A Tiger in the Kitchen (29 page)

From the time that I pulled my very first bagels out of the oven, however, I’d realized that there was true magic in the smell and taste of freshly baked bread, still hot from the oven. And I had hoped to be able to share that revelation with my skeptical family. After a steak and potato dinner left me with a mound of leftover mashed potatoes, I decided to pull out Peter Reinhart’s recipe for
panmarino
. The bread is incredibly easy to make—on the first day, you make a
biga
, mixing flour, yeast, and water, and let it sit. On the second, you cut that
biga
into pieces, let it rest and rise, then mix it together with more flour, salt, black pepper, chopped fresh rosemary, roasted garlic, mashed potatoes, olive oil, and water; then you knead it, form it into two round boules, and let it rest some more to rise. And then into the oven it goes. It was so easy that I started to wonder whether it would be any good. The combination of the sweet, softened garlic with sharp bits of rosemary and the slightly salty, potatoey bread was just perfect, however. You could set this bread out with cheese and ham for a pre-dinner snack but, really, it’s more than flavorful enough to stand on its own.

Shortly after making—and rapidly devouring—my first
panmarino,
I began whipping together more mashed potatoes for several more loaves. And, shortly after that, I found myself wedging myself into a seat on a plane headed for Singapore, carefully tucking away a large tote bag stuffed with bread and absolutely reeking of garlic. I was a true hit on that plane with my fellow passengers, I’m sure.

From her first bite, I could see that my mother understood. She’d carefully toasted a small sliver and buttered it slightly. Her eyes grew large as she thoughtfully chewed for a moment. “How did you make this?” she asked, listening quietly as I quickly walked through the steps I had taken. “Wah, so clever ah,” she added, before leaping up to quickly bundle up the rest of the loaf. “Daffy and your daddy must try this,” she said. “Better keep it for them.” She proceeded to guard over her loaf with great ferocity, instructing Erlinda not to serve it to anyone. Only my mother was allowed to slice it up and parcel it out in tiny, buttered slices—it was that precious.

I thought back to the days I had spent sweating at the counter in my Brooklyn kitchen, kneading pillowy mounds until my arms and fingers hurt—or desperately trying to hang on to my jumpy KitchenAid mixer and prevent it from jitterbugging off the counter as it strenuously mixed massive gobs of dough. I thought of the failures I’d encountered, the whole days it had taken to get the smell of smoke out of my living room—and the fact that I’d kept at it even though the quest had seemed, at times, plain silly. Watching my mother and her prized
panmarino,
I knew it all had been worth it.

One day, my mother said the words I never thought I’d hear. “I think you should meet your father’s new wife.”

It had been a few weeks since I last saw my father, when we had traveled to Shantou together. With the holidays approaching, however, Ketty and my father had some errands to run in Singapore and were due for a short visit—a trip that pained my mother, I knew, from the way she never spoke of it. “Well, I’m not sure that I want to,” I said. But someday soon, I knew, this woman who had entered our lives would be in charge of my father’s life, should his health weaken. “You don’t want to regret not having a relationship with her if she’s suddenly the one who decides who gets to see him if he gets really sick,” Mike had suggested. “I’m just saying . . .”

I wasn’t sure what to do—so I consulted with Willin.

“You know,” he said as we sipped glasses of sauvignon blanc while sitting in rattan lounge chairs at his hilltop bar, Wild Oats, before his dinner shift one night, “I have this friend whose elderly uncle married this very young Chinese woman less than half his age. The uncle was the eldest son, so he was in charge of the family assets—everything was in his name—and they had this big house in China that belonged to the family. After he married this woman, he went to China to see the house with his new wife. And then, mysteriously, he fell down the stairs and died!” he added, dramatically using his fingers to punch quote marks in the air as he said the words
fell down
. “And then the new wife inherited the house and now the rest of the family doesn’t have access to it anymore!” he finished, practically shrieking.

“
Maybe,
” he said firmly, quietly, “you should meet your father’s new wife. Just so you know what she’s like.”

That settled it. I immediately called Le Bistrot du Sommelier, a little French place I thought my pâté-loving father would like, and made a dinner reservation.

