Introduction
It would be enough for Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan to walk us through the many and varied delicious traditional dishes she spent a year learning to cook from the women in her family in Singapore: Tanglin Ah-Ma’s pineapple tarts, or Bak-Zhang (pyramid-shaped dumplings with pork and mushrooms wrapped skillfully in bamboo leaves), or Otak (a spicy fish mousse steamed or grilled in banana leaves); Auntie Khar Imm’s salted vegetable and duck soup; Auntie Alice’s Teochew braised duck; Auntie Khar Moi’s pandan-skin mooncakes (stuffed with lotus-seed paste). Throughout it all Tan describes the intricate preparation and eating of each meal with such vivid detail, passion, and genuine hunger that she brings us wonderfully close to tasting it all ourselves.
But Tan goes further to weave together a narrative that explores the complicated process of cultivating and defining personal and cultural identity in a time of globalization. As a graduate of an American college and a successful journalist living in New York, she spent the good part of her adult life transcending the traditional roles expected of women in Singapore, especially that of the cook. She speaks English like a Californian, and struggles instead with the varieties of her native languages. She married a man from rural Iowa. But after the divorce of her parents focuses her attention on her responsibilities as the oldest child, she begins to lament the distance she has traveled from her family and culture, and to desire the intimate knowledge of the food she was raised on and the women who prepared it.
A year of visits and idiosyncratic tutorials brings Tan into the intimate kitchen spaces of these women, where she gains not only many treasured recipes but also valuable insight into just how traditional, often laborious home-cooked dishes help create a sense of home and family. Despite the substantial divisions created by geography, generational time, language, economic class, and even divorce, the ancient art of preparing extensive meals for extended family brings Tan back to a place of genuine connection and comfort with the women she moved away from more than a decade before. And far from relegating her to some diminished social position, cooking with these women of great suffering and strength teaches her to trust herself, to relax and have the confidence and command necessary to prepare meals that bring people together and make them happy. All of which can’t help but have us feeling, by the end of her journey, quite full ourselves.
Discussion Questions
1. What are your memories of food from your childhood? What were your favorites? Were there special family dishes or recipes? Were any of them taught to you?
2. Tan is eventually moved by a great desire to learn about what she calls “the cuisine of my people.” Even if you didn’t grow up eating it, what is the cuisine of your people?
3. In Chapter Three, Tan explains that her relatives suggested that “cooking wasn’t a science; it wasn’t meant to be perfect. It was simply a way to feed the people you loved.” Discuss this in the context of America’s current fascination with cooking shows and competitions that portray cooking as extremely complex and all about perfection.
4. Tan admits early on to thinking that knowing how to cook was “one of those things that weakened you as a female,” but does so in the light of seeing her grandmother as a fierce presence in the kitchen. And later, she refers to herself as a “silly schoolgirl” for avoiding the kitchen. What do you think? At what point, if any, does being responsible for cooking meals become limiting, or even oppressive? Can personal ferocity balance this out?
5. Tan makes the bold claim that “Home . . . is rooted in the kitchen and the foods of my Singaporean girlhood.” What role does food play in your concept of home? Are there other spaces, or elements from your experience that are the center of your concept of home?
6. Throughout the book, as part of her online experience baking her way through Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Tan talks about making many kinds of bread. What breads are primary in your life? What breads from other cultures have you tried? Discuss the long history and cultural significance of bread. Which breads have become symbolic?
7. What were your greatest cooking moments? Any “COLOSSAL FAILURE[S]” like Tan experienced when trying to make ciabatta? How did each make you think about yourself? About cooking?
8. In the modern day of vegetarian and even vegan diets, what are your personal rules when unexpectedly asked to eat a meal you know you won’t like, as Tan experiences when confronted with jellied worms? Does courtesy win out, or do you find a way to refuse?
9. Tan is shocked to find that both of her grandmothers ran gambling dens to survive financially, that her Auntie Leng Eng was an opium courier for her own grandfather, and the extent of the poverty of Chaozhou. How does this family history change the way she thinks about where she’s from? Does it change the way she thinks about cooking?
10. After cooking ngoh hiang with her Auntie Alice and Ah-Ma, Tan tries for the first time a Golden Pillow, brought home by her kuku. This is a very large bun with chicken curry baked into it that is snipped open and shared by everyone gathered around it. What other dishes can you think of that are designed to gather around to share?
11. Discuss the often-mentioned idea of agak-agak. Is it simply the act of estimating instead of measuring amounts of ingredients? Is it about instinct? Does it end up having greater personal implications for Tan? Is it related to the need to know “exactly . . . the details of Every Single Thing” that she admits to in Chapter Five?
12. In the Prologue, Tan articulates the difficulty of achieving contemporary professional success and remaining in touch with her grandmothers and their traditional recipes. What are the various things necessary for her to take an entire year to offset this sacrifice?
13. Despite their personal strength, it is clear to Tan in Singapore that she is an exception and that many women, including those of her family, were in many ways limited socially. Where do you see these social limitations? Where do you see strength or transcendence despite them?