Hot Hunan Catfish (or Mom’s Fresh Catch of the Day)

Fish is a very auspicious Chinese symbol and represents “extra” or “plenty.” Cooked and eaten whole, the fish head is reserved for the guest of honor to eat. (Don’t shirk the foodie duty and offend the ancestors or your guests!) Serving whole fish is a traditional Chinese Lunar New Year dish. (Buy Tickets Now: Natalie & Margaret’s Chinese Lunar New Year Cultural Banquet)

Mom loved to go fishing at the local lake or pier – so fresh! “Eat and Catch” was her motto.

Both my parents love to fish and we had a small cabin of sorts– half log, half mobile trailer– near Lake Allatoona. Off the highway, most of the roads were dirt or gravel. First stop was always the local bait and tackle shop where we picked up minnows, crickets or night crawlers and our favorite snacks like Slim Jim’s, Chick-O-Sticks and cinnamon fire balls. I peered up at the humongous jar sitting on the counter with giant white eggs floating in brackish yellow-green liquid. Were they better eaten like a boiled egg or like preserved radish in rice porridge?

When we were little, my parents would pack us in the station wagon with a bunch of snacks and pillows and drive out to the lake at night. After we fell asleep, they crept out to the dock with the Coleman lantern, night crawlers, homemade dough ball bait and fished for carp, catfish and other bottom-dwellers. The next day, if they had been lucky, I would get to eat fresh fish like Fried Salt and Pepper Brim. As we got older, we got in on the fishing action, too, but never for long as short attention spans gave way to horsing around, rock-skipping or swimming. No one matched mom’s die-hard patience and passion for fishing.

Sun-shy Chinese people typically frown upon tans and shun beaches for vacation, opting instead for Vegas or a bus tour of the Grand Canyon. But living in a place where the summers are long and hot, maintaining lily-white skin like a Chinese concubine means never going outside! Nothing as silly as that would keep my mom from her fishing pole and my sisters and I loved the beach scene–wearing bikinis, jumping waves, tacky shell necklaces, the fishing pier and eating beach food!

Like eating hotdogs toasted over a campfire, eating anything at the beach tasted divine—from ice cream cones to chili fries! Maybe it was the intoxicating warm salt air, surf scenery or the sheer excitement of being on vacation instead of sitting in Mrs. Newsome’s math class. Or just eating stuff we never got at home.

Before I could even drive, we took trips down, just Mom and us girls and we’d squeeze in a small super-cheap motel room, the kind with dark brown paneled walls and pea-green carpeting. It didn’t much matter since we came in only to sleep.

To save money, we bought fresh local seafood like shrimp or mussels at the market or off the boat and cooked up a mini-gourmet fisherman’s feast in a small electric hot pot in the room. Mom was an ideal foodie traveling companion and brought her own mix of seasonings in a little baggie or jar, plus the essential 3G’s (fresh ginger, garlic and green onion). What could be better than enjoying fresh local shrimp and rooting on the Atlanta Braves after a day of surf and fun? Years later as adults on a “4K girls reunion,” we honored the tradition with a slight upgrade. You would never believe the culinary creations four Keng women could rustle up in a hotel kitchenette!

Since my mom was a school teacher, we had the same academic and vacation schedules and went on several spring break trips together through high school. Two adventures I recall with particular fondness occurred when I was a young teenager.

My mom enjoyed any kind of fishing…off the dock, deep-sea, even fly-fishing though it took her a while to understand the catch-and-release practice. “Why would you catch a fish and NOT eat it?”

Deep-sea fishing in Panama City, Florida was an annual family destination. After my sisters went off to college, it would often be just me and Mom on trips. Picture the scene: Two short Asian girls on a deep-sea fishing boat surrounded by splashing buckets of raw squid (can we eat these like calamari?), heavy fishing gear and burly men smoking cigarettes. A few times, we were the only female passengers on the long five-hour round trip ride. Our boat mates and the captain were as much surprised as they were amused to see a petite Chinese lady with her pony-tailed little girl braving the rough waves, getting down and dirty and wielding 50-plus pound fishing gear.

My high school classmates hoped to get lucky with a guy or gal at the beach. I got lucky hauling in the day’s catch–red snapper and tuna. Not exactly MTV Spring Break Madness video material, but at least I wasn’t doling out Shrimp Fried Rice orders at the mall.

Mom’s determination and competitive nature, regardless of the weather conditions, meant we never went back to shore empty-handed. While the rest of us grew older and outgrew the all-day excursions (or hours of being seasick) and retired to more leisurely dock fishing, Mom never got seasick or lost her love for the ocean and deep-sea fishing.

Another trip we did together (only me and Mom) was when I was still in middle school. It was an all-inclusive “special package deal” I found listed in a smudged, inch-sized ad in the newspaper. 4 days, 3 nights in Cancun, Mexico, all for $199 per person. Wow, I wasn’t sure what the asterisks meant but it sounded like a super deal. Let’s go, Mom! Our hotel was sketchy and we slept in our clothes BUT we went snorkeling for the first time, rented a scooter around, rented a jet-ski and Mom won the conch shell blowing contest!

We were happy to survive that trip!