A Tiger in the Kitchen

by Cheryl Tan

  From the beginning, things were difficult. “I cooked for her to eat,” Ah-Ma says. The first wife, of course, only complained ceaselessly. Ah-Ma became an outsider in her own newlywed home. Finally, Ah-Ma moved out, and the first wife proceeded to lord over the home that once was hers. “Your marriage was so messy!” Auntie Alice suddenly exclaims. Her face is wrinkled in disgust at the hardships her mother had to endure. “If it were me, I wouldn’t have stood for it, you know,” she whispers to me, putting her hand to her face to shield her mouth.

  But times, of course, were different. In 1940s Singapore, a young married woman with children had few options—especially if she was the second wife, even if she hadn’t known it at the start.

  My grandfather started sporadically coming by to drop off provisions and cash for Ah-Ma and their growing family. Auntie Alice was born, then my mother. Then Auntie Jane and my kuku. It was difficult to determine when Gong-Gong would come. This is when the selective memory starts to kick in. “Wah mana eh gi!” Ah-Ma says of this time, saying she doesn’t remember much of what her new life as the exiled second wife was like. “My memory is that Papa rarely came back—right?” Auntie Alice asks softly. “He worked seven days a week. He didn’t have Saturday and Sunday off.” (Leaning over, Auntie Alice whispers to me, “I think she remembers—she doesn’t want to say.”)

  “Aiyah,” Ah-Ma finally says. “If he wants to come, he comes. If he doesn’t want to come, he doesn’t come. I was very stupid before,” she adds quietly, sighing again. “But did I have a choice?”

  Years went by, and Ah-Ma’s little family grew up. Auntie Alice suddenly remembers the one family outing her father took them on. “He came on a bicycle to fetch us. We went to have dim sum,” she says. “That’s the only outing I remember, you know. As a father figure, I don’t think there was much communication. But it was really a nice feeling, a once-in-a-lifetime outing with your parents.” Shuat Giau, the first wife, too, stopped by to see Ah-Ma. “I was in Primary Six, and she came to the house. I remember I opened the door and I didn’t even know what she was saying. But next thing I knew, I got slapped,” Auntie Alice says.

  And then one day, my grandfather fell in the bathroom and hit his head. A few days later, he was dead. “People came to notify us, but Shuat Giau didn’t want us to attend the funeral,” Auntie Alice, then a teenager, says as her own memories return.

  Privately, the second family mourned. And then Ah-Ma went to work; the neighbors’ laundry became her business. Auntie Alice began taking care of the household, cooking for her younger siblings, watching them after school. Instantly, this teenager became a young mother. “And then you started having gambling in the house, right, Ma?” Auntie Alice says. The selective memory kicks in again. “No lah, I don’t remember that,” Ah-Ma says. “Don’t write that down,” she adds, pushing my pen away. (Once again, Auntie Alice leans over and quietly says, “There was a gambling den in our house—but only for a few years.”)

  The hardships this man had brought on Ah-Ma didn’t diminish her desire to see if he was okay, however. She missed him; she was curious. Shortly after Gong-Gong died, she went to a psychic with a reputation for being able to call up the souls of dead loved ones so the living could see how they were doing. The message was one that Ah-Ma would remember for decades. “Gong-Gong said, ‘Right now you are suffering, but your life ahead will only become better and better. I know you had a hard life, but don’t worry, you will have good days ahead. And this woman who made your life difficult, within three years, I will take her with me to the Other World.’ ”

  Ah-Ma wasn’t sure what to make of it. But within three years of my grandfather’s death, his first wife died. And as for her own life, my grandfather had been right—it only got better and better. Her children all grew up and became successful professionals, making them all the more able to grant her the comfortable life she’d craved and had always, always deserved.

  Ah-Ma was tired, the trip through a thicket of unwanted memories having exhausted this spry eighty-six-year-old.

  “People need to have ups and downs,” Auntie Alice finally says, as we hug our good-byes. “It’s only if you have downs that you’ll get to have the ups.”

  At this point, I was beginning to feel a change whenever I stepped back into my New York kitchen.

