Hah....... the aroma of Long Bean Rice brings back memories. It strikes an emotional cord in me because the person who taught me is now long, long gone. She is my grandma. I can still see her by the stove cooking dishes she loved and dishes we loved. . When she grew older and she could not stand for long at the stove, we gave her a chair. It sounded mean, right? That even when she could not stand for long, we still wanted her to cook. No, it isn't like this. It was her love. Her passion to cook. And when she saw us enjoying every morsel of her food, it was joy to her.
I can still recollect the many trips my eldest uncle and his family came back to visit her and us. (My grandpa died 20 years before her.) It was happiness for everyone because grandma would really cook. Dish after dish which was everyone's favourite. I can name a few 'Hakka bean fish' 'Hakka stuffed brinjals' and 'Hakka steamed pork'. Yes, she was a Hakka and I grew up eating Hakka food. Now, coming back to my uncle. And of course we were warned not to eat so much , actually almost told not to eat as she would cook separate dishes for us. She would but we found that the ones she cooked for my uncle was especially delicious. So what do we do? We faithfully ate ours but we stole some of the source from my uncle's dishes. If grandma did not see, all was well but if she saw...... Ha! Ha! Ha! we were called greedy pigs. We took no offence as she was all too anxious that we would leave nothing for my uncle and we knew how she loved him and how important he was to her.
In a Hakka family, the sons are placed on the pedestal. Girls take second precedence and in olden days, I think there was no second precedence too. Properties go to the boys. This happens till today. You may argue that this is a modern generation. But .......culture dies hard and we, girls have sort of accepted our place though we want equality in the world. In our family we respect our elders.
Cooking time was a joy for everyone. My eldest aunt, the oldest in the family of 11 inherited grandma's skills. She could cook exactly like her and the one who inherited her skills is my cousin, my aunt's daughter. Me? Half.......Ha! Ha! Ha! The reason is simple. Time constrains and I have numerous other interests. So whenever I want to eat grandma's food, I make a beeline to Puchong, Kuala Lumpur to my cousin's house and she would indulge me.
Large family is a joy if everyone sticks together and there must be a head who gathers the flock. My eldest uncle was the head after grandpa died. We all loved and respected him. His words were law and noone countered him. So whenever he announced that he was coming home to visit, everyone around would quickly gather and start the fire.
My second uncle would mince the pork and taste it to make sure that he got the right consistency of softness. We were horrified but he laughed. My third uncle would washed the pots and wok for grandma and we would all be around to do this and that. Finally it would be grandma holding the spatula to cook. It was a time of sharing, shouting if things go wrong and exchanging tales that ranged from humour to horror. At this time there was no rank of who should tell and shouldn't. Everyone could tell a story and every story was quite believed. Ha! Ha! Ha! But the one who had the most story was the uncle who minced the meat.
He was a Division 1 Welfare Officer in the government department. He alone had gone deep into the jungle to attend to the poor. He often told us that he was served muddy drinks. He could not reject as it would be too offensive. The people were so, so poor that to serve even a cup of coffee took a little off their food expenditure so how could my uncle refuse? Often times after the visits, he came out vomitting. And he was also the one who saw the Vietnamese refugees in their old, broken boats coming to Malaysia soil. He saw their boats capsized in the storm and people died. He came home all dazed and numbed with pain. He told us that we were fortunate that we need not run from our homeland. We had not seen hardship. This uncle was the humblest of the lot and he ate everything because he saw poverty but this act was the one that brought him ill health. He died at quite a young age; 62.
When grandma died, my eldest uncle still gathered the flock but there was no more clanging of pots and woks. No more exchanges of story. My eldest aunt was told not to cook as she had her own family to take care; a rather large one - 10. So we went out for dinners. It was never the same. Today only my cousin's family has the privilege to enjoy grandma's cooking because my cousin could cook like my grandma and my family on certain occasions get to enjoy it, if I cook it correctly and whenever I take them to visit my cousin in Puchong. I guess that if the day my cousin is no more around, the dishes would be lost. Perhaps I should ask her to give me the recipes so that my grandma's legacy would carry on.
