My wife is Chinese, and I very clearly didn’t know anything about her culture because REAL Chinese food is… not what I expected, and very shortly after the wedding I took over cooking. But before taking over I had this same conversation so so many times.
The first family get together with her side of the family was at a Chinese banquet hall, the tables have giant lazy susan’s in the middle and they serve a 12 course meal. Almost every main was served with its head, sometimes multiple heads. You don’t mind the lobster so much but when you have to look the chicken in the eye it’s rather different.
She now has me make her favorite dishes, the main one being “pork bone soup” which at least in her family version contains quite a lot of chickens feet. That really took me a long time to get used to.
My wife is Chinese, and I very clearly didn’t know anything about her culture because REAL Chinese food is… not what I expected, and very shortly after the wedding I took over cooking. But before taking over I had this same conversation so so many times.
The first family get together with her side of the family was at a Chinese banquet hall, the tables have giant lazy susan’s in the middle and they serve a 12 course meal. Almost every main was served with its head, sometimes multiple heads. You don’t mind the lobster so much but when you have to look the chicken in the eye it’s rather different.
She now has me make her favorite dishes, the main one being “pork bone soup” which at least in her family version contains quite a lot of chickens feet. That really took me a long time to get used to.
I live in Europe and our chicken broth, IIRC (not the one cooking) contains pig feet. But you don’t serve them, they are there for taste.