"Chicken", Miss Dim Sum said to my father. He poured an inverted glass bowl on the top of the whiteboard. He nodded and handed us the chicken ticket. He raised his bowl, and my brothers and I gasped while watching the rough chicken feet in the black sauce entangled in the fermented black beans. The old man playfully dug in.

My parents often went to Chinatown in new york, which was the main part of my cooking education when I was a child. One of my earliest and most cherished food memories is not about my father's Italian cooking; It was hung up to the steaming window and winked at the glittering barbecue.

We often go to the grocery store in China, where my father buys mushroom soy sauce. Next stop: noodle factory, which is a lively non-retail production space. My father will secretly look at the "wonton skin" behind the curtain and approach all the workers in white clothes. Dad uses wrapping paper to make home-cooked food? -The dish that taught me how to use chopsticks when I was eating rice noodles with my brother Tony in Mott Street.

Char siu。 [Photo: Max Falkowitz]

It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I realized that snacks, barbecues and chicken feet were all part of China's local cuisine: Cantonese cuisine. Until that moment, I thought what I ate in Manhattan's Chinatown was "real China food", not those people from China, a long island shopping mall with fried lotus gardens.

before I know the golden rule of Cantonese cooking, I need more time, that is, the importance of subtlety, and let the ingredients speak for themselves. Yes, noodles with soy sauce, dim sum epic and barbecue are all symbols of Cantonese cuisine. But so do exquisite steamed or fried whole flounder and light vegetable dishes. Even today, Cantonese food is much more than Americans think.