In addition to reading, cooking is something I enjoy enormously, and do so on a regular basis. I’ve always liked cooking but not until college did I really embrace it as a hobby and as something to share with others. Here are some of the dishes I’ve made:

Pan bagnat: I found this recipe by America’s Test Kitchen while watching a video on how to make better sandwiches. Admittedly, two pieces of bread with a few things in the middle aren’t typically what I go for (there are a couple of exceptions of course: Vietnamese sandwich – or banh mi – which so far has been impossible to find a good version of where I am, and a simple but delicious sandwich from my college days in KC. The latter was from a Parkville coffee shop on Main street, made with artichoke in olive oil and feta on toasted baguette. I would order this and a coffee then spend an hour or so in the shop or in the nearby English Landing Park reading David Foster Wallace. I have never found the sandwich elsewhere. On first my return to KC, I learned that the shop had changed owners and its menu no longer carried the sandwich. It would be really lovely to have it again some day. Though I suspect it’s not unlike my time in KC – long gone and can only be brought back through nostalgia). Anyway, I digress. I made the pan bagnat on a Sunday morning and quite enjoyed the process of it. To press the sandwich, I placed it underneath my larger chopping board then put a stack of books on top of it. One was the almost 900-page Best American Short Stories of the Century edited by John Updike. I got to the (19)60s a few years ago. After a couple of particularly difficult accounts on southern slavery, I decided to take  break from the collection and been on a that break since. Anyway, if I make pan bagnat again, I would get tuna in oil instead of water and pitted olives (both my mistakes) and dry out the tomatoes some more. Also, ciabatta replacing baguette perhaps? Fresh marjoram and not dry oregano? Though rather than dwelling on the many ways one can do it over, what I really should do is to try recreating my Parkville coffee shop sandwich and stop being so sentimental about it. And resume my reading of the short stories. Moving on to the 70s is, too, a way of moving on, of sorts.

Eggplant parm: This is Alison Roman’s A Little Eggplant Parm recipe, with corners trimmed, cut, or forgotten altogether. Not the proper parmigiana di melanzane that my friend Andrea, who was from Parma, taught me back in grad school (this method would take 5-6 hours as the eggplants have to be salted, left alone, then fried before assembly. The last time I made it, it was for my first grad school advisor Nancy. I think both of us ran low on patience toward the end and Nancy probably wished I’d stick to science instead. The time before that, it was for Giulia, who was also Italian. Now looking back, it’s hard not to think that was anything but stupidity. But that’s another story). Anyway, I cooked the simpler version for Jeff and his family. The eggplants were roasted in the oven before being incorporated in layers of mozzarella and tomato sauce. I left the final product in the oven a tad too long, which made the surface crispier than I would have liked. The toasted breadcrumbs gave it some texture which some may like though I prefer the smoothness of the cheese and melanzane. I also added much less anchovies than Alison does. That’d have been too much I think. Not that it could have changed Jeff’s daughter’s mind. Perching on a chair next to us, she ate strawberries and my birthday chocolate instead.

Pate: Pate (or to be proper, pâté) is one of the few things that the French brought to Vietnamese cuisine in the mid 19th century. Since then, it has become a staple in our sandwich and on breakfast sticky rice. When I think of pate now, I often recall the excellent chicken liver pate made by the grandmother of my closest friend in high school. I only had it a couple of times. And though I cannot possibly remember now how it tasted, to me that pate has essentially become the idea of what all good pate should be. I also recall eating sticky rice and pate one morning. I was in my high school freshman year. The phone rang and there was a brief message from someone I cared about. She said she was leaving the country the next day to attend high school overseas. It did not come as a total surprise. I had known about her plans but asked not to be told of the timing until the last moment… It was devastating just the same. And it was years until I would eat pate again… Anyway, my local grocery store carries chicken liver so I bought some. I mentioned to a friend who is French that I was contemplating making pate. He said if I did, he would make baguette to trade. I held up my end of the deal. My friend eventually did, too. I’m not sure when he started baking but by the time he stopped by to hand over a paper bag containing two warm baguettes, it was also most 11pm. We exchanged our food outside my apartment, the two of us barely lit by the street lights. I couldn’t stop laughing at how silly the whole thing was. My friend didn’t. At least not when he tried the pate shortly after. 

