Let’s be honest: Creating a family cookbook is a big project. Even though The Family Cookbook is all inclusive—we send a professional photographer to your home and take care of all the design and editing work for your cookbook—there are still a few steps our clients need to take to make sure their book is exactly the heirloom they want. Probably the biggest obstacle for any family making a cookbook (even those going the DIY route) is getting their recipes collected. Gathering recipe cards, scanning/photographing them, writing recipes down from memory—it can take a long time.
Bus as school starts back up in the coming weeks, the end of summer has us thinking about how to make this process easier (and more fun!). Namely, use your kids! Have a school project coming up? Have your kids help document your recipes in the kitchen. Need some family history show-and-tell? Dig out a few old recipe cards and the stories that go along with them and send them to school. Get your kids interested in how the foods you all love are connected and your cookbook process can get much more engaging. If you need to test a recipe from memory, have your kids help measure, mix, and record the process. Having them involved in the entire cookbook process—not just the photo session—is a great way get them away from screens and complaints of boredom. Basically what we’re trying to say here is that you don’t need the entire recipe gathering process to just fall on you. And once the final book arrives, they’ll be just as excited as you are.
Freeing the Wandering Spirits
In Taiwan, the seventh lunar month is dedicated to ancestral spirits. There are a lot of events and traditions that go along with this, one of which is the Toucheng Ghost Grappling competition, a huge event where teams of 5 compete to climb a tower and claim offerings and a flag at the top. This ceremony came to Taiwan from China probably in the 1700s, and in Chinese tradition those who die away from home are considered lost souls who wander the earth. This tradition came about with the belief that Chinese immigrants who settled in Taiwan’s Yilan valley and died there would now wander, lost and unable to return home. During the wider ghost festival, communities collect offerings and funds to release the wandering spirits of their ancestors.
The ghost grappling event specifically involves a huge platform resting on several tall pillars. On top of that platform is another series of scaffolded towers laden with offerings such as duck, pork and dumplings. At the top are gold medals and banners, which must be retrieved by the climbers to win the competition and to symbolize releasing suffering souls into the afterlife. Oh, and the entire tower is greased to make it as difficult as possible to get to the top. The teams climb with a section of rope and stand on top of each other to reach the platform, then scramble up the trestle towers to the top.
Like many gatherings around the world, you can find great street food during the grappling event, like gua bao, a steamed bun filled with braised pork belly and a number of delicious toppings.
This recipe might seem a little intense to make, but I promise it’s worth it. We ended up with a lot of pork belly left over, so if you don’t feel like making the buns, I would say it’s perfectly fine to just make the pork belly and peanut powder. Don’t skip the peanut powder! We ate pieces of pork doused in this powder for days. However, you could probably cut the amount of peanuts in half.
What Else Is Cooking
This Malawian chicken curry from chef and writer Nyanyika Banda. Her father grew up in Malawi, and it’s actually his recipe, but one she writes about fondly. At first glance, it seems like a very acidic dish—with tomatoes, lemon juice, and vinegar—but let it all simmer together for at least an hour and the flavors meld perfectly.
I came across this recipe while researching the Malipenga dance traditions of the Tonga groups in Malawi. During WWI, Malawians fought alongside the British and took inspiration from military drills for their dances. After the war ended, Malawian men returned home, bringing the new dance with them. Every August, a dance festival is held in northern Malawi celebrating Malipenga moves.
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