The CulinaryWoman Reading Room for Wednesday, May 10

Joyce Chen still has things to teach us

Sometime in the 1970s, my mother began cooking Chinese food. This happened after my father died. I do not recall a single instance of her serving anything beyond classic American food to him, except possibly for Swedish meatballs in a copper chafing dish at one of their cocktail parties.

But when he was gone, she spread her culinary wings, and one reason…