Marian Liu
THE WASHINGTON POST – My moments of joy are around the dining table, starting with rice, whose aroma is my favourite in the world: the signal that dinner will soon be ready.
In the Asian American Pacific Islander community, food is how we show love. It’s how we communicate, how we cope and find comfort. Instead of hugs, my family piles more into your bowl. Food has also been a source of my community’s pride and pain, how many of us introduced others to our culture and how we first felt different in that “lunchbox moment”.
When I was little, I would have given anything to transform my mom’s home-cooked meal of dumplings into Lunchables and Doritos. This sad thought lingered when I started to work and the smell of my leftovers escaped the microwave
“Food brings us all together,” said Martin Yan, who became the first Asian American to have a cooking show in 1978. “That’s the reason why in Asia, particularly China … we sit at a round table and talk to each other, face to face, in front of food.”
And like our food, the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community is diverse. The places we come from encompass more than 50 countries and territories, each with numerous ethnicities. Asian Americans make up almost six per cent of the United States (US) population and are the fastest-growing ethnic group, according to Pew Research, increasing by 81 per cent between 2000 and 2019, from roughly 10.5 to 18.9 million.
To honour the community, Congress in 1978 designated May as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, according to the US Census, “to coincide with two important milestones in Asian Pacific American history”: the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants to the US on May 7, 1843, and contributions of Chinese workers to the Transcontinental Railroad, completed May 10, 1869.
To celebrate this month, instead of reiterating recent hardships, the history of discrimination in the US and the uptick of anti-Asian attacks during the pandemic, I decided to focus on how food connects and comforts so many of us during this time.
I asked other Asian food lovers what role food plays in their lives, what it’s been like being Asian during the pandemic and how food has gotten them through it. Some expressed anxiety about the attacks and about keeping restaurants open when Asian-owned restaurants are closing at a disproportionately higher rate than those owned by other ethnic groups. Two even carry protection, one pepper spray and another a personal security alarm.
Their backgrounds are as diverse as their palates. When I asked them what dish is giving them comfort, many picked simple dishes that remind them of their mother’s cooking, flavours all of us have been chasing since childhood.
CHRISTINE HA
Chef, restaurateur
“Something I will be chasing for the rest of my life is to be able to re-create the dishes that my mom cooked to her level,” said Christine Ha, chef of two Houston restaurants.
She grew up with a protective mother who didn’t let her help much in the kitchen. She couldn’t go near the knives or the oven and only did “some small tasks like rolling egg rolls or mixing the filling for egg rolls,” the second-generation Vietnamese American said.
But when her mother died when she was 14, leaving no recipes behind, she missed the flavours that reminded her of her mother’s table and kitchen. During college, she set out to re-create her mother’s cooking by memory.
“I basically taught myself how to cook,” said Ha, who initially learned from cookbooks. “I would just kind of experiment in the kitchen and feed my friends and my roommates … I got to a point where I was able to, once in a while, cook some dishes that my friends enjoyed. And there was something about being able to create food with my own two hands and make other people happy with what I’ve been able to create. That really sparked a joy in me for cooking, and that’s kind of where it began.”
Her comfort dish is fried rice, something her mom occasionally made “sauteing up some rice in a skillet, maybe with some Chinese sausage and egg and green onion.”
“Fried rice doesn’t sound that fancy at all, or very sexy, but that’s what I think of as comfort food for me,” said Ha, 41. “You can put anything in it so you can use up any leftovers … It’s something I’ve grown up eating. It’s easy to eat. You can scoop it up in a spoon and in one bowl. And I love making fried rice, and I love eating fried rice.”
Ha made headlines as the first blind contestant on Fox’s MasterChef in 2012, a fact she embraces when she introduces herself, even naming her first restaurant The Blind Goat.
