She raised me as a kid, nagged at me, walked me home from school, washed my clothes and cooked for me. I’ll always remember my fave 3 hit combo of rice served with black bean pork ribs, kailan and oyster sauce and fried streaked rabbitfish. It was a meal that combined variety with flavor, interest and nourishment, something apparently necessary for a growing child.

My grandmother was always super protective. Even at the age of 10, she wouldn’t let me cross the road on my own. I did of course, in my petty disobedience. She also hesitated to let me play footie out on the street and other random stuff that involved me not being sheltered or whatever. In later years, that kinda changed and she just nagged me about getting a girlfriend or settling down or somesuch.

I remember lots of silly details about her. Like me having to buy 6 packs of Guinness or cigs for her as a kid (back then peeps didn’t care) from the convenience store below the flat where we stayed in. She’d give me a buncha cash, I’d buy the grog plus some extras like one of those styrofoam planes or some pop rocks or an icicle tube or horlicks sweets or something. That shit was the best. Then there was always me chilling in her room, watching dramas and shit. I used to do that when I was younger, then I got bored of SBC/TCS and moved onto the computer.

Or the many times I was made to scrape shavings off an antelope’s horn and put that crap into hot water and drink it. She was sadistic in her desire to provide me with good health. If you don’t know, Lin Yang is the worst of all evil Chinese medicinal drinks. Bitter does not begin to describe the torment that comes with drinking this stuff. Most kids just had their stuff come in a pink packet of folded paper tossed into a glass with hot water. I had the privilege of scraping my own.

Another sadistic thing she loved to do was stick salt on my ulcers whenever she knew I had one. I know people think it helps heal them, but seriously, they go away on their own if you drink lots of water. You don’t really need to stick salt on it. She was like smacking my bottom and forcing her finger onto the ulcer despite my mad flails of pain and tears. Shit hurt.

Another crazy terribad ritual I had to undergo was the plucking of the bean sprouts. For the sheltered wimps that don’t know what I mean. Shit stinks. And there’s a lot of em. My family can get picky with stuff. So bean sprouts gotta be like white tubes. No heads, no tails. White Tubes. It’s this sort of insanity to prep in my youth, which may explain why I’m not too fazed separating the individual sacs of a grapefruit. Cos nothing beats topping and tailing bags of stinky as hell bean sprouts. Then after all that, my grandmother would fry that crap up and serve it to me, thinking it was edible. After all the stink, I had to pinch my nose to force it down. To this day, I am haunted by memories like these. Haunted and smiling.

My grandma also made the most kickass dishes ever in existence. Braised Mushrooms In Oyster Sauce with Pork Hock, Dried Oysters & Fatt Choy. Oh my god. That stuff is divine. Heavenly. So much myth and mystery steeped into unctuously tenderously beau-tee-full morsels from the wondergods. This totally makes up for the antelope horn shaving water. Other glorious things included the daily double boiled soups, that ranged from extravagant bird’s nest (on super duper special days) or abalone soups to watercress or pig intestines with pepper. My fave soup to this day, is still her remarkable black chicken herbal soup, which is a perfect soup in my mind. Nothing will ever beat this. A close second is her Lotus Root Soup. Or her Chicken with Black Fungus. Or her Porridge. Or her Tang Yuan. Or her Deep Fried Nian Gao. Or her Fried Chicken. Oh my god, her fried chicken was insane. Insane. I have to make it again! There’s probably another 5 millions dishes I can’t remember but suffice to say, I was spoilt rotten.

I suppose many of my memories about my grandmother revolve around food. Probably because food was always at the heart of my family. We talked about it endlessly, at mealtimes and gatherings. Maybe it was because we didn’t have much to talk about but I suppose a discourse on the differences between calamari and cuttlefish is considered normal convo for us. So um, yea, we like food. My grandma, although not the most articulate, was a fount of knowledge for everyone else cos she actually just knew her shit and didn’t speculate.

Which is why, it pains me so much, that the thing I wanted to do most, I will now never be able to. That’s to cook a meal for my grandmother. It’s coming close to 3 years now in Sydney, where I’ve been honing my craft, expanding my mind and my tastebuds. Much of this has been guided by a lady who lived to the ripe old age of 93. She taught me good taste by serving it to me on a plate. You can’t buy that from a cookbook or a telly show. I was given this gift by someone who cherished me. Never mind that her teeth were failing (I would’ve done a classic Chinese steamed egg dish) or that she couldn’t eat very well. It was just one of those things I wanted to be able to do, properly. I can make cakes with a microwave and talk about sousvide till the cows come home, but I’ll never be able to cook for the woman who cooked the most for me when I was a kid again. No return favors concept kills me.

Farewell mah-mah.