How I started my cooking journey and how you can too Part 1
Written By: Gen Nguyen | Read full profile
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“Cooking is all about people. Food is maybe the only universal thing that really has the power to bring everyone together. No matter what culture, everywhere around the world, people eat together.”
A lot of my blogs involve food in some way. My summers at UC Berkeley were mainly food oriented. In my study abroad in S.Korea series, I mostly only recall all the restaurants and food I ate. Hell, I even wrote about boba and cereal! But, unlike most of my thoughts, I don’t randomly start thinking about food. My love of food had to come from somewhere, so let’s take an adventure through my journey into cooking and baking.
Joke of the blog:
What did the peanut say to the cashew when it sneezed?
Flashback to when I was about 3 or 4 years old and still lived in Boston. It was around 6pm, I’d just finished watching the old school Scooby Doo, Where are You? on Cartoon Network. I walked into the kitchen and asked my mom if I could help her prep for dinner. But her response made my heart drop: “Làm xong hết rồi. Không có gì làm nữa.” which roughly translates to “All done. There’s nothing left to do.” Next thing I knew I started crying and did what any other toddler would do - pull a tantrum. My mom had to make up something for me to do so I’d stop crying, even if it wasn’t part of the dish she made. So, I started peeling carrots. And thus, my love of cooking was born. I was very emotionally invested.
In most, if not every, Asian household, food is a sign of love and affection because Asians do not know how to normally communicate it (or the older generation at least). Instead of an “I love you,” parents usually ask “Did you eat yet?”, call you down to eat, or they cut fruit up for you. I didn’t understand this was another love language until Wong Fu Productions portrayed it in one of their videos, What Asian Parents Don’t Say. Nor did I think anybody else experienced this until other Asians in the infamous subtle asian traits comically memed it. My parents embodied this philosophy until I became old and too mentally scarred to feel any kind of emotion. So I was conditioned to believe this my entire life and I still think it’s the best way to show affection. Actions speak louder than words.
SPAM n EGGs YUM
Back when I was in elementary/middle school, my parents would work all day and come home late. But kids gotta eat, right? So, as the only girl in the family and having traditional parents, I was tasked to do the cooking: spam, eggs, lạp xưởng (Chinese sausages), egg-lạp xưởng. You know, regular college sustenance. On good days, we would have steak and I’d marinade and cook it well done. Well done because as a 9 year old, I didn’t know how to cook yet even after watching Chopped and a bunch of other Food Network shows. But some days my mom would pre-cook soup and all I had to do was add broccoli, green onions, and cilantro (all of which were already prepared too). BOOM. Call me chef Gen.
Chef gen in the house
Although I did most of the cooking out of the three of us, some of my fondest memories were cooking alongside my brothers. My most memorable one was probably when we tried to cook canned corned beef. As starving children who didn’t know how to professionally cook (or at least cook sustenance), we scoured the pantry for spam but found an unknown can labeled corned beef. When we opened it, we were completely appalled because it didn’t look or smell like spam. We still fried it up, but my brothers were afraid to eat it, thinking it was poisonous. And then here you have me on the side taking tiny bites every couple minutes to make sure it wouldn’t kill us. (My stomach of steel handled it like a champ.)
Another time, we all made pork dumplings and Japanese chicken curry together before Nick went off to college. It was the first time we made something from scratch - no premade canned items. The dumpling skins were made from flour, water… and maybe an egg? The roux for the curry was made with flour, worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and other ingredients I can’t remember. It was also the first time I realized that I sucked at cooking (as if I didn’t already know that before). After stuffing and frying the dumplings, I took a bite out of one of them and ended up with fried dough in my mouth - all because I didn’t flatten the dough enough nor did I add enough filling. The curry came out great though. And now it’s one of my best and favorite dishes to make!
Even after Nick went to college, my cooking journey didn’t stop there. What do you like to cook? What sparked your motivation on your food journey? I would love to hear your stories because “the people who love to eat are always the best people”! - Julia Child
Answer to today’s joke: Cashew-n tight!
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