Goat curry: Another recipe I found while watching a video, this time on a new Vietnamese restaurant in Miami. The chef and restaurant co-owner is this young second-generation Vietnamese, who had no formal culinary training. He walks through the steps of making Vietnamese goat curry (it must be a southern dish as I never had it growing up in the north). No measurements but all the basic information was there in case I ever want to make it. There was actually another goat curry I had during my very first trip to Boston. Marie, Chris, Vasiliy (?), Shelly, and I had just started grad school. We were all new friends but drawn to one another almost immediately. The group had done a trip to the city where we walked the beautiful Williamsburg bridge together. On our second trip a few weeks later, we drove to Boston. On our arrival, we stopped for dinner at this place where both New England and New York clam chowders were on the menu. Inexplicably, Marie ordered the New York version and only to be told by our visibly embarrassed waitress that the item was actually “a not very funny joke”. Only then did Marie realize the cheeky description of the NY chowder which basically asked the diner to get out and, very politely, take a hike via the I-95 south. Later that night we ended up at a bar that served really really good mac-and-cheese and goat curry. This goat curry was coconut-creamy and spicy. It also had fried plantain that balanced everything out with its subtle sweetness. Anyway, when the chef of the Miami restaurant mentioned coconut milk as one of the ingredients, I knew I had to make it. And with fried plantain. That’s how this wonderful Vietnamese, Miami, New England goat curry came to be.

Pasta alla puttanesca: This one came from a Jamie Oliver’s cookbook I bought during college. Jamie Oliver was all over the TV then after his Naked Chef series. I first made it for my college advisor Dr. Kerkman when he came over for dinner. It was somewhat boring and I probably enjoyed Jamie’s explanation of the dish’s name more than the actual food itself. Several years later, I made it again for our March for Science in DC. I was a very poor grad student then. My friend Rachel and I had decided to bring our food along so we wouldn’t have to spend money. I don’t know why I thought the dish was a good idea for a road trip but there we were, eating pasta and listening to The Cardigans as Rachel drove us back on I-95 in the rain. Anyway, for a long time I had this nagging suspicion that I had never done the dish justice. Then, during my postdoc, I gave it another try. This time, I replaced penne with spaghetti, added a lot more red pepper flakes, and let the flakes, along with garlic, simmer in anchovies and olive oil for a while to extract and marry their flavors. The result was lovely and spaghetti alla puttanesca soon became my favorite Italian dish. It’s not surprising why I like it so much. The sauce is rich in spiciness from the red pepper and tang from the tomatoes, lemon, and capers in brine. As far as I can remember, I have always been partial to spicy and sour flavors. In Vietnam, coincidentally, we also use the same two words to describe the hardships of life.

Vegan gyoza: I share my food with others and no other dishes have been shared more than gyoza and dumplings. I first learned how to make dumplings in grad school. For a couple of years I was a vegetarian (eggs were off the menu too, much to the dismay of my friend Meg, who liked to cook for me). In place of the usual ingredients, I used diced carrots, cabbage, tofu, and mushrooms. They were decent enough that I mentioned to my (second) grad school advisor who soon invited me over for Thanksgiving dinner with her family. It turns out that her mom, who was visiting from Hong Kong, was curious about this vegan dumpling. So we made it together, using my recipe. The only difference was that she made the dumpling wrappers from scratch, which I struggled to follow, having almost no prior experience in handling dough. We did not talk much to each other due to the language barrier. But the old lady was animated in her movements and in her frequent and emphatic “no! no! no!” in response to my wrapper making. Years later, once again a vegetarian in my postdoc, I would come up with another version with impossible burger instead of meat/tofu. The napa cabbage is still there but the carrot now has been replaced with chives. It is probably closer to Japanese gyoza than Chinese dumplings now. The dumplings are also pan fried instead of steamed. I’ve made them for my YPA friends, for Jeff and Thea (while their year-old daughter was learning to crawl on my carpet), for Milena when she was too busy to cook, for Martin, Fabian, and Matt for a Germany’s football match, for Renate and Oliver, whom I now miss dearly as they’ve returned to Germany… I once made them for Sophie’s birthday. I don’t remember it was Halloween or the day before. A few days later, I dropped her off on campus. She turned back and smiled, not knowing those dumplings would be the last we shared. 

Hillbilly salmon pasta: Another from my KC days. Danny made me this dish and then taught me how to cook it. First, you simmer garlic and castelvetrano olives in olive oil for an unreasonably long time. I’m guessing the idea is to infuse garlic into the oil – that’s obvious. Why you would want to (or whether it is even possible to) infuse olive into olive oil is less easy to see. But like most of Danny’s cooking during this period (college and a couple of years after), it’s best to enjoy without asking too many questions. Anyway, after a while you add canned salmon and heavy cream (?) then stir until everything is thoroughly mixed. Cooked pasta, preferably spaghetti, and a lot of black ground pepper then go in. The dish is served immediately with a sprinkle of banjo music as a garnish. It was sort of my go-to dish for a time. I even made it for Sarah – we sat and ate outside the French doors. She smoked while both of us silently looked at the trees in my yard. Not long after, Sarah left for Seattle. I left too. On the other side of the country, something of a new chapter began for me. I stayed at this house during the first month on Long Island, waiting for my rental place in Sound Beach to become available. John, the 40-something-year old house owner, occupied one room and rented the other three out to various characters, usually for no more than a few months at a time. At this point, unbeknown to his tenants, John had stopped paying his mortgage and in a year would lose the house to foreclosure – but that’s another story. The other two renters were Regina and Robin. Regina had a cat and a heroin habit which soon became the reason why we all had to lock our bedroom doors while out of the house. Robin had just separated from her husband who was a cop and who apparently drove by the house a few times out of jealousy (John admitted to/boasted about a relationship with Robin). John, who had quite a sense of humor, and I got along well. One night I cooked the pasta and invited everyone to try. The food was so magical that Robin wept. Regina quit heroin on the spot as life was worth living once more. John went back to his room and sat fire to himself as he knew he’d never experience anything that beautiful again… But of course, none of this happened. In truth, I ate by myself and the entire house smell of cooked canned salmon for several hours after. The next morning, I came in the kitchen and was cheerily greeted by a couple notes on the fridge written in John’s chicken scratch. One said, “Robin, teach Le how to cook”, the other, “Keep Le’s black ass out of kitchen!!”. It never occurred to me till I wrote this very sentence that John may have been colorblind. In any case, I took a picture of the notes and have kept it to this day.

