by Cheryl Tan
But Tan goes further to weave together a narrative that explores the complicated process of cultivating and defining personal and cultural identity in a time of globalization. As a graduate of an American college and a successful journalist living in New York, she spent the good part of her adult life transcending the traditional roles expected of women in Singapore, especially that of the cook. She speaks English like a Californian, and struggles instead with the varieties of her native languages. She married a man from rural Iowa. But after the divorce of her parents focuses her attention on her responsibilities as the oldest child, she begins to lament the distance she has traveled from her family and culture, and to desire the intimate knowledge of the food she was raised on and the women who prepared it.
A year of visits and idiosyncratic tutorials brings Tan into the intimate kitchen spaces of these women, where she gains not only many treasured recipes but also valuable insight into just how traditional, often laborious home-cooked dishes help create a sense of home and family. Despite the substantial divisions created by geography, generational time, language, economic class, and even divorce, the ancient art of preparing extensive meals for extended family brings Tan back to a place of genuine connection and comfort with the women she moved away from more than a decade before. And far from relegating her to some diminished social position, cooking with these women of great suffering and strength teaches her to trust herself, to relax and have the confidence and command necessary to prepare meals that bring people together and make them happy. All of which can’t help but have us feeling, by the end of her journey, quite full ourselves.
Discussion Questions
1. What are your memories of food from your childhood? What were your favorites? Were there special family dishes or recipes? Were any of them taught to you?
2. Tan is eventually moved by a great desire to learn about what she calls “the cuisine of my people.” Even if you didn’t grow up eating it, what is the cuisine of your people?
3. In Chapter Three, Tan explains that her relatives suggested that “cooking wasn’t a science; it wasn’t meant to be perfect. It was simply a way to feed the people you loved.” Discuss this in the context of America’s current fascination with cooking shows and competitions that portray cooking as extremely complex and all about perfection.
4. Tan admits early on to thinking that knowing how to cook was “one of those things that weakened you as a female,” but does so in the light of seeing her grandmother as a fierce presence in the kitchen. And later, she refers to herself as a “silly schoolgirl” for avoiding the kitchen. What do you think? At what point, if any, does being responsible for cooking meals become limiting, or even oppressive? Can personal ferocity balance this out?
5. Tan makes the bold claim that “Home . . . is rooted in the kitchen and the foods of my Singaporean girlhood.” What role does food play in your concept of home? Are there other spaces, or elements from your experience that are the center of your concept of home?
6. Throughout the book, as part of her online experience baking her way through Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Tan talks about making many kinds of bread. What breads are primary in your life? What breads from other cultures have you tried? Discuss the long history and cultural significance of bread. Which breads have become symbolic?
7. What were your greatest cooking moments? Any “COLOSSAL FAILURE[S]” like Tan experienced when trying to make ciabatta? How did each make you think about yourself? About cooking?
8. In the modern day of vegetarian and even vegan diets, what are your personal rules when unexpectedly asked to eat a meal you know you won’t like, as Tan experiences when confronted with jellied worms? Does courtesy win out, or do you find a way to refuse?
9. Tan is shocked to find that both of her grandmothers ran gambling dens to survive financially, that her Auntie Leng Eng was an opium courier for her own grandfather, and the extent of the poverty of Chaozhou. How does this family history change the way she thinks about where she’s from? Does it change the way she thinks about cooking?
10. After cooking ngoh hiang with her Auntie Alice and Ah-Ma, Tan tries for the first time a Golden Pillow, brought home by her kuku. This is a very large bun with chicken curry baked into it that is snipped open and shared by everyone gathered around it. What other dishes can you think of that are designed to gather around to share?
11. Discuss the often-mentioned idea of agak-agak. Is it simply the act of estimating instead of measuring amounts of ingredients? Is it about instinct? Does it end up having greater personal implications for Tan? Is it related to the need to know “exactly . . . the details of Every Single Thing” that she admits to in Chapter Five?
12. In the Prologue, Tan articulates the difficulty of achieving contemporary professional success and remaining in touch with her grandmothers and their traditional recipes. What are the various things necessary for her to take an entire year to offset this sacrifice?
13. Despite their personal strength, it is clear to Tan in Singapore that she is an exception and that many women, including those of her family, were in many ways limited socially. Where do you see these social limitations? Where do you see strength or transcendence despite them?
A Conversation with Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
Q: What are your favorite dishes lately?
I often think about what my final meal would be if I had a choice—and I often think about a simple meal of fried noodles, Singapore style, and my mother’s turmeric fried chicken wings. Both items are incredibly easy to make and represent the ultimate comfort food for me. When I’m not craving those—and the whole host of Singapore dishes ranging from my grandmother’s popiah to my mother’s green bean soup—I also adore Italian food. I am an unabashed Italophile and have been on a bolognese binge recently, experimenting with recipes from chefs such as Jonathan Benno (formerly of Per Se and now of Lincoln, in New York City) and Heston Blumenthal (of Fat Duck in the United Kingdom). This obsession is not as odd as one might think—there are threads that connect Italian food and Chinese food, after all. Marco Polo did bring the noodle back from China to Italy, resulting in the creation of pasta. I hope to be able to master traditional Italian cooking someday.
