It wasn’t quite as good as the last one I had at the famed Tai Cheong bakery in Hong Kong, but holding the egg tart in my hand-one that I had made from start to finish-felt pretty darn empowering. I bit into the crisp, tender pastry and savored the smooth custard. My first try turned out terribly I had overworked the dough and it was tough and brittle. “You can just feel really prideful of yourself and your culture too.” That afternoon I thought about Cho’s words as I followed Wong’s egg tart recipe. “When you make yourself, you lay a little claim to it,” Cho says. Setting my dinner table full of the foods I grew up eating-and sharing this experience with my husband-filled my chest with pride. Cooking through Irene Kuo’s The Key to Chinese Cooking, Cecilia Chiang’s The Seventh Daughter, and Grace Young’s The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen felt like reconnecting with my culture. I immersed myself in Chinese food blogs and cookbooks. But last year’s shooting in Atlanta and the recent rise in anti-Asian hate crimes jolted me awake. I never learned to make turnip cake or mooncakes from scratch. In my most vulnerable moments, I thought that disregarding my heritage seemed like a fair price to pay if it meant I’d be unequivocally accepted by my peers. After these negative experiences in high school and early adulthood, I couldn’t help but feel that being Chinese was more a burden than a joy. Marui Bakery, located in the London Drugs complex on Kingsway near Joyce. I was emotionally exhausted by the rejection that often came when I shared my food and culture with others. Egg tart, or dan tat in Chinese, is a baked dessert made with a pastry crust. I want to steam a whole fish, dive into a bowl of red-cooked chestnuts, and fill my apartment with the warm, spiced aroma of flavor-potted tofu.įor a long time I felt pressured to assimilate and shied away from my Chinese heritage. Lately, I’ve been yearning to re-create the flavors of my childhood in my own kitchen. It wasn’t just about embracing a new challenge, though. It seemed silly that I was confident in my ability to make a fancy French cake like a marjolaine or opera but couldn’t imagine baking something as essential to my culture as the egg tart is.
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