11. A dangerous kitchen

Welcome to the 12th installment of Misfortune Cookie

1.

Whenever friends and I swapped childhood stories, I was surprised when they told me how they ate spaghetti every Monday, leftovers every Sunday or only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. I couldn’t believe how bland, repetitive, and predictable their meals were. Spaghetti sauce was tomato paste, or canned tomatoes. Bread was the cheapest store bought brand.

Mom would whip up blueberry pancakes from the box, eggs and bacon for weekends. We were eating pad see ew, those thick white noodles we bought fresh from Chinatown, drenched in dark soy sauce and chewy goodness before mainstream America had even heard of Thai food.

2.

Mom sometimes prepared foods while sitting on the floor of the kitchen. First, she’d spread a colored straw mat on the floor, similar to something Americans would use at the beach, and sit on it as she prepared her papaya salads, or she’d use a heavy stone mortar and pestle to ground herbs for a green or red curry paste.

Or she’d make fermented sausage by pushing ground pork with strips of pork skin into casings while adding whole bird’s eye chilies.

To scrape the inside of coconuts, she’d sit on a small wooden bench with a semi-circular, serrated edge or blade that would protrude just far enough for her to use as a scraper. Imagine sitting on a cutting board that had a handle that stuck out between your legs—that was where the serrated edge was located. She’d hold a half coconut and start scraping the white meat inside, letting the shavings fall onto a plate on the floor.

It seemed like a lot of work for coconut. I don’t even like coconut, but I liked watching her scrape. There was something satisfying about the sound, the repetitiveness of her labor, and the quiet concentration in which she worked.

3.

Mom hardly ever ate with us. She’d cook for us, then she waited until we were finished before eating her own meal. Other times she sat on the floor in the kitchen and ate her food there, while we were eating in the dining room.

Many times I asked her to join us, but she never did. I think she felt comfortable doing her own thing. She probably wanted to be spared the strange looks, endless questions, and wrinkled noses as we reacted to her foreign food. Or perhaps our polite tolerance and uncomfortable silences might have been equally annoying.

Occasionally, I caught Mom at the table eating by herself, and I’d sit down and watch her eat with her hands. She’d pinch her sticky rice, using it as a utensil to pick up other foods, dishes that looked, quite frankly, like they’d been overcooked. Even the fish had a tortured look about them. She’d encouraged me to try the white meat, but I made a face instead.

4.

So there was her food and then there was our food. Sometimes they’d mix, but usually, they did not. Her food took time while ours seemed to be prepared with an ease that almost made it seem like fast food. Which I suppose it was, made to order, pan fried. Rice was always in the rice cooker, and the rice cooker was either on the cook or in the warm setting.

I tried not to panic when there wasn’t any cooked rice left. Mom always reassured me that it wouldn’t be long. I probably learned to cook rice before learning to walk.

Our chicken, beef, or pork had been marinating before making contact with the flame. It was a difficult lesson to learn that other people didn’t cook their meat with the same attention. Her short ribs have a wonderful peppery taste with garlic skins still hanging on. Her grilled chicken is exquisite, tender, with blackened skin. Mom mastered Korean kalbi effortlessly, claiming she could taste food and know how they did it.

We ate beef stews and bitter melon soup, ramen noodles with an egg, garnished with slices of leftover meat and veggies, Chinese stewed pork with boiled eggs (Dad’s favorite), Thai-style stuffed omelets along with the usual American plate of meat, vegetables and carbs, but instead of potatoes, we had heaping piles of fluffy rice.

5.

But it wasn’t always a culinary home run. Dinner time was a little like roulette. Sometimes the odds favored the table, and other times they did not.

A steaming plate of greens was set before me.

“What is it?” I looked at it suspiciously.

“Just eat it, Lani,” was Mom’s usual response as she padded back to the kitchen.

Sometimes she’d know the word in English, but often she did not. Thai vegetables are not the same as American vegetables. We don’t normally eat water spinach or cha-om let alone know what they are. It didn’t matter anyway. I had to try it. Larry wasn’t picky, but I was.

In fact, I didn’t know the vegetable I hated was called morning glory until I moved to Thailand and saw its name on a menu. This same plant grew out of her betta fish pots, and that association didn’t help either. So I’d be left to fill up on as much rice as possible when I found the vegetables to be foul-tasting. Other times I’d only eat the meat, subsisting on nothing of fiber-friendly value.

But when the meals did favor the table, I gorged myself on her cooking, praising her culinary skills, asking what spices she used, telling her I liked these vegetables. Then she’d warn me to not eat so much because I’d get fat.

“Don’t eat too much, Lani.”

“Don’t get fat.”

“You’re going to get fat.”

“Are you getting fat?”

I’ve never been fat in my entire life.

6.

In hot weather, she’d cook outside. Mom set up a single gas range next to an outdoor sink she had put in. Crude wooden boards over cinder blocks provided an area for her to stack dishes, pots, and pans. She’d leave large jars of mustard cabbage sitting in the sun, fermenting for days, and beef strips dehydrating in custom-screened racks that prevented flies from landing on them. She made beef jerky, the likes of which, I’ve doubt your tongue has ever tasted.

