The beginning of March is always a difficult time for me. Right before spring break, just as the first tidal wave of midterms begins to subside and people start quietly leaving campus, is the anniversary of my a-kīm’s passing. This year, the almost-spring rain that fell as I sat in the library reminded me of the drive to the hospital five years ago, the silence in the car punctuated by the patter of rain and the quiet whir of the windshield wipers.
My a-kīm, my mom’s sister-in-law, lived just up the street from my parents, where she and my a-kū, my mom’s eldest brother, would take care of me while my parents were at work. My earliest memory is not of my parents nor my own house, but of sitting on the edge of the cluttered kitchen countertop as my a-kīm spoon-fed me soup while tending to a pot on the stove. Joyce, my cousin, was in college then, though since she was just a short drive away she would visit home often. Growing up, I borrowed paperback books and wore hair ties and hand-me-downs from Joyce, whom I always call jiě jiě, Mandarin for “older sister.”
These days, Joyce is in her third year of residency training at UConn. We don’t get the chance to visit each other in Connecticut, but every year she asks me to share the Yale academic calendar with her so that she can request days off that somewhat align with my breaks. For my spring break, she always takes the first week off, with the expectation that we’ll both go back home to Massachusetts. In addition to marking the anniversary of her mother’s death, the beginning of spring break is a time to celebrate: Joyce’s birthday falls a few days after, and it’s also a very belated chance to make and eat Lunar New Year food with our family. One of the classic Lunar New Year foods that my a-kīm used to make was fā gāo, a fluffy, steamed muffin-like cake with a top that rises and cracks open to symbolize the abundance and prosperity that awaits in the upcoming year. Two years after my a-kīm passed, Joyce took on the mantle of the family fā gāo maker.
This spring break, Joyce and I picked a specific day to make fā gāo, and that morning I took the familiar short trek up the street, where I joined Joyce at the same countertop my toddler legs had dangled from nearly two decades before. Contrary to my initial assumptions, Joyce’s fā gāo recipe is not one passed down from my a-kīm. Apparently, my a-kīm didn’t write down many of her recipes, and when she was still alive neither Joyce nor my a-kū ever cooked with her. Joyce didn’t cook much until recently, but now she’s been experimenting to figure out how to make the Taiwanese and Chinese foods she grew up with. “It makes me feel closer to my mom,” she told me. A pensive silence fell over us as she began dissolving sugar in a bowl of warm water.
Joyce’s recipe is guided by memories of the taste and texture of her mother’s fā gāo, several YouTube tutorials, and hours of trial and error. “Fā gāo is really finicky,” Joyce confessed, recounting several times that the tops of the cakes inauspiciously failed to rise. Although the tiny cakes seem simple compared to a lot of other bakes, there are still plenty of points at which things can go wrong. Online, some people suggest using rice flour, while others prefer all-purpose, which Joyce uses. Steaming the cakes for too short a time means they’ll be flat, while steaming for too long makes the cakes tough and inedible. Throughout the process, Joyce referred to a recipe she had printed out for the ingredient ratios but completely disregarded the written instructions. At the step where wet and dry ingredients were to be mixed, I protested as she spooned flour and baking powder into the warm sugar water and pointed to the printout, which said to add the wet ingredients to the dry ones. “Trust me, dry to wet is the way to go,” she said. “I tried it after seeing it on YouTube. It works better.”
After we whisked the ingredients until smooth, we carefully ladled the batter into red cupcake wrappers, which themselves were nested in little foil ramekins. It was time to steam the cakes. Joyce and I turned towards the stove, where she had readied a giant, well-worn steamer before I arrived. We gently lowered the cakes into the steamer and closed the lid, and Joyce set the oven timer for twenty-five minutes. Just as I was about to ask her where and why my a-kīm had gotten such a huge steamer, my a-kū padded down the stairs and into the kitchen. When I asked him about the steamer, my a-kū explained that it actually belonged to my a-kong, his and my mom’s father, who took it home from the restaurant he used to work at in New York City. My a-kong had been the first of my mom’s family to emigrate from Taiwan, and the rest of the family joined him in New York when my mom was nine years old. Around then, my a-kū had finished his service in the Taiwanese military (mandatory for all young men during Taiwan’s martial law period) and married my a-kīm, who followed him to a new, uncertain life in the United States. A few years later, Joyce was born.
“The most important thing is to resist the urge to check on them,” Joyce said. “Some people even have glass steamers, but we don’t need to be fancy like that.” As we waited for the fā gāo to finish steaming, we sat at the dining table where my a-kū and a-kīm used to help me with my math and Chinese school homework. When I was little, the whole family used to all gather there for Lunar New Year dinner. After filling our bellies, we would play card games, most of which I have long forgotten how to play. At the end of the evening, there would be plenty of extra fā gāo left to eat later, some of which my parents and I would take back to our house. These days, my parents are the ones who host Lunar New Year dinner, usually takeout from the Taiwanese restaurant with salt and pepper pork chops that are themselves worth the drive. Fā gāo is Joyce’s thing now, mostly a separate affair.
When the oven timer went off, Joyce and I scrambled out of our seats to open the steamer. The cakes had risen and split open beautifully, a wonderful, auspicious success. After letting them cool, Joyce wrapped up two cakes for me to give to my parents. Then it was time for the taste test. With a mouthful of cake, Joyce quipped, “Well, seems like it worked.” Upon biting down, I had to agree: a little chewy, yet fluffy, and perfectly sweet.
