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My Granddaughter, My Daughter, Myself
by Molly O'Neill
The tradition of passing on delicious recipes to the next generation
When she was 4 days old, Elliott Antonia joined her grandmother, the cookbook author Eileen Yin-Fei Lo in the kitchen. Lo was testing the recipes for her tenth book, My Grandmother’s Chinese Kitchen: 100 Family Recipes and Life Lessons (HP Trade, 2006). The appeal of babysitting her first-born grandchild while cooking her own grandmother’s recipes was impossible to refuse, so the author tucked Antonia into her bassinet, placed it on the kitchen table, and started steaming, braising, and stir-frying. “My granddaughter took it all in,” she says. “Even before she could learn to do anything else.”
Now 3 years old, Elliott Antonia is still a constant presence in her grandmother’s kitchen. “I waited over 20 years to be a grandmother!” Lo exclaims, barely able to contain her glee. “It’s so wonderful to cook for her, to feed her, to teach her.”
Lo, who has been called “the Cantonese Julia Child” and “the Diva of Dim Sum,” was born in Guangdong province of southern China and learned to cook from her mother’s mother, "Ah Paw.” Her grandmother, says Lo, was “a brilliant kitchen chemist with an encyclopedic knowledge of food.” Ah Paw was, in fact, celebrated throughout the region for overseeing the family’s vast gardens, orchards and fishing ponds, and for her keen sixth sense in the kitchen.
As Ah Paw taught Lo the finer points of choosing ingredients and cooking them, she also passed along a philosophy of life that emphasized generosity, hospitality, and a respect for discipline and learning.
“My grandmother showed me that there is joy in properly doing things with no shortcuts,” Lo says. “She also taught me to learn, learn, always learn.” The granddaughter carried this philosophy with her when she left China for Hong Kong, and later, in 1959, when she moved to the United States. She and her husband, the writer Fred Ferretti eventually settled in Montclair, N.J. Authentic Chinese cuisine was still difficult to find in the United States, and her reputation as an excellent cook spread quickly. Soon she was entertaining family and friends four or five nights a week and, while balancing first one, then another and finally a third child on her hip, she was cooking banquets for more than 45 people.
She began teaching recipes at the China Institute and the New School in Manhattan. At home, however, she schooled her children in “the proper techniques for classic Cantonese cooking,” she says. It was a good way of introducing her children to their heritage, and it also made good sense. Lo is nothing if she is not pragmatic. “One you know the traditional techniques you can apply them to anything,” she says.
As a banquet for the Lunar New Year, Lo offers a collection of recipes — congee, steamed fish, shrimp stir-fried in bean sauce, and water dumplings — that call for traditional Chinese cooking methods and also make a fine feast. Most are recipes she learned from her grandmother and as she cooks her New Year's meal, there is little doubt that the recipes and traditions will continue to be passed along.
Antonia is, after all, her star pupil. She already negotiates sharp edges and hot surfaces with ease. She sorts and mixes ingredients. She inspects the contents and progress of each pot on the stove.
“I want to teach my granddaughter, just like my grandmother taught me,” Lo says wistfully. She admits that it is a challenge. “She’s too smart and even more stubborn than I am,” Lo says, “but I try.”
Continue to the recipes: Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's Congee, Scallion Oil, Shrimp Stir-Fried in Bean Sauce, Steamed Fish, and Water Dumplings
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