstacles on the way. I bought a large radish for my first try at fried radish, a tasty snack served at dim sum restaurants. This makes about triple the amount of horseradish that the recipe called for, so I doubled the recipe significantly.
It made a lot of batter so I ended up with very large tubs of cabbage noodles that took over 2 hours to heat up. It was 3am when I finished, but it was worth the effort. You were perfect.
It wasn't long before the next time I tried the recipe, the kale pies were too thick. So back to lackluster workouts for me.
Although I didn't have my father's recipes, I inherited his trusty stainless steel skillet (although I used a non-stick skillet for convenience) as well as a set of used sickles and tools from the closet. These include a liter of Kikkoman Soy Sauce, homemade tangerine peel, bean noodles, dry salted black beans, star anise, fermented red beans, five spice powder and more.
A few years ago I didn't know what to do with most things. Today they are an indispensable part of my kitchen.
My mother can no longer cook due to physical limitations, but she helped provide detailed instructions for some of her homemade meals, such as: His guidance is invaluable.
To my surprise, I have good taste and I know how this dish should taste and look like. As long as I use the recipe as a base, I cook it exactly how I like it. Every time I make a dish it changes size (which is very different from the usual cakes I make). It's not good, is it? Add some oyster sauce. Still not good? Add another tablespoon of fermented black beans.
Nobody was as surprised and delighted by my newfound cooking skills as my mother. His eyes light up when his favorite dish is served to him. And when I was rinsing his plate after a particularly delicious meal, he smiled and said "Ho mi" in Cantonese, which means "good" or "good taste." I know I did very well back then.
Last year my mother gave me the biggest compliment that I cook better than my father. I was surprised. Anyone who has tasted my father's dishes knows what a compliment that is.
Today, when I cook one of my father's specialties, like chicken wings in soy sauce, shrimp in tomato sauce, or boiled chicken with potatoes, I feel great. How amazing I am that he - such a wonderful chef - created a dish that is as delicious as it is.
I have no explanation for how I went from non-chef to real Chinese chef in such a short time. Is it osmosis? All those hours the kid spent in the kitchen while my parents cooked dinner? Or 10 years working the lunch shift at her restaurant with my mom in St. Louis. go about my daily business in Lewes. Joe, do you watch your dad make spring rolls, duck duck and sweet and sour chicken?
It could be, but I felt like my father was somehow involved in my success - I guided it. There are times when I cook vegetables late the next day and think about it. I heard an inexplicable noise in the secluded kitchen and knew it was him. don't bother me I just said, "Hello dad. I miss you,” and he continued to cut.
March was three years after my father's death, and that's when the unexpected carnage of my life in the Chinese kitchen began. Some of the ingredients I left behind are still in my cupboard. But little by little, day by day, I use it.
I am sad that the real relationship with my father is gone. But at the same time I think she just enjoyed watching me cook, especially for my mom. I hope he's proud too.
Brookfield's Mabel Wong is a freelance editor who has worked for the Milwaukee Sentinel and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for three decades, most recently as editorial editor.
*****
The dark soy sauce used in this recipe is slightly sweeter and thicker than regular soy sauce and is used to add color and flavor. It is available in Chinese and other Asian grocery stores in the form of candy or granulated sugar. Sweets can be found in the spice section.
Makes about 3 servings
7-9 chicken wings, trimmed (can be whole or halved)
4 ginger sticks, cut into 1 cm thick slices
2 spring onions, cut into 2 cm pieces
Boiling liquid:
1 glass of water
½ cup soy sauce, like Kikkoman
1/2 cup dark soy sauce, like Lee Kum Kee
1 ½ tablespoons oyster sauce
A cup of candy or granulated sugar, like Yong Long.
3 stars anise
2 bay leaves
Pour enough water into the pan to cover the wings. Place the wings in a saucepan of water before cooking. Put ginger and spring onions in boiling water. Boil 30 seconds. add wings. When the water boils, boil for 3 minutes.
Submerge the wings in a large bowl of ice water (to stretch the skin) until completely cool. Discard the ginger and spring onions to dry.
Meanwhile, while the wings are cooling, combine all the liquid ingredients cooked over medium-high heat in a Dutch Oven or clean saucepan and heat until the caramel is melted. Try it out and adjust as needed. It should be sweet and salty.
Put wings in the pot. Increase the fire too high. When the liquid boils, reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes. Using a wooden spoon or chopstick (to avoid tearing the skin), turn the wings from time to time so they are evenly coated. The skin should be a nice dark brown color.
Serve with rice with cooking liquid as a sauce.
The cooking liquid can be used several times. Once cool, strain through a sieve into a large measuring cup. Pour into a large glass bowl. Place in the fridge overnight. Skim and discard the fat and freeze the cooking liquid. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator to reuse. You can add more soy sauce, candies, anise and bay leaves for flavor.
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This article first appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Chinese Food Is Heritage." Decades elapsed before research
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