December 27, 2010

My dearest,

The shortest day, the longest night. The Winter Solstice is upon us.

Time has come for gathering near to the home, to the hearth, to warm ourselves with fire and food, wholesome soul food, made to rejuvenate and replenish the emptied stores of tired spirits.

This year, I fly home the day after the Winter Solstice Festival. I am a day late for Dūngzi. You had shared with me the night before how you took some frozen tong yun from the freezer, left over from another meal long ago, and cooked those instant dumplings for dinner. It is not right, eating winter dumplings by yourself.

You may never know how sad that news made me.

I hid my dismay, and you didn’t notice if ever I did slip, for you were excited at the prospect of me returning. A reunion. That’s what Dūngzi is really about, after all, is it not? You are cheerful. I say, let’s make tong yun by ourselves. You tell me you think that is a brilliant idea, you do.

Do I know how to make them? No clue. Neither do you, but you are sure it will be easy. It’s just dumplings, right? Flour and water, is all. I’m not too sure, but I forget my misgivings as the smile you’ve given me breaks across my lips too.

It’s Christmas Eve. Pre-recorded yuletide carols repeat in all their alternating muted and brash splendour in shopping malls, in grocery stores, in koptiams, everywhere. Cotton-wool draped carelessly and liberally stands in for sprinkle of fresh snow on assorted sizes of Christmas trees (none of them real, naturally).

‘Tis the season for plastic being swiped and lots of last-minute shopping.

Somehow we find ourselves joining in, though we avoid the crowds. We hop into smaller stores and find what we need – packets of glutinous rice flour, red food colouring for some of the pink dumplings (to contrast with the white; a tradition, this), the raw peanuts with their skin still on, old ginger, gula Melaka.

We tell ourselves if we get the ingredients right, we can figure out the rest by ourselves. We have to.

Once home, you start on the peanuts. Skins still on, they are tossed into a dry work without oil, and stir-fried as is. You keep at it till a heavenly aroma fills the entire kitchen and our humble home. The scent is something one ought to be able to devour on the spot, and perhaps, this we already do.

Meanwhile, I pour out some flour from the packets we bought into a large mixing bowl. Then some water into the same bowl. No measurements, no recipes, no need. We are gonna figure this out as we go along, are we not?

The dough is too wet, more like slop, more like an albino Hollandaise sauce. You tell me to add flour. I tell you I already did; it’s still wet. Add more, you say. I do, and then I add some more. Somewhere along the process I must have added a smidgen too much for now the dough is like waves of cracking brick in my hands.

More water, you tell me. You think?

The roasted peanuts have cooled. You pour them into the mortar, newly bought and cleaned, and you start pounding gingerly with the pestle, then as you get into a regular rhythm, smoothly and surely. The aroma that was released during the dry wok-frying returns, stronger perhaps.

It is a delicious fragrance, a promise of sweetness that will burst like treasure from the hearts of our first dumplings, our first home-made tong yun.

You look at the dumplings I have made, folding and rolling the dough in my palms, pinching them flatter to be vessels for the ground peanuts mixed with sugar. You tell me the skin looks too thick. I tell you the skin is just fine. Any thinner and the filling will fall out. You join me at the table and try to better me at dumpling-making.

It’s a ritual, a tradition, this. Making dumplings together. It means something.

Once we are done, we gently drop the balls of tong yun into boiling water. They sink, and then as they are cooked, they return to the surface. None of the dumplings crack and spill their contents prematurely. A success!

The roundness of the dumplings is a symbol of family togetherness, all through the years, the centuries. We have made dumplings only for two this winter, but they are enough. For even two make a family, a good one at that, and we are together. Good fortune to be together, on this shortest of days and longest of nights.

We sit at our table in our home, our palms and our spirits warmed by the steam from the bowls of spicy ginger soup. We spoon our dumplings, our tong yun made by our own hands, from the soup and we bite into them. You are right, the skin is too thick, the peanut filling too meagre. It’s alright. It’s only our first try, after all. We will learn. We will get it right the next time.

We have all the years, all the winters to come, to get it right.

Yours, ever and always.