My parents and I (age 4) at a community picnic.
Between the ages of eight and twelve, I would peek over my Amma’s shoulder each night during the holy month of Ramadan and watch her cook. The smell of spices would fill our small Queens basement home and then spread out the door all the way to the blooming pear tree in our spacious yard. I would be playing in the yard, swinging on the swing, playing with bugs, or whatever kids do at that age, but when I got a whiff of those spices, I would run inside the kitchen and pester Amma with a million questions.
I stood on my tiptoes, the cold tile beneath me, just to get a glimpse of what Amma was stirring. The heat from the stove, combined with the suffocating humidity of a New York summer, was peeling the white paint off the stained walls. I don’t know how we both stood there for hours. There was barely enough room for her in the narrow kitchen, let alone the two of us, but she never pushed me out. Instead, she would find a myriad of ways to keep my curious mind and ready hands busy—giving me cucumbers to chop, spices to pour into a pot, and onions to stir in a Dutch oven.
Onions, turmeric, cumin, and fragrant chilis ruthlessly teased our empty stomachs as they intermingled to create the night’s beautiful aroma. Make no mistake, cooking dinner while fasting for fifteen hours in the August heat is a laborious task that requires the utmost restraint.
Eventually, all the chopping and stirring would come together like magic, and my parents and I would finally sit down at the circular table with our plates of boot bhaji, dates, and piaju. There was a moment of quiet as we waited for the sun to set, and in that peaceful moment, I often thought about how thankful I was for my mom, my Amma, amar kolja. She had given us her whole body and soul in the meal. My Amma and I never talked much at the dinner table, but her unsaid “I love you,” and “I’m proud of you,” and “thank you for helping me in the kitchen” always spoke loudly to me from her meals.
Years later, when I was 20 and in college at Stony Brook University, I received a call from my Abba from our home in Queens. I was studying at the wooden desk in my college dorm room with only the sound of crickets out the window to keep me company on the chilly November night. Inside, it was suspiciously quiet since none of my roommates were ever home. I had become used to the stillness and peace of Long Island over the two years I’d been there, and the sound of my phone vibrating startled me.
My Abba’s usual booming voice gently asked me, “ki khēycha?” I stared at my room’s unadorned, off-white walls and then lied and said I’d eaten rice with some daal because for my dad, a meal was not a meal unless it had rice. In reality, I hadn’t had time to sit down and eat an actual meal that day. I had just snacked on an unhealthy diet of chips and crackers. But I couldn’t worry him by letting him know that. I quickly shifted the subject from me to him and asked my Abba what he’d eaten. He described his lunch, a very simple Bangladeshi meal—white rice, daal, and lau. He said he would make me some fried fish and rasuna bhorta when I came home during winter break. I didn’t know how he remembered that I liked fried fish and rasuna bhorta.
It was rare to receive a call from my dad, but that November, with my mom on a trip to Bangladesh, he was forced to check in on me. Usually, he never called me—even when he wanted to speak to me, he would ask my mom to call me. It was like there was a wall between us, full of things we could never say. Our conversations were always lost in translation, feelings behind words never fully reaching the other person. But the one phrase that was never minced or lost in translation was ki khēycha? For both my dad and me, there was an “I love you,” and “I hope you’re taking care of yourself,” in that question.
I imagined my father cooking and eating alone at our family’s dimly lit kitchen and dining table. This was not the same basement home with the blooming pear tree and narrow kitchen. This was a home my parents had the freedom to make their own for the first time in their lives. They had painted the kitchen walls a smooth brown and changed the kitchen tiles to a beautiful, pristine white. It made me glum to think of him eating alone with nothing to stare at but those smooth walls and pristine tiles.
Thinking back to this conversation with my dad, I am reminded of a flashback scene from Jhumpa Lahiri’s book The Namesake. The main character, Gogol, remembers a particular time in his childhood when he and his father ate the same dinner of chicken curry and rice alone and in complete silence for days while his mother was absent due to pregnancy-induced nausea. Most importantly for young Gogol, his father remembers to mix up the rice for him, something his mother did to ensure Gogol ate his food. Gogol tires of eating chicken curry and rice—and misses the way his mom would form the rice into balls. As an adult, Gogol recalls this pivotal moment—the comforting silence of those meals after his father passes away. This scene resonated so strongly with me because it is one of the few moments Gogol and his father interact without his mother present, and although Gogol’s father is not privy to all of Gogol’s tastes, he remembers the small detail that Gogol likes his rice mixed up.
For many, no matter one’s culture, food is a way to express love. Feeding someone can be a primal and beautiful form of nourishing another. The labor that goes into preparing a meal is an act of service. Giving someone their favorite food is a form of gift-giving, showing that you are listening and thinking of them.
