Yeah, long time, blah blah…. Speaking of a long time ago, one of the first posts I made for this blog was for Chinese New Year 2008. If you scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll see a video of me steaming a whole fish. Featured in that video commenting on how delicious the fish is because it was made by her uncle (who was and is still a damn good cook – not to mention so much better looking 16 years ago) is my niece who was 7 years old at the time. Her name is Maia and she’s now a full on singer songwriter who goes by the name mxmtoon who’s been on multiple tours and performed for tens of thousands and has millions of followers on her various social media channels. So could it be that her appearance in my vid, her first foray into internet video content as it were, served as the inspiration for her to pursue her creative and artistic ambitions? In my mind, the answer is unequivocally yes. But don’t take my word for it. You can listen to a whole radio story that I produced about her rapid rise wherein she admits that indeed, if not for me, she would be nowhere. Okay that is completely not true but the point is, if there’s a grain of truth that watching her uncle make that fish video was in anyway inspirational, then my own kids, similarly inspired, might as well be accepting their future grammys, emmys and oscars (maybe they’ll be EGOTS) because they’ve been participating in my damn videos since they were both in diapers.
The point of all this meandering (as if there needs to be a point) is that my kids love these videos – watching them and being in them. They have been the ones to spur me on to make the last few food vids (well them and their mom who’s like “you’ve got to make videos while they’re still cute!”). And while I should have been doing more (frankly, I got a little jaded on the process – due to the fact that barely anybody watches these vids) I’m so glad to have done the ones we have because I realize, it’s not about the number of views (although more would be nice). It’s the fact that these videos are little time capsules of me and the kids during these last few years and the delicious foods and recipes that are their legacy. In fact I’ve come to realize that this whole blog, if anything is just a personal journal of my life as seen through food stories that just happens to exist on the internet for the world (an spam bots) to see. Looking at the various posts and pages is a reminder of who I was and where I was at different points in life and it’s great to have those touchstones. Of course I’m appreciating this now as I thought this whole blog had crashed a few days ago and I was trying to be all zen about the possibility that these years of posts were gone forever. Fortunately, it was just down for an hour AND I backed everything up. Phew! OK, so what was this post about again? Jesus, give me younger get to the point Clarence to meandering middle-aged Clarence any day. Let’s keep this moving!
Ok, task master! Alright, so, last week, Mona comes to me with this third grade homework assignment. It’s called a DYOH (Do Your Own Homework) project and she says, “Baba, I want to make a cooking video.” So I’m like, “Ok, go ahead.” She’s like, “No, I want you to help me make a cooking video.” I’m like, “Wait, who’s homework is this anyway?! Isn’t it enough that I contributed to giving you life?!” Listen, I’m trying my damndest to be a hard-ass old school Asian dad who teaches his kids the true meaning of self reliance by yelling at them to just do everything themselves (this works about half the time). But really, I’m kind of a softy and upon looking down at the sweet beseeching face of my second born, of course I relented and said, “OK, what should we make?” We settled on garlic noodles because they are a true Bay Area original, they’re easy to make, are damn delicious and we had all the ingredients. They are:
INGREDIENTS:
1 lb Noodles (any fresh noodles from an Asian Market or dried spaghetti)
4-6 tbsp butter
5-7 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)
2-3 tbsp oyyster sauce
2-3 tbsp fish sauce
1-2 tbsp Maggie sauce
1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese
And this is how we do it:
