A Tiger in the Kitchen (16 page)

In my own family, ghosts are taken seriously. When I was a baby, my dad was posted to Taiwan and moved us into a posh apartment in a high-rise building in Taipei. The first time Mum walked into the apartment, she immediately declared that she could not live there. “It’s dirty,” she said. “There’s a ghost here. A very unhappy one.” Dad pooh-poohed the notion. A few days later, he returned from work, calling out to Mum the moment he took his shoes off. No answer. He walked through the living room and spotted her standing on the balcony. “Tin? Are you okay?” he asked, unease setting in as he walked toward her. Mum was standing on the balcony in a daze, holding me over the railing. If her fingers had relaxed just a little, a death drop would have been certain. Dad grabbed me and shook Mum, whose eyes were rolled back in her head, so the story—which they now often tell with great laughter—goes. The next day, they moved out.

Perhaps because of this, my mother now sees ghosts everywhere. And I mean everywhere. “I saw a ghost right by that tree,” she once tossed out while pulling into a parking spot near our old apartment. “She had long hair and was just standing there. I asked her what she wanted, but she didn’t say anything. Sad . . .” Daphne and I weren’t quite sure what to do with the information. But before we could fully process it, Mum was bundling up our school things from the backseat and chastising us for moving slowly. And the moment passed.

Fortunately, there’s a very simple way to appease Singaporean ghosts. Unlike their Western counterparts, Singaporean ghosts aren’t obsessed with eating humans or general carnage. (Unless their corpses have been turned into zombies by jumping cats, that is.) It’s food that they crave. They’re hungry the moment they leave Hell, and it’s only if they remain hungry that they’ll turn on people. So as a very practical matter, you’ll see massive feasts of fruit and home-cooked dishes set out along streets at this time. Even families who don’t have much food to put on their own tables will shell out for tea and overflowing platters of food in order to get these hungry spirits off their backs.

Getting between a ghost and its food has its consequences—as any kid who’s been warned will tell you. My aunties still regularly tell the story about my kuku (uncle), who was walking home from school one day and kicked over a roadside offering of food and incense. “That night, he had a very high fever, and he kept saying that he was this man, a man we did not know,” my mum will say, as my aunties quietly nod, remembering. “And he kept saying, ‘My mouth is full of dirt, my mouth is full of dirt!’ This ghost had been buried, you see . . .” The fever subsided only when my ah-ma called in a monk to pray over Kuku.

I hadn’t thought about this festival in years. August certainly is far enough from Halloween that no one is thinking of spirits in America. Landing in Singapore in August, however, I had one hungry grandmother to be thinking about.

“You can come to the temple on Saturday” said the text from my cousin Jessie. My grandmother would definitely be hungry that first weekend of the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts. And if her family wouldn’t feed her, who would?

I wasn’t sure what to bring for my Tanglin ah-ma. Auntie Khar Imm and Auntie Leng Eng would probably come laden with sweets, tea, noodles, and spring rolls for her. My parents had not gone with the family to visit my grandmother during the Hungry Ghosts month for years, preferring simply to give Auntie Khar Imm money for offerings. This was a big moment. I would be representing my own family at this feast for my grandmother. What could I possibly bring that would be a worthy addition? The answer became obvious after very little thought.

And so that Saturday morning, at the temple in Singapore’s Hougang neighborhood where my grandparents’ ashes are kept, I arrived teetering under the weight of a massive pineapple, the largest I’d been able to find. Auntie Khar Imm looked amused.

The temple was packed the moment my family arrived. Amid the hum of activity, dozens of people bustled about, setting out food and drink for their dead loved ones with great care. Swirling, slender plumes of smoke from incense filled the air, seeping into our hair. All along the walls were little rectangles of yellow paper, each crammed with Chinese characters—names of those whose ashes were housed in the temple—and serial numbers that were almost like apartment numbers indicating where those ashes could be found. Addresses for urns within a columbarium—it was almost too precious.

We found the spot bearing the serial number of my Tanglin ah-ma’s urn and started putting out the feast. We’d brought noodles, spring rolls, a vegetarian tofu stir-fry. There were little sweet cakes, capped with tea served in three thimble-size, delicate cups. And, of course, there was my giant pineapple, which suddenly seemed more than a little out of place. I looked around at the spreads of cookies, cakes, and noodles that everyone else was setting out; no other pineapples were evident. I wondered if I was being gauche. But then I thought,
Screw it
. 
The queen of pineapple tarts really deserves to be having a pineapple.

