#ChineseFoodiesofIG: The Mala Project

 
The mother-daughter team behind @themalaproject and themalamarket.com

The mother-daughter team behind @themalaproject and themalamarket.com

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?

Fongchong: The rural edge of Guangzhou. But DNA testing shows that my ancestry is Dai and Southeast Asian.

Taylor: I was born in Oklahoma but have lived all over the place. 

What does home taste like?

Chinese food. And sometimes Mexican food.

Share a food memory:

The first day we met in person was the day that Fongchong became part of our family, when she was 11 years old. We knew nothing about what she liked to eat, but assumed she would be a typical Cantonese eater. I had long been obsessed with Sichuan food and it was the only Chinese food I knew how to cook, so I was worried about her tolerance for spicy food. We took her grocery shopping in Guangzhou that day, and her favorite snack turned out to be pickled pepper chicken feet. They were so spicy hot that her new dad couldn’t eat them at all and I could eat only one, while she happily ate the whole bag. I was so relieved and happy to discover that she was a chilli fiend, and it was our first bonding experience.

Favourite Chinese vegetable?

Fongchong: Chinese cabbage and winter melon.

Taylor: Yu choy (油菜) and celtuce.

Who's your Chinese food legend? 

Fongchong: My mom, because she cooks for me.

Taylor: I’d have to say Fuchsia Dunlop, since she wrote the definitive English-language Sichuan cookbook and taught us all to cook real Sichuan food. 

The perfect stir fry:

One that combines all the Sichuan flavors: sweet, salty, sour, hot and numbing. It doesn’t get much better than a properly prepared gong bao chicken, which balances a light sweet-and-sour with mala—Sichuan pepper and chilies. Having said that, any kind of Chinese green stir fried with garlic is the dish that will disappear from our table first.

What’s in your fridge?

Every possible Sichuan ingredient as well as other spicy condiments and a bunch of Chinese produce. And leftovers, because I always make enough dinner for FC to eat again the next day for lunch so she doesn’t have to eat (traditional) American food, which she still doesn’t like.

Most underrated Chinese ingredient:

Fongchong: tofu skin.

Taylor: Green Sichuan pepper and green Sichuan pepper oil. This fresh, citrusy, numbing taste is everywhere in Chengdu and Chongqing, but little known in America. We sell both products, but a lot of customers look at them as a gamble, since they’re not familiar with the taste.

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

It quite literally brought us together and then helped us build a family. Fongchong’s identity is very strongly tied to Chinese food, and we’ve done our best to help her retain that part of her culture even as she adapted to a new family, language and country. In her mind, both her birth country and her new home are defined by Chinese food. It’s powerful stuff!

 
#ChineseFoodiesofIGJenny Lauchinese identity, sichuan, adoption, guangzhou, chinese american, ingredientsComment