Xiu Fen Xiang, originally from China, is fifty-nine and lives in Brighton, Massachusetts. She came to the United States in 1997 and works as a cashier’s assistant at Whole Foods Market in Brighton.
In China, she worked as an engineer.
Xiu Fen Xiang, originally from China, is fifty-nine and lives in Brighton, Massachusetts. She came to the United States in 1997 and works as a cashier’s assistant at Whole Foods Market in Brighton.
In China, she worked as an engineer.
XIU FEN IS IN HER element today, wheeling her carriage purposefully down the aisles of C Market, a large grocery store in Chinatown. The sounds of Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese surround us as we make our way toward the produce section, maneuvering around the many families shopping on this Sunday afternoon. Xiu Fen calls my attention to the things she likes to buy here: piles of leafy green pea tendrils, eggplant, water chives, Chinese celery, and baby bok choy. There’s a certainty to her movements I don’t recognize. When I usually see her, bagging groceries at the large American natural foods market on the other side of town, she always looks a little tired. The lines in her pretty face are more pronounced as she fills my bags and we chat about one of our favorite things—food. Sometimes I’ll come upon her outside the store, where she collects the grocery carriages that are scattered about the parking lot. She’ll tell me about a trip she’s planning back to Shanghai or a dish she cooked the night before, or, if there’s a special on something in the store she thinks I’d like, she’ll let me know about it. This is always spoken in English that has a sing-song quality to it: her vowel sounds rise and fall with the words she struggles to pronounce. Frequently she’ll stop midsentence, furrow her brow, and close her eyes as she searches for a particular word. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at guessing what she’s trying to say and sometimes help her finish a sentence, which she seems to appreciate, nodding eagerly when I’ve gotten it right.
Opposite: Xiu Fen Xiang.
I’ve always wished I could say more to Xiu Fen, that she could tell me about her life before she came to the United States, the people whose faces peer out from the framed pictures in her apartment, the successful career she left behind in Shanghai. The connections we’ve made have always been through food—she asking what I’ve been cooking recently or I wondering how to prepare one of the Asian vegetables the store just got in. I love her suggestions for homeopathic remedies when she finds out one of my kids has been home with an upset stomach or if I come into the store with a cold. “Licorice is good for that,” she’ll advise, pointing toward the aisle where I can find the herbal teas and then turning to her next customer with another bag to fill.
But across town in her favorite Chinese market today, Xiu Fen is the customer. She roams the produce section with a light step, calling me over excitedly when she sees they’ve just restocked the lily bulbs. “Good for soup,” she explains. Or she shows me the taro root she’ll use for dessert.
“Ah, winter bamboo!” she cries out suddenly, parking her carriage in front of a large cooler. This is what she’s really come for. It’s one of her favorite things to eat, and she tells me it’s hard to find in Boston. I look down at a pile of oddly shaped vegetable pieces that are a nondescript brown color. “Winter bamboo!” she says again. “You slice it, then cook. Very, very good! Much better than canned bamboo.” She moves several aside before she chooses one, explaining that summer bamboo is delicious, too, but impossible to find in this country.
When we move into the seafood section, the distinct smell of salt and fish permeates the air. Here there are tanks filled with live sea bass and flounder, baskets heaped with menacing-looking crabs crawling over one another, and, behind the counter, an assortment of filleted fish. Xiu Fen points to a tray of tiny silvery-white fish, aptly translated as “silver fish” on the sign, and asks if I like them. When I tell her it’s something I’ve never tried, she orders a pound. I marvel at the assortment here: sea ginger, conch, even seaweed. “Eat with sugar, vinegar, maybe some soy sauce and spices,” Xiu Fen says when she sees me looking at the translucent green vegetable.
