葛莉絲 的世界

My mom loves to cook.  When she wants to learn to cook a new dish, she always starts a series of experiments.  She would cook the same dish over and over again until she got it just right.  Most of her experiments resulted in success on the second try.  However, there was one dish that she had to remake so many times that until today I still dread to eat or smell it.  It was the “bowl-shaped sticky rice pudding,” a very popular dish in Taiwan.

The bowl-shaped sticky rice pudding is made from rice and is molded in a rice bowl.  It is white with bits of salty meat topping on it.  When it’s ready to serve, you cut a big “X” at the center of the bowl, and then loosen the edge by circling the inner side of the bowl with a knife.  Next, you flip the bowl upside down on a plate, and gently lift up the empty bowl.  The sticky rice pudding with its perfect semi-spherical shape appears in front of your eyes.  The dish is now ready to be served.  You can enjoy it with its special-made sauce or just eat it plain.  You can also top it with some hot sauce or any other spice if you prefer.  Although it looks like a French cake with chocolate pudding on top, it is actually a Taiwanese-style salty food.

The way my mother makes this dish is as follows: First, she puts rice and water in a special rice-grinding machine which turns them into white rice liquid.  This process sounds pretty simple but is really not.  If too much water is used, the pudding will not firm up correctly.  It will be too soft and won’t be able to hold up the shape.  If not enough water is used, the pudding will become very hard and dry.  It will taste like chewing rubber.  My mom is a perfectionist.  She always makes sure that her creation is perfect.  So of course her rice pudding cannot be too soft or too hard.  If the texture doesn’t turn out exactly right, she will keep on trying, even for a hundred more times, until it’s finally right.

Next, my mother prepares dried baby shrimps, dried chopped onions, lean ground pork and diced dry mushrooms for the topping.  She stir-fries all of the ingredients with soy sauce and her special combination of spices.  You can smell the aroma all over the house.  I used to walk home form school smelling this welcoming scent everyday as soon as I made the right turn into our street. 

Once all the basic materials are ready and prepared, my mother will set up at least thirty rice bowls on our dinning table.  She then carefully pours the white rice juice into each bowl.  After that, she sprinkles a little bit of the topping she stir-fried earlier and drops one egg yolk into each bowl to let it float at the center.  Finally, she gently places all bowls into a set of specially made large bamboo steamers and steams them until they are done.  The bamboo steamers can be piled up for as many layers as you want, depending on the amount of food you try to prepare.  After the puddings are done, my mom usually wants us to taste them and give her our feedback.  Every time she experiments, we will have to eat the same food for dinner, breakfast and even pack it for lunch for days.

The first time my mom attempted to make the bowl-shaped sticky rice puddings, my brother, my sister and I were very excited.  Normally this kind of food isn’t easy to prepare at home because it’s very time consuming and involves a lot of work and labor.  At the beginning, it was a fresh experience for all of us, and we loved to eat it.  When my mom packed it for our lunch, we were always opening up our lunch box lid with our chins high up and proud.  I loved to hear my friends say, “Wow! Smells so good!”  However, after the fourth or fifth time, and countless more times, it was not funny anymore.  I quickly turned from feeling proud to feeling embarrassed every time I opened my lunch box.  “Why does your mom pack the same food every day?” “You must love bowl-shaped sticky rice pudding so much that your mom packs it for you everyday, right?” God, please help me, I don’t want to eat this anymore,” I prayed in my mind.

It kept on going.  Every time we though it would be the last time she was making the bowl-shaped sticky rice pudding, we were disappointed.  Each time we came home from school, the closer we were to home, the faster our hearts beat.  As soon as we opened the front door, we would immediately check our dining table to see if there were any bowls lined up on the dining table, or we would go straight to the kitchen to see if there were any bamboo steamers on the stove.  If we saw a lot of bowls placed on the table, our stomachs would start to turn.  It would mean that we were stuck eating the products of her experiment every meal of the day for the next few days until they were all finished.  I got so sick of it.  Every time I saw her start preparing food, I got scared and fidgety.  “What was she going to make now?  Please make anything but that bowl-shaped sticky rice pudding,” I was begging.  It was a torture.

While I was suffering, my best friend from school came to my rescue.  She always told me how much she wished her mom was more like my mother, and how lucky I was to have a mom who always makes special lunch for her child.  She complained that her mom never had time to cook, and that she always had to buy her own lunch from the school cafeteria.  “You don’t know what I’m going through!”  I told her.  “Can you imagine eating the same food three meals a day for days or even weeks?” I said.  I could not even throw them out because I didn’t have any money to buy other things to eat.  Anything would have been better than the bowl-shaped sticky rice pudding.  “If you hate it so much, why don’t you switch it with me?” my friend suggested.  At that moment, I felt so happy and relieved.  “Yes!! Thank god! You really heard me!” I yelled in my heart.  My eyes sparkled and I started to smile (but in fact, I really wanted to laugh out loud!) “That’s great!  How about you buy me a bowl of noodle soup and I give you my lunch?”  Just like that, we exchanged lunch everyday until my mom finally finished her experiments with the sticky rice pudding and moved on to her next project.

This was the reason that although almost every Taiwanese loves bowl-shaped sticky rice pudding, I can’t bear even the smell of it.  People in Taiwan get excited when they see this special dish or talk about it.  They like to compare and discuss about which store sells the tastiest bowl-shaped sticky rice pudding.  Thanks to my mom, I am an exception.  After having to repeatedly eat it for innumerable times in my childhood, this dish still gives me a nightmare up to this day.  I just can’t be as excited about it as other Taiwanese do.  I guess this is an example of how too much of a good thing can be bad.