You are What You Eat

Was brainlessly surfing some random stuff on wiki. Then somehow i came to the food page. Skimming through the pages of cuisine, i came about the Cuisines of China.

Went on to the Teochew cuisine section. Then i realised not only does my granny cook well, she does all the authentic teochew dishes. And most of my favourite food (she cooks really DAMN well) reads exactly like the list on the Wiki page. Wuh... I am more Teochew than i think i am.

For a list of the traditional food i have every big family dinner:

hay-zo (prawn roll): mashed prawns, spring onions, water chestnuts, pork, rolled up in a beancurd skin and fried

lor-ak (braised duck in soya sauce)

Teochew steamed pomfret (with clear broth, tomatoes, ginger and plums)

Broth (really clear, super boiled, aged stuff with pork ribs, sea cucumber and old cumcumber)

Besides that, I've lived all my life with food such as Teochew porridge (simple porridge breakfast with preserved veges and small leftover dishes), peng-kway (rice dumplings, normally triangular and dyed pink), yam paste dessert, crystal pows, steamed chives dumplings (gu cai kway) and of cos or-luak (oyster pancake) all my life, all which i discovered are REAL original teochew stuff they eat over at the ancestral village in Chaozhou.

So it's really interesting to me that food acculturates, and in such an invisible manner. Good food is meant to be appreciated, and i am doubly pleased to know my comfort food comes from good hands, and has some real solid history and background to them. One day i will get my hands on to making those dishes, and not merely eat them.