Several days later, when we are in Xiu Fen’s apartment on the other side of Boston, she prepares no fewer than fifteen different dishes for dinner. Several of them, which she refers to as the cold foods, were already arranged artfully around the living room table when we came in. The others I watch her cook in her wok. Wearing a white lace apron that she probably sewed on the machine she keeps in the other room, Xiu Fen measures, mixes, stir-fries, and serves everything with a pair of wooden chopsticks she rarely puts down. Some of the dishes are straightforward: for example, the shrimp simply stir-fried with peas, and the sea bass cooked with green pepper. Others, like the eggplant served at room temperature, which I did not see her make, are more complicated, a blend of exotic flavors complementing the dish. My favorite is no surprise to Xiu Fen: the winter bamboo she cooked with soybeans, black mushrooms, tofu, and nuts. She was right: the fresh bamboo is so much better than the stuff in a can.
I go to Chinatown when I need vegetables. Lemongrass, tofu, baby bok choy, everything is very, very fresh. But Chinatown is a little far away. I go maybe every three weeks only. I like to get special vegetables, the fresh bamboo. You can serve it with meat. Chinese people love this. And pea tendrils, I cook in oil with a little garlic and salt. You cook it very quickly. Then you must eat right away, because if you wait, it’s no good. I can get the dried tofu there. It has a very nice taste. I cook it with some oil and mushrooms. It’s very delicious with a little soy.
Every day I cook Chinese food. I like to eat shrimp and fish, and I prepare it like we do in Shanghai. I cook with garlic, sometimes asparagus. I do everything in the wok. I use a little oil and add garlic. When you can smell the garlic, then you add the vegetables. And ginger, I use ginger with fish and maybe chicken, but not with vegetables. Sesame oil, that’s only for special vegetables, maybe to sprinkle on mushrooms before you eat, but never for cooking. And soy sauce, I like to put that on chicken with a little sugar and some spice. That’s for dinner. For breakfast I make Chinese cake, like moon cake. I make a lot and freeze them so I can have one every morning.
I’m a little tired because I always work hard. I work full-time. I go home and cook for myself—breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I make the things we have in Shanghai, like the rice, the noodles, and the dumplings. In the North, they eat noodles and steamed dumplings, and in the South, rice. Shanghai is between North and South, so I cook both. My neighbor in Shanghai was from the North, and sometimes I watched her make steamed dumplings and vegetables. Now I can do this!
Xiu Fen selects taro root for dessert.
My mom was a very good cook. She always did a lot for New Year’s. A few days before, we’d go shopping to get everything. For the meal, you always start with a lot of cold foods. Later we’d have the hot food and then the soup at the end. It would take us a few days to prepare everything. And the spring rolls, we’d always make them. We would make a lot and bring them to friends—spring rolls because spring is coming. This year I didn’t do anything special because I worked. In America, it’s different, but in Shanghai, it’s very, very exciting! The first night we usually eat the big dinner; it’s like American Thanksgiving. The family, everybody, they come together and eat—brothers, sisters, my mother, always everybody together. Then, at midnight, there are so many fireworks in the street, and people everywhere. It’s very beautiful!
I don’t always cook everything for New Year’s now. Before, when my friends were here, I’d have a party. They all went back to China. Their husbands didn’t like it. It was the language. English is difficult, and people get frustrated, maybe a little bored. Our language is so different! I’m sorry, I want to learn more English, but I work a lot, and I’m very tired. I don’t have time to practice. Sometimes I watch TV, or sometimes I read. I used to listen to English tapes that I bought in Shanghai, but I don’t have time now. But I can speak Russian! Sometimes I speak with the Russians who come to the store. We had to learn it in school, because, when I was a youngster, China and Russia were very close.
That was [during] the Cultural Revolution. In China, everything changed. Oh, it was very bad then. Very bad! There was no school. I had to stay home. The teachers, they were considered bad, treated very bad. And the red color, it was everywhere. The clothes, we had to wear dark gray and green, nothing beautiful. Our hair, we had to keep it very short. It was a terrible time! And there was no good food, no fancy food, because everything was rationed. Like sugar, you could only have a little sugar every month. It was the same with oil, rice, with many things. So, for six years I stayed home with my mother. She didn’t want me to go out, because she was very scared. So, I learned to cook. She cooked every day, and I watched her. She could cook anything! And sewing, I learned that. I used to sew all the clothes: my mom’s clothes, my brother’s clothes. And now, it’s good for me; it keeps me busy.
