1½ pounds taro root (see note)
Vegetable oil for frying (1½–2 quarts)
cup water
1¾ cups sugar
Kosher salt (optional)
………
RANDOM HOUSE, 2005
(available in paperback from Random House, 2006)
AS A GIRL IN nineteenth-century rural China, narrator Lily is born a “useless branch” on the family tree. Her duty is to learn with the other girls of the house the skills of the inner realm, including embroidery and nu shu, a secret written language known only to women. Lily’s carefree hours in the women’s chamber come to an abrupt end at age seven, when Lily’s mother and aunt bind the younger girls’ feet, wrapping them so tightly with bands of cloth that the bones break and are reset. While one of her sisters suffers a sad fate from the procedure, Lily’s outcome is excellent: beautiful “golden lilies,” or tiny, arched, pointed feet that increase her chances for a propitious marriage, bringing prosperity and status to her family.
Lily’s future looks even brighter when matchmaker Madame Wang deems her eligible for a laotong relationship. Laotongs, or “old sames,” are girls who share lifelong companionship and fidelity, a stronger bond even than marriage. Snow Flower—refined, knowledgeable, and with prosperous roots—becomes Lily’s laotong, and the girls form an instant friendship that deepens into love. They commemorate special occasions, including the first time they meet, with phrases of nu shu etched in calligraphy onto a silk fan that is passed between them.
All is not as it first seemed, though. When secrets about Snow Flower’s childhood emerge, and as the young women eventually marry very different kinds of men, their relationship starts to fray. And affairs of the outside world—traditionally the domain of men—creep into their lives when the violent Taiping Rebellion forces them to flee their homes, further straining their friendship. Lily and Snow Flower’s attempt to maintain their relationship as “old sames” becomes one of the central struggles of their lives.
An exploration of many types of love, including between husband and wife and mother and child, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan ultimately highlights the extraordinary beauty and storminess of female friendship.
Lisa See shared with us her recipe for candied taro, the snack Snow Flower calls “the best treat in the county.” See writes:
When I went to China to do research for Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, I traveled from Guilin to Gongcheng and then on to Jiangyong County in Hunan province, where nu shu was invented and used. We stopped in Gongcheng for lunch. It was a tiny restaurant. By tiny, I mean just one small room with just one tiny table and tiny chairs that seemed like they’d been built for kindergartners. The restaurant owner brought in a live chicken for us to look at, and then he went away, slaughtered it and we ate it, along with some freshly picked greens and rice. For dessert, he suggested we try the sugared taro. I loved it so much that I not only insisted we stop at the same restaurant on our way back to Guilin, but I also used it in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan as part of Lily and Snow Flower’s memorable meal at the Temple of Gupo.
When the book first came out, readers often wrote to me to ask for a recipe for the taro to serve at their book clubs. I didn’t have one, but I came across a recipe online (http://chaxiubao.typepad.com/chaxiubao/recipes/) and this is a slight variation of that recipe. Most of the dish is amazingly easy to make; the tricky part comes just at the end.
NOTE: You will need a deep-fry thermometer to fry the potatoes.
Taro is a root vegetable similar to a potato. It can be purchased at Asian markets and specialty grocers. You can substitute russet potatoes for the taro if necessary.
The trickiest part of this recipe is coating the fried pieces of taro. Here’s how the website recommends this step: “Remove the wok from the fire immediately. Switch on a fan in full gear and stir the taro in the liquid in the wind. Which way the wind blows does matter in this case: Blow to the taro so the syrup can solidify during the stir-frying.”
I can guarantee you that the tiny place where I had this dessert definitely did not have a kitchen fan. What they did was put the fried taro into the pan and swirl it around so that each piece was fully coated with the syrup. Then the taro was put on a serving dish and brought to the table. We used our chopsticks to pick up a piece of the taro and then dip it into very cold water. The cold water turned the sugar hard, like a candy apple. When you bite into your piece, you will get the crunch of the caramelized sugar and then the softness of the taro.
