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My Turn by Dmae Roberts

From The Asian Reporter, V20, #11 (March 23, 2010), page 6.

Since age 10, I was my mom’s sous chef. Ma would tell me what vegetables to cut up and criticize me for doing it wrong. After heating up her wok until the oil was smoking and flames were shooting toward the ceiling, she would start shouting.

"Garlic first! Now add the onions! Bring me the carrots and bamboo … where’s the cabbage? Hurry with the broccoli. Now!"

By the time I was 11, I could make pot roast and meatloaf for my dad. But stir-fried vegetables were her pride and joy. Ma taught me that stir-frying is an art form requiring specific timing for each vegetable. If you don’t follow the rules of that timing, vegetables overcook and taste mushy and flavorless. Not having beautiful, crisp vegetables that sparkle in the right light is as embarrassing as asking your parents for a loan.

Ma was a stickler for the "look" of vegetables. Carrots were French cut, onions were sliced in huge chunks, cabbage thinly sliced, mushrooms quartered, bamboo long and tree-like, broccoli doll-sized bouquets. The look was important, but I learned it also determined the cooking time in the wok. While madly stirring, Ma shouted out for ingredients as a surgeon calls for a scalpel or sponge.

"Garlic! Ginger! Tofu! Baby corn! Green onion!"

As I got into my teen years, however, I started to have problems with her use of oil, salt, sugar, and something she called Ajinomoto — all sitting by her stove in open bowls.

"Ma, what is that?"

"That’s Ajinomoto. It makes food taste good."

It was a couple years before I found out it was monosodium glutamate — MSG. I knew what that was before any of my white friends. Just like I knew Asian food was more than Americanized chop suey or egg foo young — long before anyone else in our mostly Scandinavian small town, where the closest Asian grocery was a two-hour drive to Portland.

There was no doubt this woman could cook. After she poured one dish into a serving bowl, she was ready to begin again with a different vegetable dish. We usually had three or four. For protein she’d make my dad and brother a steak, porkchop, or meatloaf. Ma and I ate her Taiwanese food. And as much as I complained about some of the ingredients, it always tasted good.

When I moved into my own apartment and cooked for myself, I vowed to stay away from all the bad stuff Ma put into her wok. Gone were the salt, sugar, and MSG. And I only used a tablespoon or so of oil. I cooked with a wok, lovingly tossed my fresh-cut vegetables, and added water to steam them. The dishes were beautifully healthy but just didn’t taste as good as my mom’s food.

When I visited Ma, I’d sit down to the table horribly defeated. As I spooned the oil off my plate, I realized, despite my efforts to eat healthy, her food was delicious.

"You see, Ajinomoto makes food taste good!"

When Ma’s cancer came back and she was bedridden, I commuted to her house every three or four days to take care of her. She was too sick to cook, so I made her a bowl of rice porridge with small side dishes of condiments such as peanuts, pickled vegetables, fermented tofu, and dried plums. I prepared everything on a tray with a little flower and brought it to her with a cup of green tea. Even with little energy, she managed to criticize the porridge.

"Not hot enough. Too hot. Not thick enough. Too soupy."

I believe it was her need to cook that pulled her from her deathbed. She couldn’t lift pots or do much cutting, but what she could do was direct me. Gone was the captain shouting in the storm. She became a symphony conductor waving at me to follow her lead. Yet I couldn’t change her mind about her four groups of seasonings. I resigned myself to cook the way she wanted, given how little time we had left together. And I celebrated when she could eat and keep it down.

On our last day together, she wanted me to make her a dessert from boiled peanuts. I used Spanish peanuts instead of blanched ones and we sat in her bed trying to peel the skins off one by one to make the dish. We watched an old "All In The Family" episode on TV. It was funny until one of the characters went to sleep and didn’t wake up. She turned to me.

"Did she just die?"

"Yes. I think so …"

We were quiet for a time. I finally gave up on skinning the peanuts. The next night Ma died. But on our last good day together she was happy because we were trying to cook together. Again.

Now I think of her each time I chop vegetables or make hot and sour soup or a noodle dish.

"This is the way I was taught. This is how it should taste."

With every slice and every stir in the wok, I feel her presence commenting on my food and telling me how to season it. And then I leave out the MSG, the sugar, the salt, and most of the oil.

Editor’s note: "Cooking up a storm" is an excerpt from Lady Buddha and the Temple of Ma, a