Read Aunty Lee's Delights Online
Authors: Ovidia Yu
Aunty Lee's Delights (26 page)
Aunty Lee’s Delights kept Aunty Lee occupied after ML Lee’s death left her a (relatively) young widow. Of course Aunty Lee always grumbled about the amount of work she had to do on whatever budget her clients gave her. Cherril noticed that if a client increased the budget, Aunty Lee simply upgraded her menu and went on complaining. Aunty Lee’s grumbles were a way for her to disguise how much she enjoyed cooking for people. When there were no clients, she cooked for free. She had managed fine on her own but she seemed glad to have Cherril around.
Mark had not paid back the money Aunty Lee lent him to finance the wine business, so the handover of the business should not have been a problem. But Mark still had not signed the transfer papers or returned his keys. It was almost as though he was reluctant to let go. Aunty Lee had given Cherril keys to the shop’s front entrance, but there were no extra keys to the service entrances connecting the kitchen and wine room to the alley behind the shop. Aunty Lee had hung the keys to these doors on hooks beside them.
“And don’t forget that today’s people have not paid you yet, madam,” Nina reminded Aunty Lee. “You must ask them right away or else later they will say, ‘I’m sure I paid already.’ ”
Nina sounded uncannily like Niyati Fornell, who had given that excuse the previous week. Aunty Lee gave a cackle of delighted appreciation but Cherril’s laugh was a little weak. Nina was a skilled mimic. The thick Filipino accent she spoke with most of the time was a token of subservience, designed to keep her invisible. Cherril was very conscious of this because of the difficulties she was having with her own accent and with standard English. The Hokkien-Teochew infused with Malay and English “loanwords” Cherril had picked up from her parents was as despised by speakers of pure Amoy Hokkien as her neighborhood-school “Singlish” was by her husband’s mission-school-educated friends. Many of Mycroft’s friends affected British, American, or Australian accents depending on where they had gone to study, and several had laughed at Cherril’s pronunciation and grammar mistakes. One (who Cherril suspected had wanted Mycroft for herself) had given her a link to the “Speak Good English” campaign website. Cherril, too practical to be proud, had found the site very helpful. But the ease with which Nina adopted voices and accents made her wonder if Nina mimicked Cherril’s “gahmen” school accent when she was not around. And when Nina so mimicked her, did Aunty Lee cackle with laughter as she was laughing now? Nina grinned at Cherril as she carried some food out to the car. Cherril smiled back.
Nina Balignasay knew the wealthiest employers and clients could be the meanest and stingiest when it came to not paying up. At least, thanks to her, Aunty Lee now collected a down payment when taking on a job. Aunty Lee was too easily distracted by stories and menus. It was a good thing she had Nina by her side and on her side. It was good for Nina too. Though she had not known how to cook or drive when she arrived in Singapore, she had since learned to do both proficiently. Aunty Lee considered her one of the best investments she had ever made, one that had paid off hand-somely. From the start it had been Nina who kept the business grounded and the accounts balanced. If Aunty Lee had a gift for making food, Nina had a gift for managing money. And, if unleashed, she went after late payments like a loan shark.
That bright September Saturday morning Aunty Lee was happy as she followed Nina out to the car. She had a catering job to occupy her and the prospect of looking over an unfamiliar house to entertain her. Could life get much better than this? But of course she was too much a
kiasu
Singaporean to tempt fate by saying so.
“Looks like it’s going to rain,” Aunty Lee said, looking up at the brilliant blue sky with only a few light, white clouds. “Sure to spoil the food. Don’t know why these people with big houses always want outdoor parties. You said it’s a big house, right?”
“A very big house, according to Google Maps,” Cherril said, joining them. “It’s not going to rain. It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.”
“Then sure to be too hot to eat outside,” Aunty Lee said firmly. “Nina, better get more dry ice.”
“Did you read in the papers about the Mainland Chinese woman that committed suicide?” Cherril threw this in to distract Aunty Lee from imagining possible weather disasters. Nothing tickled Aunty Lee’s mental taste buds so much as a strange death.
“Of course! But the newspapers never say everything. I can tell there’s some funny business there!”
“Madam, the woman write a letter and say she is going to jump off the balcony and then she go and jump off the balcony. Even you cannot say there is funny business there!” Nina said firmly. Catholic Nina did not approve of suicides any more than she approved of the murders Aunty Lee had a tendency to get herself involved in.
“The Chinese papers said her boyfriend phoned her right before the operation to tell her that everything was going to be all right. She said she already knew something was wrong because even over the phone she had heard angels singing.”
“The English papers didn’t report that.” Aunty Lee looked put out. “Nina, I wish you would learn to read Chinese. Chinese news is much more interesting than English news. What else did the Chinese paper say?”
“The Chinese papers interviewed one of the women staying in the one-room flat where Bi Xiao Mei stayed. She said they pay five dollars a day to sleep there. Bi Xiao Mei went out to search for her fiancé all day, then went back and cried all night. She could not find any record of his death or of the operation. Because the operation was illegal, she was afraid the people who did it did not bother to properly dispose of his body but just dumped it somewhere.
“Anyway, the woman said that that night before she died they went to Bukit Timah Plaza and Bi Xiao Mei said she heard the same angels singing as she did over the phone. And then she died.”
“Did the woman also hear angels singing?”
“She only heard the
getai
people playing their music outside. There is an uncle at BTP with Alzheimer’s. When people play
getai
music he will sit in his chair there and sing.”
