thanksgiving hotpot

Thanksgiving is my day to reign in my father's kitchen.

My dad cooks for our family and he is the reason that I don't know how to cook Chinese food. He is fantastic, but is so self-sufficient and efficient that the biggest help I can give him in the kitchen is to stay out of it.

For 19 years, our dinner on Thanksgiving resembled a meal served on any other day. Occasionally, my dad would prepare a dried, salted turkey part (don't know which part since it's usually cut up). Delicious with rice, but not exactly traditional.

The past two Thanksgivings, I've taken over my dad's kitchen. I have roasted the turkey, mashed the potatoes, and buttered the corn and he can't do anything except watch because he doesn't know anything about ovens (the Chinese think ovens are a handy place to store pots and pans).

My nieces and nephews love it. The little gluttons love the food, but I think they also love how celebrating a traditional Thanksgiving validates them as Americans. (Well, let me not speak for them. That's how I have felt growing up eating salted turkey on Thanksgiving.) When you eat turkey on Thanksgiving, you've made it. There's nothing Chinese about a gigantic, whole bird in the middle of the table, not sliced up, not stir-fried, not in soup.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when my mom told me that they wouldn't be roasting a turkey this year for Thanksgiving because I was the only one who knew how to do it. Instead, they're having hotpot.

And I confess, as much as I love the traditional Thanksgiving fare, I miss home, I miss my dad's cooking, and I wish I was eating hotpot for Thanksgiving, too.