My Mom and Me: Cooking Across Generations
+ 3 Recipes from Ever-Green Vietnamese
“I am very proud of you,” my mom said after Ever-Green Vietnamese released. Those are weighty words from someone who self describes as triệt để (thorough and exacting) and đanh đá (shrewd and feisty).
She used to boss me around the kitchen, but over the years, as my writing career developed, we became cooking buddies. She uses my cookbooks. I’m the only one of her five children that she lets cook for her. I may not have high earning potential like my siblings but I have culinary credibility.
Mẹ (Mom/Mother) and I now have an adult relationship. We trade and share cooking information. We investigate things we don’t understand. I get my culinary curiosity and thrift from her. Look how she peruses the weekly supermarket ads like she’s got a family of seven to feed. That zealousness was just a few weeks ago!
For those reasons, you’ll notice my mom, 89, mentioned in parts of Ever-Green Vietnamese (EGV). The Wall Street Journal recently asked me to interview her for a generations-themed issue of “Off Duty” — a popular Saturday section of paper. What is her and our food story?
During their 63 years of marriage, my dad was our family’s storyteller in chief. Mẹ, ever the dutiful wife, mostly kept her story to herself.
Not this time. I asked her about her cooking life, from the 1930s in northern Vietnam, to wartime Saigon, to the unknown in America. Mẹ has been an emigrant, immigrant, and refugee. I learned things I didn’t know, all reminders of the need for conversation with loved ones before they are gone.
I finalized the story last week with my editor, Beth Kracklauer, but am still processing some of the things Mom said.
For the interview, I prepared and mentioned three Ever-Green Vietnamese dishes:
Grilled Eggplant with Garlicky Green Onion Sizzle (she taught me this dish)
Kohlrabi Salad with Soy Sauce-Seared Tofu (kohlrabi is a favorite vegetable in northern Vietnam where Mom was born)
Steamed Banh Mi Lettuce Wraps (inspired by her experiences in 1950s Saigon)
We discussed them and she had opinions on my modern takes.
For all newsletter subscribers: here’s a gift (free) link to unlock the article and three recipes. <= Click on the link to get the whole shebang!
Vietnamese women of Mom’s generation can beguile. They may demure yet are darned determined, like tigresses waiting in the brush. You may have read about them in historical fiction or seen them in movies. My mother, Clara Tuyết Thị Nguyễn, is the real thing, still alive and cooking.
I hope you enjoy the read and recipes.
Coming this Sunday for paid subscribers — the thrills of yakitori grilling with recipes to play with!
Nice interview and fun recipes. Thank you!
I can make almost all the sauces & dips here, and I bake my own bread/baguettes, so I will most certainly experiment with these recipes.
(Friends brought me a handful of sad looking eggplants they'd bought at a roadside stall, three days ago: it made great baba ganoush but I will need fresher ones for your recipe. Hopefully, the fates/friends will deliver.)
Thank you for sharing the interview with your mom. It’s interesting to me that you helped cook for the family being the youngest (similar to your mom’s experience?). I’m an only child and was raised by a single mom. The only home cooked meal I distinctly remember was rice with steamed broccoli and fresh lemon from the tree in our yard. We did eat out a lot (using the Entertainment coupon book) and tried many kinds of ethnic foods. Cookbooks were a revelation to me because they taught me to cook the foods I wanted to eat. I’m curious what meals I make that my kids will continue to make as adults.