The Chinese are a food loving people and my family are no exception to that. I grew up surrounded by delicious food. Dad was a chef but our Mother cooked pretty much all of our meals at home. We would sit down to a meal together once a day, every day. It was often the only family time we had. That precious gap between us kids getting home from school just after 3pm and Dad going to work by 4pm. We ate what our parents ate and for us that meant there would always be rice. We spoke Cantonese at home and our equivalent to saying ‘Bon Appetit’ is to say ‘Eat rice’ (sik-fahn) and when we would sit down to dinner, there would be a chorus of ‘Everybody eat rice’ (dai-ga-sik-fahn). In our family, and I'm guessing in many other Chinese families too, the way of asking someone if they have eaten yet or had their dinner yet is to ask ‘sik-jor-fahn-mei-ah?’ or ‘have you eaten rice yet?’. Luckily, and perhaps unsurprisingly, I love rice! As my mom says, I’m a rice bucket! Rice is a staple across much of China but in some areas, particularly in the north, wheat is more commonly grown and noodles and bread are more predominant.
Our average daily family meal would consist of a small bowl of rice for each person with a variety of communal dishes in the middle of the table to share from. These dishes are called ‘Sung’ 餸, and they are accompaniments to, and toppings for, the rice. There would normally be a stir fry of veggies and meat, either chicken or pork, a whole steamed fish with ginger, spring onions and soy sauce and sometimes we would have an omelette/fried eggs drizzled with oyster sauce. We used chopsticks and spoons. We would take a spoonful of something from the middle, put it in our rice bowls and eat it along with some rice and then repeat. This way of eating flips the 'Western' convention of having starchy foods such as potatoes as a side dish. For us, the rice is the main part of the meal and the shared dishes in the middle are to help the rice go down. It also allowed each person to eat as much or as little as they liked and to choose what they wanted from the meal. We were always allowed more rice if we wanted it. I think this way of eating is why my brother’s and I are not picky eaters. The age-old child vs parent food struggle still existed but generally, we were encouraged to eat a variety of foods, including fish and vegetables but they were not forced on us. It was not an overwhelming or intimidating plate of food that we had to finish, just a bowl of rice and as much of the other items as we wanted to eat. Not that we didn’t sometimes misbehave. We’d often fill up on the ‘good stuff’ from the middle of the table and not eat our rice. My youngest brother went through a phase of not wanting to chew anything. He would sit with his bowl of rice for ages after everybody else had finished stubbornly refusing to eat. We always ate the same as what my parents were eating and that made us more adventurous eaters. The Chinese way of eating and sharing food is something I still love. Family members show you love and care by spooning the choicest morsels into your bowl for you to savour. Communal food always feels like a party/celebration to me!
As we got older my parents started a weekly tradition of going for Sunday lunch. Every Sunday we would all go for a swim and then out to a local restaurant for a family meal before Dad went to work. I think it was to get us used to a different way of eating. We were taught to use chopsticks long before learning to use knives and forks and our parents wanted us to learn 'Western' table manners. It was also at least partly an attempt to fit in with the norms of our town and it gave my mom a break from cooking. For us kids, the novelty of being able to choose what we wanted to eat from a menu and getting our very own dishes was exciting. We were never forced to choose from the children’s menu though. My parents would instead ask if we could have a half or a children’s portion of something from the adult’s menu. Or we would choose a starter and get a side portion of vegetables to bulk out the meal. It was extremely rare for us to ask for, to be allowed to have, the usual chips and nuggets children’s menu option. Some might say we were spoiled but I think it was genuinely my parents trying to educate our palates with as wide a variety of foods as possible.
These Sunday meals were foods we would not typically have at home, often places with starched white tablecloths and very traditional silver spoon service but sometimes foods from other cultures too. We had our favourites but we would also try different restaurants, depending on Dad’s mood. It’s where I discovered a love of roast potatoes, cauliflower cheese and braised red cabbage but also pasta and Indian curries. It’s also where I discovered the horrible things done to lovely vegetables, it was where I came to understand why my friends said they hated vegetables and refused to eat them. I still dread over-cooked, unseasoned, floppy carrots, broccoli and sprouts. Even during these meals out, the desire to share food was strong. If we tasted something particularly delicious on our plates, we would offer a bite to everybody else to see if they wanted to try it. It’s something we still do and my mother still despairs of us passing forkfuls of food around the table and making a mess.
