During the pandemic, the district my family lives in closed down, allowing only one person from each family per day to purchase necessities from grocery stores. Although we had very limited access to a variety of food ingredients, we still have one ingredient in abundance: Mei Gan Cai, a type of dried and salted vegetables that can be stored for a long time. The bottom drawer of our refrigerator was stuffed with bags of Mei Gan Cai that my grandmother had sent to us months ago. Among all the dishes that involved Me Gan Cai, braised pork with Mei Gan Cai (梅干菜烤肉) has always been my favorite. The essence of this dish rests on the balance in the dryness of Mei Gan Cai and the oiliness of pork. Mei Gan Cai takes in the flavor of pork, and the pork absorbs the special smell and taste of Mei Gan Cai. Therefore, during the pandemic, Mei Gan Cai Kao Rou became a comforting dish to me and my family because of its amazing flavor and the emotional connections with my grandparents that it was able to remind us of.

Mei Gan Cai Kao Rou, braised pork with preserved vegetables, is a traditional Chinese dish that originated in Shaoxing, where my grandparents live and my father grew up, but it is also a popular dish in other Southern provinces, like Guangdong and Fujian. The recipe of Mei Gan Cai Kao Rou differs by region, but the two key food ingredients needed for this dish are Mei Gan Cai and pork belly. Nowadays, many people with health concerns prefer to replace pork belly with lean pork, which contains less fat.

To truly make this dish from scratch, pickling Mei Gan Cai would be the first step, which takes a few weeks. Mei Gan Cai has a long history and is traditionally a homemade ingredient in the Shaoxing region. In Qing Dynasty, it was one of Shaoxing’s eight tributes to the emperor because of its unique flavor. Today, Mei Gan Cai can be easily found in grocery stores, but many people keep the tradition of homemaking Mei Gan Cai to produce its most original flavor. Typically, Shaoxing people would start the pickling process around May. During that time, while walking by the front yards of people who live in the countryside of Shaoxing, you would see leaves of mustard greens piling up, being dried under the sunshine. Then, these dried vegetables would go through salting and steaming. Through the process, the leaves would gradually shrink and turn into a darker color. The final product would gain a very strong and distinguishable smell. There is a funny story about my father and the Mei Gan Cai’s smell. Years ago, my father gave his Italian customer a bag of Mei Gan Cai as a gift before leaving. Later, his Italian customer told my father that his wife blamed him for bringing it back after he arrived at home because his entire suitcase smelled like Mei Gan Cai. However, I love the herbaceous smell of Mei Gan Cai. To me it is a smell of home and reminds me of my grandmother.

My grandmother is a master at pickling Mei Gan Cai. Every time we come to visit, she gives us a lot of her home-made Mei Gan Cai to bring back home. We even have a plastic bottle especially assigned for this purpose, which always arrives at my grandmother’s place empty and departs filled with Mei Gan Cai. My grandmother, and probably most of the Shaoxing people, has a strong passion for this magical food ingredient and have created many recipes with it. Among all the dishes related to Mei Gan Cai, my favorite one is Mei Gan Cai Kao Rou, which is also my grandmother’s signature dish. She would braise Mei Gan Cai and pork together for around half an hour. When she opened the pot, the smell of Mei Gan Cai mixing with the fragrance of braised pork would immediately fill the entire room. When putting the braised pork belly in my mouth, I could feel the fatty part melting on my tongue, bursting out the savor of pork and Mei Gan Cai. My grandmother told me that when she was a child, this dish was reserved for the dinner table on Lunar New Year Eve because pork, at that time, was still quite an expensive ingredient. Her parents would kill the pig they had fed for a year and invite neighbors and friends over to share the meal. Today I can cook Mei Gan Cai Kao Rou whenever I want, but serving it at the reunion dinner on Lunar New Year Eve, which is called nian ye fan (年夜饭) in Chinese, is still a tradition of my family. During the lunar new year last year, my family was not able to visit my grandparents due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but because of the Mei Gan Cai my grandmother had given us, we were still able to make this dish. There is a Chinese word called nian wei that in general means “the customs of Lunar New Year” but directly translates as “the taste of Lunar New Year.” To me, Mei Gan Cai Kao Rou is the taste of Lunar New Year, and its smell brings me to my grandmother.

Before I started cooking, I made a phone call to my grandmother, who is in Shaoxing, to learn about the true recipe of Mei Gan Cai Kao Rou. She was amused at the fact that my homework was to make a dish and was very excited to share her “secret” recipe with me. I was touched by how happy my grandmother was when I asked her to teach me how to cook. I also realized that food traditions were exactly passed down this way by generations, from grandparents to grandchildren. The cooking procedures were not very complicated, but even the most basic cooking techniques still take effort. Chopping off pork belly took longer than I thought. When she saw my clumsy motions and unevenly sized pork pieces I made, my mother came to help. She taught me that cutting in the direction vertical to the general trend of fibers in the pork could make it more digestible because fibers were generally cut shorter. Overall, the project is an enjoyable process of learning new things from my family members and improving my poor culinary skills. This project also provides an opportunity for me to bond with my family members: throughout the project, I called my grandmother, consulted my father, learned cooking with my mother, and most important of all, sat with my family together around the dinner table, savoring the Mei Gan Cai Kao Rou cooked by me, a dish that comforted me and my family during the pandemic and connected us emotionally.