“Let him handle it.”
Leaky faucet? Busted fuse? Rats in the pantry? Pa’s good for all those, but I’m referring to escabeche. As with inún-unán, mine is always “too sour.”
Huh? “But it’s supposed to be sour!”
“Well I don’t like it.”
He means it, too. “See?” Ma says. “That’s why I stopped cooking. At least now he tells you what he finds wrong with the food. Used to be he would just shrug, leave me guessing. Hahay.”
She calls him Insik (Chinaman) behind his back. Peanut shells on the dining table: “Ah, that’s the Insik.” Apple peelings in the sink: “Dirty Insik.” Worn clothing on top of the hamper instead of in it: “Hahay, Insik.” Far as I could tell, she says it without irony — he is of Chinese descent, after all. I suppose you do not manage to stay married 45 years by getting hung up on things you can’t change.
“Let the Insik be,” she says when I complain. “It’s how he is and that’s that.” At the table, she turns to him. “Want me to order out, Pa? How about the morcon at Hobie’s — you like that, don’t you?”
Oh, it’s not like she is the easiest person to get along with. That’s to be fair to my father. Also, he cooks when he has to. That involves my prepping the ingredients for escabeche or inún-unán, then standing aside with towel in hand for the inevitable mess as he works the dish.
Actually, I could care less about inún-unán, although people all seem crazy for it. “You should try my father’s,” I tell them. “You’d think it was tinowa.” His escabeche, on the other hand, is good for what it is, maybe even great if you like vinegar squarely in the background. I would share his recipe if I could be bothered to replicate it, but I have my pride. It’s the old-fashioned kind, I should point out, the sauce consisting of water, sugar, soy sauce, and, of course, vinegar. None of that red sweet-and-sour sauce, thank you. And if you think there is way too much lamas in the dish, you haven’t seen the half of it. That has nothing to do with my father: Ma and I fight over those spices. Now there’s irony in there somewhere.
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