When we were done, we took turns lighting joss sticks as an offering to my grandmother. And the waiting began. The dead had to eat, after all—we couldn’t rush them. A procession of chanting monks passed through the grounds. I wasn’t sure what they were chanting—Teochew not being my forte—so I found myself pressed into a corner, trying to avoid the general hubbub, along with Auntie Leng Eng.

“So your auntie Khar Imm is teaching you how to cook?” asked Auntie Leng Eng, generally a woman of few words. I hadn’t seen her since my quest began, and I’d been a little nervous about it. As the vice principal of one of the top girls’ schools in Singapore for many years, Auntie Leng Eng prized education and professional success. Her school, Singapore Chinese Girls’ School, had churned out many female leaders in the country, after all. Auntie Leng Eng herself did not cook, having spent her time on her career instead of in the kitchen. I knew she had been proud of my success in journalism, and I wasn’t sure what she would think of my cashing that all in to learn how to cook.

“Well, yah,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to make Tanglin Ah-Ma’s dishes. I always regretted that I never did.” She nodded, silent for a moment. I told her about the dishes that I’d learned and wanted to learn—pineapple tarts, salted vegetable duck soup, braised duck—noting that I’d brought the pineapple because I thought Tanglin Ah-Ma would have liked it. “Anything very sweet or very salty, she just loved,” she simply said. “Your ah-ma had a
very
sweet tooth,” she added, smiling at the thought. I was relieved to think of my grandmother enjoying my pineapple, even though it was unlike any other offering. As we spoke, it was a little disconcerting to imagine us standing there casually talking about soup and cookies when spirits were supposedly all around us, gathered at tables, stuffing their faces.

Soon enough, it was time to pack up and head home. Auntie Leng Eng gave me a big hug. “Stop by and visit sometime,” she said. “If you have time.”

A few days later, I got more marching orders. An e-mail from Jessie arrived: “U can come by 29 Aug Sat early we are making the pink rice cake and braised duck.” The e-mail warmed my heart. Niceties in our communication had been dispelled—I was truly beginning to be treated like family.

Soon enough, I was back in Auntie Khar Imm’s kitchen. This time, another aunt was there as well, Auntie Sophia, the wife of my father’s adopted brother. I’d met Auntie Sophia only a few times before—at Chinese New Year, during cursory visits her family made to my house, and at my Singapore wedding, which had been a blur of food, way too many toasts, and 250 guests, most of them friends and associates of my parents whom I absolutely didn’t know.

“Hello, Auntie!” I said brightly when Auntie Sophia arrived.

“Not Auntie lah!” Auntie Khar Imm said. “You must call her Ah-Sim.” Even as a child, I’d been mystified by the very specific Chinese names assigned to relatives. Auntie and Uncle were too simple to be acceptable; each person had a specific title based on gender and birth order. My mother’s younger brother, for example, is Kuku to me, a name that indicates very specifically that he’s my mother’s younger brother. Beyond that, I had no idea how to address everyone—and Auntie Khar Imm was determined to school me on that.

“Ah-Sim,” I echoed. And Auntie Sophia smiled.

We got to work right away. On the menu that day was
beng gway,
which means “rice cake” in Teochew. The bright pink cakes are basically squishy glutinous rice flour shell in the shape of teardrops filled with glutinous rice that has been stir-fried with shallots, pork belly, mushrooms, and dried prawns. (Sometimes peanuts are mixed in for added crunch.) These are usually eaten for breakfast or a daytime snack—with generous dollops of fiery red chili sauce. And they’re often presented as offerings to the gods or to loved ones on the other side—the festive pink color making them lucky food.

I hadn’t had
beng gway
since I was a child, largely because they’re fairly hard to find in the United States, even in New York City. And since I’d never been a big glutinous rice fan, these cakes had never been a favorite of mine anyhow. But with the Hungry Ghosts Festival still on, make them we must. Auntie Khar Imm was the teacher in this instance, Auntie Sophia having a busy job with the government’s housing agency that generally prevents her from spending much time in the kitchen. She’d heard that Auntie Khar Imm was giving me cooking lessons and asked to tag along, however. So there we were. Auntie Sophia and I rolled up our sleeves and tried hard to follow along as Auntie Khar Imm demonstrated.

