my lil dumpling
june 28, 2005
i don't have too many concrete memories of my youth in hong kong. granted, i only lived there for 5 short years before coming to the u.s. but there are certain memories that i can visualize in some nebulous haze in the back of my mind.
to the average diner eating a pan fried dumpling, otherwise known as wor teep or gao gee in cantonese, it's just a delicacy that you have from time to time. you dip it into your own mixture of vinegar, soy sauce and perhaps some chili sauce and then let the flavors of the dumpling skin combined with the pork and vegetable filling unravel in your mouth. the slightly crunchy texture of the pan fried side of the flour wrapper coexisting with the tender moist steamed side all meshing together with the juiciness of the filling is simple yet filling.
when i sit down and have a plate of wor teep/gao gee, it transfers me back to when i probably was about 3-4 years old in hong kong. my mom would take me almost daily to the open air markets buying the freshest of groceries for our meals. the cacophony of haggling and the din of conversations at open air markets is overwhelming but not moreso than the watery canals along the sidewalks where one would have to walk up planks to reach a particular stall. the muck of dirty water, the smell of fish, meat, fowl, vegetables and things of that nature filled your nostrils. needless to say a woman making her daily trip to buy groceries would have a hard time managing a chubby toddler while traversing the slippery narrow alleys with one stall lined up against another.
when i was old enough to eat on my own and not be too much of a burden to others, she started dropping me off at a small eatery along the street of the open air markets while she did her shopping. the only thing i can remember about the look of the restaurant was its white walls and tiled floors. and of course their food.
each time my mom would drop me off before her shopping run, she would order me a plate of gao gee and a bowl of dao fu fah and put me in the capable hands of the restaurant owner. i guess back in those days, you feel more trusting about people who are part of your neighborhood. faces you know and trust and the knowledge that people helped one another. everyone knew each other by name and it was part of the neighborhood family you could say. my mom would plop me down on a chair and when the owner brought me my plate of 3 gao gee and small bowl of dao fu fah, my mom would rush off for 5 minutes to finish all her grocery shopping.
for those 5 minutes, i joyfully savored every bite of those gao gees. although they are not that big in size, to a 3 year old, they are pretty enormous. and then i topped it off with a tasty dessert of the dao fu fah - warm spoonfuls of silky tofu dripping with a sugary juice laced with ginger. as i sat there and ate, i remember the aunties and uncles who would come sit across from me and try to engage in conversation with me. they would ask me, "do you like gao gee?"
i would of course nod yes to the gao gee question and at the time, i couldn't quite say gao gee correctly and would always end up saying gow see (dog shit) instead. so from then on, whenever my mom would take me grocery shopping with her, she would tell me that we are going to go eat dog shit.
and i smiled happily as i hurried along holding her hand.
and if you're wondering, yes my mom still refers to it as dog shit when she asks me if i want any gao gee to eat.
currently listening to: dramarama, anything
