Steamed Eggplants Still Purple

Since leaving home in 2018 to study in Canada, I have tried to recreate the food I grew up with. Sometimes I cook dishes specific to my hometown, Nanjing, in Southeast China, like roasted duck or pot stickers; other times I try to mimic recipes associated with a person or memory.During my time in Toronto, I heard many stories of how food intertwined with the journeys of new immigrants. Sometimes it was to express a sense of longing and nostalgia, and sometimes to pass down a tradition or a sense of identity. I realized that these food memories connect personal history to shared emotions, and I started to collect these stories intentionally.In 2023, I worked as a program coordinator for Heritage Toronto and created an oral history project “North York Recipes for Healing” that documents the food memories of the East Asian communities in North York, Toronto. The neighborhood witnessed the growth of East Asian communities, among many other diverse cultures, and I’m particularly interested in how recipes adapted and changed with immigration and cultural contact. Each interviewee was asked to provide a recipe, or recipes, along with the memories they associated with cooking, sharing, and eating the food. The goal of the project was to reflect on the challenges of immigrants and visible minorities, especially those facing food insecurity and Anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to heal together as a community through culinary knowledge and stories. Not only was I touched by the interviewees’ narrations and resonated with their experiences, I also went through a personal journey with food, storytelling, and healing.In February 2024, my Gonggong, maternal grandfather, who lived with the rest of my family back in Nanjing, passed away. This was my first experience with the death of a close family member. When I was little, Gonggong cooked for our entire family. I was too young to grasp the social expectation of gender roles, but I noticed that while most children associated food, warmth, and comfort with their mother or grandmother, my earliest memory of these feelings was about Gonggong. Using the culinary knowledge he passed on to me through my mother and recreating the food he once made helped to ease the pain I felt from his loss.Three eggplants lay before me on the cutting board. They were the skinny kind that usually sold under the name Chinese eggplants in grocery stores. Long, curvy, and dark purple in color. I picked up the kitchen knife and carefully sliced the bottom into strips, leaving the top intact with the stem. This cutting technique was a bit more difficult than simply dicing, but it was how Gonggong used to do it, and I was dedicated to making this meal just the way he would…Cooking the foods we associate with a loved one is a way to keep their stories alive in our minds. Two of the interviewees also contributed recipes in memory of their deceased relatives. Joanne is a third-generation Japanese Canadian whose mother Esther lived through racial segregation in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. After Esther passed away in 2015 at the age of 102, Joanne assembled a cookbook, Esther’s Table, with the recipes her mother often made, in remembrance of her mother’s courage and resilience. Ben is a second-generation Korean Canadian, whose father worked as a butcher and raised two children as a single parent in Canada. Ben spoke of a Kalbi recipe, Korean BBQ ribs, that his father often made on weekends. It took Ben much trial-and-error to recreate the taste, since his father, like many East Asian home cooks, never cooked with precise measurements and instructions. But the experience of testing the Kalbi recipe had brought Ben closer to the memories of his late father.The fifteen recipes collected through the project came from the very diverse and complex East Asian communities in Toronto. The interviewees include dependents of early immigrants whose families lived in Canada for several generations, and also second-generation immigrants whose parents arrived in Canada seeking opportunities in the late twentieth century. Also included are newcomers and recent immigrants, who arrived in the past two decades for education or work. I also tried to approach people of different age groups and professional experiences, including high school students, teachers, health care workers, civil servants, food business owners, and employees. At the same time, I posted an online community survey, collecting short responses about community member’s food memories. I understood it was impossible to represent every member in the East Asian community through my project, but by showcasing as many perspectives as I could, I tried to capture the diversity within.I then edited and curated the oral history interviews and recipe stories into an online archive about a North York’s East Asian food heritage for public access. Community-based artist Zhu Dandan was commissioned to create illustrations for all the recipes. I also organized an in-person event Full Moon Festival that coincides with the Mid-Autumn Festival, a celebration of full moon and harvest season in many East Asian cultures. Project participants were invited to share their stories through panel discussions and food demonstrations.While working on the project, I heard from my family that my Gonggong was showing many signs of Alzheimer’s. Though it was sad to see his memories slowly slipping away, this was expected since he was almost ninety years old, and my family had treated his confusion and sometimes absurd behavior with patience and humor. I spoke with him on a video call close to New Year’s Day in 2024, and when asked who I was by my uncle, Gonggong thought about it for a moment and replied, “little sister.”