Our modest hibachi grill sat on a concrete bench below her garden of chili peppers, herbs, and papaya trees. We used to have just the gas range set up, but this makeshift kitchen, complete with sink, arose out of necessity when we were remodeling the indoor kitchen. But even after the remodel was completed, she continued to cook outside.

And yet she’d never used her outdoor kitchen when it made sense to use it—when she’d roast her little red chili peppers, or deep-fry something. Instead, the stove top was coated with this stubborn yellow stain from cooking oils.

She’d cook her dried peppers over the range until the whole house was filled with pepper-spray fumes. We’d be watching TV or hanging out in our rooms when the fumigation consumed us. And we’d run out of the house, holding our breaths, gasping for fresh air looking like crazy people fighting a camouflaged enemy while Mom continued to stand in front of the stove shaking the frying pan back and forth.

7.

Other kids grew up with the smell of Grandma’s baked cookies or their mom’s cheesy casserole. We grew up dancing the do-si-do around the kitchen. We’d advance, then retreat, turning our backs, learning through practice when to pivot or stretch our arms out.

This didn’t stop me though from asking her what she was making. But her replies were often things like “my food,” or “soup,” and other tantalizing descriptions. It wasn’t until much later when I moved to Northern Thailand that I was able to recognize many foods from my mom’s kitchen.

Foods that made my nose recoil in horror like naam phrik ong or naam phrik num, chili pastes to compliment boiled or raw vegetables, along with sticky rice, or delicate white noodles with deep fried pork skins, looked like something that had gone off. Like real off.

Her Northern noodles or nam ngiao made my eyes concerned. That soup was awfully bright red with chunks of coagulated pig's blood and minced pork meatballs. Even a simple bowl of noodle soup would be ruined with seafood body parts and more pink coloring that made me wonder if it was supposed to be that way.

I’d watch her and her friends dig in, sniffling constantly from the spices and heat. They’d wipe their noses (as blowing it is rude at the dinner table) or let the perspiration build up so I could count the little droplets on their faces. Mom could easily slay any internet spicy hot wings challenge in an I Dream of Jeannie blink.

Once I lifted the lid off the pot to see what was cooking. All I saw were white-knuckled chicken feet. Did Halloween come early this year? Were the feet used for stock, like bones in soup?

“Is this dinner?” I asked.

“No.”

“Oh, thank god.”

8.

My brother was the one who learned from watching, and gradually he developed a talent for cooking the way she did. I, on the other hand, watched her when I was bored, forced to, or when I was curious as to what she was doing.

She tried to teach me, of course. As a Thai woman, it’s considered a necessary skill. And I’d have none of it.

“How are you going to cook for your husband?” she asked.

I thought about it for a moment. She had a good point. “Okay. Show me again.”

But after a few tries of dragging me away from my books, this plea stopped working.

“How are you going to cook for your family?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I shrugged. “We’ll eat out.”

She shot me a withering look.

Suddenly it hit me. “I know! I’ll marry a guy who can cook!” I gave her a big, cheesy grin. Then I quickly ran back to my books, back to my sanctuary, and closed my bedroom door before she could retaliate.

9.

After I left home for college, it hit me in the gullet how lucky I was to have Mom. How lucky I was to grow up in Hawaii where I enjoyed a wide range of Asian, American, and Polynesian foods on a regular basis. How Mom tried to teach me to be independent, something she had to learn the hard way, but like most kids, we brushed off our parents’ good intentions as old-fashioned and lame. So lame.

My first thought after seeing the selection at my college’s cafeteria was, “I’m going to starve.” [College, by the way, was in little Durango, Colorado]

I did laps around the CUB hoping that the next time I circled around I’d find something I had previously missed. The food under the heat lamps looked tasteless, made for the middle American masses. I didn’t even know what the majority of the food was.

Where was the rice? I could eat a bowl of rice with soy sauce and survive. I remember when my husband and I were newly arrived in Cambodia and were chatting it up with this restaurant owner, Fila, who spoke near-perfect English. He sat down with us with his big bowl of rice and seasoned it with soy and red pepper sauce and dug in.

As a child, I used to help myself to a heaping pile of rice, unwrap a slice of Kraft cheese, and pour spaghetti sauce straight from the jar on my creation. After a quick nuke, it was pretty tasty.

Folks in the cafeteria must have thought I was overwhelmed by the choices, standing there, circling, leaning my head towards the food behind glass, as if through closer inspection the potatoes would transform to rice, but in reality I was underwhelmed.

Where was the Spam musubi? Kalua pork? The pig didn’t have to be roasted underground covered in banana leaves. I’m not a monster. Or the shoyu chicken? Mac salad? Manapua? Saimin? McDonalds in Hawaii serves Portuguese sausage, eggs and rice for breakfast for crying out loud.

I wandered while my belly rumbled until I found myself staring at what I did recognize, the cereals. I lifted the lever and dispensed the Lucky Charms like one would do dog food into a bowl, found the milk, and joined my new friends at the table.