Q: Given that you have now had successful experiences in both a modern, professional pursuit and a traditional, domestic one, what insight do you have about how possible it is to balance them? Is the idea of being a “Superwoman” as mentioned at the end of the book an inspiration or a burden?
I think it’s highly possible and can also be very fulfilling to balance the two elements in your life. Part of the reason I began this journey was that I had invested almost all my energies in building my career since I left college and the higher I climbed, the more I realized there was a gaping hole in my life. It was only in my thirties that I realized that the missing piece was my connection with home and all that it represented. Being a “Superwoman” can sound daunting, but it’s also something worthy of aspiration. In my experience, cooking and being able to feed my loved ones well can be a hassle sometimes, but the fulfillment that you get from it ends up feeding you, too. And when that part of your life is nurtured, it fuels you to go forth and conquer the career part of your life as well.
Q: In a world that is constantly trying to sell us new kitchen gadgets, can you describe what was used in the traditional Singaporean kitchen to make all the wonderful food?
When my grandmothers used to make their signature dishes decades ago, they obviously didn’t have access to many modern gadgets—a mortar and pestle would be used for pounding spices, a charcoal stove would be used for wok-frying tapioca flour for cookies. In my aunties’ twenty-first-century kitchens, however, charcoal stoves have become too much of a hassle. Regular ovens are now used if flour needs to be toasted to a specific dryness. Food processors are used for blending ingredients together; an electric juicer is used for separating the pulp and juice in pineapples when making pineapple tarts. And instead of wooden
molds for shaping mooncakes and teardrop-shaped rice cakes, festive pink plastic ones are now used instead. One thing remains the same, however; anything that needs to be fried is still done in a basic black wok—I suspect that will never change in a traditional Singaporean kitchen.
Q: Can you talk about the concept agak-agak? It seems more than simply a lack of exact measuring. Has it been relevant or helpful in other ways in your life?
Agak-agak is the Malay phrase that means “guess guess”—and it was something that I repeatedly heard in my aunties’ kitchens whenever I tried to press them for exact measurements of ingredients for various dishes. Unlike me—who used to follow recipes to the letter in the kitchen because I lacked the confidence to experiment—my aunties and grandmothers were serious cooks who rarely relied on measuring cups or spoons and instead would “taste, taste, taste” and then simply agak-agak whether a dish needed more or less salt. When I first started cooking with them, hearing the words agak-agak bandied about so much was frustrating—I had come back determined to learn how to make these dishes I’d grown up eating and loving and I didn’t understand why they weren’t helping me in my quest. After a while, however, I learned that they were teaching me an important lesson. Cooking isn’t a science. It isn’t supposed to be. Recipes have a basis, yes, but they are supposed to be organic and can change over time. You just have to trust in yourself enough to wing it sometimes. It’s a lesson that I started to embrace after watching them cook, and as I started helping a little more and gaining more confidence in the kitchen. I believe agak-agak is a philosophy that applies to life as well. You can’t and shouldn’t plan every single thing out. Sometimes you just have to let go a little and trust yourself.
Q: In what ways are you able to integrate all that you learned about cooking these traditional dishes into what must be a busier everyday life in New York?
Everyday life in New York has and always will be crazy. In my own kitchen, I’ve tried to make some of the dishes that I’ve learned. The dish I probably make the most often is a quick version of the dau yew bak or Teochew-style braised duck that my aunties make. Instead of using pork belly or duck, I sometimes use ground beef or pork for simplicity—no chopping involved!—and if I feel like dressing it up a little, I’ll slice up tofu and add that together with a few hard-boiled eggs to the gravy toward the end. It’s a hearty, meaty stew that lasts a few days and gets better over time. The leftovers are perfect for weeknights in New York when I don’t feel like cooking.
About the Author
Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is a New York-based writer who has covered fashion, retail, and home design (and written the occasional food story) for the Wall Street Journal. Before that she was the senior fashion writer for InStyle magazine and the senior arts writer for the Baltimore Sun. Born and raised in Singapore, she studied journalism at Northwestern University. Her work has appeared in the New York Times and Marie Claire, among many other publications. You can follow her travels and eating adventures at www.cheryllulientan.com.
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
“The Moon Represents My Heart” © Copyright. CRC Jianian Publishing/BMI (admin. by EverGreen Copyrights). All rights reserved. Used by permission.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the original print edition of this book as follows:
Tan, Cheryl Lu-Lien.
A tiger in the kitchen : a memoir of food and family / Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan.
p. cm.
Summary: “A book about the author’s quest to recreate the dishes of her native Singapore during one Lunar Calendar year, as a way to connect food and family with her sense of home”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4013-4128-2 (pbk.)
1. Cooking, Singaporean—Anecdotes. 2. Tan, Cheryl Lu-lien. I. Title.
TX724.5.S55T36 2011
641.595957—dc22
2010035210
eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-9656-5
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Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Cover photograph by Ricardo Demurez / Arcangel Images
First eBook Edition
Original paperback edition printed in the United States of America.
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