En10 – E16
“Only for Yu”
Family Recipes make families different from each other. Each family has a distinct way of preparing their all-time famous dish. The way food from a family recipe is cooked varies for every family. The presentation of these meals, although showing the same food, makes the family recipe different from the other. These dishes serve as a way to show the family’s pride and a way for them to introduce to others their family cultures. Through family recipes, people learn things about that certain family and know what it is like to live with them. In my family, we like to make the bad things good through our recipes.
Our family recipes consist of food I both hate and love. I hate how the food that results from our family recipes is unusually made. Strange ingredients, which seem unfit for the dish, are added and mixed to the final meal. My family believes that the addition of these unusual ingredients adds up to the “signature mark” of the Yu Clan-made dish. An example of food from my family’s recipe is my grandmother’s all-time famous Lomi. I hate how my grandmother’s Lomi is sticky and sprinkled with celery, the herb I am disgusted with the most. According to my grandmother, this Lomi recipe has been passed down from her grandmother. It is a recipe that has lived within our family for many years now and has remained unchanged since the olden days. However, I do not understand how celery is still part of the recipe. It is disturbing to think that the perfect blend of sweetness and saltiness in my grandmother’s Lomi is ruined by the bitterness of celery. Has not anyone realized that celery is not fit for Lomi? Another example of food from our family’s recipe is my aunt’s Kiam Pung Rice. My aunt’s Kiam Pung Rice is cooked with lots of pork cubes, mushrooms and all other necessary ingredients. It seems like the ingredients are very abundant and generously-added into the meal. However, there is one specific ingredient in which