Every recipe starts with a list of ingredients. For the wontons that my mother and I used to wrap together, it was ground pork, spinach, sesame oil, and a blend of other seasonings. I see a bowl of water to line the doughy wrapper, a small metal spoon to mix these ingredients together, and my mother in front of me, stuffing a spoonful from the bowl before quickly folding over the ends. While the ones she made sat in pristine rows with tightly pressed together ends, mine were nothing short of disastrous, destined to disintegrate the moment they enter the pan.
Despite my initial lack of dexterity when making wontons, however, cooking has become one of the dearest skills I’ve developed, not just because of the mouth-watering food that followed, but all that it brings to the table for me.
To me, food is the binding ingredient for my family and friends, bringing everyone together. Cooking is a masterclass in learning our own senses—I see those I love sitting around the dinner table, eagerly waiting for their meal to arrive. I hear laughter, chattering, and forks scraping against plates. And while sharing a meal tastes like consolation and familiarity, preparing one is independence and compassion.
When I moved from my childhood home into a brand new apartment in Davis, I will be the first to admit that I was terrified of somehow forgetting the tastes that I had grown accustomed to, as if they would evaporate from the deep crevices of my brain the moment I became rooted elsewhere. But my experience was far different from the one I was expecting, because when I found myself, away from the gas burners that I never learned to appreciate until I was stuck with a coil that never seems to get quite as hot, away from the convenient Asian grocery store that carried ten types of sesame oil (I still can’t tell the difference), and away from my mother’s hands that deftly took the lumps of dough and meat from my hands to wrap into something edible, I tapped into a desire that I never thought existed within me. One that made my identity more legible to me than ever before.
As a child, I wanted to cook to become more responsible, but I now realize why my mother spent hours scooping and tucking those pockets of dough and meat—because now, when I cook for others, I become the binding ingredient, the one to bring joy and companionship. I am the one concocting something that can help someone uncover a hidden memory or remember a favorite place. Food has the uncanny ability to elicit strong emotions of affection and comfort, and I will always have an appetite for the feelings of interconnectedness and unity that are so closely tied with my recipes.
Because, somehow, many years (and meals) later, the feeling of the dough bending beneath my fingers and the smell of wontons in chicken broth with green onion seem all too familiar. It’s a piece of home, and one that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, no matter how far I am from the place that introduced me to it.