At the end of lunch, we’d be allowed a dessert! This was often ice-cream, served in a little silver dish with a wafer and every last drop and crumb of it was savoured. My parents would have coffee and we would steal the sugar cubes or sugar crystals when we thought they were not looking. We’d suck on them in the car on the way home and they’d pretend not to notice. Desserts were not a normal part of a meal at home. Dad would instead peel and slice up oranges, apples, melon and on rare occasions, mangoes and divide them between the five of us. It is only as an adult that I appreciate this sharing of fruit as a symbol of caring, family and unity.
Our parents would sometimes experiment with making their own versions of the dishes we had tried in restaurants at home. My mom makes a wicked roast leg of lamb and her pan-fried pork chops are delicious. My Dad cooks a mean steak. On the occasions they would prepare these foods, we would eat them from individual plates with knives and forks like in restaurants instead of our usual communal meals with bowls and chopsticks. The meats would often be served with rice instead of mashed potatoes and stir fried, instead of boiled or roasted, vegetables. I know now that they were learning to prepare these foods, having grown up eating and preparing only Chinese style dishes themselves. It was, and still is, a luxury to have an expensive piece of meat to yourself instead of slicing it up and cooking it with other ingredients to make it go further and serve more people. Now a days, there’s very little that my parents don’t know how to cook. They are serious foodies! When I go home to visit them and my mom asks what I want to eat, I still ask for our childhood favourites, chicken and rice soup and my dad’s sweet and pour pork knuckle and stir-fried lobster with noodles.
Papa Tong's amazing lobster stir fry!
While growing up in Ireland has meant that I adore potatoes in all their forms, I still love rice most of all. It’s my ultimate comfort food and while we don’t eat it for every meal, we still have rice once or twice a week. I’m much lazier than my mother was though!
Cooking a variety of dishes or steaming a whole fish for just the two of us seems excessive. I’ll make one dish of thinly sliced meat, fish, prawns or tofu stir-fried with carrots, onions, celery and mangetout and sometimes add side dish of garlicky stir-fried greens like tender-stem broccoli or pak-choi. A lot of the time I just do the one stir fry with rice. I reserve the cooking of a table full of dishes for when we have friends over for dinner. Inviting people for dinner is a really good excuse for me to cook all my favourite Chinese dishes!
Chinese New Year Meal chez Barlow 2020
When not eating rice, I try to cook a wide variety of dishes. We will have curries, salads, pastas, stews, soups and roasts. We love trying meals from around the world, Thai, Mexican, Indian, Italian, French, Japanese and Greek foods are particular favourites. A Sunday lunch out is a special treat now rather than a weekly occurrence. It’s something both Hubby and I really enjoy and we cook it at home almost as much as we would go out for a Sunday roast. The illicit/forbidden nature of fast foods and the foods that my parents considered ‘junk foods’ when I was growing up does mean that I do get a kick out of the occasional chicken nugget and I love a good juicy burger. My husband’s tastes do influence my cooking, because I cook for him more than anyone else, and I like making him smile. Foods that were once guilty pleasures, like sausages and chips, are no longer taboo!
As an adult, I really appreciate the time and effort my parents put into feeding our family. We were privileged in that our mom had the time and budget to cook at least three different dishes for us every day. Both of our parents encouraged us to try as many different foods as possible and spent their hard earned cash on taking us out for meals. There’s very little, foodwise at least, that we would not at least try. I credit them with my passion for food and for trying new things and also for the joy I get from feeding people and sharing food with them.
What are your favourite family meals? Are you an adventurous eater? How do you encourage your family to try new and different foods? What are your guilty pleasures? What are your favourite comfort foods?
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