  I’d approached meals, cookies, and certainly, breads with some degree of confidence before, but it was always laced with the unshakable fear that something was not going to work out. Or explode. Or perhaps even both. Each time I returned from Singapore, however, I was feeling this fear dissipate. The attitude from the first egg cracked, the very first stirrings, was gradually becoming one devoid of doubt. Things were likely to work out, I started believing—and even if they didn’t, well, so what? I could always try again. My looser approach was freeing, and amid the lack of fretting, I discovered that I was truly starting to enjoy cooking.

  I was still making my way through the Bread Baker’s Apprentice challenge. On the docket this time, however, was a bread that was anything but titillating. The last time I’d baked a bread, what emerged from the oven was a loaf of casatiello, a gorgeous hunk of Italian bread studded with salami and oozing with hot cheese. I’d started priding myself on being able to tackle focaccia, beautifully braided challah, breads that I’d never even contemplated making, much less producing versions people marveled at and couldn’t keep themselves from clawing.

  So you might understand why I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the next challenge loaf: light wheat bread. After the sexy Italian, wheat bread seemed like the yawner of a boy next door. (You know, the ugly one.)

  But after having spent several weeks in Singapore without an oven at my disposal, I was itching to bake something. Anything. And as it turned out, this plain boy next door had his surprises.

  This bread began as several others do. First, I mixed together the dry ingredients, which in this case were bread flour, whole wheat flour, powdered milk, and yeast. Now, in this recipe by Peter Reinhart, the wheat flour accounts for only 33 percent of the total flour, so it’s not as hard-core as whole-grain loafs. If you’re more of a white-bread kind of person, this loaf’s for you. Next, I added in some shortening, honey, and room-temperature water. And after mixing and kneading, it was time to let the ball of dough ferment at room temperature for ninety minutes. (This bread turned out to be a real riser—it more than doubled in size during that time.)

  Next, it was time to press that dough ball out into a rectangle and then roll up the rectangle into a loaf and let it sit for another ninety minutes or however long it took until the dough “crest[ed] above the lip of the pan.” I set the timer and, of course, proceeded to forget to check on whatever cresting activity might be happening. So when the timer went off, this was what had happened: My dough had grown so much it was on the verge of sprouting hands and lifting itself out of my loaf pan. Into the oven it went, and less than an hour later, this gorgeous, caramel-hued loaf came out.

  Now, when it had been baking, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of this bread.

  Unlike the casatiello or the impressive-looking double-decker braided cranberry-walnut celebration bread that I’d made in previous weeks, this loaf did not fill my apartment with any discernible smell during baking. There was no provolone fog or clouds of cranberry mixed with lemon. When I sliced it open, however, there it was—the simple, sweet smell of freshly baked bread.

  Toasted and slathered with blueberry jam, this bread was just divine. And it was even better buttered with Dijon mustard and a little mayonnaise, and topped with cheddar and thickly sliced bone-in ham from the fancyish store down the street. And for the next few days, Mike and I would be reminded over and over, as we pulled it out to savor with breakfast or lunch, that sometimes it’s important to nail the basic as well as the fancy—a lesson whose importance extends far beyond any kitchen, really.

  As bread goes, this light wheat bread may not have been my first choice. Oh, how I’d sneered at it! But
in the end, it turned out to be basic, yes, but also versatile and surprisingly satisfying—the sort of bread that really grows on you.

  You know, just like that boy next door often does.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When I was a child in Singapore, my mind would inevitably turn to butterflies, dragons, phoenixes, and horses as each September approached.

  With the Mid-Autumn Festival coming, the neighborhood provision shops, already crammed with an array of colorfully packaged candy and snacks, would start taking on a crimson tinge from the dozens of red lanterns shopkeepers would hang from the eaves. The blazing tropical sun would pierce through these lanterns, made of red cellophane fashioned into festive dragons or butterflies, bathing everything in a fiery warmth that was both titillating and comforting.

  What we looked forward to each year was getting to pick out a lantern to take for a spin on the night of the festival, which occurs on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar calendar month. It celebrates the autumnal equinox, the time when the moon is at its fullest and roundest—the reason the day is also known as the Moon Festival.