“You don’t really know that China man is really dead,” Nina said. “Probably the guy is not really dead. He didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to marry her, so got people here to tell people back home he’s dead.” Nina’s previous experiences with men had not left her with a very high opinion of them.
Aunty Lee’s lips pursed appreciatively. There was nothing she liked more than a good gossip based on romance, betrayal, and death.
“The Chinese papers also said the fiancé Zhao’s father told reporters his son said he was going to Singapore to work and save to pay for his wedding. The father was sure his son would never have come here for an illegal operation.”
“That boy wanted to come here to work and earn enough to save money for his wedding? He must be crazy! Here, every time you earn one dollar you spend two dollars on food, three dollars on housing!”
“Not really, Nina,” Cherril said. She handed each of them a banana (so full of necessary potassium, healthy fiber, manganese, and vitamins C and B
6
). “Eat this to keep up your energy. I know this PRC guy who came over less than five years ago. He rented an HDB flat—yes, illegally—then subrented rooms out. He did the cleaning for them once a week when he collected the rent. Then he got a second apartment and a third apartment . . . now he’s a millionaire!” Singapore’s Housing Development Board had strict rules on the renting and subletting of the HDB flats, especially where noncitizens were concerned. But new arrivals from the People’s Republic of China seemed able to get around anything.
“I wonder how much you get paid for a kidney,” Aunty Lee said. She looked thoughtfully at the portable food chiller Nina was filling with crab cakes and prawn patties, ready to go onto the grill.
“Not worth the risk,” Nina said sharply. “That is illegal.”
“The girl’s family said she had been depressed since news of his death. And with the baby coming, it must have made things worse. One of the letters they found was from Zhao’s family telling her not to make any more trouble because they had accepted the rest of the payment promised to Zhao for his kidney. Apparently the advance he got was only enough to pay for his ticket to Singapore. That shows his family must have known what he was going to do.”
“What we are going to do is serve food. Come,” said Nina firmly. The last of the food and equipment in the car, she turned the sign to closed and locked the door, wishing she had the time to go at the kitchen with a scrubbing brush and mop after all the food preparation. People who came in and said how beautifully organized everything in the shop was did not realize how much constant work it took to maintain everything dust-free and functioning despite the stream of people passing through.
“Isn’t that Mark’s car?” Cherril asked as they drove off.
“I already told him the shop is not open today,” Nina said firmly. “If he can’t remember, too bad. He will have to come back.”
Aunty Lee was torn. Her
kiasu
(fear of losing out) side dictated that she leave immediately in order to arrive at least thirty minutes early for the catering project, but her
kaypoh
side that made everybody else’s business her own wanted to stay and find out whether it was indeed Mark Lee in the car and what it was that he wanted.
“Maybe he came to talk to me about the handover,” Cherril said.
“Sir Mark just wants to come and look at his wine bottles,” Nina said. “His precious babies. He will stand there and talk to them, his precious wine bottles.”
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Aunty Lee’s Deadly Specials
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Aunty Lee’s Amazing Achar
(easy home version)
Singapore
achar
is a sweet and spicy vegetable pickle eaten with everything from hot curries to plain rice and even bread and butter. Some commonly used ingredients include sambal belachan, blue ginger, lemongrass, home-dried limes, and tamarind pulp, but the point is really to use whatever you have on hand!
Prepare at least a day in advance. The longer it stays in your fridge the better it will taste.
Ingredients:
2 cups vegetables, chopped into thick matchsticks and bite-sized morsels. Use what you have and more of what you like. Traditional vegetables include cucumbers, carrots, Napa cabbage, red onions, hot peppers, cauliflower, and green beans. Leave the skin on the cucumbers and carrots but remove the seeds from cucumbers and hot peppers. For crunchier pickles rub a tablespoon of salt into your cucumber sticks and leave them to sweat.
Blanching Solution:
½ cup your best vinegar (can be white vinegar, rice vinegar, or wine vinegar. Remember: the better the vinegar the better your pickles!)
½ cup water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
For Rempah (Spice Paste):
1 red onion (chopped)
1 clove garlic
1 nub fresh ginger
1 nub fresh turmeric
2 dried hot peppers
1 tablespoon toasted belachan (fermented shrimp paste) Or use 1 teaspoon each of ginger and turmeric powder and 1 tablespoon of red chili pepper flakes, and substitute 1 tablespoon of anchovy paste for the belachan.
Final Touch Ingredients:
½ cup vinegar (see above)
Fresh juice of one large lime (or half a lemon)
Dash of salt and pepper
Small can of pineapple chunks
Crushed roasted peanuts
Toasted sesame seeds
How to Prepare:
Turn on your radio or television and turn off your phone.
Bring your blanching solution to a boil. Blanch all your chopped vegetables (except for the cucumbers) and lay them out to dry on kitchen towels, where the cucumbers can rejoin them. The more you dry them here the better they will absorb your marinade later.
Blend all your rempah ingredients into a paste. If using powders you may need a few drops of oil to bind them. Heat a pan with a little oil and stir-fry your spice paste over low heat until it smells good. This will take 10 to 15 minutes.
Add ½ cup vinegar, the lime juice, and a teaspoon each of salt and sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil then remove from heat immediately.
In a glass or ceramic bowl, add your pineapple chunks, peanuts, sesame seeds, and all your vegetables and mix well, pressing them down in the bowl. The marinade won’t cover the vegetables at this stage but the level will rise as your vegetables pickle.
If not eaten immediately, your
achar
should be stored in a glass container in the fridge. Stir thoroughly each time you help yourself.
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