Auntie Khar Imm had chopped up the shallots, the pork belly, mushrooms, and dried prawns, and had boiled the peanuts in water for three hours to soften them a little. Standing beside her, we watched as she fired up the wok, pouring in gobs of cooking oil and then frying the shallots until golden brown. Removing the shallots, she preserved the oil, adding the mushrooms, shrimp, pork, then peanuts and frying it all up with a little salt, white pepper, and a dash of monosodium glutamate. Once that was all mixed up, she added the glutinous rice she’d soaked for hours and then drained and steamed, stirring it all together. When that was done, she set the mixture aside to cool as she prepared the dough, mixing several cups of rice flour and tapioca flour with nine rice bowls of hot water and generous dashes of bright pink powdered coloring to form a paste. Once that cooled, she placed the dough in a stand mixer for several minutes of kneading.

When the dough was done, our assembly line began. Auntie Khar Imm showed us how to make the cakes using the one neon pink plastic teardrop mold she had. First, she took a small ball of dough, rolled it out into a flat square, and covered it with glutinous rice filling, then folded over the extra dough to cover the top, and sealed it, forming a small pink purse. Then the person in charge of the mold took this ball and pressed it into the mold, smoothing it out at the top before giving the mold one solid
whap
on the side to dislodge the cake. And there you had it, a perfect pink teardrop filled with rice and pork. Auntie Sophia and I got to work mimicking Auntie Khar Imm. Because I had already learned to make
bak-zhang, beng gway
was easy for me. Auntie Sophia was struggling a little. “You want to learn,” Auntie Khar Imm said at one point, “you must come more often, like Lu-Lien.” I felt my cheeks flush with pride as I tried to quicken my hands to make her even more proud.

When the pink dough ran out, Auntie Khar Imm made more dough, this time choosing not to add pink coloring and instead showing me how to dot the plain
beng gway
with liquid red food coloring so the cakes wouldn’t be just white, the color of death. “Luckier for praying,” she said. And when the rice filling ran out, she thought for a moment before rummaging through her fridge and chopping up some cabbage, lightly salting it, and adding a few dashes of minced dried shrimp for more flavor. “You can use the dough to make dumplings,” she said, pressing a small amount into a circle, filling it with cabbage and shrimp, and then folding over the dough and crimping it deftly and beautifully to form a perfect half-moon.

Try as I might, however, I couldn’t get the crimping down. Auntie Khar Imm’s creases were tiny and perfect, far prettier than those of any dumplings I’d seen at the best dim sum restaurants. And she did them in a flash. I had to ask her to slow down several times so I could actually see what she was doing. Mine, on the other hand, were clumsy and fat, and I probably made one dumpling for every four she was turning out. I was that slow.

I was beginning to feel that perhaps I hadn’t been deserving of Auntie Khar Imm’s recent praise. “Aiyah,” she clucked after watching my brow furrow ever more with frustration. “I’ve been doing this for so many years already. You just started.” And so I kept going. I didn’t get discernibly better, but I did get a little faster. I was starting to feel better.

As the day came to an end, we packed up the rice cakes and the dumplings for steaming. Auntie Khar Imm picked up one of my later dumplings, inspecting it. “This one’s not bad leh,” she said, smiling. “Just practice.”

I began to feel like I was getting somewhere.

When I think of the family feasts of my Singapore girlhood, there’s always a duck in the picture.

To say that my people—the Teochews—adore duck would be to make a major understatement. In Shantou (also known as Swatow, which is its Teochew name), the area in Southern China where my great-grandfather lived as a boy, duck and goose are inescapable at many dinner tables.

So it’s more than slightly sacrilegious to say that duck simply isn’t one of my favorites. I do make an exception for some versions, however, and Teochew-style braised duck is one of them.

While I’m really good at eating it, making it is another matter altogether. But this was something auntie Alice was intent on fixing right away. “Cheryl ah, do you want to learn how to make
lor ar
[braised duck]?” she called one day to ask. My mother’s side of the family is Hockchew, not Teochew, but Auntie Alice’s husband, Uncle Yong Hai, was one of my
kaki-nang
(own people). “Your uncle Yong Hai’s sis taught me how to make it. I can teach you if you want,” Auntie Alice said.