Mother's cooking

This is a zoomed in cropped photo of my mother (on the right) and my aunt from a very old and faded family photograph. Mother was about 19 at the time when this picture was taken in 1934. She was dressed in a female adult suite for important occasions in that era.

Once, we were reviewing our albums, this was the one she stayed her attention on the longest as if her memories about that scene emerged right before her. Then, she usually left it with a comment, "Your aunt and I were widely praised by people in the community as the most beautiful and dutiful daughter-in-laws of Chen's family", and then away to the next photo.

Indeed, mother was very beautiful when she was young. Apart from her good looks was her excellent cooking skill. It is especially true when I retrospect the images of her working in our very old kitchen of 50's in Taiwan when burning coal or wood was the only way to cook. The chopping board was about 50 cm in diameter. There were no sink and bench for preparing the cooking ingredients. Chopping board served as working bench and a pail of water fetched from a facet some ten meters away were what you got to cook two to four dishes and the staple, rice, every day.

Not only that, mother had to slaughter chicken or duck from a lively one to a naked lifeless one and lastly a delicious roasted or stewed meat dish that the whole family fought to grab to their own bowl. I wondered if any of us ever thought about how mother worked in the ill equipped kitchen to get those tasty dishes served on table.

Once I noticed mother only picked the least demanded dish into her rice bowl while all of us landed our chopsticks on the meaty dishes, I asked her why? "A cook is delighted the most seeing the dishes are emptied rapidly. I am fine with this less wanted one....", she said.

I remembered once I watched how mother slaughtered a duck of black feather. That was an unforgettable experience.

In a small town like Ching Shui of 1950's, most of the households got to kill poultry by themselves. There were just no such thing as supermarket where they could simply pick a tray of chicken thighs to their cart. They went to the poultry section of the market; point to the most lively one to the vendor; the vendor tied up the legs of the fowl with a few straws; hooked the poor creature on the balance scale to get the weight of the fowl to figure out a fair price for both parties. Then the mother carried that fowl all the way back home with the fowl's head dangling down along the way.

This was what I witnessed when mother processed that very duck.

Mother fetched the duck to a cleared area in the kitchen. Pulled both of its wings and stepped over the wings with her left foot. She had made some preparations prior to the slaughtering. A deep wok of slow boiling water was ready for removing duck's hair by dipping it for a right length of time. A tray of about two cups of glutenous rice was placed aside for absorbing the duck's blood for making a side dish called duck blood cake.

Back to the slaughtering. Mother asked me to go away as the killing was disturbing to view. I begged to stay to watch. No time to waste on arguing, so she carried on. She read out a short speech while her fingers nipping off hairs clear around the spot of the duck's neck where she aimed to set the blade on. I still remember that mantra mother read to the duck. It went "duck, duck, it's suffering being a duck, not worthwhile trapping in the form of a duck forever. Be born to become a member in a rich family."

As soon as the mantra finished, the blade swished, the blood streamed down, mother quickly moved the plate of gluten rice to the blood. The duck jerked a couple of struggles before it went complete motionless. Then mother kept on moving the rice plate about to make all the rice dampened by the blood evenly till no more was to flow out. The head was then put in between the wings waiting for dehairing.

Phew! That's enough for me. I am not going to tell what I had seen after that. It is disgusting to watch the whole process, but we seem to be forgetful particularly when the duck become a dish on the table. However, that memory during my childhood germinated and grew fruition that about 25 years later I claimed myself as vegetarian.

As to mother, she stopped slaughtering by herself for cooking after a dreadful experience occurred. She told me she once killed a big duck without any family member around. She laid the duck on the ground after its blood was drained. Suddenly when she was doing something else, she heard some rustling noise at her back. She turned around and saw that dead duck stood on its legs with head still wrapped in between the wings clumsily walking about. Mother gasped and ran away from the kitchen horrified.

I think slaughtering might be mother's most disliked task of her everyday cooking chores. Otherwise cooking of other non-life related dishes is simply piece of cake to her.

Since she was assigned to cooking chore for Chen's family by my grandmother at the age of ten, she had quickly acquired all the kitchen skills such as setting up fire, control of the heat strength of the fire, food preparation and storage, steaming, grilling, stir frying, boiling, flavor seasoning and etc.

There is not any signature dish of hers as all her dishes are just equally good. But what impressed me the most was the rapidness of her cooking.

Once a group of our relatives came to visit us unexpectedly around lunch time. It was a customary that the host was supposed to offer the visitors meal be they not yet had one. Immediately my mother retreated to the kitchen, and within one hour she presented a big plate of lovely fried noodle, a grilled whole fish with soy sauce and drizzled with spring onion, a plate of sliced boiled pork with sauce, and a stir fried green leafy vegetable on the table. Sometimes I came home from school hungry. This was never a problem to mother that within 10 minutes, she could turn the leftover into yummy hot meal for me.

While fast food business is damaging the health of young consumers worldwide nowadays, cooking from a mother is becoming more urgent and important. It is not only the deliciousness that counts, it is the love and education that generate from cooking activity make us unforgettable in a later day.