![]() But most importantly, she took to ordinary Kiwi food like a duck to water. I took my wife back to New Zealand for the first time last February, and culinarily-wise I was quite surprised by two things: First, my parents had found an Asian supermarket in Hamilton, the rather small city they currently live in, so we could stock up on a few things that would suit my wife’s tastes. She noticed and commented, asking, “How come you used cabbage instead of lettuce?”Īnd I guess in addition to regional differences, there’s also the personal differences, as Rhiannon’s comment suggests. Trouble is, I couldn’t find lettuce anywhere, so I had to settle for 圆白菜/western-style round cabbage. And just on Monday, I cooked my wife steak and mashed potatoes, and wanted to make a salad to go with it all. ![]() Is it a regional thing, perhaps? I mean, there is no shortage of salad-like 冷菜 on Chinese menus. John’s reaction to raw lettuce strikes me as a little odd – and I mean no offence by that, I have simply never come across such an aversion. To read the full series to date, you can start at Chapter 1, or browse the Memoirs of a Yangxifu archives. Memoirs of a Yangxifu in China is the story of love, cultural understanding and eventual marriage between one American woman from the city and one Chinese man from the countryside. How did China change your perception of your favorite foods? That was one small step for John, and the beginning of a new culinary love - his love of salad. “Mmm, that’s not bad,” he declared, munching on a few of the greens on our table. I never imagined risk until that night, seeing John’s response. Yet, here in the West, we worship our greens, despite the headline-making risks. ![]() After all, people in my country, the US, have died from eating spinach and lettuce tainted with deadly microbes such as E. Eat it raw, and prepare to meet your toilet - many, many times. You must cook lettuce, like every other green, to avoid harmful bacteria. It was their way in John’s home and culture. One Chinese New Year, I prepared salad and spaghetti for the whole family, and observed as John’s parents avoided the salad bowl. The lettuce of my childhood - crisp greens kissed with vinegar and olive oil, the wrinkled leaves giving the illusion that the salad was even greater than reality - drowned in sauces, and wilted miserably in the bowl. Years later, I would sit down at the round, plastic table in his parents’ dining room, and find, among the vegetables they prepared, a dish of lettuce stir-fried in rapeseed oil, soy sauce, salt and MSG. If I’d spent more time at his home, I’d have known better. “Uncooked lettuce gives you diarrhea.” The dinner I’d spent hours on was now, according to John, a digestive liability. “Of course it’s lettuce! That’s what we eat for salads.” Suddenly, the usual gentle, happy-go-lucky smile faded away to a slight grimace as he bent over to look closer at my afternoon’s work. John pushed through the door, and surveyed the dinner spread on the table with his hands on his hips. ![]() Oh, he’s going to just love this, I thought, the anticipation surging within after I called John up for dinner. I walked around the table, as if I was parading it before a crowd, proud of what I had done this afternoon. And then I set the creaky wooden table, the tomato sauce crowning two steaming plates of angel hair, with two salads to start the meal. I washed the salad greens and tossed them together with tangy balsamic vinegar, olive oil and a little salt. I boiled the angel hair pasta to al dente perfection. I cooked down the tomatoes with nuggets of garlic and a splash of olive oil, and then a little basil seasoning at the end. And after discovering the foreign foods market just blocks away - the tawny olive oils, the deep balsamic vinegars, pasta, and even salad greens in a rainbow of colors and shapes - I schemed to dazzle my Chinese boyfriend with a taste of my childhood, and feed my thirst for something beyond the usual Chinese fare. Well, in China, I had spent many a week without spaghetti or salad. It just wasn’t a week without our spaghetti and salad. I wasn’t even close to being purebred Italian, yet for years, an Italian meal on the weekends was as important a ritual as evening mass at the Catholic church. One Saturday evening in Shanghai, I holed up in the kitchen with some long lost culinary acquaintances - angel hair pasta, ripe red tomatoes, and mesculin mix, with flavors that ranged from the bitter, toothy mizuna to the sweet baby lettuces. When John, my Chinese boyfriend, refused to eat my salad, that moment was a window into one major difference between our culinary cultures.
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