Made egg Hakka noodles with black bean sauce the other night. Hakka noodles is something my mum would make for us when we were kids. I made pomfret roasted in chilli garlic sauce too.
I realised last night that there were many things different in our kitchen compared to my mum’s kitchen in the 80s.
Yellow capsicum. Knew only of green then.
Broccoli. Hadn’t heard of it then.
Nor had anyone heard of black bean or chilli garlic sauce.
I knew of chilli fish. That was deep fried. Didn’t know you could roast it in an oven. Didn’t have an oven.
Our noodles were not made without flour or without frying them. Didn’t know that noodles were fried and made with maida then. Not that one would have cared.
Didn’t use a soy sauce made in Japan. Didn’t know anything about Japanese food then. Let alone about the Japanese using soy sauce!
The one thing that remains constant over the years and across the two kitchens is the small bowl of finely chopped green chillies dipped in soy sauce.
