Love Bites: In Handfuls of Rice

Mondays smelled of sweet and sour sauce, spring onions and ginger. The kitchen warmed with steam that escaped the rice cooker, one that had been part of our family since before I was born. I would watch Apaw (Granny) wash the rice under the cold stream of the tap until the water ran clear. She’d use the length of her finger to measure how much water it needed. Half a knuckle.

I make the rice now, measuring it in fistfuls and rinsing it more times than necessary, until my hands are red and painfully cold. I dip my finger in, making sure that the water level is perfect. Rice is easy to get wrong. If it’s right, a double thumbs-up. If it’s wrong, Apaw will laugh and hold up her finger to me, pointing to where the water should come to.

For next time, she says while taking my hand in hers. Our hands are different in size, shape and colour. Hers wizened from years of buttoning her children and grandchildren into soft babygrows and wringing the necks of fat ducks before roasting them as a young girl in Hong Kong. 

I’m removed from Apaw’s culture in every way apart from food; measuring it like this reminds me of how she learned to – in a tiny village, from her mother, and her mother from hers. Apaw communicates with us through food. She opened a Chinese takeaway that fed a community and subsequently, my family. Making rice with only the measurements of her own hands is something she’s always done. Never used numbers. Never written it down. Apaw carried that knowledge thousands of miles in the length of her fingers. We have a lot to thank for Apaw’s cooking. So, I’ll teach my friends to measure rice this way. I’ll teach my children.