“Little sister of whom?” My uncle pressed.After another pause, Gonggong said my mother’s name unsurely.My family burst out laughing.Gone along with the memories was his ability to cook for himself. My mother and two uncles took turns cooking for my grandparents or taking them out to eat at restaurants. Gonggong’s passion for food didn’t diminish with his memories. He was confident in judging the food brought before him, and his taste buds knew when something tasted different from how he would make the food. This was when I started my experiment to recreate some of his dishes, so I might be able to cook for him when I returned home to visit.The pot on the stove was still simmering. I seasoned the meat with soy sauce, vinegar, and cooking wine, and brought the pot to a boil with bay leaves, dried pepper, and star anise. Then I lowered the heat to let it simmer. I wasn’t sure how long it would take.Born and raised in Nanjing, a Southeast coast province of China, I grew up eating soup as a stable side dish with every meal. After I came to Toronto, I cooked within the limited time between study and work and had soup less often. The pork bone soup was another one of Gonggong’s dishes that I missed a lot.The change of diet caused by circumstances made it easy for me to relate to the stories about searching for familiar tastes in a new environment, as a way to fulfill the longing for home. Interviewee Julia came from Ningbo, a city also located on the Southeast coast of China. Julia’s recipe 面筋包塞肉 (meat-stuffed seitan puff) is a common dish in the area, which I also remember fondly from my childhood. Julia described how grocery shopping was almost therapeutic when she first moved to North York in the 1990s. At the time, most Chinese groceries were available only in Toronto’s downtown Chinatown, or suburbs of Markham Ontario, where there were established Chinese communities. In high school, Julia and her friends would go on grocery excursions during weekends, taking a long bus ride to gather ingredients for their family. The meat-stuffed seitan puff was a dish her family made quite often at the time. It required only simple ingredients in addition to the premade seitan puff: ground meat (beef or pork), soy sauce, and aromatics (ginger and garlic); canned water chestnuts were optional for additional crunchy texture. But the dish was savory and wholesome, a nice accompaniment to steamed rice or noodle soup.Julia’s weekly journey to get Chinese groceries reminded me of the trips I made to the farmers’ market with Gonggong. When I was little, Gonggong treated cooking with true care and dedication. He would rise early to go to the farmers’ market for local produce since the quality and variety of vegetables were best in the morning. I watched him pick, choose, haggle, and sway. Organic food probably wasn’t what he had in mind, but with years of cooking experience, he always favored produce that looked lean and delicate, sometimes with dirt still dangling from the roots, over the bright and puffy produce that looked like blown balloons, all identical to one another. But this also meant an extended effort to wash and pick, which took up the bulk of the prep time upon returning home. The farmers’ market was always lively, with dozens of shoppers as sharp and picky as Gonggong, and dozens of vendors trying to win shopper attention. The prices were never clearly marked, so how much you paid in the end would depend on how much you knew your way around the market. Gonggong wasn’t a big talker, but he was kind and warm to everyone, so instead of haggling nonstop with vendors for a better price, Gonggong sometimes got an even better deal with his easy smile and earnestness. As an adult, I shopped only in supermarkets where every item had a listed price and never dreamed of the need to haggle. Thinking back to the times I followed Gonggong through the stalls and watched him working his magic, I realized haggling was a skill lost between generations.If it was just my grandparents and I, lunch was usually simple, and by simple I mean at least two vegetable dishes, one meat dish, and a soup, served with steamed rice. The cycle repeated itself in the afternoon, but with more ingredients to prepare and more dishes to cook, since my parents would be home for dinner. Only after I came to Canada did I understand the importance with which my culture and my family had treated meal times. Another interviewee, Carol, a second-generation Chinese Canadian, shared a similar sentiment. Carol also lived with her grandparents growing up, and they had communal meals every day. Steamed fish with hot oil, soup, and white rice were staple dishes that Carol had disliked as a child yet grew to crave after she moved away from home. As an adult, Carol usually cooks healthy but simple dishes for her own family, like one-pot dishes with both vegetables and meat. “But sometimes my Mom would still say: ‘Oh my poor grandchildren, they only get one dish during a meal, and no soup,’” Carol described with a smile.Similar to Carol, my own cooking skills were developed when I was living on my own at university, in Toronto. How to quickly assemble something that contains all the nutrients my body needs was top priority. Dishes like pasta, fried rice, or noodle soup became the things I made the most. Food was usually quickly devoured between classes or short lunch breaks at work. I started to understand that the meals I had with my family were precious, which I didn’t know to appreciate as a child. They were precious not for the common ingredients or the skill of the cook. Gonggong was a reasonable cook, but the number of dishes he knew how to make was limited, and he wasn’t a person too eager to branch out to try new things. What gave homemade meals a special place in our hearts and minds was the care that went into the preparation. The ingredients might be simple, but the memory made them rich.I checked on the soup pot after I finished slicing the eggplant. It had been on the stove for more than an hour, but the meat didn’t feel tender yet. I turned the dial on the stove from low to medium heat and added more water, while I kept reminding myself to take time and be patient, just like him.All fifteen interviewees had contributed recipes that required common ingredients and were simple to make, such as noodles and simple soups, and side dishes with vegetables. When I first approached them, some were hesitant to be a part of the project. “I’m not a good cook,” they said. “I only know how to make the most basic things.” But the most basic foods that made up our everyday life carry the most stories. Jan served on the board of the Japanese Canadian Culture Centre in Toronto and was involved with developing a community cookbook, Just Add Shoyu, a collection of Japanese Canadian recipes. Many of the dishes in the cookbook, especially those passed down from the early generations of immigrant families, were created out of necessity, working with what was available, adapting and changing with the