SMELLS LIKE SALT AND GINGER

One of the things on the programme for the week after Christmas is food that has nothing to do with the season. Comfort food. Unfestive and unpretentious. And something which I would have a hard time persuading any of my coworkers to eat. Steamed salt fish pork patty. My coworkers, some of whom are splendid people, are all rather Anglo. And salt fish is anything but Anglo. Southern Chinese. Indonesian, Malay, South East Asian, and Indo-Dutch.

There are a number of foods that with all the goodwill in the world are just not part of the Anglo foodworld. They'll try extreme things like durian and fried sambal dishes, plus adventurous things, unique exotic things. Delicacies and rare treats.

Steamed salt fish pork patty is none of those things. It's home cooking. What your auntie made when you stayed over for dinner, or what you had at that corner eatery where the cute girl worked. Something you made when it was raining outside and had been coming down in buckets for the past two or three days. The ingredients were at the convenience store next to the fridge with the Coca Cola, Vitasoy, and Watson's. The fatty pork was in the ice chest with the slide top. There was a time when every shop had hanging salt fish. Because it was, truly, both ubiquitous and essential. Plus Pearl River Bridge soy sauce. As well as Good Companion Cigarettes, Gold Leaf, and Winston ("real American taste").
Embassy and Craven A, for the Britishly inclined.

Steamed pork patty is not a period dish, not one of those things fondly remembered from the fifties and never eaten since then. It's timeless, accepted, easy to make, and can be made often. It just is. Side or main. 鹹魚蒸肉餅。Haahm yü jing yiuk beng.

Mostly Hong Kong and Quangzhou (香港同廣州). But that really is universal.

Dinner time is after dark, and it will be raining in SF.
It's twenty degrees warmer there than here.



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