It is a truth universally acknowledged that any cook worth his or her salt probably went to school at Grandma University. Whether it’s pot-au-feu or apple pie or red-cooked pork, food cooked by a grandmother is understood to be food cooked with patience, thrift, and a lifetime’s accumulated wisdom. If you missed out sitting by your grandmother’s stove, or your family ethnicity doesn’t happen to match the food you know you were born to eat, Patricia Tanumihardja’s book goes a long way toward addressing that need.
Kitchen friendly, home-cooked, and grandmother-approved
“The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook: Home Cooking From Asian American Kitchens’’ is a pan-Asian volume that sprawls through the kitchens of half the world. The dishes are Malaysian, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian and - rather extensively - Chinese. Many recipes have this in common: Afterward, I found myself exclaiming, “Now I know!’’
Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce, for example, proves that sometimes it’s just one detail that makes the difference. In this case, splitting the stalks lengthwise so that they cook properly and become tender and absorbent. Water spinach with shrimp paste and chilies shows how you get the benefit from salty, stinky shrimp paste: Grind it with shallots, cook it in some oil, add greens.
Most exciting, for me, was learning to unlock the secrets of one great Southeast Asian stir-fry after another. In Thai basil pork, it’s garlic, oyster and fish sauces, and basil. For Vietnamese caramelized chicken with lemongrass and chilies, it’s heaps of minced lemongrass with garlic and cilantro cooked in an oil-suspended caramel sauce (a new technique for me). Lao chicken and herb salad explodes with every weird herb you can find in the Asian grocery - Vietnamese coriander or “rau ram,’’ sawtooth herb, galangal, kaffir lime leaf - with gritty, nutty roasted rice powder for texture. For years I’ve plunked down $8.50 so someone else can make these dishes for me. Free at last. Now I know.
Not every dish is a showstopper. It’s a little scary leaving miso-smothered salmon to marinate for three days. The long wait helps the seasoning penetrate all the way to the interior of the flesh, but I didn’t find the payoff sensational. With 1/4 cup each of oil and butter, Bengali-derived spiced chayote and peas is too rich for me even at my most decadent, even with its pungent counterbalance of mustard and fenugreek seeds. Burmese pork curry is a competent but uninspired sermon on soy and ginger, and Filipino fried noodles are rather bland.
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