A Taste of Home

By Hklbrries

"Growing up, I barely knew my grandmother. But when relatives taught me how to make her fabulous fruit tarts, I finally felt close to her.

When I was a child in Singapore, Chinese New Year meant just one thing: my gradmother's pineapple tarts. The buttery, bite-size circles topped with dollops of homemade jam were an obsession for me. We had them in the house once a year, on the lunar new year, when everyone would spend days visiting family and friends to swap tales of business deals and recent vacations, and compare children's test scores over tea and sweets.

Year after year I was reminded how superior my grandmother's tarts were. At friends' homes I would nibble politely on their pastries and think, this crust is too dry or not flaky enough. There's too much pineapple or too little. Only my Ah-Ma got it right, I told myself. I also thought that someday I'd learn from her how to make them. And then, when I was 11, she died.

Ever since, Chinese New Year has been tainted with a sense of loss and regret. The notion of baking pineapple tarts, a complex process, was so daunting that I tried simpler Chinese sweets instead. Almond cookies were an easy substitute - or so I thought. Many years after moving to America and starting college I started experimenting with various clipped-out recipes. My failures were legion. Every batch was either burned or underbaked, brittle instead of tender, salty rather than savory-sweet.

While planning a trip back home last January I decided to e-mail an aunt who had helped my grandmother bake. I asked if I could assist with the annual pineapple tart production. Twenty-three years after Ah-Ma's death, her tarts remain so famous that friends still request them at New Year's. The ritual began at dawn, when my cousins went to the market to pick up the 70 pineapples they're ordered. All morning we squatted on low stools in the backyard, slicing, chopping and juicing. Then we spent three hours stirring and sweating over a hot stove - a sauna and a workout all at once. As the pineapple jam thickened, our relationships deepened.

At first we worked mostly in silence. But as we painstakingly patted, shaped and filled the tarts, I soon learned some things about Ah-Ma. She had always loved to cook and was so devoted to feeding her family, she sometimes rose at 3 a.m. to make bak zhang, a pyramid-shaped rice dumpling filled with meat, for breakfast. I'd never spent much time with my aunts and cousins, and the stories they told me made me feel closer to them - and Ah-Ma as well. I remember how she'd urge me to eat as many treats as I wanted, but I never knew what she thought about her Westernized granddaughter, who could barely speak Chinese. Biting into a hot, flaky pastry - delicious, but not quite as sublime as Ah-Ma's - I had my madeleine moment. She showed her love for me, and all of us, the best way she knew how. Sitting in her kitchen all those years ago, I should have known: The proof was in her pineapple tarts."

Cheryl Tan is author of the forthcoming "A Tiger in the Kitchen" (Hyperion), a memoir about food and family.

Ingredients

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Preparation

Step 1

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