“As a Vietnamese American woman who eventually lost her vision, I’ve become used to that identity, and I’ve accepted who I am,” Ha said. “Being on ‘MasterChef’ and winning not only proved to other people, but I proved to myself that regardless of where I came from, if I worked hard at it and I didn’t let go of what my goals were, I could achieve them. I think that gave me more confidence to live the life that I live now. And I think part of it is also a joke about the saying, ‘When you can’t see something, you can’t fear it,’ so I always joke about how losing my vision helped me become fearless, but partially it is true because … I didn’t learn how to snowboard until after I lost my vision. I joke about how you can’t see how steep the mountain is, so then you can’t fear it …
“There was a lot of freedom and liberation and being able to embrace who I am, disabilities and all. And I think that really just kind of gave me the confidence to do what I believe in. And I realised that when you strongly believe in what you do, whether it’s opening a business during a pandemic, cooking a certain type of food, living your life a certain way, if you strongly believe what you’re doing is right, then other people will also believe in it and will also follow you.”
This includes speaking up for her Asian American community. She hasn’t personally come across racist incidents, but her staff has.
“I feel vulnerable as an Asian American woman who also has a vision impairment, as a business owner … I think many Asians, myself included, we were taught to kind of grow up being quiet and obedient and not really making a lot of noise and complaining a lot, and so I think it’s sometimes in our DNA to sort of turn the other way and accept things the way they are and just put our heads down and keep working and just try to make it on our own. But I think now’s the time where we really should be loud about what’s happening, because I really think that’s the only way to raise that awareness and to continue to have that conversation and make people aware of what is happening to the AAPI community. And I feel like people fear what they don’t know or don’t understand.
“And as long as we stay quiet, people will not get to know us and get to understand us as a culture and as a community. So in order to change that, I think we have to make the unknown familiar to everyone, and that means continuing to have this conversation, continuing to promote Asian-owned businesses, continuing to promote the culture and the food, and all of these other things that we do have that’s beautiful and in common with other people. Everyone has to eat. So I feel like food is definitely a good bridge … so that people can understand that underneath our skins we’re all the same. We’re all humans, we all bleed. We all have feelings.”
JIYEON LEE
Chef, restaurateur
When Jiyeon Lee thinks of comfort food, she remembers cooking with her mother and grandmother in the South Korean countryside.
“I think most of Asian culture, when your mom or grandma is cooking, we help them,” said Lee, 50.
“My grandmother raised me because my mom and dad were trying to settle in the big city.” Her parents left their children with her grandmother “and slowly brought them to the city, and I was the last one they brought.
“We barely could have Korean barbecue … We couldn’t afford those things back then, so my grandmother always made the broth with dried anchovy, dashima [dried kelp] … and some radishes, onions …
“Flour was the cheapest ingredient back then, so my grandmother always made a little dough and hand-pulled dumplings,” Lee said.
“I make it very often. It’s pretty easy to make and such a comfort food for me with a good memory of my grandmother.”
She runs Heirloom Market BBQ in Atlanta with her husband, Cody Taylor, both named semifinalists for Best Chef: Southeast in 2020 by the James Beard Foundation.
They serve Southern barbecue with some Korean flourishes, such as spicy Korean beef, kimchi slaw and sweet-and-spicy tofu.
It’s her third restaurant, after two failed attempts with a sushi spot and a cafeteria inside an office building. But this is also her second career, after immigrating to America at 28, and after shooting to fame as a pop star.
“I used to be a singer and model in Korea when I was a teen. I have four albums, pretty successful in my previous career, but I wasn’t really happy … because I was too young, because I was in high school and just became like an overnight Cinderella-kind of story … I love to be on a stage, but it was very difficult … for a young little girl handling that kind of pressure,” Lee said. “I wanted to change my career … I wanted to change my lifestyle and environment.”
This led to restaurants in America, and the “little butterflies” returned like at the beginning of her singing career.
Her restaurant has now been open for a decade. Referring to the March killing of eight people, including six women of Asian descent, at three spas, she said, “That tragedy that happened in Atlanta, it was such a shock to the Asian community.”
“I’ve lived in Atlanta for 21 years, but I never really feel racism toward Asians … Ignorance, yes … but not violence,” she said. Still, to be on the safe side, she said, she carries pepper spray when she walks her dog at night.
