Coming home to dumplings

Sisters from New Zealand, educated in uk, return to love of Chinese food with new book

For Amy and Julie Zhang, cooking Chinese food is about much more than just filling their stomachs or enjoying a delicious meal. It is about recalling sweet childhood memories and their eagerness to share their passion for cooking with the world.

The family originally is from Guangzhou, China, 120 kilometers northwest of Hong Kong, but the sisters grew up in New Zealand, where they helped their parents with cooking and selling food from their food cart at a Sunday market every week.

"From a very young age we worked alongside our mom and dad and our little brother. Sunday was our favorite day, when we would go to the market. We would load up Dad's van, and tow our food cart. We've fed generations over the past 20 years, as some family came and their children came and their grandchildren came," says Amy.

Amy, 29, was 2 years old when the family moved to Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island, where Julie, 25, and their younger brother Justin were born.

Growing up at the food market in Christchurch helped the two sisters to develop a love for Chinese food. Later they attended university in the United Kingdom in other fields. Ultimately, however, their love for food led them to launch a new book including more than 100 of their favorite recipes, The Dumpling Sisters.

The book is divided into sections such as dim sum, sharing menu, noodles, baking and desserts. Unlike most traditional cookbooks that provide only bare bones recipe instructions, each recipe in The Dumpling Sisters has lots of detailed advice that helps the reader understand what the food should look like at each stage so they know that they are on track.

Recipes also have little notes that provide their context in Chinese culture and cuisine to give readers an insight into the importance of food in Chinese culture. For example, it includes details of the Chinese concept haugum, or "mouthfeel", which is how they heard Chinese food described at home.

"It is so hard to describe these ideas to a general audience who are not used to such ideas, but at home this is what Dad would say if he tasted something very nice," Julie says.

The book features many of the most common dim sum that one would typically find in a Chinese restaurant, like prawn claw dumplings, silken congee, golden spring rolls and pan-fried turnip cake.

At the same time, it also challenges stereotypical ideas of what Chinese food is all about, especially with baked goods and desserts. "We want to demonstrate the great variety in Chinese food, because people don't normally think of Chinese food as baked goods and desserts, but we have lots of traditional and innovative baking and sweet dishes in our cuisine," says Amy.

They also have included flavors and foods from New Zealand cuisine in their recipes, such as with the coconut and black sesame ice cream. It blends two ingredients that are popular in China, coconut and black sesame, with ice cream, which is a summer favorite in New Zealand.

Julie says her favorites are pork dishes, and Amy says she loves anything with chicken. Food has been an essential part of their lives and culture, as demonstrated by the amazing food their parents make, though neither was a professional chef in China. "They just went to New Zealand for a better life, and it was common for immigrants to open a food cart or a restaurant," Amy recalls.

The Zhangs once owned a fish and chip shop, which the sisters recall was very hard work, but also fun. When McDonald's bought the shop's location, the family went back to spending all their time and effort on the food cart, preparing vegetables during the week and pre-cooking many ingredients.

Sundays were very busy, and the three children helped out from morning to afternoon. It was much more challenging in the winter, when they could not feel their feet for the cold, but they still worked every week of the year.

Food they served included chicken fried noodles, satay chicken, steamed buns, barbecued meat, hot chips, meat skewers, kebabs and hot dogs. The food has been prepared with the same classic flavors for more than 20 years, and dishes use fresh vegetables grown in the Zhangs' back garden.

"The market really became a nice community, as everyone in the market knew us. It is a very big part of our lives. When it got busy, Dad and Mom would rush up and down the food cart, and once Mom fell over and there were lots of regulars who crowded around the cart to make sure she was OK," Amy recalls.

Growing up, the two sisters never thought of food as a long-term career. They were high achievers and could have chosen many possible jobs. Amy earned her doctorate in chemistry at Cambridge University and Julie finished her master's degree in criminology at Oxford.

The food cart in Christchurch, of course, is still going, run by their little brother Justin, and he has expanded it and continues to attract many customers.

For Julie and Amy, the idea of a book came in 2012 when one day, Julie was on the phone with their mother, expressing her uncertainty about what to do after graduation. Amy was facing the same question around this time. "Mom said that we are always very welcome to join the family business, but I said, 'I want something bigger,'" Julie recalls.

Because they loved food so much, they decided that instead of returning to the food cart, they would write a book to share their passion with a wider audience. A book might carry with it the potential to open a restaurant or a branded chain store offering food from their favorite recipes to more people around the world.

Looking back, they say they would never have imagined following such a career path when they went to university, but now they believe all the knowledge they gained has helped them with the book project.

They also say the project has helped them to connect to their roots because the research they have done has made them better understand China and Chinese food.

In 2013, the sisters entered a competition hosted by British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. They cooked hoisin chicken with rice, and won second place. Through this experience they came into contact with a book agent who has supported them through The Dumpling Sisters project.

Recalling the competition, the sisters remember it as a hectic time that taught them a lot. To solicit support from the public, they reached out to media back home in New Zealand, and stayed up late on social media to tweet their fellow Kiwis, asking for their support.

"We did a lot of crazy things, which seem to be a lot more normal now. We were live on satellite back to New Zealand, reached out to NZ journalists, and we were up at 4 am tweeting to catch people in the right time zone. We were proud of what we did," Julie says.

From there, they did many video demonstrations showcasing their cooking in a friendly, small kitchen environment, and started the book.

"We want to make Chinese food accessible to every family, but at the same time allow them to cook authentic Chinese food instead of a simplified version of it, because we think it can be done," Amy says.

cecily.liu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 06/05/2015 page26)