Last night was my cousin Lynda's last night in town, so my other cousin Sirion and I went over to her hotel room to hang. We were flipping channels when we landed in the middle of Eat Drink Man Woman, one of my favorite movies and, of course, the inspiration for the title of this blog. That movie speaks to me on a gazillion levels, but one of my favorite bits of dialogue happens during one of the Chu family's many nonchalant, elaborate home dinners. The elder sister Jia-Jen complains about the next door neighbors' relentless karaoke-ing, to which younger sister Jia-Chien shrugs, "We communicate by eating. They do it by singing."
My family is definitely of the communication by stomach school. This visit had been especially food-filled, even by our gluttonous standards. It seemed like all of the out-of-towner activities we had lined up were meal related. We had hardly finished digesting one meal before we threw ourselves into the next. When we weren't eating food, we were discussing our next meal. Between the eight of us over eight days, we put back steak, several dozen oysters (raw and fried), sweetbreads, lamb's brain, anchovies, lobster, foie gras, chicken liver, many street vendor hot dogs, Brazilian skewered meats, lots of chocolates, whole fried fish, soft shell crabs, and much, much more.
But the best meal, by far, was the one my aunt prepared at my house last Saturday. It's a rare treat when this many members of my family are in the same town at the same time, so my aunt decided that she was up to the task of cooking for us all. Doug's Swedish cousins were also in town, so we invited the three of them to join us, making it a feast for 11 -- ten omnivores and one pregnant vegetarian, Swedes and Thais and Americans in various intersecting circles. This was our menu:
Stir-fried Chinese broccoli with garlic (vegetarian)
Tom Kha Gai -- Chicken coconut soup made with lemongrass and galangal from my aunt's garden
Tom Kha Het (vegetarian) -- Mushroom coconut soup, vegetarian variation of Tom Kha Gai
Broiled sirloin with my dad's special spicy garlic-serrano-lime dressing
Moo Kaprow -- Pork with Thai basil
Baked salmon with tomatoes and soy sauce
Som Tam style carrot salad
Shrimp with Satoh -- Satoh are sometimes called Chinese olives. They're stinky before you eat them and apparently even stinkier when they exit. (My aunt says think asparagus, but 10x worse)
Oyster mushrooms with ramps (vegetarian)
As usual, my aunt was worried that we wouldn't have enough food and made sure we had eggs handy in case she had to whip up an omelet filler. And as usual, her fears were misplaced as we gorged til we collectively had to undo the top buttons on our pants. We filled our plates from the buffet in the dining room and sat in a circle, balancing our plates in our laps in the living room. My uncharacteristically sassy aunt kept cracking zingers -- when Doug said, "Wow, that's spicy," she said, "Wait til tomorrow!"
Doug's family fit right in. They embraced our ragtag crew as much as we embraced them because we all spoke the language of family through our stomachs. We traded respective foreign language phrases (Lee luak -- an important Thai term for the digestion/relaxation time after a gutbusting meal; "You look like a bag of ice skates" is a Swedish idiom for "You look like shit.") We playfully fought over who would get to wash the dishes. We understood each other. We were full.
My Aunt's Moo Kraprow -- Pork with Thai Basil*
6-8 cloves of garlic
3-5 serrano or jalapeno chilies, sliced
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 lb. ground pork
1 bunch Thai basil (can be found in Thai markets. If unavailable, substitute regular basil)
3 tbsp. oyster sauce
1 tsp. fish sauce
1 tsp. sugar
Roughly smash the garlic and chilies together with a mortar and pestle. If you don't have a mortar and pestle, mince and smash them with your knife as best you can. Heat a wok or deep frying pan over high heat. When the pan is hot, add the oil and swirl around. Throw in your smashed garlic and chilies and stir. Add ground pork and brown, stirring well. Add oyster sauce, fish sauce, and sugar. Adjust seasoning to taste. Strip the basil leaves from their stems. Fold the whole basil leaves into the pork. Serve immediately with rice. Serves two or three or six, depending on how many other dishes you've got.
*For my brother Danny and Miho -- wish you guys could have come out for this one! We missed you.
Today, I rolled over to Winnie & Chris's Boerum Hill apartment where Jim was busy deflowering the brand new smoker he bought with Chris. I followed the pungent trail of mesquite to their airy apartment, where Jim was manning the steadily puffing green R2D2 on the mini-deck out back. 
The result? Tender, spicy, mesquite-infused ribs with a rosy ring of smoke that could give any of those BBQ festival participants a run for their money. And smoky, juicy chicken that will be incredible sliced cold on tomorrow's salad. Chris's cinnamon and butter-spiked sweet potato mash cooled our spicy tongues while Winnie's dandelion pea shoot salad with sauteed mushrooms and fiddlehead ferns cleansed our palates. 
I'm glad I saved room for our perfect summer dessert of lavender-mint syrup macerated mixed berries with a touch of balsamic vinegar over Ciao Bella vanilla gelato.