“I’ve been lucky since I was little. I grew up in a very poor family, but I had a big chance to be a model and singer … I still feel like I’m in a very lucky spot … Some of the less fortunate people are out there in a very dangerous environment. You’ve got to raise a voice for them.”
NONG POONSUKWATTANA
Chef, restaurateur, podcast host
Being a restaurateur during the pandemic has been like getting thrown overboard in the middle of he ocean and hanging for dear life on a board, said Nong Poonsukwattana, who had to shut down one of her two restaurants in Portland last March.
“I can have my family on my board, but I can have some room on the board and I can put some people on this board and swim and plow through this storm and then we are still in the middle of the ocean. But you know that there will be some people that … might never come back …
“I lost about like 45 per cent of my team,” said Poonsukwattana, who started a podcast called Riding Tiger aimed at helping entrepreneurs to learn and grow their businesses. “I think that it is important that I have to have a desire to fight for my business, for my team, for my family, because this drive, I can do my part and help my staff and help the economy.”
Her comfort food is what her mom gave her to recover during tough times, a dish known at her restaurant as ‘Super Soup.’
“I think every Thai mom or Asian mom will make rice soup or jook for their kid when they’re sick,” said Poonsukwattana, 41, referring to rice porridge. “The broth has all the bones and all the vegetables, and the protein is chicken, and it’s easy to digest. And it helps the body to recover.”
Her drive has kept her afloat despite the circumstances. In 2003, she immigrated from Thailand with only two suitcases and USD70. She worked in restaurants, saving up to buy a kettle corn trailer to house her first food cart in 2009. She started serving one main dish – chicken and rice or khao man gai – then expanded to restaurants in 2011.
But it’s been a tough road for Poonsukwattana, who won an episode of the Food Network’s Chopped in 2014 and was named a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Northwest in 2019.
She said she gets treated differently due to her accent at such places as 7-Eleven.
“It is not like Thailand, where we were taught to welcome foreigners. We look at foreigners as better than us,” she said.
“If you just come from America, we want to be like you, you’re above us.”
But she hopes that food will be that “good example of how we do business … We are trustworthy. We are good. We share food and we also share the way we do business and treat people the right way.”
MARTIN YAN
TV cooking show host, cookbook author
Food is “the most powerful equaliser and diffuser against discrimination, against hatred,” said Martin Yan, an Asian American who appeared on television before celebrity chefs were commonplace.
This is why his comfort food is hot pot, a dish in which everyone can choose different ingredients to cook together in a soup. The host can join in on the meal and talk to everybody, instead of “slaving and sweating it out in the kitchen,” he said. It’s a staple in Asia, he added, with different versions in Vietnam, Thailand, Korea, Japan and China.
Hot pot is also the perfect meal to eat together when everything is open again after the pandemic, Yan said.
The 72-year-old started on television at a time when the only other cooking shows were Graham Kerr’s The Galloping Gourmet and Julia Child’s The French Chef. His motto is “If Yan can cook, so can you!”
“When I was growing up, I was actually exposed to a lot of these ingredients – hoisin sauce, soy sauce, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, vinegar,” said Yan, who ran around his father’s restaurant trying different foods.
His father’s life wasn’t easy. In Portland, Oregon, even after running a cafe and small jewellery store, he could not buy property as a Chinese immigrant, so he and the family returned to Guangzhou.
“There was a lot of discrimination,” said Yan, who is based in San Mateo, California “In fact, they faced more problems than what we have been facing in the last 30, 40 years. They have no choice but … just made enough money and went back to China.”
He did not return to the US until he attended the University of California, Davis on a sponsorship and started teaching; cooking classes.
“I consider myself as an ambassador, a culinary and cultural ambassador of East and the West,” said Yan, who teaches virtual classes during the pandemic. “I think all of us should learn to be inclusive, to accept each other, and to make this country a great country … I hope all of us are using food as … a bridge.”