It’s nice here. I like America, because the air is fresh and it’s quiet. I like quiet. In China, oh, a lot of people! Before, when I lived in Shanghai, I didn’t have this feeling, but now when I go home I think there are too many people—on the street, everywhere. Here, after six at night, there’s no one around. In China, there are always so many people. I like quiet. And the air, I like the fresh air in America.
My father left China, too. I never knew him, because he left when I was a baby. That was because we had the Cultural Revolution. He was in Taiwan, working in a famous hotel. Before he died, he was a chef, and he cooked American food, Chinese food, French food. He was the first chef in a big restaurant in Shanghai! A few years ago, I went to Taiwan to find my father’s friends. They said, “Oh, your father, he was a very good chef.” I was happy.
When I cook now, I think about my mother teaching me how to make all the foods. She taught me to eat slowly, to have patience, and also how to treat people. And now, I like to cook Chinese for my American friends, sometimes for people at work. They like it. They like my spring rolls! And when I go back to Shanghai, it’s nice because everybody cooks for me—my sister, my sister-in-law. And the taste, it’s so good, not like the restaurants here. I don’t go to Chinese restaurants [here], because they’re all the same.
I like Chinese food! I try American food sometimes, but, to me, it has no taste. When I eat salad, I feel like an ox eating grass! Sometimes, at the store where I work, I watch them cook. Some of the foods have no flavor. Some are too salty. Some of the desserts, oh, they’re very sweet. I cannot eat them. But pizza, sometimes I like that. Cheese pizza is good!
Stir-Fried Sea Bass with Green Pepper, Curried Scrod with Scallion, Shrimp with Peas, Winter Bamboo, Pea Tendrils with Garlic, Scallion Pancakes, and Sweet Taro Tapioca Pudding
Serves 6 as a multicourse meal
When Xiu Fen prepared this meal, she cooked one dish at a time and brought each to the table immediately, rather than trying to serve everything together. Although the winter bamboo stir-fry is more labor-intensive than the others, I highly recommend it if you are able to locate all the ingredients. Fresh winter bamboo, unlike the canned version, is tender and subtly flavored, which is why it’s so prized in Asian cooking. The dish itself is beautiful, a contrast in color and texture.
1 pound fresh sea bass fillet, cut into 1-inch pieces
3 tablespoons olive oil plus 1 tablespoon, divided
1 medium green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and cut into 1-inch pieces
Salt and freshly ground pepper
In a medium bowl, gently toss the fish with the 3 tablespoons olive oil. Let stand for 5 to 10 minutes.
In a wok or large skillet, heat the remaining tablespoon of oil over high heat until shimmering. Add the peppers, making sure not to crowd the pan (which will lower the heat). You may need to work in batches. Stir-fry the peppers until they just begin to curl at the edges, about 1 to 2 minutes. Add the fish and continue to stir-fry until just slightly browned on the edges and cooked through, about 30 to 60 seconds. Season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.
¼ cup olive oil
1½ teaspoons curry powder
1 pound fresh scrod fillet, cut into 1-inch pieces
½ cup scallions, chopped
Salt and freshly ground pepper
In a wok or large skillet, heat the oil over high heat until shimmering. Add the curry powder and cook for 5 to 10 seconds. Working in batches, add the fish by carefully placing the pieces in the oil and allowing them to fry until partly cooked, about 1 to 2 minutes. With a spatula or tongs, gently turn the fish to cook its other side, and add the scallions. Fry for another minute or two, until the fish is just cooked through and the scallions are soft. With tongs or a slotted spoon, carefully lift the fish and scallions from the oil. Season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined, tails left on
½ pound fresh green peas
Salt and freshly ground pepper
In a wok or large skillet, heat the oil over high heat until shimmering. Add the shrimp and peas, making sure not to crowd the pan (which will lower the heat). You may need to work in batches. Stir-fry until just cooked, about 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.
