Mushrooms. Fungus. Ick.
Every time I see a dish with mushrooms, I immediately turn myself away from it. The earthy, umami flavor has always rubbed me the wrong way. Combined with its rubbery texture, it’s always been off-putting, regardless of what form it’s cooked in.
Enter my mom’s mushroom pork stir fry. Sauteed with oyster sauce, soy sauce and sesame oil and combined with thin pork slices, the savory, nutty, seemingly perfect texture and thickness of the two paired together made a once-hated vegetable into a craveable dish.
The dish, in many ways, mirrors my relationship with her. Yes, growing up, my mom and I didn’t always get along; we clashed — about school, social life, college — but food brought us together in a way that almost no other conversation topic could.
As a pre-pubescent teen, my relationship with her was often unpleasant, distasteful and cold. For a period of time, it would seem like we could talk about nothing in peace, always butting heads even about the smallest things, from what clothes I was wearing to how long I was taking to eat my meals. Sometimes it seemed as though even my breathing would rub her the wrong way.
Coming from an upper-middle-class background in the New York City suburbs, I admit I was definitely a spoiled child. Spoiled in the sense of being pampered with gifts, clothes that I wanted and lavish family vacations — but perhaps more significantly, I was spoiled with care. Each meal was elaborate and carefully curated, especially breakfast, which my mom would wake up to cook at around 6 a.m. every day before school. There was a never-ending variety of dishes: from cold dried tofu noodles with seaweed strips, eight-treasure congee, scallion pancake, tea eggs simmered overnight in soy sauce, tea leaves, star anise, Sichuan peppercorns; to her own twist on avocado toast made with a croissant and tomato, onion and pepper salsa with homemade soy milk — I was always pleasantly surprised by whatever handcrafted delicacy was put in front of me.
Lunch was handcrafted with the same amount of care, either with leftovers from dinner or freshly made pasta, a meticulously crafted bento box, air fryer chicken wings or baozi, always with a side of fruit and dessert. While many of my friends suffered through barely edible school lunches, I always enjoyed my deliciously lavish, well-balanced home-cooked meals. This was, ironically, a huge contrast to our actual relationship, which was oftentimes bitter, pungent and resentful.
Her constant nagging to study harder and encroachment on my already-limited free time and our opposing political standings strained our relationship, further exacerbated by the stressful and overly competitive school environment that I was in. Still, despite having our ups and downs and differences in perspectives, food offered a safe space. Almost analogous to a heated argument ending with a bowl of freshly cut fruit on my desk, the question “What do you want to eat for dinner?” or “What kinds of new recipes do you want me to try out?” would mellow the environment and tone of an otherwise tense conversation centered around school, grades, social life or college.
This past weekend, my parents and sister (and my dog, Bambi) visited me in Ann Arbor. But what came with them was a hefty amount of food from my home in New Jersey, including frozen bags of my mom’s homemade pork and chive dumplings (neatly tucked into a cooler with ice) and a whole box of Korean pears and hand-picked apples from a local orchard, still individually wrapped in the foam net sleeves and packed with a fruit peeler. Chinese rice roll snacks, strawberry nougat crisps from a homemade bakery (further hand cut into smaller cubes) and, on top of all that, a greeting from my mom that started with a hug and a, “I’m sorry, I meant to bring you mochi donuts but forgot.”
Each carefully packed bag and neatly wrapped fruit was its own reminder of my mom’s love made tangible. While the “food as love” theme in immigrant households is often overdone, it’s one I can’t escape because my ever-changing, volatile relationship with my mom has been deeply intertwined with our shared love language of food and food preparation.
Now, as I carve my own path in college, what remains the same is our shared love for food and food preparation. As I sit here in my room at 3 a.m. eating the Korean pears that my mom bought me I am reminded of her never-ending love for me, 634 miles away. This love still finds me — tucked in freezer bags and cardboard boxes, in homemade dumplings and carefully wrapped fruit. This love still finds me — in longer and more frequent FaceTime calls, text messages and notifications from Life360 asking if I got back home safe. While not nearly as elaborate and authentic, I find myself trying to recreate the same form of love that my mother has shown me: through a bowl of freshly steamed rice, tomato and egg stir fry and late-night Shin ramen hotpots with roommates, a late-night attempt to recreate our childhood flavors. I am forever grateful for this fruitful form of love that my mom has showered me with. I hope I can continue to pass this love language on to the loved ones in my life.
My mom once turned mushrooms — something I used to despise — into something I crave. Maybe that’s what love really is: turning the unpalatable into comfort, the ordinary into care. Just like my love-hate relationship with mushrooms, my relationship with her has changed with time — seasoned with patience, simmered with care and always, always from a place of love.
MiC Columnist Madison Kang can be reached at madikang@umich.edu.
