03-04-2018
To let my guests try authentic home-made Chinese dishes, I racked my brains to come up with a list of dishes. After I made my decision I bought, washed, and cut the meat. Then I bought, sorted, and washed the vegetables. And finally I steam cooked, fried, and boiled them as I planned.
After cooking for more than half a day, I managed to fill a whole table with home-made Chinese dishes. However, the story here is not about those dishes but about the steam cooked rice I made effortlessly.
My guests were four members of an American family, and I wanted to treat them like family.
I followed my hometown Zigong’s eating habits: The main dishes are placed on the table for everyone to enjoy, while everyone has their own rice in a rice bowl for themselves.
Before we started our dinner, I explained: “In our family, we eat rice with every meal, this way the flavor is amplified by the contrast between the plain rice and the tasty dishes.”
The youngest guest is the almost two year old little girl, K, and this is her first time eating Chinese food. When she saw the strange Chinese food on the table, she had no appetite. Her mother told her: “Just try your rice.”
K looked at the rice in the bowl in the front of her, maybe the white rice didn’t look strange to her. She started to use her fingers to put rice into her mouth. After a few bites of rice, she started repeatedly saying: “I like rice.” while eating the rice.
K had just started to enjoy using word to express herself. I felt K’s childish voice repeating “I like rice” released very pure and natural feelings, it sounded so sweet and tender.
K finished her small bowl of rice, then she also picked up the rice stuck on her clothes and ate them as well. Her mother joked: “K really likes rice, we probably need to buy a rice cooker for K.”
Children’s natural instincts on accepting new food are biased towards food have pleasant appearances, mild smells and good taste.
Pure white rice does not look gross, has no smell, and tastes just a little bit sweet. All these things combined to let K enjoy the rice. Little K had great taste, because she immediately liked the most authentic Chinese food, rice.
Sometimes, large efforts may not bring out the expected result. Sometimes, the simplest things are the most desired. Wisdom comes from practice.