Rumblings & Ramblings

For quite awhile now I’ve been thinking a lot about family histories and the immigration experience and how disjointed different generations can become. A lot can be lost. Language, stories, practices and traditions. Beliefs. I’ve always been jealous of friends and acquaintances who are able to recite their family history and who have a good sense of where they come from and who know their ‘family traditions’. One thing in particular that sticks in my mind, and also my belly and taste buds no less, is family recipes.

In the last while I’ve been mindful of the fact that a lot of recipes and foods I’ve grown up eating at family gatherings are at risk of being lost after my parents & aunties & uncles’ generation dies off. In my father’s family none of my cousins can really cook, and definitely not Vietnamese foods. Only one of my cousins in my father’s side of the family, out of 20 or so, can. Morbid as I am, I’ve been wondering, after our parents die, who will be making the banh xeo, the thin yellow pancakes filled with bean sprouts, shrimp and pork? The sup cua maw, the crab and fish egg soup? The goi, ’slaw’ salad of pickled carrrots, onions, daikon, shrimp and slivers of pork ear?*

I’ve made a vow to learn many of the dishes I’ve been eating for years and years in hopes I can become a guardian, a custodian of family recipes.

Now I know that in reality recipes, even the ones that are passed down, change as many times as they change hands, if not more. How can they not? Ingredients vary from place to place. And this matters when your family is part of a diaspora spread all over the world. Despite the globalization of commodities giving us access to foods from afar, globalization has homogenized our foods as well too - meaning that specific and regionalized foods are not necessarily accessible. Any seasoned cook with a discernible palate will say things like seasons, terroir, and specific varieties will effect the outcome of the final dish.

My grandmother on my mother’s side of the family kept a notebook of her recipes. One of my French aunts has it in her possession. Attempts to remake my Bo Nguoi’s famous cha lua, Vietnamese sausage, which I last tasted when I was 5, but can still distinctly conjure up the memory of biting into the fragrant fried pork & fish sausage redolent in cinnamon spices, have not nearly been as good. Perhaps it’s because no one has quite as much practice as she did making it from scratch. It is also possible that she strayed away from the formal write up of this recipe. God knows I can’t follow recipes, always wanting to adapt proportions and substituting ingredients. My mother’s side of the family has adopted many French, European and North African recipes into their repertoire.

My father’s side of the family do not have written records of their recipes and food traditions. And even so, they have been reluctant to share information with me. Not purposely but it is how they are. Guarded. Asking them questions about the past or their childhoods always results in a wave of the hand or snort, a dismissal. Attempts to learn are sometimes subject to a paraphrase of “you’ll never be able to learn anyway so why bother?”. One aunt, when asked about her famous barbecued beef short rib recipe says “Oh, I can’t remember, there are so many ingredients! And besides, my butcher cuts my meat just so, no one else can make them”.

There are definitely a lot of challenges but that does not mean it isn’t worth learning and knowing family recipes. I really hate to think that future family gatherings will only consist of take out and Costco platters (and believe me they are creeping into family parties!).

Thankfully, some of my relatives are starting to come around, and after wooing my aunt Hang, who is the second eldest and essentially the matriarch of my father’s family, with hot pepper plants and homemade sauerkraut she has become receptive to my learning family recipes.

My expectations are to learn and be able to at least replicate the food traditions of my elders and to amalgamate them with the knowledge I’ve acquired through my own experiences and my own history.

I am excited!

*excuse the Vietnamese grammar mistakes I am most likely making.