The night of our dinner, Mike and I squirmed in our seats, waiting for my father and his wife. Mike leaned over and stroked my back—my uncharacteristic silence was telling of the anxiety coursing through me. I texted Willin, telling him that Mike and I were bundles of nerves, wondering what on earth we would have to say to Ketty. “I’m not involving myself in this—I don’t want to get tied to this in any way. I’m on your mum’s side!” he immediately texted back. And then, right after, his final bit of advice, reminding me of his friend’s sad tale: “Quick, push
her
down the stairs before it’s too late.”

We ordered wine and then decided not to drink it, feeling it would be disrespectful if half the bottle disappeared before our elders showed up. And soon enough, my father appeared, spritely and beaming as he effervescently pumped Mike’s hand and hugged me before stepping aside to introduce his wife.

With her long black hair and smooth alabaster skin, this woman with the slender, girlish figure looked younger than I was. She spoke little English, I had been told, so I introduced myself as Rulian. There was little more to say. As we looked through the menu, my father spoke at breakneck speed, filling us in on her likes (shopping; The Gap; simple, healthy foods like fish and rice) and dislikes (anything ostentatious; rich, Western food like pâté, which she worried would shorten my father’s life). I suddenly recalled that I had known that about Ketty; I wondered if that had subconsciously been a factor in my choice of restaurant.

“But you like pâté!” I said.

“I know,” my dad said, “but I can’t eat too much of it.”

We decided to get some for the table anyway, since it was a specialty of the restaurant. I was feeling better about this dinner. The man sitting across from us at the dinner table was still ordering like the father I knew, at least.

With my Mandarin being so-so at best, I was unable to say anything much deeper to Ketty than, “What did you buy today?” (“Just a few T-shirts.”) and “What do you like about Singapore?” (“It’s very clean.”). And since Mike understood no Mandarin, the conversation largely took place in English, as my father enthusiastically filled us in on their life together in China, pausing every few sentences to translate what he said in Mandarin to Ketty. As dinner whizzed along, I realized it wasn’t going terribly, after all. My father was happier than I’d seen him in a while; Ketty, who was carefully watching his pâté and wine intake with a whiff of thinly disguised disapproval, didn’t seem like the shoving-down-the-staircase sort. Mike looked over and gently squeezed my hand.

As Mike signed the bill, my father leaned back, smiling as he sipped the last of his wine. “You know, Cheryl,” he said, “you’re actually supposed to call Ketty
houma
.” The Mandarin word for second mother. My mouth actually fell open in surprise. Ketty looked around the table nervously, then giggled and said, “
Buyong
ah!
” I instantly agreed. There was no need for this. We had taken a step that night—but for the moment, it was just that, a step.

Outside on the street, as Mike and I watched my father and his bride wend their way in the darkness toward their nearby hotel, I noticed they were strolling hand in hand. “Your father was so happy,” Mike said. “You did a good thing tonight.”

I suppose it was just as well that I hadn’t listened to Willin.

A few days later, I made my way to Auntie Khar Imm’s house for my final cooking lesson. With Christmas and then Chinese New Year approaching—and with the recent arrival of her second grandchild, a sister for Giselle—my aunt’s workload had increased. There was more cleaning, more babysitting. The cooking lessons, sadly, had to come to an end.

The dish for the finale was an obvious one:
pua kiao beng
, my Tanglin Ah-Ma’s gambling rice. Or, as Auntie Khar Imm called it, “
Landuo fan
lah!
” Lazy rice did seem like an appropriate name for it, given that it was designed for easy eating so that gamblers didn’t have to get up from their tables midgame in order to fill their stomachs.

As always, Auntie Khar Imm had prepped the ingredients before I got there. the dried mushrooms had been soaked in water for four hours until they were soft enough for easy dicing. The pork belly had been cubed, the shallots had been minced, the cabbage had been shredded and was soaking in a basin of water next to her sink. “The prawns,” Auntie Khar Imm said, holding up a handful of dried shrimp. “You soak them a little in water until they’re soft.” I watched as she washed the rice she intended to use, rinsing it out a few times until the water she was swirling it in didn’t grow cloudy anymore. Placing that rice in a rice cooker, she pointed out that she was pouring enough water into the cooker so that the water level was three-quarters of an inch above the top of the rice.

