home cooking?

like most families, mine has its own holiday food traditions. our practicing chinese cultural standing understandably dictates a practical mix of customary cuisine done with ethnic ingredients: chinese sausage stuffed turkey? why not? sticky-rice and chestnut stuffing? i'm way salivating. and my mom’s unapologetically-chinese-no-holiday-excuse-needed-garlic-chives-gyoza?! where the fuck is the soy sauce?

all the more reason i miss going home this year. while i’ve had holidays away from my parents before, i’ve never spent it with daphne alone as a "family". i guess i’ve been too busy to really give the situation too much thought until now, so it’s christmas eve and i have only a vague idea what i’m going to cook for dinner tomorrow.

not daphne, she already know she’s making three-mushrooms soup, scalloped potatoes (with crispy brown edges – the way she likes ‘em), and an artery-blocking coffee cake, all taken from the “a taste of kansas city (then and now)” cookbook she got last year from her aunt mary.

in contrast, i've been waffling between such classic holiday fares as shrimp wonton and something with the chicken fryers we have in the freezer. but none of it really grabs me, not in the way a holiday meal should, not in my mind at least.

it was an unusual week for us meal-wise anyway. instead of eating in like we normally do, we ate out a number of times. like on sunday, we hooked up with daphne’s crew from pratt and had dim sum at 88 east broadway, a cantonese banquet hall on the second floor of a small, dingy mall tucked underneath the manhattan bridge off-ramp.

monday was daphne’s birthday and we had an amazing omakase dinner at en, a japanese brasserie in the west village. while the look of en (“destiny” in japanese) suffers from trendy restaurant design clichés (i.e. vast space with a rough industrial finish, minimalist décor, and kimono-clad hostesses, ugh!), its food rocks. we particularly enjoyed the moist and slightly sweet black cod in miso, the buttery kobe beef seared on hot stone with ponzu dipping sauce, and the sublime soba green tea pudding. i had high hopes for the much touted freshly-made tofu but found it lacking the rich soy taste found in chinatown.

we were out this morning for a dim sum brunch down at elizabeth and mott with deb, dan and their lil’ man lucas. and we just came back from a wonderful time with bb and gabriel sharing a large steamy shabu shabu at shabu tatsu in the east village.

it’s possible that all the good food this past week decreased my motivation to whip something up the same way that grocery shopping is kind of nauseating on a full stomach. but i suspect it’s more in my head - i think i’m just homesick.

i’m sure it’ll will be better in the future. after all, one day, going home for christmas would mean gathering at our crib, and i very much look forward to building that family tradition with daphne. i guess it's not too hard to see my lack of enthusiasm for our christmas meal as a reflection of my various uncertainties about the future at this point in my life.

as usual, when in emotional doubt, i reach for the music. “this must be the place” by talking heads from their 1983 “speaking in tongues” album (sire), “homeland” from “beyond skin” by nitin sawhney (outcaste, 1999), and tom waits’ “long way home” from the “big bad love” soundtrack (elektra/asylum, 2002) hit the right note.

Posted by cellpharmer at December 24, 2004 05:27 PM