Posts tagged with "food"

To Steep

All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes.

—George Orwell

On Saturday mornings I wake up a little past seven, no matter how late I was up on Friday. Get dressed, check the mail, read the news, go upstairs to cook breakfast in a pan of grease. Everything is timed perfectly. The toast is started two minutes before the eggs are broken into the pan, but only after the bacon is done. The tea starts steeping two minutes before that. Everything is ready and warm within 25 minutes.

Dolly gets a treat on the weekend mornings: a bit of Fancy Feast, or half-and-half mixed with water. Cats are lactose intolerant, so they can’t drink straight milk, but they’re drawn the fat that their noses can smell.

Bacon, bread, egg, bacon, bread, egg. I eat my breakfast in order, going clockwise around the plate, but I always save a few sips of tea for the end. Even though I’ve given up the Hong Kong style milk tea, Orange Pekeoe is an appropriate black leaf substitute, rounding out the meal.

It’s a little ritual that keeps me sane. At the end of breakfast, satisfied and full, I can reflect and recharge, down to the dregs.

Every year, as I grow older, I find that I let my tea steep a little longer. Maybe life has gotten a little too complicated, and I need the tea as a distraction, or perhaps life has become too simple, and I need the companionship of a rich mug to stimulate me.

Strange how a teapot can represent at the same time the comforts of solitude and the pleasures of company.

And I’ve never needed this more than I do now.

A Bittersweet Comfort

A bowl of egg-noodles, with barbecue pork, shiitake mushrooms, shrimp, carrots, bok choi, and green onions in a chicken broth, is considered comfort food for most Chinese people. They say that comfort food soothes the mind by acting like an opiate, hitting the receptors in our central nervous system. We go to it in times of stress, and in addition to keeping us full, it keeps us pacified.

As Pat and Jen cut, and wash, and cook, they never nibble. Everything that’s prepared goes into the pot. Not too long, or the vegetables will lose their firmness. With chopsticks and a spoon, they serve the noodle soup in large bowls. One eats from the spoon, which is used to scoop the broth, while the chopsticks are simply used to put the desired ingredients on the former utensil.

I don’t have meals like this anymore. Chinese food is a complicated affair. It takes a motley set of ingredients, most of which is only available on a single street in this city, so I’m grateful for a real home-cooked meal.

Everything about it brings me back to a time when I was a child, living with my parents, living off Chinese food every day. The contrasting colours of the pork against the noodles. The full aroma. The savoury taste of broth. Even the dulcet slurp of noodles.

If only my childhood was worth remembering.

Dim Sum

Outside it’s snowing, but inside it’s a clatter of carts and dishes. Dim sum is mostly seafood, especially shrimp, but the most common ingredients are oil and monosodium glutamate.

My parents go full out with the tripe and the phoenix talons (a euphemism for chicken’s feet), dishes that scare most Westerners, and even some Canadian born Chinese such as me. The dim sum here is much better here than at the restaurant across the street, they note. The rice-flower skin of the shrimp dumplings is delightfully smooth and thin, a demonstration of the chef’s skill. The mooli cakes, made from fried daikon radishes, taste especially savoury. Even the buns are steamed well and slightly sweet.

The praise of my parents is a testament to the quality of the food. They have the ability to find fault with almost anything, the root of years of childhood despondency and confidence issues, but today the food is nearly impeccable.

Summer Steak

Nothing says summer like a juicy, tender, melt-in-your-mouth steak. And to have a friend cook it for you?

Well that’s even better.

Yoghurt And Rice

Someone used a yoghurt and rice example on me the other day. In his beautiful Lebanese accent, he told me, “It’s like yoghurt and rice. I can explain it to you, but you won’t understand until you try it for yourself.” There must be several other ways of saying the same thing, but the most interesting I’ve ever heard was two examples at once: Taco Bell and anal sex.

Now I’m dying to try yoghurt and rice. I’m guessing that it would only work if it’s white rice (jasmine fragranced would be neutral enough), and a plain, non-fruity, yoghurt.