2 pieces winter bamboo* (about 1½ to 2 pounds)
2 tablespoons plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
¼ cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
4 to 6 Chinese dried black mushrooms,** soaked until soft, drained, stemmed, and cut into ½-inch strips
½ cup canned soybeans, drained and rinsed
½ cup canned ginkgo nuts,*** drained and rinsed
8 ounces drained firm tofu, cut into 1-inch pieces
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon sesame oil
Using a sharp knife, cut off the woody bottom end of the bamboo and discard. Make a lengthwise incision in the shoot and remove outer husk, along with the leaves and sharp hairs that grow on it. Cut off the tip of the bamboo and shave off any remaining hairs and any remaining inner leaves until you have a smooth piece. (You will have reduced the diameter of the bamboo by more than half.) Discard the leaves and shavings. Cut the remaining piece of bamboo in half lengthwise and slice crosswise into pieces ¼ inch thick.
In a large skillet or wok, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add the bamboo and stir-fry until golden, about 5 minutes. Add the soy sauce, sugar, and enough water to just cover the bamboo. Bring to a boil. Immediately reduce the heat to a simmer and cook, covered, until the bamboo is soft to the bite, about 40 minutes.
In a 10-inch skillet or wok, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil over high heat until shimmering. Add the mushrooms, soybeans, ginkgo nuts, and tofu and gently stir-fry, being careful not to break up the tofu, until everything is cooked through, about 3 to 4 minutes. (Note: If using fresh mushrooms, you will need to sauté them ahead of time. Also, when adding the remaining ingredients, you may need to work in batches to stir-fry properly so that the ingredients are not crowded in the pan.) Add the bamboo and its liquid and continue to cook for another minute. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer everything to a serving plate and drizzle with the sesame oil.
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
½ pound washed pea tendrils, coarse lower portion of shoot removed
Salt and freshly ground pepper
In a large skillet or wok, heat the oil over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add the garlic and cook, stirring constantly, until it begins to turn golden, about 15 seconds. Add the pea tendrils (you may need to work in batches if the pan becomes too crowded) and stir-fry until the tendrils just begin to wilt, about 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.
Makes 6
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup water
3 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus more for frying
1 cup scallions, chopped, white and first half of green part
Salt and freshly ground pepper
In a medium bowl, combine the flour and salt. Slowly add the cup of water and, using a wooden spoon, mix the dough until it can be gathered into a ball. If the dough crumbles, add more water. If it is too wet, add flour. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead it by folding it end to end, then pressing it down with the heel of your hand and folding it forward. Repeat for 2 to 3 minutes. Form the dough into a ball, place it in a bowl, cover with a cloth, and let rest for 10 minutes.
On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a large oval, about 9 by 18 inches and 1/4 inch thick. Using a pastry brush, spread the 3 tablespoons of oil over the dough and sprinkle with the chopped scallions, salt, and pepper. Working from the long end, roll the dough jelly roll—style, and cut crosswise into 6 equal pieces. On a lightly floured surface, roll each piece to about 8 inches in diameter and 1/4 inch thick.
In a 10-inch skillet, heat 1 to 2 tablespoons of oil over medium heat until shimmering. Add one of the scallion pancakes and fry until the edges are golden brown, about 2 to 3 minutes. Turn the pancake over and cook the other side until golden, about 2 to 3 minutes more. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, cut into quarters, and serve immediately.
6 cups water
1 cup tapioca pearls*
1 small taro root* (about 1½ pounds), washed well, peeled, and cut into 1-inch pieces
One 14-ounce can coconut milk
½ cup sugar
In a medium pot, bring 6 cups of water to a boil. Add the tapioca pearls and reduce the heat to low. Cook until the pearls become translucent, about 15 minutes, stirring frequently so that the tapioca does not stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. Add the taro and continue to cook, stirring frequently, until soft, about 20 minutes. Add the coconut milk and sugar and continue to cook until the thickness of porridge, about 20 minutes. Serve warm in individual bowls.
*Found in markets specializing in Asian and health foods.
**Fresh mushrooms with a strong flavor, such as shiitake and portobello, can be substituted. Cooking time will vary.
***Fresh ginkgo nuts can be substituted. Remove the shells by gently tapping the nut with the side of a large knife or a small pan. Boil the nuts for 1 minute to make removing the skins easier.
*Found in markets specializing in Asian products.
