#ChineseFoodiesofIG: Cathy Erway

 

This is part of an ongoing series of interviews I’m doing with my favourite Chinese foodies that I follow on Instagram. Come and follow the #ChineseFoodiesofIG hashtag on Instagram and leave a comment showing your support for these talented folk!

Where are you from? Where are you really from?

I was born in New York City, but raised in Northeast New Jersey from the age of 1 or 2 on. So you could call me a Jersey girl and a native New Yorker (although I’ve been in NYC now for most of my life). My mom is from Taiwan, and my dad is from Upstate New York.

What does home taste like?

It smells like five spice and tastes really savory. My mom made hongxiao (red-cooked) stews often, and whether it had chicken or beef, there were always lots of other tasty things bobbing around in it, like tofu blocks, seaweed knots, big, fat shiitake mushrooms and hardboiled eggs, my favorite. I could eat that every day still.

Favourite Chinese vegetable?

What a great question. Maybe kong xin cai (water spinach)? It has crisp and juicy stems and green leaves, so when it’s stir-fried there’s a lot of contrast in texture. But I have yet to see this veggie be embraced — or be available — outside of Asian American households, restaurants or farms. And now you got me thinking I should look into this more...

Share a food memory:

My parents like to tell this one: Someone signs me up for a pie-eating contest on the 4th of July when I’m like 4 or 5. The bell goes off, all the other kids start furiously mashing their faces into whipped cream-topped pies, and I just sit there, staring at everyone, not touching a thing. I hated whipped cream, and I still don’t really care for it.

Who's your Chinese food legend? 

Awesome women food writers like Grace Young, Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, Linda Lau Anusasananan, Rhoda Yee, Pei Mei, Joyce Chen, and several others before them. Why am I calling out women writers only? I guess since they’ve written the bulk of these cookbooks, and some of the ones I love the most. 

Rice or noodles?

Rice. I’d probably more likely say “I love this!” about noodles, but I just feel like I need rice, in a way that I don’t need noodles.

Dream dinner party guests:

I would try to invite all my favorite contemporary food writers to the same table for a meal. Uhhhh… wait, we do that sometimes anyway! To that end I’d like to say how great it is to be friends with food writers like Diana Kuan, Chitra Agrawal, Pervaiz Shallwani, Rachel Wharton and many more but I’ll stop there before this gets obnoxious.

Most underrated Chinese ingredient:

Bamboo shoots.

What would you like to tell the world about Chinese food?

I am humbled to even be asked that question, as I am not a chef nor Chinese food historian nor expert, but a home cooking enthusiast. So I would like to say that Chinese home cooking is about being intuitive and resourceful — not a precision performance — and you can and should have fun with it.

 
#ChineseFoodiesofIGJenny Lauchinese identity, foodies, taiwanese american, bloggers, new york, food writerComment