13 Asian Novel + Cookbook Pairings

When fiction does food well, you hunger for more + BKK snippet

Earlier this week, I learned that I’d written a culinary memoir. My first cookbook, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen (2006), was listed alongside Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and two other works in a collection of epicurean memoirs recommended for twenty somethings.

My first-born cookbook is a memoir? I had expressed my family’s immigrant experiences through 175 recipes with the secret hope that the side stories and cultural tidbits would enrich readers and cooks. People have said they read IVK without cooking a thing and I’m more than alright with that. (I do that all the time.) So, I was stoked that Anujj Trehaan saw the book as a culinary memoir and had written a concise, insightful summary in the article.

The mention got me thinking.

Good cookbooks whet appetites but so do novels and memoirs. It seems like nowadays, fictional story telling often includes food-related vignettes. Or am I noticing it because I’m always looking for ways to improve my writing?

Whenever I come across a food passage in a novel, I take note. What’s the dish? How does it move the plot along? What terms are used to describe it? When the novelist works the food angle well, I’m motivated to cook or open up a cookbook to get culinary details. It’s Pavlovian thing. I’m a method reader, per se.

People offer food-and-beverage pairings. Why not do novel-and-cookbook pairings? A good book can make us hungry.

So I looked on my shelves and nightstand.

Because you’re here for the rice-y scoop and salty, spicy, tangy bites, here are my Asian novel and cookbook pairing notes, from past and recent reads. May is also Asian Pacific American Heritage Month!

South Asian Thrillers

Set in Houston, Texas, Nishita Parekh’s debut thriller unfolds during one long, arduous night. A South Asian family shelters in a mega mansion during hurricane Harvey and there’s plenty of bickering, suspense, and cooking. Food is a character in the book. I read The Night of the Storm in bed, before I fell asleep and when I woke up; it’s a light, easy read. The book also dishes on desi culture and the South Asian diaspora community.

The family in Nishita’s book prepares easy-going vegetarian fare, which led me to check in with Maya Kaimal’s compact Indian Flavor Every Day. Plant-based recipes pepper the cookbook, which is modern, streamlined, and cross-cultural. Maya’s family melds many countries and continents; she’s a solid recipe writer with a good palate. I also looked through Julie Sahni’s Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking (1985) for traditional approaches on dishes like khichdi and lassi, which are mentioned in Parekh’s book. I ended up making Maya’s chicken tikka and will share the recipe soon.

Immersive Korean

Esther Yi’s arty novel is strangely entertaining. It’s about a young woman who becomes infatuated with a South Korean boy band. She fangirls so much that she travels from Europe to Seoul to find her favorite band member. Mania and fantasy are juxtaposed with everydayness, virtual realities, and the world of Korean pop culture.

The title Y/N refers to a genre of fan fiction popular with young people. Yi’s main character loses herself in it, blurring the lines to the point where you’re not sure if she fully wakes up from it.

That sort of full-throttled immersion is what you experience with Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard’s new book, KoreaWorld. They offer a snapshot of the players and flavors shaping Korean pop culture today. They have modern, nontraditional recipes, including Korean corn dogs, which Hong told me are all over South Korea these days. Corn dogs are a thing in Koreatowns in the U.S., too.

K-pop music, Korean soap operas, Korean banchan and barbecue, and H-Mart —many people are swept up in many things Korean. Dive in with this novel and cookbook combo.

Real Chinese Americans

Real Americans by Rachel Khong weaves in and out of time, from Beijing to the East Coast. The Cultural Revolution, eugenics, Chinese traditional medicine, generational divides, and race relations all factor into her second novel. It’s incredibly researched and well-written, a vivid page turner that could easily be made into a movie.

Rachel’s bestselling novel got me thinking about Chinese culinary heritage on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. The Woks of Life shares recipes from a Chinese American family’s experiences from Beijing to the East Coast. Location-wise, the Leung’s experience sort of mirrors the experiences of characters in Real Americans. Their recipes are accessible to boot!

Even from the cover (above), you sense that A-Gong’s Table is quietly comforting. Written in Taiwan, the book’s mood and vegan recipes pay homage to author George Lee’s family history and cuisine. Taiwan is an unusual tropical island crossroads of East and Southeast Asia. There are strong indigenous cultures there too. Lee celebrates his heritage with detailed, thoughtful recipes. His book is for advance-level cooks with knowledge about Taiwanese ingredients. But, there’s much to be said about examining what’s being savored in country, so we may understand how flavors and techniques get tweaked abroad.

Vietnam War and Peace

I read as many Vietnam-centered novels as possible not only to support my colleagues but also to sense how they’e shaping the Vietnamese experience.

Pulitzer prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen owns Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, he told me when we first met. I wonder if my squid cleaning instructions informed the squid prep passage in The Sympathizer? I’m not sure, but Viet does enjoy good food. Food plays a role in his other works, including The Refugees, a collection of short stories about the Vietnamese American experience. (His parents owned one of San Jose’s first Vietnamese market, too.) The stories provoke deep thinking but you can pop in and out of them so they’re good summer reading.

The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai includes a passage about popsicles that got me worked up. The story plot and her choice of words at that junction in the novel inspired me to develop a Viet coffee popsicle recipe for Ever-Green Vietnamese. (I know, I’m a sucker for compelling food descriptions!)

Que Mai’s book centers women during Vietnam’s tumultuous 20th century. She gathered incredible detail from people who survived that era and created a poignant book.

And, if you’re into graphic novels, Thien Pham’s memoir recounts his family's journey to America and resettling in Oakland, California. To earn money at a refugee camp, his mother becomes a bánh cuốn steamed rice rolls vendor. Chapter 2 of Family Style describes the experience. His mom prepared them the old school way with from-scratch batter, but you can use the much easier short method in Ever-Green Vietnamese (check the rice chapter).

Speaking of bánh cuốn rice rolls, last weekend, I attended a cookbook club potluck and one woman showed up carrying six (6) bamboo steamers containing bánh cuốn that she made from EGV! I was taken aback by her cleverness. She said they were so much easier to make than she thought; the instructions worked perfectly. Other club members said the same thing of recipes they tried. I felt so cheered by their successes.

Above are some pics from the Ever-Green Vietnamese feast cooked up by the San Francisco Cookbook Club. Hostess Pat Aresty made bodacious bao stuffed with charsiu cauli. And the corn milk got a new addition of whipped cream flavored with miso. I love getting to eat my own food without having to cook it myself! (Thanks Jan for the Martha Stewart-ish photo.)

I am sending this dispatch to you from Bangkok. We just arrived and are spending time with a dear friend, the Michelin starred-chef and restaurateur, Pim Techamuanvivit. Along with enjoying stellar meals at her restaurant, nahm, we did a little shopping. A snippet of what I’ve been experiencing:

I’ll be writing while we’re on the road! I actually made a new tofu recipe before we left and I road tested it on the road. Stay tune…