Cơm chiên by Ari Lieu

Every year my family and my relatives from my mom’s side come together for a family party. Sometimes there's a couple of aunts and uncles and other times there's a bunch of cousins and relatives we haven't seen in a long time. But I always remember that my aunt, Ye Ma, would always make fried rice for almost every event.  I always remember how the fried rice would smell every time we would heat it up on the stove, the meaty smell of the lạp xưởng that hit filled the air with a savory but almost sweet scent but also the seasoning of the rice would also linger in the air. The combination of smells that traveled through my aunt’s house always made me run to the kitchen to patiently wait for the first bowl of fried rice. Ever since I was a little kid in my mom’s family van, I always loved my aunt’s fried rice. The ingredients are pretty simple including, chopped onions, eggs, fragrant chinese sausage or lạp xưởng in vietnamese, some vegetables and other seasoning. But the thing that always drew me to the kitchen to get a bite was that my aunt always treated her food well and made every meal with her heart. I always watched as she carefully cut each vegetable into equal and even cubes, and the swift and effective movements of her spatula when moving the popping sausages in the wok. The aroma of each ingredient that hit the pan would flourish into the air with steam that would fill the house with an amazing scent. Once she has finished scraping every last grain of rice into a big bowl, you could see each cut piece of egg, sausage, each soft and flavorful pea and carrot and the rice that was browned with seasoning and flavor that was collected and made into an amazing cuisine. Her amazing cooking and the environment of my older cousins always made me feel like a kid at the family gatherings, everyone would gather around that kitchen with the marble counter that was filled with a plate of each dish that every family provided and load up their plates with each food that was on the counter. I am grateful that I get to feel that same feeling every year, but the feeling of my cousins getting older and having to see my aunts and uncles less makes me more anxious for each meeting to see if I can smell the flavorful whiff of my favorite fried rice. But as time inevitably moves on, I am thankful that I can in the future, provide the same fried rice to my nieces and nephews the same as my aunt has for me.