Sesame Oil Chicken Soup (máyóu jītāng 麻油鸡汤)
BY EMILY PEDROZA
- 2 pounds of chicken legs (鸡腿)
Gently rinse and pat.
My mother is always moving; even as her legs soften, joints weaken, her limbs blend into backgrounds, shifting in cadence with flickering light. This is how she migrated from Taiwan to America, after all, the trick is to become unseen. Even after dinner, when my father sinks into the couch to unwind, my mother’s fingers slip through papers, bifocals on.
Whenever I get sick she makes this soup — both a tradition and a promise. You will live. When words fail, this is how we warm a heart. Her spine curves over the stove, I peek at her through the steam that cloaks her face in sweat. On rare nights like these, I can see her slow, and my eyes gain enough focus to see the color in her cheeks and her flaked lips. I am reminded that we are more than the blood that ties us.
I think I must have inherited her never-ending hunger, too, and fear of it. Hunger feels too much like an absence. That’s why we scrape our teeth against bone to get the last bits of meat and save the bones for broth another day.
If you have leftover chicken bones thick enough, please feel free to add them in.
- 2 tablespoons sesame oil (芝麻油)
You can find a bottle at your local Asian market (Amazon works, too).
I used to be so scared of oil, scared my joints would inflame and swell into large sticky balloons and carry me away. Scared it would well from my pores, blurring my features until no one could recognize me under the sun, the Invisible Woman. When I told my mother she stared blankly, you read too many books.
And she was right. I breathed warm, dim light; paper; and ink like life forces. Our cells merged. That’s what reading does to you, turns you into an illusion. This is the only way to survive in America. How can a dream be only a dream when it’s in front of you, so close? I can still taste it.
But don’t skip it. 芝麻油 subtly sweetens your tongue; draws in savory warmth. Wait until your pot starts to smoke, then add it in.
The color is nostalgic, right? Like syruped dreams or a first love’s iris under the sun. Hold onto this thrumming in your chest — close your eyes. This feeling will take you far.
- 5 ounces sliced ginger (姜)
Toss with heated oil for two minutes, sear chicken in this mixture.
From the outside, 姜 looks like a fruit made from some old man’s deformed skin. But cut inside and you’ll find your fingertips stinging from its flesh, a quiet kind of heat, too much like a blanket to feel like a cutting pain. Just don’t make the mistake of rubbing your eyes with unwashed ginger hands, they’re delicate.
You know, I used to be obsessed with hugs, heat. I would hold my hands under hot tap water every morning, after sleep with three duvets, just to feel it melt into my skin.
In Taiwan, they label certain foods cooling and warming because of their effect on the body. All ingredients in this recipe are exactly that, warming. My mother tells me that usually this effect is wanted when someone is suffering from an excess of cold, but it seems I’m almost always cold compared to my origins. How are we expected to move on from the stillness, enveloping warmth from the womb? It seems I will always crave it.
- 1 bottle of mijiu rice wine
Rice wine feels like home. It transforms into goodness under heat, under fire like most do. My mother breaks her no-alcohol rule for it, ignoring the flush that crawls from her collarbones to her cheeks.
Sometimes you have to withstand things for flavor.
Add this to your pot slowly, be careful of spatters, then add the following.
- 5 tablespoons of rock sugar (冰糖)
I remember asking myself why my abuelos added so much cream and sugar to their instant coffee, then remembered their pasts. Where everything was rationed, migration was constant, and overworked limbs were always sore. Of course, they still need sugar to coax sweetness into their lives, no? Life balances itself this way.
And just because the sugar’s sweetness is fleeting, doesn’t mean it never existed. Its memory will always linger.
- 5 cups of water
And what is a soup without water?
In fifth grade, my English teacher organized a play about children who, for flavor, would boil stones in water, stone soup. Desperate enough to turn to dirt for nourishment. I cried up on that stage, under stage light, eyes piercing. All the lines evaporated from my brain but still, I imagined myself in the character’s bodies, you know? Felt their hunger. Maybe we’re all hungry, waiting. That’s what makes us human.
- A pinch of salt
I’ve never been good at reading measurements and guessing. Like, how much is a pinch, really? My two fingers can’t be the same size as the two fingers of the stranger sitting next to me on the bus, or a two-year-old. And even if we did, our brains couldn’t possibly estimate the same amount. Sometimes I think that salt is like the American dream — more like an idea than it is tangible.
- 1 chopped scallion
Simmer over medium for half an hour.
You leave them in the ground for too long and they start to look like weeds. That’s why, my mother told me once, we always grow them in the back.
My mother has always been bound by her shame — when she first moved she would squat under the sun, picking weeds from our overgrown front lawn, dedicating two hours every day after coming back from work. It’s embarrassing to have the neighbors stare at our lawn, she said. It’s embarrassing to not have the money to pay someone, but it’s even more embarrassing to then not be able to do it yourself.
Now that she has three jobs, she majors in composure. Red Clinique lipstick, beige slacks, a leather bag, pinned-back hair. She’s always smiling in front of old church friends, her voice high and stringy, wavering. Sometimes that serves as my only reminder that this look is just a mask.
Maybe that’s why every moment we’re alone feels like a blessing. Here she loosens; her staticky hair falls. Her voice sharpens, she frowns. She’s meaner, yes, but this is proof of her trust, love. To love someone is to be unable to lie to their face. To love someone is to lift a bowl of chicken soup to their lips. That’s why you’re here, right?
