My mother’s youngest sister, Huang Minlin, known to us as Siyi, or “Fourth Aunt,” has always been the most storied cook and spirited personality among my mother’s sisters. She is known as much for her chili crab as she is for telling hilarious stories, filling her accounts with exaggerated voices and facial expressions. In 1972, she married an overseas Chinese man from Malaysia and moved with him from Taipei back to a small, bucolic former mining town near Penang, in order to join the family building materials business. She started a crash course in learning to be a competent housewife, in part by reading Fu Pei-mei’s cookbooks. For my aunt, cooking is a critical part of bringing a family together, and all her efforts in the kitchen aim to give her children “a taste of Mom.” In my own family, I have often reminded my children about the tender loving care someone puts into a dish when it has been cooked expressly for them. The message must have sunk in, as my then five-year-old son finally labeled an empty jar “TLC” and put it in our spice rack. When he wants to add TLC to a dish, he brings it out and shakes it on.
How did you learn to cook?
Your uncle’s family in Malaysia is a large, traditional family. Every meal had twenty or thirty people, including all the workers from their shop. The maids cooked; it never fell upon me to cook for everyone. The dishes weren’t great, but the quantity was always enough. Your uncle was a favorite of his paternal grandmother. She could see that I didn’t like the food and couldn’t get used to it, and your uncle kept telling her how great the food was in Taiwan. So, his grandmother would buy a large, expensive piece of meat, either pork or beef, two or three times a week. She would say to me, “Minlin, whatever you want to make, go ahead and make it.” So, I had to think of how to prepare that big piece of meat. I pulled out my copy of Fu Pei-mei’s cookbook that I had brought with me from Taiwan, one that didn’t even have pictures. That’s how I got started cooking.
What did you think of Fu Pei-mei’s cookbooks?
In our generation, there is no one who doesn’t know who she is. Using today’s viewpoint to look at them, her cookbooks are written very simply. But using the standards of back then, there was no one else doing this. She was the only one. If you had no idea of cooking whatsoever, then you could read her cookbooks and learn something. A friend who moved to America in 1970 reminded me that I gave her a copy of Fu Pei-mei’s cookbook the year she moved. I had totally forgotten! But she still has it, even today. Another friend from Taiwan living in Malaysia told me she brought back a copy of Fu’s cookbook two years after she arrived here. I asked her, “Did you read it?” She said, no, she gave it to her servant and asked her to cook from it! That really made me laugh.
How did your own cooking improve?
It was only in 1980 that I really took charge of kitchen matters and cooking. Why? After your uncle’s grandfather passed away, the extended family split up, and each brother established his own household. We lived separately, with my mother-in-law, my two younger unmarried brothers-in-law and my unmarried sister-in-law, your uncle, and our three children. That counted as immediate family! I started to cook for all nine of us. My mother-in-law was busy helping as a cashier in the family business, so it fell to me to cook.
Did you learn anything about cooking from your mother-in-law?
My mother-in-law did everything precisely. She didn’t know any English, and she only went to school until the fourth grade or so for Chinese. But you really had to respect her. Looking at her recipe books, she wrote down everything diligently, even if there were some wrong characters, especially for the special cookies she baked. In her fruitcake recipe, she wrote, “9 eggs.” But above it in brackets, she wrote, “500 ml.” I asked her why, and she said, “Because eggs come in large and small, don’t you know?” She would write down exactly which brand of butter to buy, to get the right taste. Now I realize that even though she never received any formal education, her mind was very nimble.
Did she invent these recipes on her own, or did she learn them from someone else?
She said if you asked someone, no one would tell you. Everyone would hold something back because these recipes were so dear. Even though she would ask and ask and ask, when she would come back to test and experiment, it would often be a failure, because they had tricked you and told you wrong. My mother-in-law said those were precious recipes she had written down, and they could not be shared with others.
Why not?
I’ll tell you a story. Once, I was cleaning out the kitchen. And there was a very large wooden spoon. I wanted to throw out that useless thing, but she wouldn’t let me. She said that on the spoon was a mark. I said, “What’s that for?” She said that in the past, she made hot sauce and sold it to other people. Her hot sauce was different from Sichuanese hot sauce; it was made with local hot peppers, garlic, sugar, vinegar, very fresh. She said you had to slowly simmer, simmer, simmer, until the liquid reached the mark on the spoon, then you would know it was done. She made a woman who worked for her vow never to reveal the secret after she married out. Why? Because if you told people how to make it, how much of this or that, then people would steal the recipe. She said, “If the day ever comes when we have no more money, we can rely on this to live.” I told this story to your grandmother, and she said, “Hnh! Impressive! Ask her to come to Taiwan, so she can make her hot sauce and I’ll open a factory!” [Laughs.]
What do you think is the most important thing in cooking?
The first thing about cooking you have to consider is your economic ability. There’s a Chinese saying: “Even the cleverest housewife cannot cook a meal without rice.” If your family really has nothing, you can’t do much about it. When I first got to your uncle’s house, I would ask my mother-in-law, “Why don’t you make things this way or that way?” My mother-in-law would respond, “If we were to do it like you suggest, we would have been bankrupt long ago!” They were from a working-class family and really frugal. If not for all that saving, they wouldn’t be here today. So, if you ask, “What did you cook?” I say, it all depends on your economic ability.
So do you cook at home to save money, or to create a family atmosphere?
Well, there’s a trend today that I don’t really approve of. People have the economic ability, but they think that eating out is better. Every meal they eat out. If you took that same money and cooked something at home, you could make something really nice. Mothers are really important. They make all the plans. I cook for the happiness of the family. Your children will miss it: this is a taste of Mom! If you don’t give them this to think about, then they won’t have much of a concept of home. In order to sustain a family, three meals a day are an important fact. If you have children, you should cook for them.