MI N G - C H E AU L I N
Author of cookbook
Just Add Rice
and food blogger
The food memory: Noodle broth
For a young Ming-Cheau, her sister Jasmine and her brother Frank, the April school holidays were a happy time, as it meant their father, Kingha, would be on leave and cook for them. “My dad has a very refined palate and pairs flavours beautifully. During the holidays, he cooked us these big feasts and, because everyone knew he was such a good cook, people would always try to get themselves invited to our house.” Because the temperature in Bloemfontein started dipping at this time, the family would eat loads of hearty noodle broths spiked with ginger to heat the body from within. “We’d wake up and the house would be filled with the smell of a lovely broth,” she says. “We’d pitter-patter our way down the stairs of our little townhouse barefoot, because shoes weren’t allowed in the house, and run into the kitchen where my mom, Hui Li, would gather us around the table to slurp noodle soup for breakfast.” Over the December holidays, Hui Li and the children would take Kingha packed lunches to enjoy at his factory. “My dad was an entrepreneur who never took time off when we first moved to South Africa,” she says. “We’d take him Taiwanese fried chicken, veggies, rice and seaweed salad in a plastic bento box, and drank cartons of green iced tea.”