Featuring the Women’s Weekly Chinese Cooking Class Cookbook

I peek around the door jamb and pull at tufts of the yellow shag pile carpet. Even now I can smell the stale dust odour of that carpet and hear the chaotic conversation mixed with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass echo into the hallway.

We four kids are supposed to be downstairs in the rumpus room playing nicely, of course. No doubt, it’s hide and seek but since I’m the youngest and therefore the smallest, I can hide too well and the others give up before they find me. They don’t really want to play in the first place and only do it to keep me quiet.

I ache to be in the room with them and their easy chatter and clinking tableware. Each day I play with their children and spend time in their houses but tonight these mums and dads look different, act different. The mums have shiny lipstick and dangly earrings; the dads wear neat trousers and casual, checkered shirts. My mum wears her green eye shadow and dad has put his Old Spice aftershave on.

Before the grown-ups all arrived, I help mum and dad prepare for the dinner party. Dad went to the local shopping centre this morning to buy all the exotic ingredients he needs for the Chinese banquet. The Women’s Weekly Chinese Cooking Class Cookbook is great because it has photos of all the weird food he needs. The baby corn, water chestnuts and bean shoots – all canned of course – and soy sauce just like the local Chinese restaurant has on the tables. Dad even went to Box Hill last week to the large Asian warehouse and bought these small blue and white bowls and the ceramic spoons with the flat bottoms.

The recipe book is propped up in the clear plastic stand that lives just a little too close to the electric fry pan. He wipes splatters of brown sauce off with the tea towel he always has flung over his shoulder when he is cooking. As I age, I’ll start to see many of these same traits in myself. Not only the tea towel but also dishes done and kitchen cleaned before I can begin my mis-en-place.

I can see the cookbook in my mind with its rich red cover, gold lettering and photo of meat and vegetables in a thick glossy sauce. I can’t recall the exact menu that evening but I bet it included San Choy Bow. I can picture myself declaring that I was up to gently peeling apart the iceberg lettuce; I probably wasn’t. Dessert was most likely tinned lychees in syrup with ice cream. Fancy dishes like deep fried ice cream were reserved for dining out only.

The formal dining table is pulled out from up against the window where it rests between dinner parties. Matching black stained wooden chairs with leather slung seats and ornate brass fasteners are placed into position. In fact, the whole thing would not look out of place on the set of Game of Thrones.

The good silver is unearthed from the credenza and mum tries to entice me to do some polishing. I’m not having it. I want the glamorous jobs, like shaking ground nutmeg across the Brandy Alexander cocktails that will be prepared for the women on arrival. Nothing but the best at these dinner parties!

My childhood stamina isn’t much and soon I get bored. I retreat to my room and snuggle down deep under my Noah’s ark sheets. The next day, stacks of dishes smeared with sauce are too bright in the morning sun. We kids are full of morning energy even though clearly our parents aren’t.