  After carefully perching a toothpick of a birthday candle in the middle of my lantern, I’d race through dinner and wait impatiently for it to get dark so my sister and I could head down to the playground to join the impromptu lantern parade, a giggling procession of bobbing red lights in a river of black. I never had a dragon—those always seemed more for boys than girls. But a horse, a butterfly, a puppy. Those seemed perfectly acceptable. As I got older, however, lanterns became passé, too uncool for teenagers, to be sure. I stopped making trips to the playground—going there being a little unseemly if you were not, say, between the ages of six and ten or in possession of a child within that age range.

  However, there was still one thing to enjoy about the Moon Festival, and that was mooncakes, round cakes of lotus-seed or red bean paste wrapped in either a soft, biscuitlike crust or a pliant pandan-scented wrapper made with mochi rice flour.

  Now, there are a few old stories that explain the reason for eating these little cakes. My favorite is the one of Ming revolutionaries planning to overthrow the Mongolian rulers of China during the Yuan dynasty and spreading word via letters baked into mooncakes. (Julia Child, with her intrepid intelligence service background, would’ve been so proud!)

  During my Singaporean girlhood, I’d known the stories, I’d eaten the cakes. As for making them? That seemed so laughably difficult it never once crossed my mind. I was perfectly content buying them from Chinatown every year—that is, until I found out that my aunties knew how to make them.

  It turns out, they’re incredibly easy—you just need the right teachers. In my case, that was Auntie Khar Imm’s sisters, who make a massive production of mooncakes every year. With the list of family members and friends requesting mooncakes getting longer by the year, Auntie Khar Imm and her sisters have a serious production line going.

  As usual, when I arrived at Auntie Khar Imm’s mother’s house, the activity was already well under way. You know you’re walking into a hard-core kitchen when the first things you see are stacks upon stacks of boxes filled with gorgeous, homemade mooncakes. Now, the last time I’d seen these aunties had been just before the Chinese New Year, when I’d tried my best to keep up as I watched them make my Tanglin ah-ma’s pineapple tarts. It wasn’t until I saw their mooncakes, however, that I truly realized: these women are fearless in the kitchen.

  When I walked into the kitchen that day, a sour and deeply spicy aroma hit me. Having prepped myself for making sweet mooncakes, I was completely unprepared for this scent. It turned out there was mee siam simmering on the stove. The sour, chili-based Malay noodle soup with shrimp and tofu is not by any means a regular dish for a Chinese family to be making. First of all, it’s not Chinese. And second of all, it’s incredibly labor-intensive—most people just buy it. I was perplexed about where this was coming from. “Orh, this is your ah-ma’s mee siam,” Auntie Khar Imm casually explained. “She took in this elderly Indonesian cook who was in poor health and had nowhere to go later in life. This cook taught her all her recipes.” I was surprised, but realized I shouldn’t have been. Of course my Tanglin ah-ma had been selfless enough to take in another mouth to feed even when she might not have had enough for her own family. And in return, she’d gotten a prized mee siam recipe that my family apparently now just whips together as simply as, say, tossing an egg in a frying pan for breakfast. Years later, here I was, standing in my auntie’s mother’s kitchen, taking in these incredible smells, making a major mental note to ask Auntie Khar Imm—no, beg her—to teach me.

  But first, I had some mooncakes to learn. For my daylong apprenticeship, I was attached to Auntie Khar Moi, Auntie Khar Imm’s younger sister, who is a true pro and a stickler for detail. (Luckily for me, she also possessed the infinite amount of patience required to endure the many ugly mooncakes I made before I started to get the hang of it.)

  First, you take a bunch of lotus-seed paste. (In Singapore and other Asian countries, this can be pretty widely found in the weeks leading up to the Mid-Autumn Festival.) Then, you mix in a bunch of melon seeds for added crunch. (This is optional.) Next, I watched as Auntie Khar Moi formed them into little balls, each weighing just under an ounce. You can make these cakes with several kinds of fillings—in Singapore, green tea paste has become popular in recent years—so Auntie Khar Moi took some of the fir-hued paste out to show me what it looked like. Once the filling is done, you set it aside and move on to the dough.