Then the frying began. She began to pour cooking oil into the wok before pausing to reach into a cupboard to pull out a measuring cup. I was surprised—I had thought I was supposed to
agak-agak
. “
Ni xihuan
measure mah!” she said, smiling. Yes, she was right—I did like measuring. I felt a pang as I realized that this would be our final cooking lesson.

After pouring a half cup of oil into the wok and heating that up, she mixed in the shallots, frying them until they turned brown—this took about ten minutes by my estimation—and then removing them and setting them aside on a plate. Then she fried the mushrooms in the same oil, removing them and setting them aside after five minutes. Next, she added the pork belly cubes to the mixture, frying that together until the meat browned. Then she added the dried shrimp, shallots, and mushrooms back into the wok, mixing it all together and taking out a measuring spoon to scoop a half tablespoon of salt into the wok, and an eighth of a teaspoon of monosodium glutamate. After mixing that all up, she added the cabbage and stirred it all together for a minute. Turning off the heat, she carefully dished the mixture into the rice cooker, making sure to stir the entire mixture together before pressing the “cook” button.

As we waited for the rice to cook, we sat around the dining table, sipping from mugs of warm water.

“I met my father’s wife, you know,” I said, watching as her eyes widened and her hand flew up to cover her mouth.

“Wah, really?” she said, thinking about what I’d said for a moment. “So what did you think?”

“She’s not bad,” I said. “My Mandarin is not very good, so I didn’t have much to say.”

Auntie Khar Imm took another sip of water, thinking again. “I met her also,” she finally said. “I thought she was very pretty. Beautiful skin; nice girl. Just like you. Just like your mother.”

Her words weighed on me as we packed up the rice and I prepared to leave. She was right—Ketty was a nice girl. She would never be my
houma
, my second mother. But perhaps it was time to start seeing her as family.

Singapore may be a country filled with a diversity of religions—Taoism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism. However, when it comes to Christmas, everyone, regardless of race or religion, jumps right in and celebrates.

Orchard Road, the main shopping street in Singapore’s downtown area, is strung up with Christmas lights from beginning to end. An endless stream of cars and pedestrians clogs the street during the entire month of December as Singaporeans turn out to madly shop and check out the massive—and usually gaudy—holiday decorations that malls put up, each shopping center hoping to outdo the rest in the annual contest for the best-decorated mall.

Amid this festive hive of activity, my family was going through a little meltdown. Except for a handful of Christmases when either I or my father hadn’t been able to get enough time off at work to fly to Singapore or New York for the holidays, my family had always spent Christmas together. This year, however, Daddo had decided to stay in Beijing with Ketty, a decision we had all thought we were fine with—until Christmas morning, when we woke up to unwrap a mountain of gifts. Faced with a pile of crumpled wrapping paper, we did the annual photo shoot where each person piled on all the gifts they’d gotten that day—artfully perching them on the body, on the head, on the arms—and had a picture taken to document that year’s bounty. Giggling over our pictures, we realized there were none of my father that year. Under the tree, his presents remained wrapped.

Over the phone, my father told us he missed us. And knowing that it was hard to say good-bye and hang up, he said to me, “Remember when I brought you to college for the first time? Remember what I said?” Of course I remembered—it was a phrase that had come to mind the many times a day that I thought of my parents, my sister, my friends in Singapore so far away, with sharp stabs of longing.

“I’m as far as the telephone,” he had said. “Whenever you miss me, just look at the telephone. I’m always there.”

To quell the tears, we set about preparing our Christmas Day lunch. For years, Auntie Jane, my mother’s younger sister, had been in charge of Christmas. At her trendy apartment near Orchard Road, we would gather, filling our plates with turkey, glazed ham, noodles, and her famous potato gratin. After she retired and moved to New Zealand, however, the Christmas dinners my mother’s family used to have had become a sometime occurrence. This year, Daph and I had decided to take over, inviting Auntie Alice, Ah-Ma, our cousin Benny, his wife, and their daughter, Bernice, over for lunch.