Author Archives: Yi Lin Valerie Tan

Minced Pork Stew Ng Family Style

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 56
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/12/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

This is a recipe passed down to my mother from my grandmother. I reached out to my mother for the receipt of Pork Stew. It is a very traditional Chinese dish, specifically within Hokkein families. Hokkein is a dialect spoken by Southeastern parts of China, and in Singapore, it is one of the most common dialects spoken.

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Performance

Ingredients

Dried Chinese Mushroom – 6 medium pieces

(wash ns oak in hot water for ½ hour. Thinly sliced)
Tau Pok – 1 packet

Minced garlic – 2 tablespoon

Chopped onion – 3 tablespoon

Chinese wine (Hua Tiao Qiu) – 1 bottle

(around 375ml)

Chicken stock – 800ml

Rock sugar – 5 small cubes

Dark soy sauce – 4 tablespoon

Light soy sauce – 1 tablespoon

White Pepper Powder

Cooking Instructions

Add a bit of oil, stir fry the garlic lightly, followed by onion

Stir fry until both is translucent (don’t brown it)
Add mince pork and make sure all of the pieces break up nicely, when the pork is cooked, add the mushroom

Add dark and light soy sauce, stir fry a little longer until fragant

Add the rice wine, rock sugar, add chicken stock until it covers above the pork. Around 1 inch. Let is simmer for ½ hour or longer.

Add the tau pork and cooked hard boil egg (optional)
Simmer another ½ hour. If the water evaporates, add more chicken stock.

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Analysis

This was my absolute favorite dish growing up and the first dish I asked my mother for the recipe when I left for college and had to start cooking for myself. It is a comfort dish that reminds me of home. On a personal level, it is a recipe that everyone in my family knows how to make and something that I had eaten growing up, thus it feels incredibly nostalgic. On a cultural level, this dish comes from China but has a Singaporean take on it. Pork stew is often made using large pieces of Pork Belly. However, this recipe using minced pork instead. In Singapore, most of the Chinese population were immigrants that were working to send money back to their families. Thus, they did not have a lot of money. The pork belly was a much more expensive cut of meat and minced pork was much more readily available. This pork stew, while having the taste of the dishes in China, the cut of meat is different and that is what makes it uniquely Singaporean. On a cultural and historical level, it reminds me of what makes Singapore, Singapore. And it reminds me of the hardship that was faced by my grandparents as they worked hard to make Singapore go from a fishing village to one of the busiest and most cosmopolitan cities in the world.

Broken Ceramic, Broken Hearts

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 56
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/12/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

This was an incident that occurred during my cousin’s wedding that caused quite a bit of argument within the family. ‘Jie’ refers to my older sister. The interview is with my mother as I get her to recount the incident.

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Performance

The following is transcribed from a conversation between me, (M), and my mother, the interviewee (I).

M: Do you remember the time you got really upset at jie about the gift she tried to give Dixie?

I: Yes that was really bad.

M: Can you tell me about the gift and why you were so upset?

I: She tried to give Dixie a pair of ceramic cups that she had made as a wedding gift. But! One of the cups had a crack in it. I told her to either remake it or don’t give it at all. Because it’s bad luck in Chinese tradition to give something that is broken on her wedding. And you know Dixie, she is superstitious, and you cannot do that during a wedding.

M: What ended up happening to the gift?

I: Your jie still insisted on giving it so I had to hide it during the wedding itself and not give it to Dixie. You cannot do things like that, especially at a Wedding.

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Analysis

I remember very clearly this being a huge moment of contention between my mother and sister. My sister had put in days of work in order to create something homemade and special for our favorite cousin on her wedding day, and my mother seeing the broken ceramic cup and refusing to let my sister gift it on the wedding day. I think this shows how superstition across generations can change and how it can create moments of tension. While my sister was not a superstitious person, my mother was and she knew that my cousin was as well and thus could not allow such a gift to be given. It was also a reflection of the family and my mother felt that it would’ve reflected badly on her if she had allowed such a gift to be giving by her own daughter. The superstition comes from Chinese beliefs where everything must be seen as auspicious. From the color red that must be present everywhere on the wedding day, to the multitudes of rituals of tea pouring that must be done in the correct order.

Oxtail Stew – Bejing Recipe

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beijing, China
Performance Date: 04/27/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Context

The interviewee in this collection and I are both Chinese though we have very different backgrounds. I’m Singaporean-Chinese and she is Beijing-Chinese. We found common ground in many of the foods that our mothers made for us growing up, however always noticed that there were little differences in the recipe. The following is a recipe that she gave me that was a favorite dish for both of us growing up, but the recipe is the Beijing version of Oxtail Stew.

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Performance

The following is a receipt given to me by the interviewee.

1.Blanch the chopped oxtail over boiling water for 1-2 minutes.

2.Add in 2 spoons of yellow wine and 3 spoons of soy sauce.

3.Season the beef with rock sugar, chicken powder, aniseed, cinnamon, and dried chili

4.Add in water and keep braising the beef until the beef is well cooked

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Analysis

Food can be a very tricky thing. You can make two dishes of oxtail stew with practically the same ingredients, but once one of them has dried chili and aniseed, it becomes distinctly a Beijing recipe instead of one from Guangzhou or Singapore or Malaysia. Because the Chinese population is huge and many Chinese people have branched away from China to various parts of the world, recipes get changed and adapted to whichever country the chef resides in. It is always fun to see a classic Chinese recipe that is just slightly different.

Worthless Men

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: 04/25/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

The joke was collected when a friend came over for dinner and told the room about this family custom.

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Performance

The following is a joke told to me by the interviewee.

A joke that we always say in the family is that the men are worthless whenever they do something wrong. Cherokee legend that women were created because men were worthless and so my family will say, when the men in the house were being trash, that they are so horrible that women had to be created. So if my Dad did something wrong, my mom would joke that of course he did something wrong, because men are worthless and that women had to be created to solve all the problems.

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Analysis

This joke is one that is used to make fun of the men in the household. While very funny and can very much be used as a means to poke fun of the guys in jest, this joke actually holds historical meaning as well. Cherokee women, unlike many early women colonizers from the West, had a lot more power. They were independent, could own land, could leave or divorce their husband, etc. The Cherokee society was based on matrilineage, it was the women and the mothers that determined the family. And thus this joke holds true in how the Cherokee people were brought up.