environment. Jan contributed her mother’s crab meat tempura recipe for North York Recipes for Healing. The ingredients were simple: canned crab meat, carrots, and green beans. Using canned seafood was a way to adapt when fresh seafood wasn’t accessible or affordable. But the dish became the family favorite, and during special occasions, like birthdays and family gatherings, Jan’s children would request crab meat tempura, exactly the way grandma made it. Now that Jan has two grandsons, she wrote down the recipe for her own children, so they may pass on the culinary tradition to the future generations.When I think about the ingredients Gonggong used, simplicity is a word that comes to mind. He only made the food he was familiar with, leafy greens local to my hometown Nanjing, like 菊花脑 (Chrysanthemum sprout) or 马兰头 (Kalimeris leaves). Beef and lamb weren’t a major source of meat for the southeast coast when he was young, so he would use mainly poultry or pork, sometimes fish or shrimp. For seasoning, he relied heavily on soy sauce and vinegar, and spices were limited to ginger, garlic, and green onion. In light of my adventurous palate that wanted to try every flavor possible, his dishes seemed perhaps overly simple. Simplicity doesn’t mean easy—just like the Pork Bone Stew that had only a few ingredients (pork bone, winter melon, kelp. and some aromatics)—but simmering the bones for a full for was a eggplants were a dish Gonggong used to were at the bottom but intact at the top where the They were with garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and vinegar, and then steamed over simmering The vegetable was and when and nice color. When my mother and I made the same dish, the was usually before cooked where it went perhaps we didn’t use oil, or the kind of vinegar, or we were to the in before cooking, or the cooking was many memory of Gonggong was him the kitchen in not from a pot on the Gonggong was of the that had in the most adventurous he would be with kitchen was a rice to make rice. In his pork soup involved a pot from to a water or from time to time, the meat was and the of the the pork is a recipe contributed by interviewee a second-generation Chinese pork with and is a recipe his mother often made when he was The cooking usually a few so mother would it in the early afternoon, and by time, the meat would be so tender it from the my kind of comfort He would still make the dish from time to time but would use an to time. The cooking time was to under an hour, but he it make the as good as when his mother made it. “I use the cook to tender the meat and then them into a pot and in the but also to let out the In the memories of food, the taste itself was only a part of the cooking the and the all made up and at the of it all was the person who made the on the soup, I noticed the white of the eggplants I just sliced to When you something to there is never time. I the eggplants with the sauce I a of garlic, ginger, soy sauce, vinegar, and I carefully the in the and for the him on In the of the he up with He was to the the when the pain didn’t ease and was never able to the was our during the with When I arrived in on February two before the New Gonggong was He my in the with a but there was no way to he knew who I or he me as simply another body in with the and care in and out of the I often heard people who a life away from their hometown that when you get the and the too In my I was to him during the of his Though my not ease his it did ease my the New got a yet of was in the for a Gonggong’s him in and out of Sometimes he was too to or keep his and the rise and of his were his only signs of At his was close to so my family had not to but to only on to ease his around and but the always way back to Gonggong. about Gonggong, between and nostalgia, from time to time. Gonggong’s had many years so we weren’t sure he or even sense our in his In my mind, the of Gonggong in the kitchen for the soup to cook with my family in his passed away on February but part of me thought Gonggong be special in some way to the on such a day. he was too kind to make for him every so he picked a with a family kept things simple: the was on the and the the with only family were in of the during the and to family The first of is a of and so are treated as a of the in and the living to on Food and two of the most of a are often intertwined to of food and often came up in my with my a Chinese Canadian from contributed the recipe of her hometown, steamed fish with It was a common dish for the New celebration when was growing up, since the for fish is a for a for a of and to eat fish during had lunch together after the and a dish was served as the of and and The that and that you and from the that eating food that is and simple and to in It was by for of years and became a during the meal after a loved the interviews with community and my own trial-and-error in recreating Gonggong’s dishes, I realized it was impossible to the tastes from our no how we in a different time and and different from and on culinary knowledge for our community as it both to our past and create our The experience my of how food and memories about food be so intertwined with our personal that food may the of our or is the Chinese when families a in of passed family It was for to make dishes to the This the on 2024, and I was to to Toronto in I didn’t have the to be there with my family when they Gonggong’s and made for the first time. In my kitchen in Toronto, I the eggplants sliced and meat slowly in the I was to make the dishes exactly the way Gonggong I knew my cooking never be the same as my in Canada and to a of vegetables that from the I tasted as a no how I the recipe, the was still different from my I use an they use a stove and an the of the heat and the had to to many of my project as as we the taste of home lived in our memory and was what made them even more Steamed of soy rice be with other Chinese eggplants and water to and there was never an to we the recipes of in their But the way that we and the we the or is how we connect to our as as to the people and from those I the and brought out the dishes I I Gonggong’s was to a to share my meal with and I part of him still lived through my memory of him and my to cook food the way he used I share my of the recipe Heritage Toronto North York Recipes for

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.