Growing up, Frankie Gaw's Taiwanese American Thanksgiving family meal at his grandmother's house in Memphis, Tennessee, consisted of a mishmash of steamed buns, scallion pancakes and soy-marinated tofu sharing space with macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole and racks of ribs from Corky's, the neighborhood barbecue joint. He loved it.
Inspired by those Taiwanese American Thanksgiving smorgasbords at Grandma's, there's a dish in Gaw's cookbook, "First Generation: Recipes from my Taiwanese-American Home," for black vinegar barbecue beef brisket bao. The brisket is dry-rubbed in brown sugar, garlic powder, orange zest, cinnamon, cumin, salt and pepper, and roasted in a low-temp oven for hours the next day. The barbecue sauce combines ketchup and mustard with soy sauce, brown sugar, Taiwanese black vinegar, butter, ginger, garlic and onion, sauteed and blended smooth. Once the brisket is done, it's sliced and served in fluffy steamed buns, topped with the barbecue sauce, marinated pickles, chopped peanuts and scallions.
To Gaw, 31, a Seattle-based former tech designer-turned-Instagram sensation-turned-cookbook author, that dish represents both Grandma's Thanksgiving table and his unique cooking style: "A weird mix that doesn't go together and that feeling of being in-between ... like it's OK to feel like you can't attribute yourself to one culture or another," Gaw says. "I feel like culture and family is messy and that's OK."
