Woman shares her mother’s love for food of her homeland
A new cookbook celebrates a family’s life around Chinese food, from Guangzhou to Minneapolis, Mike Peters reports.
Leeann Chin knew it would be hard for her children to assimilate as Chinese-Americans growing up in the northern US state of Minnesota.
“My mother did everything she could to help us fit in, like bringing us to Sons of Norway events, but every night she made us Chinese food,” her daughter Katie Chin writes in her new book. “We didn’t fully appreciate the gourmet Chinese meals we were served, and secretly wished we were eating Hamburger Helper like all the other kids. Foolish, I know.”
Her mom’s lifelong love of cooking wasn’t confined to her home kitchen. The Leeann Chin restaurant chain she founded now has 45 locations spread across the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul. After she retired, she wrote a Chinese cookbook with Katie, and the two started a pan-Asian catering business called Double Happiness Catering.
Leeann died in 2010, but her daughter has captured their culinary life together in Katie Chin’s Everyday Chinese Cookbook: 101 Delicious Recipes From My Mother’s Kitchen.
“In between our catering gigs, we were lucky enough to travel to China together to co-host a Food Network special called My Country, My Kitchen,” Katie Chin writes, “as well as to New York for numerous appearances together on the Today show. The next natural step was to do a cooking show: We co-hosted the national PBS cooking series Double Happiness, a motherdaughter Chinese cooking show shot in Hawaii.
As an American who is overfamiliar with what happens to Chinese food when it goes abroad, I couldn’t resist asking Chin if she and her mother had found the origin of lemon chicken — mom’s signature dish in Minnesota — on their journey to Leeann’s native Guangzhou.
“LOL!” she quickly texts in response to my tease. “My understanding is that it wasn’t invented in China but in NYC at Pearl’s Chinese Restaurant. The general consensus is that it’s a Chinese-American invention for sure.”
Such liberties never seemed out of line to mother or daughter, for whom Chinese food clearly represents a living art.
Leeann Chin once told chef Raghavan Iyer that while she missed the regional Chinese cooking that she grew up eating in Guangzhou, she had no problem serving up the Chinese-American staples that had become synonymous with her myriad restaurants.
“Her business acumen shone through as she admitted to serving Minnesotans foods that she knew would appeal to their palates,” he writes in the book’s introduction. Quoting Leeann: “Just a bit sweeter than I eat at home.”
Explaining her new book’s recipes, Katie Chin says: “Some are taken from my mother’s personal vault, like the time-honored classics she learned how to make in China, while others reflect our Chinese-American childhood. I’ve also included recipes that my mother and I developed together for our catering business, as well as some that I’ve developed more recently, inspired by her teachings.”
The author says that growing up, Chinese New Year was her favorite time of year.
“My mother explained all of the symbolism of the foods we ate on this day to bring fortune, honor, health and good luck into our homes. She told us about the firecrackers on New Year’s Day in China when she was a little girl, and how they lit up the sky to ward off evil spirits.” Together, Leeann and Katie came up with a fun and festive recipe “that’s great for Chinese New Year, or any time of the year when you want a little good luck.” Their Firecracker Shrimp is a spring roll with a protruding shrimp’s tail and a carrot strip to resemble the fuse of a firecracker.
Her book’s introduction is rich with such personal recollections and anecdotes, which continue throughout the recipe section.
“When I was developing this recipe a few months ago,” Katie writes of her Tofu Bites with Three Sauces, “I started with four sauces, but then I heard my mother’s voice in my head about the (unlucky) number four: ‘Don’t rent that #4 apartment!’ I hope these crispy tofu nuggets—crunchy on the outside, but soft and creamy on the inside — bring you luck with their three delicious dipping sauces. The Sriracha Mayo delivers a creamy heat, while the Soy Balsamic is sweet-tart and salty, and the Hoisin Peanut is rich and nutty.”
Writing about working with her mom, she describes Leeann as the toughest boss she ever had, with reprimands like “Your egg rolls are not wrapped firmly enough” and “You should make double the pleats on that shu mai.”
In private or on TV, it made no difference.
“One time, on our cooking show, I said, ‘If you don’t have Asian hot sauce, you can use Mexican hot sauce instead. Right, mom?’ Her deadpan response on camera was, ‘No.’ I recognize now that she just wanted me to be the best I could be.”
My mother explained all of the symbolism of the foods we ate on this day to bring fortune, honor, health and good luck into our homes.” Katie Chin, cookbook author