Back in the mid-80s some time and around the last day of school before winter break I remember while waiting for the bus I was making conversation with an acquaintance of mine. Being much younger then her I was trying desperately to be interesting. I brought it up that my family was having Chinese food for Christmas dinner and she remarked: “I didn’t know you were Jewish”. I’m not and I was a little confused as to how she came to that conclusion from what I said. She explained that she was Jewish and that her family had a tradition of always ordering Chinese food for dinner on Christmas. She went on to explain that it was a fairly common thing for Jewish families to have Chinese food on Christmas since Jewish people don’t celebrate Christmas and most Chinese people don’t celebrate Christmas and way back then, it tended to be the only restaurants that were open. At the time I was a little annoyed at her finding it so easy to be interesting and for taking my non-traditional Christmas dinner uniqueness away from me. I let her know that unlike her family our dinner would be homemade and that in case she couldn’t tell by looking at me, I wasn’t Chinese.
Many years before my father passed away he made the family cookbooks for Christmas, he typed them all himself on an old word processor. The cookbook itself is fairly unremarkable looking on the outside, just a slim black plastic binder and on the inside, the pages are printed on plain white paper and slipped into inexpensive clear plastic sleeves. No title or writing on the outside but tucked into the pocket of the binder when you first open it is a nice story about family tradition and making tamales for Christmas.
When I left California to move overseas I could only really take two suitcases worth of stuff and I made sure I packed my homemade cookbook into one of them. Despite its plain unremarkable appearance its been visible in every house I’ve lived in since my father gave it to me and when I am feeling uninspired in the kitchen it is the first cookbook I reach for.
My fathers side of the family immigrated from El Salvador and he was the first generation to be born in America. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area where he lived for nearly his entire life. He told stories about his grandmother in the kitchen when he was growing up but it wasn’t generally about the food so although I have a great appreciation for the Hispanic heritage on my father’s side of the family I know very little of its food culture. I didn’t have a close relationship with my grandmother on my father’s side so I don’t’ really know what her cooking was like and when my father cooked he mostly cooked Chinese food.
I know a lot of families have recipes they think of as family recipes, some may just be a way a family makes a certain everyday food or the recipe may contain expensive ingredients and/or be very time consuming so it’s only ever made for birthdays and other special occasions like Christmas. In my family, Oyster Sauce Beef was sort of my fathers signature dish and one of the most requested birthday dinners when I was growing up.
I know that my father wasn’t always interest in cooking and that he learned a great deal from my mother as well as taking a cooking class when he was in his thirties. I know he approached some dishes like a personal quest, pie crust being one of them. I remember his frustration and rage over failed pastry but I also remember him singing and acting silly when it was working the way he wanted it to. I remember every cooking tip he ever gave me and as I get older I have a better understanding of his approach to cooking, the rage he felt at his failed pies and though I never really struggle with pastry I definitely have my own food quests.
When I think about making Chinese food I generally look up the recipes from the cookbook my father made for me. I enjoy making his recipes and have used them for inspiration to develop some of my own Chinese dishes. I miss my father terribly and think about him often. I would have loved to have made my Mushroom Chicken for him for father’s day and to have known what he thought of it.