Gourd Dumplings
Toastmasters regular meeting speech, Topic: My Favourite Food
When a dish becomes one’s favourite food, it usually has something to do with emotion. Any kind of emotion that connects with the food with a story, whether it’s family love, affection, patriotism, or something else. Honesty, I wouldn’t say that I have a ‘favourite dish’, but many of my bondings with food relate to my family. My mum’s a brilliant chef in my family no doubt, and her love for us is so simple but powerful. She hopes to cook like her Hakka mother, who filled herself up with contentment as long as seeing her family’s satisfaction with her meals.
This is one of the nostalgic tastes that Mother always talks about. You probably think that these are normal dumplings. However, instead of the stuffings that we’re familiar with, these are gourd dumplings.
Mother cannot forget the taste of her childhood. Apart from my Hakka grandmother, the other half of my mum’s root was from 山東, which is in northern China. So they often had wheat as their staple food, including buns, noodles, and dumplings. Mother always remembers Lunar New Year in her childhood, which was the time for LOTS OF dumplings, and she and her siblings would always help out with the making process and that was quite a part of her childhood memory.
They made various flavours of dumplings, of course, but gourd has always been one of the most memorable and special ones, partly because they’re not so common.
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One day, my mother finally decided to dig into her memory and recreate the flavour of her nostalgia. While I, as her daughter, hoped to record her love for us through my lens before I pass on the taste of felicity despite my clumsiness whether in photography or cooking.
Actually, I have never heard of gourd dumplings outside of home. To my father and I, the surprise of knowing this flavour of dumplings gradually turned into expectation and curiosity every time Mother mentions this. And we watch her face immerse in felicity while nostalgically telling us about their homemade dumplings back in childhood. Each dumpling was fully filled with stuffing and offered overflowing satisfaction.
They do not contain the thick scent of leeks or the sweet crunchiness of cabbage. Instead, the shredded gourd was (perfectly) mixed with pork and seasonings, and the smooth texture and light-but-rich sweetness are fully filled in the wrapper. After being cooked in boiling water, they are ready to delightfully blast between our teeth and tongue.
Even though mum says that she is unable to completely recreate the amazing testes that belonged to her family, my father and I always find it interesting and fascinating whenever she tries to bring back her childhood tastes and share them with us, partly because these foods don’t seem so familiar to us.
My parents were raised in different backgrounds and grew up with different but both appealing foods. And I think it is absolutely beautiful to have different cultures presented in my household. This somehow represents the diverse culture in Taiwan as different people came to this island in different historical eras and how the cultures are preserved here.
However, to all three of us, no matter how different the food we grow up with is, the love and bonding with our families are quite the same. Just like dumplings, they may look simple and even plain on the outside, but definitely rich on the inside.
