as chinese-american as mom and kung pao chicken

I discovered I had brioche tins today. Bought those a few years back for the purpose of making brioche, but used them today for something else.

tinny tin tins

kirsch panna cotta with cherry sauce

too many cooks? hardly…
I was thinking today that my love of cooking runs in my family. It manifests itself differently in each of us, but it’s definitely there. My grandmother is what I would call the Wise Cook who does a lot of the old school Chinese dishes from memory and with very rudimentary equipment. My mom is the Professional Cook. She is efficient, consistent, and quick. She doesn’t deviate much from what she knows, but she does what she knows to perfection every time. My dad is the Mad Chef. He is creative and takes risks. He uses expensive ingredients and fancy techniques with almost no reproducibility (his spicy tofu fish is slightly different every time he makes it). Oh, he also makes a complete mess in the kitchen. Then there are my aunts like Angela – the Traditional Cook, and Janilla – the Healthy Cook. Elena is the Hostess Chef. She puts on a terrific and elegant meal with little effort and she is constantly expanding her repertoire. So then what kind of cook am I?

I didn’t know right off the bat, so I asked Jeremy. He says I am the Experimentalist, and I think he is correct. I like to try new recipes by reading about a dozen versions and then compiling one of my own. Then I will repeat that recipe with new tweaks until I am satisfied, all the while documenting the process on paper and in photographs. I even write down the “keepers” in a quadrille lab notebook. But I must add one thing to this profile, which is that I think of food, particularly dessert, as art. And so the presentation for the purposes of entertaining or archiving are important to me. I find greater satisfaction in a well-plated slice of chocolate fondant cake than in eating the cake itself.

I come from a family of cooks and I realized this afternoon that one thing we share with one another over the phone, via email, and in person – is food. We talk about food, recipes, restaurants… It might be a Chinese thing (all Chinese people have food on the brain) and I probably wouldn’t classify my parents as Foodies, but I certainly consider them connoisseurs. Elena is definitely a Foodie. But food is one of the few things I don’t argue with my folks about. Funny that… And when I cook Chinese food, I definitely feel a bond to my culture and my family. I like that.

chocolate fondue