  I watched as Auntie Khar Moi mixed together confectioners’ sugar; a few kinds of flour, including Japanese mochi flour; shortening; and pandan water. Now, many cooks use pandan essence added to water for the “pandan water” bit, but that just will not do for my aunts. Instead, Auntie Khar Moi showed me how to boil several knots of fresh pandan leaves in water. “Boil it until you can smell it,” she said, as I began to ask her how long it needed to be on the stove. Soon enough, the liquid started to smell deliciously grassy and vanilla-like. I realized I hadn’t even noted the time. (I also realized that I was starting to be perfectly fine with not trying to write down exact timings for Every Single Bit of the process.)

  Once the dough was all mixed together, Auntie Khar Moi showed me how it needed to feel. “Stiff but also soft,” she said, nudging me to touch it. I thought back to the breads I’d been making, and immediately I understood. It was similar to tacky but not sticky—as Phyl, my bread-baking friend in Ohio, had explained. I marveled at how that consistency was as desirable in Chinese baking as in Western bread baking. When the dough was tacky but not sticky, in went a few dots of green food coloring. “Just a little bit,” Auntie Khar Moi cautioned. “You don’t want it too green.” From eyeballing, it appeared that you wanted it to be more sea foam than Incredible Hulk.

  Then Auntie Khar Moi rolled out a little circle of dough and placed a lotus-seed paste ball in the center, turned it over, and stretched the skin to cover the ball, sealing it at the bottom. Next, she grabbed a crucial piece of equipment—a mooncake mold. These fluorescent pink plastic molds make cakes of two sizes; my family prefers the smaller ones, which you can devour in about three bites. Deftly, Auntie Khar Moi placed the dough ball she’d made into the mold with the sealed side up and smoothed the dough with the palm of her hand, making sure the cake filled all of the mold. After rapping the mold on the counter a few times to loosen the dough . . . voilà! A perfect little mooncake.

  Now, some people like salted ducks’ egg yolks in their mooncakes, because the salty taste cuts the sweetness of the lotus-seed paste. For those, Auntie Khar Moi made a slightly lighter ball of paste, hollowed it out, and filled it with yolk. (Regular mooncakes—which are about the size of a hockey puck—typically feature one or two yolks. For the small ones, it’s best to use just a quarter of a yolk each. After filling the ball with yolk and rolling it back up, you want to weigh the ball again. It should weigh just under an ounce, including the yolk.) It was simple enough. Bef
ore long, I was rolling bits of dough with crumbly yolks and whapping out little green mooncakes along with Auntie Khar Moi.

  I was definitely feeling proud of myself. Unlike making pineapple tarts, this process had been straightforward—rolling, wrapping . . . It was so easy I felt silly for having been nervous about helping out. This being my super-chef family, however, we didn’t stop there.

  My aunties had prepared a large bowl of sweetened mashed yam that morning. And when that was pulled out, I started to get nervous again. What lay ahead? I had absolutely no idea.

  It turned out that, while regular mooncakes were fine and good, there was another kind of mooncake that was more “traditional” for our family. “This is the mooncake that Teochews eat,” Auntie Khar Moi said. I suddenly felt like a very bad Teochew, given that I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. Patiently, she explained that they were yam-filled balls wrapped in a deep-fried, flaky, crumbly crust. I’d seen those in stores and had always avoided them, starchy yam never really being my favorite thing. Intently, I watched as Auntie Khar Moi took bits of white dough from two different piles, laying them side by side, and rolled them out together into a flat, round circle. Then she took a ball of yam, placed it in the center of the circle, and wrapped it up, sealing it at the top. The wrapped spheres were then placed on a tray bound for the deep fryer that had been set up in a corner.

  It all looked terribly easy. Eagerly, I jumped in, trying to copy Auntie Khar Moi’s actions as I meshed the two doughs together, wrapping the yam. After a while, the activity became mindless, and we began idly chitchatting. Somehow, the conversation turned to learning and schools and the difficulty of the Singapore school system, the intense pressure that can be placed on children.