A third way that would work would be to swirl the taro in the sugar syrup and then spread it on a nonstick cookie sheet that has been coated with cooking spray. Make sure each piece stands alone. The sugar coating will harden pretty quickly this way too.
1½ pounds taro root (see note) Vegetable oil for frying (1½–2 quarts)
|
1¾ cups sugar Kosher salt (optional) |
Lightly coat a baking sheet or jelly-roll pan with cooking spray.
Peel the taro. Trim the ends and sides of the taro to make a rectangular block. Then slice each block into 1-inch cubes.
Pour oil into a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan or wok to a depth of about 2 inches. Heat oil to 360°F–380°F. Add taro chunks and deep-fry until golden in color, 5–7 minutes. (Taste a cooled cube to make sure the taro is cooked through. It should be rather like a French fry in texture—a little crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.) Using a slotted spoon, remove taro from saucepan or wok to paper towels or a brown paper bag to drain.
Caramelize the sugar: Place water in a medium, heavy-bottomed saucepan with straight sides. Pour sugar in center of pan, taking care not to let sugar crystals stick to sides of pan. Cover and bring mixture to full boil over high heat. Once boiling, uncover pan and continue to boil without stirring until mixture thickens and becomes straw-colored, about 5 minutes. Reduce heat to medium and continue to cook until you see some of the syrup start to color and darken around the edge of the pan, about 1 minute. Swirl gently once or twice so the sugar caramelizes evenly and syrup becomes amber brown. Remove from heat immediately. (Watch carefully and do not overcook, or caramel will burn.)
Working quickly, add the fried taro and toss until coated with syrup. Use tongs to remove each taro chunk to baking sheet. Make sure each piece stands alone. Let rest for a few minutes to allow sugar coating to harden, sprinkle with a dash of kosher salt if desired, and serve. Or, bring coated pieces directly to the table on a plate and allow guests to dip pieces into ice water to harden shell (see note).
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Christy Keirn invited members of the Second Sunday Book Club to her home in McComb, Mississippi, to discuss Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, with hand-delivered cards attached to red and black Chinese fans, with the inscription: “Come join your ‘Old Sames’ for Chinese takeout and a discussion of when we should begin our foot binding … in the Women’s Chamber at Christy’s House.” The topic of foot binding dominated discussion at the meeting. Some members had researched the custom and brought historic photographs of women whose feet had been bound, breaking the foot’s arch and toes to force the desired effect, and the deformities shocked the group. “To the Chinese, a beautiful foot was ideally three to three and a half inches from toe to heel,” says Keirn, “yet foot binding caused infection and other horrible side effects.” The ancient custom prompted the group to analyze the things women put themselves through today in the name of beauty, such as plastic surgery, teeth whitening, acrylic fingernails, and hair dye. The group also explored the close bond between the female characters in the novel and how women are bound together in a different way than men are. “As a group, we felt that women have closer bonds than men, primarily because women share their innermost thoughts with each other—both joyous and painful—while men tend to use conversation to negotiate outcomes or solve problems.”
The Chicklit Chicas of Ottawa, Ontario (Canada), enjoyed a potluck Chinese meal, ranging from dim sum dishes to Chinese desserts, for their Snow Flower and the Secret Fan meeting. The menu included shrimp wontons with a dressing of tamari sauce, ginger, and hot sauce, steamed pork buns, spring rolls, and, for dessert, Asian taro root tapioca dessert, green tea mochi ice cream–like balls, Chinese fortune cookies, and tea. Taro is prominently featured in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (see recipe), and the taro dessert brought some surprises. “The taro looked sort of like fudge, but when we tasted it, the gelatinous texture was dramatically different than what we expected,” says Tanya Verde. Verde adds that the group appreciated how the food brought them closer to the setting of the book. “Chinese culture is so foreign to us; the food gave a very tactile sense of the place.”
