197 | Fields at the dinner table: Burmese side dishes in the refrigerator, a family migration history
Text/Ma Yingqing (a Taiwanese Muslim girl born in an overseas Chinese family in Myanmar, now studying at the Institute of Sociology at National Taiwan University, her research interests are ethnic identity and social boundaries, and she occasionally writes reports and comments.) (Original post published on August 14, 2022)
Editor's note: This is the second article in the "Field at the Dinner Table" series. Ma Yingqing, a columnist of the world's food, comes from an overseas Chinese family in Myanmar. She will guide readers around to taste the taste of her hometown in her memory by crawling and combing and recording different types of food culture and family stories on the family table. Implications of family and ethnic migration trajectories.
Review of the first article: "Taiwan Muslim Children's Ramadan Memories: Shalawa and Xinsheng South Road at Night"
Those impressions of home are a constant reminder of who we are, or who we might be.
Compared to most of my peers who grew up in Taiwan, my background is a little different: my family migrated from Yunnan to Myanmar, and then relocated to Taiwan 30 years ago due to multiple motivations. My father's family took root in Myanmar during the Qing Dynasty. It is said that my grandfather's grandfather once served as an official in a local place called "Bang Nong". Mom's grandmother, my Azu, rode a horse during World War II and ran to Myanmar alone to find her husband.
The family of my father and mother has been in Myanmar for decades. Running through different time and space backgrounds, the meals are full of food and simple meals, supporting a series of migration stories.
In my ignorant childhood, these foods were like secrets that I kept hidden from time to time. I didn't want to be different from other classmates, and often thought to myself, how good would it be to cook more Taiwanese food at home that my classmates would also eat? Therefore, although since I can remember, my home has been filled with various kinds of dishes all the year round. In the past, I was not very good at distinguishing which food came from Myanmar and which food came from Yunnan. Embedded in intricate migration trajectories, memories and stories are buried consciously and unconsciously.
It wasn't until I left home to study in Kaohsiung that for four years, jars of fermented bean curd, pickled vegetables, laphet thoke, and balachaung ice were in the small refrigerator. I was shocked to realize that as a child who grew up eating three meals at home, my tongue was Memories—it reminds me that I'm on a long trip, and that I'm finally home.
Every time I open the jar and put it in my mouth, the food and memories that feed me keep calling me, and it leads me to wonder about the stories behind these flavors.
When I quietly peeped into the small cracks of life, I found that these moist, crunchy and fragrant molecules are loaded with private, secret and unique stories. The aggregated memory is also impersonal, shared by a group of people with the same life experience. These foods mixed with Myanmar, Yunnan and Taiwan are their hometown flavors.
Yunnan: fermented bean curd with rice, pickled vegetables, buckwheat, dried radish with noodles
After growing up, things have changed and many things have changed, but the Yunnan tofu in the refrigerator at home is never absent. It's always about to bottom out, followed by a new can reassuringly.
Although we call it tofu in daily life, in fact, its taste and state are closer to fermented bean curd, the only difference is that it has a more distinct spicy taste and the aroma of ginger. This is a special product of Yunnan. It is packed in a palm-sized, round fresh-keeping box and used as a pickle with rice when eating.
Smell and taste buds sometimes lead us to remember someone. Whenever I take out tofu from the refrigerator, I always feel that Azu is still by my side, and my impression of her is firmly stuck in the memory of food. I often remember that in the past, Azu had to serve tofu when eating. Perhaps it was because of her influence. When I was a child, if there was no tofu at home, I would eat one less bowl of rice.
Especially whenever Grandpa made salt rolls (a kind of pasta similar to steamed buns but softer), or when grilled buns and papaya chicken soup appeared on the dining table, if I happened to be in the predicament that I just finished eating tofu, I would even stop. eat. I ate with her and developed an obsession with tofu. She always smiled and said proudly that she was indeed his great-granddaughter (great-granddaughter).
Yunnan tofu can be said to be one of the indispensable pickles in our home. However, it was not easy to obtain in the past, and we had to make it by ourselves.
Because my mother often makes fermented bean curd, she has a good relationship with the owner of the tofu stall in the market. She will pre-order a large wooden box of flat tofu. After buying it, she will expose it to the sun, cover it with a cloth, and let it ferment naturally until the tofu grows white hair, and then add chili, salt, and pepper. , star anise, and our family's unique recipe, the aged ancestral secret sauce, has finally become the taste of home in my memory.
The taste of aged secret sauce is a bit like bean paste. It is made by mixing salt and spices after the flour and soybean powder are fermented. It is said that this sauce was made by Azu in a certain winter in the past, because it is said that the water on the 8th day of the twelfth lunar month is the cleanest, and the ancestors would save the water on this day to make the sauce. Because of this special sauce, even though ready-made tofu has become easier to buy in recent years, you can still taste the difference.
Growing up in a Muslim family, because Taiwan's halal diet is not easy to obtain, most family members have to bring their own lunch boxes whether they go to work or go to school.
In the past days when we had one day off on weekends, our family established the habit of eating noodles on Saturdays. If Yunnan fermented bean curd is a pickle with meals, when cooking noodles on Saturdays, we often take out the pickles in the refrigerator to match. . The protagonists of the pickled vegetables are the mustard greens cut into small pieces and the flaky carrots. The sour and spicy taste is the best partner for pasta such as whistle noodles.
Generally, what we eat at home is mixed pickled vegetables. We take some of the pickled vegetables, pickled carrots, dried white radishes, and pickled buckwheat from three different jars, add a little soy sauce, salt and shredded ginger to taste, Mix together and serve on a plate. The taste of pickled vegetables is soft and sour. The buckwheat head bursts with juicy sweetness when you bite into it. The salty dried radish is intertwined, bringing a richer taste to each bowl of noodles, never boring.
When I was a child, I always thought that the mixed pickles of this combination were pickled at the same time and in the same jar, but when I grew up, I realized that they were mostly made separately. The little aunt will pickle the buckwheat, and the mother and he often communicate with him, so the two families usually have a full range of pickles on the table and in the refrigerator waiting to be eaten at any time.
Although it is delicious, when I was a child, when the mustard greens were in season, I always worried that my mother would ask me to go to the vegetable market to buy a lot of vegetables. Because I have to share it with my relatives, and I have to keep it for several months for the extended family to eat slowly, every time I bring it home from the vegetable market after I buy it, I always complain with a big bag of mustard greens.
Myanmar: Laphet thoke salad for sour meal, crispy balachaung for strangers
Although the family still retains the Yunnan eating habits after moving to Myanmar, many Myanmar specialties have also become part of our family dinner table due to cultural integration.
[This article is not finished, see "Walking the World" for the full text: Fields on the Dining Table: Yunnan-Burmese side dishes in the refrigerator, a family migration history ]
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197. The field on the dinner table: Burmese side dishes in the refrigerator, a family migration history
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