My dad is cool

My dad is cool.  Usually my mom did the evening dinners, unfailing brown and green over rice.  My brother's favorite thing my mom made was something I had named "very own food": ground beef cooked with peas, scallions, and a little fish sauce.  Sounds a little strange, but it's quite delicious over rice.

But it was my dad who did the more adventurous cooking.  He had been a waiter at a Sheraton when he was putting himself through business school.  He loves to tell me that despite the fact that he grew up engulfed by the supremely stinky scents of fish sauce, fermented shrimp paste, and all manner of stewing blood and guts, he'd never smelled anything as offensively putrid as blue cheese.

My dad could recreate anything we saw the other kids eating, with his own Thai-Chinese/lowbrow twist.  He would make thick bolognese sauce, finished with a little fish sauce (which is not so weird considering that fish sauce is just salty anchovy extract).  He would make the heaviest, chunkiest lasagna ever, substituting cottage cheese for ricotta (which I preferred) and making a sauce so thick with meats you could practically carve it -- it was chock full of pepperoni, smoky cocktail sausages, and ground hamburger and it was absolutely divine to us kids.  If we clamored for McDonald's breakfast, he would toast some english muffins, fry up some thick slices of ham, and then he would make a round mold of tin foil which he placed in the frying pan so that when he dropped the egg in the middle of it, it would fry up as a beautiful perfect circle, just like they did it at McD's. 

I think it was my father who taught me that food is a way that you can show your love, even if you're not able to express it verbally.  Once, when I was quite young, he made me an omelet with slices of American cheese melted on top.  I was completely blown away, and I told him it was the best thing I'd ever eaten.  Every morning, for the next six weeks, he made me a sunny yellow 4 egg cheese omelet until I finally made a gentle request for something different.

Passion for food and late nights is something that I share with him.  My mother and brother were early-to-bed, early-to-rise types, so I stayed up past my bedtime with my dad.  We'd watch late night HBO until the racier stuff came on, at which point he'd change the channel to National Geographic.  While we watched stories about deadly spiders or Fiji sea coral, we sat in silence and folded wontons together, sharing a bowl of ground pork mixture and cold wonton wrappers and throwing our winged dumplings into a container dusted with rice flour.  My father would be up early the next morning preparing a broth for our breakfast of wonton soup with the ubiquitous peas my brother and I loved, sliced scallions and thin, sweet tiles of roast pork.

A couple of years ago, when I went to visit, my father was waiting at the car while my mother had come to gather me from the baggage claim area.  I put my arms around him and gave him a one-sided, awkward hug, to which he gruffly responded, "Chinese people don't hug."   But when we arrived home, the refrigerator was full of ingredients for all of my favorite dishes -- my dad's incredible steak and vegetable soup, chicken with longan, Chinese yam and red currants, and of course, his signature Beef Delight -- fatty tri-tip marinated in a secret citrus-ginger-soy blend, barbecued to medium rare (and then reheated in the oven to a nice opaque well done by my squeamish mom), served with a piquant raw garlic-serrano chili salsa.

He's the model of the stoic Asian dad, reticent with praise and affection, and eager to share his expertise with any listening party.  He's especially fanatic about knives -- when my mom and I went shopping for clothes at the mall, we knew when we were done that we could always find my brother at the Tilt at the Hill Arcade, and we could always find my father at the Advance Cutlery shop.  He was always adamant about the importance of a good, sharp knife, and I still carry that cutlery snobbery with me.  He sharpens and straightens his blades frequently and vigorously, steel swishing against steel with a speed and precision I've never seen anyone else match.  And he always has an extra knife or two lying around, in case anyone should come by the house and mention their need for a good knife; of course, the recipient would always have to give him a penny in nominal payment to counteract the Thai superstition that any knife given away for free would cut its new owner.

He doesn't cook as often these days without the kids around to appreciate and snort down his handiwork.  About a year ago around the holidays, I went to visit and told him I would cook.  I prepared a beautiful chicken from the Chinese market with lemons and herb butter.  He took a bite and chewed thoughtfully.  "This is juicy," he said carefully.  "Hey, this is not bad."  He smiled.  "I'm surprised.  Where did you learn to do that?"  he asked.  Maybe I learned the technique of rubbing butter under the skin in a book, maybe I learned to squeeze the lemon in the cavity of the chicken from watching a cooking show.  But the beating heart of my cooking, cooking as an expression of my love -- that was your silent gift to your only daughter, and it's more valuable than all the recipes, all the equipment, all the ingredients in the world.