Food is also a way in which we form bonds and social connections with others. In fact, it is one of the first pathways parents use to build social connections with their newborns. Nursing helps mothers build trust and love with their children. Eating dinner and talking about the day as a family helps strengthen familial bonds.
While all this is true for many, my parents and I have an even deeper connection to food as a love language. It isn’t just one of the ways we express our love; it is the primary way we communicate with each other and convey our emotions. We were never like the families I saw on television growing up who would talk about their day at the dinner table. Yet, through our meals, I still felt my parents’ overwhelming love and sacrifice. How? Because there would always be something on the table that I had mentioned to them in passing—like rasuna bhorta or fried fish.
I always wondered why my parents spoke to me this way through food, why they never said the words “I love you.” I wondered if it was common to the Bengali community, Asian immigrants, or all immigrants.
I began to notice friends who were also first-generation immigrants sharing similar experiences online. Numerous essays, articles, TikToks, and even Twitter threads have been created about how immigrant parents say “I love you” by bringing their children cut-up fruit to eat. I began to see a growing amount of online discourse by other Asian immigrants who talked about their parents expressing love through food.
Tweet from Twitter user @super_smasha reading, “Ethnic parents cutting up fruit and bringing it to their kids without being asked has got to be one of the purest gestures of love ever.”
I realize we all probably use food as love language to some extent, but learning about other people’s experiences with their parents made me feel less alone. One experience that really resonated with me was just last year. On a lazy summer Sunday, I was reading Michelle Zauner’s memoir, Crying in H Mart. Although Zauner was half-Korean and I was Bengali, I found myself devouring the book, relating to many of her food experiences with her parents. There is one moment in the book that caught me off-guard. Zauner says:
Food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she could seem—constantly pushing me to meet her intractable expectations—I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them.
Tears welled in my eyes as I read this paragraph and thought about all the times my Amma and my Abba expressed their love for me through food. I thought about all the times I had communicated my feelings to them through food. We had never known any other way.
A few weeks before writing this article, I was helping my mom in the kitchen during Ramadan. My dad was setting the table and piling dates, bhoot bhaji, and cucumber salad onto our plates. I hadn’t been able to help my mom in the kitchen or eat dinner with my parents in a long while because of my busy schedule, so it was nice to once again be in the joint kitchen-dining room with them. The smell of onions, turmeric, cumin, and chilis transported me back to my childhood when I would peer over my mother’s shoulder in the narrow kitchen just to get a peek at what she was cooking on the stove. But on this night, I was frying piaju, trying not to break them or splatter any of the hot oil. As the azan rang, I pushed my mom out of the kitchen and down into the cushiony chair at the table so she could break her fast. As I served the piaju directly onto my parent’s plates, I felt our roles reversing. This time, I was the one saying, “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” and “I love you.”
My mom showing me how to cut lau as we prepare lunch.
Piaju Recipe
A crispy lentil and onion fritter mainly eaten during Ramadan. Recipe adapted from the blog, Cooking Canary. Makes about 15 to 20 fritters.
Ingredients
3/4 cup of uncooked, soaked red lentils (masoor daal)
2 to 3 green chilies, finely chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 teaspoon of rice flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of turmeric powder
1/4 teaspoon of coriander powder
1/4 teaspoon of cumin powder
A handful of chopped cilantro leaves
Enough oil to fill ¼ of a pan
Directions
Wash the red lentils in a bowl of cool water, picking out any impurities. Soak the lentils in a bowl for at least 30 minutes. The lentils should have absorbed the liquid and become slightly plump.
Blend the lentils with a bit of the soaking liquid in your blender. The mixture should not be a completely smooth paste but somewhat chunky.
Add the blended lentils to a bowl, and with your hands, mix the chilies, onion, spices, rice flour, cilantro, and lentils until everything is well incorporated.
Prepare for deep frying the fritters by heating a pan of oil. Pour enough oil to fill ¼ of your pan. You can test if the oil is ready by dropping a bit of the mixture in. If it sizzles, the oil is ready.
Shape the lentil mixture into small 1.5- to 2-inch, flat patties and drop them into the oil.
Let them cook for 4 to 5 minutes before turning them over. Cook them on the other side for 3 to 4 minutes or until the fritters look orange-brownish. Remove from the oil carefully and place on a plate lined with newspaper or paper towels to catch the oil.
Enjoy while hot and crispy, alone or with ketchup!
Israt Abedin(she/they) is in her second semester of the Food Studies program and co-editor for this issue of Bite. Israt is a first generation Bangladeshi-American raised in New York City. They are primarily interested in documenting and preserving immigrant food histories and stories. In her free time, she enjoys learning more about plant iding, foraging, and urban farming.
IG: @israttata
Images provided by Israt Abedin.