Recipes for Filial Piety Soup

Cindy Liu

I associate “soup” with warmth, comfort, and home, the same feelings that come to mind when I think of my parents. Filial piety itself is a soupy, messy, complicated, beautiful and delicious thing. I wanted to explore this concept of filial piety as soup. I’ve included “recipes” for my favorite Chinese soups/stews for our special 10th zine.

My piece also pays homage to how the standard for Chinese cooking is no recipes, just vibes; in fact, the more vibes, the better the dish tastes. My mother has never written down any recipes from her mother, and I know my grandmother would scoff at the idea of googling “西红柿鸡蛋面” to measure out how many scallions one should chop. Here’s to cooking with ever more vibes~~

Salted Pork & Preserved Egg Congee, 皮蛋瘦肉粥

Makes 4 servings, or 2 if you’re feeling extra hungry/emo

1. A few cups of rice; 2-3 century eggs so pungent they make your eyes water; the fattiest pork butt you can find.
2. The signature MSG richness bottled up from Big Wong on Mott Street in Chinatown, the restaurant your parents frequented 25 years ago. An “every occasion” restaurant: post-grocery run, for an anniversary, to fulfill a craving, etc.
3. 1 cup of tears held back as you sit across from your parents on a warm spring day in May, imagining them on a date back then inhaling the same congee you love now.
4. A few tablespoons each of scallion, ginger, white pepper, and salt.
5. 2 dashes of light soy sauce, thinking of your dad saying, “this was once mommy’s and my favorite restaurant, and now it’s for all of us,” on his first visit to New York my freshman year of college.
6. The ineffable sense of return after each hearty slurp—to where exactly, no one knows, just that the feeling of coming home can be contained even on the gentle curve of a soup spoon.

Herbal Chicken Soup, 乌鸡汤

Makes one whole pot of soup, which seems to disappear down the gullet as quickly as the steam dissipates from its surface

1. 10-12 cups chicken broth your mother painstakingly nurses on the stove, infused with the unconditional love you wish your mother could have felt from her mother during her childhood in China. She usually prefers using the carcass leftover after we gnaw down on a Costco rotisserie chicken.
2. A few slices of ginger, enough to jazz up the flavors and your sinuses.
3. 6-8 dried jujubes (one of my favorite words & ingredients)
4. Sporadic memories, vivid and tenacious, of you and your mother in an eternal dance of push-and-pull, like one is always attempting to outdo the other in proving the depth of their love. At times bitter and tough, yet ultimately as sweet and comforting as a bowl of soup.
5. 2 tbsps goji berries.
6. A sprinkling of ginseng for ~health~
7. Salt to taste.

“There’s something in the East Asian tradition at large that resists exposition. The imagistic impulse is much more common and seen as superior. The image and experience of a person is much more privileged and precious to us. I think it’s something that’s very distinct in Asian traditions. Part of the ‘aesthetic’ of Asian literature and art is that image reigns supreme, and that can be expanded as service. Rather than saying it through exposition (‘I love you’), I’m going to make you this thing that would not let you deny it.” —Ocean Vuong

Henan-style noodle soup, 烩面

Makes 2 large bowls.

1. 1.5 cups of healing mutton broth that tastes like the smell of freshly cut grass.
2. As much salt as you’d like + 1 tsp five spice powder to season the broth. Maybe some MSG sprinkled in there too, I won’t tell!
3. 3 cloves of garlic and a 2 inch segment of ginger, minced.
4. Some veggies as your heart desires. My dad likes 木耳, bok choy, ½ block firm tofu, a couple tomatoes.
5. ¾ cup of summers spent seeking shade under my grandparents’ fig tree in Henan, the heat oppressive and merciless while my dad smiled wider than I’d ever seen him, slurping noodles surrounded by family and sweating from the hot 烩面 broth. After oceans and cuisines apart, my dad’s sense of home is still wherever his family is.
6. 1 tbsp each of Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, and Laoganma chili crisp. (Take that, David Chang! Our ancestors have been eating chili crisp long before Momofuku tried to trademark it!)

“Too many Chinese families caught in mid-century wars had to drop everything and run, abandoning their homes, cherished possessions, and even loved ones. Maybe this is why food takes on such significance for so many Chinese. Food is eminently portable. If the memory of a dish lingers on your tongue and you know how to cook the dishes of your family, the taste of home is never farther than your kitchen, wherever you have landed in life. Yet, in the same way, food is a fickle mistress: a poor approximation of a beloved dish may simply remind you of everything you have lost.” —Michelle T. King, Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-Mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food