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Rebecca Horton states, “By participating in a meal, we participate in a moment, an experience, a sliver of life.”
When my
family walks into a Chinese restaurant, we’re always handed a menu where
General Tso’s chicken and egg rolls aren’t even listed as items. Instead we can
order cow tripe, jellyfish, and pork kidneys. This is known as the authentic
menu. I prefer calling it the “secret” menu.
Don’t
get me wrong, it’s not like a race-activated sort of deal. You don’t need a
special password. But while for others it might just be an interesting change
in taste, for me it’s a reminder of my cultural heritage and of course, my own
family’s secret menu.
Kao fu—or “baked spongy gluten”—has
been a trademark dish of our dinner table for as long as I can remember. I grew
up eating it, a mixture of the above food, various fungi, and bamboo shoots.
It’s also incredibly Shanghainese, where my mom grew up as a child. So
Shanghainese that most of my Chinese friends have never heard of it and I rarely
find it in Chinese restaurants that aren’t labeled as such. In fact, almost
one-hundred percent of the time, I eat it on my own dinner table.
I did
find it one time in a Wal-Mart in the Xinjiekou of Nanjing. About eight years
old at the time, I was shopping with my grandparents. I exclaimed in delight
upon seeing one of my favorite dishes, all freshly cooked and steaming hot. My
mouth was already watering.
We
bought a gigantic batch to take home. Walking down the busy streets, getting on
the bus—all I could think of was that beautiful plastic bag of goodies just
waiting for me. Come dinner, and I was digging in already, shoving
chopsticks-fuls into my mouth but taking the time to chew and savor the taste.
It was delicious—but something was off. Was
it too salty? Maybe too sweet? Or too chewy? It wasn’t like I didn’t enjoy it
or anything; it just felt different. Then I realized—it wasn’t the same as my
family’s version. It was like putting a generic piece of chocolate in a
Hershey’s wrapper.
Looking
back on it, I think food’s an integral part of growing up. It tells a lot about
where you lived as a kid, what kind of family you were raised in, and maybe
even what kind of person you were then. For me, kao fu is a story of my grandparents, my mother’s side of the
family, and on a broader scale, my identity as a Chinese American. Even the
preparation process strays from normal recipes; it’s devoid of measured amounts
and serving sizes as the authentic Chinese cooking style isn’t dependent upon
that.
In Culture, Food, and Identity, Sidney
Mintz states, “Food habits […] are normally learned early”, meaning a strong
part of our childhoods stems from the food we eat. Food creates that hidden background, that
family story—it’s a home you can always go back to, and anything different from
it, even if it’s the same dish, is like living in someone else’s house. As Horton states, “Share a home-cooked meal
with a friend, and in the process you may learn a thing or two about who they
are and what makes them tick – something that words alone might never
articulate.”
Everyone
has their own tale to tell.
Everyone
has their own secret menu.
Works Cited
Claxton, Mervyn. Culture, Food, and Identity.
n.d. Web. 9 December 2013.
<http://www.normangirvan.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/culturefood-and-identity-6.pdf>.
Horton, Rebecca. Food and Identity: The Stories
Behind the Foods We Crave. 16 October 2009. Web. 9 December 2013.
<http://www.curatormagazine.com/rebeccahorton/food-and-identity-the-stories-behind-the-foods-we-crave/>.
Reichl, Ruth. Tender at the Bone. Random House,
1998. Web. 9 December 2013.
<http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/r/reichl-tender.html>.
