Mirandi Riwoe, A Short History of Longans

When I was a kid, my grandmother collected dolls. Pedigree, antique; Never Barbie. European dolls made of celluloid and biscuits; Madame Alexander dolls with names such as Baby Brother and Pussycat; beautiful porcelain dolls from Japan; and there was once an anatomically correct boy doll he bought in the 1970s that didn’t last long on the market.

The grandmother traveled abroad on doll tours, sometimes closer to home on a tour bus, and the doll society held regular meetings in Brisbane. If I were home from school (and I’m a pretty keen doll collector myself), I’d be allowed to come along. Meetings were bring-a-plate style arrangements, and Grandma would either make a delicious chocolate bar (I’ve been known to bake) or a tray of deviled eggs (which I’ve only done once due to her meticulousness).

My grandmother wrote down a recipe for chocolate wedges in the cooking journal my mother gave me one Christmas when I was a young adult. My mother is a very enthusiastic cook. She has a rather worn and food-stained red-bound exercise book in which she writes down all the recipes she has collected and cooked over the years: recipes passed down from the women in the family, such as savory lemon pudding and pickled leg of lamb, as well as noodle dishes and curries she learned from her Chinese Indonesian mother-in-law.

My mother’s own mother’s (Grandmother’s) recipe book, carefully kept in the glass front cabinet along with her most precious books in the spare bedroom, is also red-bound but becomes more fragile over time. Even my dad pulled out the recipe book the other day (he’s a doctor), written in the most legible handwriting I know of, using Peranakan recipes from his sister and mother. He also has red skin.

I get emotional every time I see my mother’s or grandmother’s neat, loopy handwriting in my recipe book. It’s like I’m saving the pieces of these women I love so much for a future winter without them.

My new novel Brief History of LongansIt tells the 200-year-old story of an Irish-Chinese family, and the recipe book seemed an obvious way to make connections between relatives and their stories.

In my novel, there is a diary that is largely based on my grandmother’s story, passed down from generation to generation, and reflects a certain period of history. It’s filled with handwritten recipes, others neatly cut from newspapers, and wartime articles titled Illusion is a Savior and Become an Ambitious Cook, as well as a folded list of Italian sausages.

I also borrowed recipes from my mother’s cookbook. I braided a beef dish, one of my favorite childhood dishes, that my mother prepared in a particular dish; The pork and mushroom dish, which originated at a wedding in 1897, is based in part on an old Chinese recipe I found and a chicken recipe my mother scribbled on a sticky note.

Once, after my grandmother died, I told my Aunt Ellen (my mother’s sister) about the deviled eggs she made for doll conventions, and she was surprised, too. He said he never remembered his mother doing these things. We are a close family, so I thought it was quite remarkable that he didn’t know about this dish his mother liked to prepare; For me, this recipe immediately brings to mind spending time with my grandmother.

I can just imagine her in her tidy little kitchen, placing untouched eggs into a round Tupperware container. I remember how small it was. How her soft, close-cropped hair curled like a 1930s starlet’s. I remember his smile, how he would lift his left shoulder if he said something even remotely controversial. How easily he could touch his toes, as if he had a hinge in his hips. These memories both make me happy and sad. They’re all deviled eggs.

My recipe book is not red bound. Instead, the cover depicts kitsch red and green wallpaper and plant branches standing next to a wooden spore. Even though there are scattered magazine recipes, scattered doodles, and starters written in the dessert section, I hope my children in the (distant) future will also cherish the memories these recipes can hold.

Brief History of Longans Released by UQP on July 14 at $35.