When we were children in Rangoon, the dish my brothers and sisters loved most was Mother’s steamed pork with salted fish.
Whenever Mother gently lifted the pot lid, rich fragrance rose with the clouds of steam.
“Wow! Smells so good!”
Several children would cry out at once, breathing deeply through our noses, greedy eyes watching as Mother used a white cloth to lift the porcelain bowl from the rice pot and place it on the table. Steam rose from the bowl. Inside was minced pork mixed with pieces of fragrant salted fish and a small scattering of yellow ginger strips.
Mother filled bowls with white rice one after another and handed them to the children gathered around the table.
We shoveled the rice into our mouths. With the meat juices mixed through it, our appetites opened even wider, and everyone ate an extra half bowl.
Steamed pork with salted fish is actually a very ordinary Cantonese home dish. Almost every family knows how to make it. You simply mince the pork, mix in small chopped pieces of salted fish, spread thin-cut ginger on top, and steam it over high heat.
But after I left home, I could no longer taste Mother’s steamed pork with salted fish.
After returning to China, I ate big-pot cafeteria food at school—almost every meal stir-fried greens or boiled radish. Later, after I began working, I still ate from communal pots. We lived in frontier regions. On lonely nights, I would sometimes return in dreams to the flavor of Mother’s steamed pork with salted fish, soothing the greedy little worm in my stomach.
Later came marriage and children, then the Cultural Revolution. Materials were scarce. Grain, cooking oil, pork, side foods—everything required ration coupons.
Our family of four had two people whose grain allocation was tied to a work cafeteria and two children whose grain allocation was at home. Each person received only half a jin of pork per month. Wanting steamed pork with salted fish was like a toad dreaming of eating swan meat.
First, salted fish could not be bought. Pork existed, but it was not ideal either. My wife would rise early in the morning and walk two li to the meat shop to stand in line. By nine or ten o’clock, the meat she brought home often had thick skin and little lean meat. If we tried to make steamed pork with salted fish, that thick slab of skin was difficult to deal with. So we usually chopped everything into pieces, added soy sauce and sugar, and simmered it into red-braised pork. That counted as a special meat treat.
Our children therefore grew up never tasting steamed pork with salted fish at all.
For forty years, this dish became a delicacy I longed for day and night.
After coming to America, I went to supermarkets and saw every kind of seafood and meat—huge shrimp, fish, everything lined up in abundance. And salted fish! Tiny salted fish shining like broken gold, neatly packaged squid, and especially the large, carefully wrapped pieces of fragrant salted fish. They made my heart move.
I bought one and took it home. I removed the flesh, cut it into small pieces, mixed it with minced pork, scattered fine yellow ginger strips on top, and steamed a bowl.
The whole family ate heartily. The fragrance remained in our mouths. The children finally saw what this dish was about, and everyone enjoyed it tremendously.
Even the fish bones I had removed could be simmered into rice porridge, and the flavor was just as fresh and tempting.
Unfortunately, as I grew older, doctors repeatedly reminded me that elderly people should eat less oil and salt, control the quantity of food, and eat fewer preserved foods. So all I could do was sigh at the fish.
Several times I lingered in front of the supermarket shelf where the fragrant salted fish was displayed, only to be talked away by my wife.
But I still say:
“Ah—when our son comes home, let’s steam a little so he can taste it.”
Originally published in Our Stories, compiled by the Los Angeles Burmese Chinese Middle School Alumni Association, Macao, 2007.