Roast chicken: I’ve roasted chicken a few times – my preferred method would be water-brining the chicken overnight with herbs and spices beforehand. But this is not the roast chicken I’m thinking of. Rather, it was the roast chicken Tanya, Scott, and I would treat ourselves to almost every Sunday morning while living in Springvale South. There was a chip shop near our flat – this (the chip shop, not our flat) was where I experienced the proper Aussie chips-salt-vinegar-in-newspaper for the first time. After a while the shop started cooking and selling roast chicken. We would get an entire bird and “a shit load of chips” (I can still hear Tan saying this in her chirpy and slightly amused way). That was our breakfast and lunch, sometimes even dinner. For a time before that, Scott and Tan did not have stable jobs and I was just starting to save up during my time at Monash. We couldn’t afford anything decent so Maggie, Scott’s mom, would stock our fridge with bags of frozen chips, fish sticks, and chicken schnitzel. These three were our formidable foes which I soon came to dread. For a few nights a week, Tan would chuck a handful of each on a tray, stick everything in the oven for half and hour, then leave them out on the kitchen counter for us to grab (or ignore). We were nevertheless grateful for the free food. Things began to look up though. Tan found a job at a video store in Noble Park, Scott became a regular courier driver, and I quit Parisien Bakery, where I’d met Tan, to work 3rd shift at 5-Way Foods which paid an incredible $16.75 an hour. We also moved from Cheltenham, after our neighbor threatened to kill us, to Terry’s (Scott’s dad) former flat on Athol road in the significantly less sketchy Springvale South. Our dinner similarly got upgraded from free food to KFC, sometimes even Nando’s. Then the local chip shop began selling roast chicken. For the two and a half years living together, not once did the three of us ever visit a proper restaurant. Yet, I don’t think we missed out on anything. And with enough time gone, even the fish sticks and chicken schnitzel don’t seem so disagreeable now as they may have done once.

Mac-and-cheese: It was not a surprise when one day Meg, who loved cheese among other things like bacon, stickers, and poop jokes, took me to S’mac in East Village. S’mac was (and still is) a place that offered really creative baked mac-and-cheese. You could build your own or pick from a menu of different offerings with supposedly French (brie, roasted figs, and rosemary), Spanish (manchego, fennel, and onion), Italian (mozzarella, roasted tomatoes, and basil), or the personally untested American South (pepper jack, andouille sausage, and celery) inspirations… Each topped with toasted breadcrumbs and served in a cast iron skillet. Depending on your culinary persuasion, you may shudder at the idea of something so simple and comforting being made needlessly complicated or, worse, pretentious. I did not. Having recently gone to school in the Midwest, the only mac-and-cheese I’d known then was the college students’ edition, often made with just elbow/shell pasta, butter, and the Agent Orange-looking-and-only-slightly-less-lethal Velveeta. All in equal measure of course. So S’mac, like most of my early days of exploring the city, was a bit of a revelation. And it was inevitable that I would try to recreate some of its menu at home. It’s proved a fun event for a group of diverse eaters. I’ll always start with a base of milk, butter, flour, and an excellent cheddar. To this base, people are invited to add any combinations of other types of cheese, herbs, spices, and once an option of lobster or crab meat. This way, each guest will create their own, based on their preference (and bravery). I also use muffin trays which let people have variations of the dish if they so choose to be creative. The trays then go into the oven until the cheese is golden and bubbly on top. I don’t remember how many of my friends have done this – there must be more than a few. It’s somewhat an irony that Meg isn’t one of them. If she were, I imagine she would definitely want bacon, though I don’t know what else she would pick. Or whether she would like her own version more than those at S’mac. Or whether she still remembers that place and how she took me there one distant winter afternoon in New York City. 

Lamington: I made my share of lamington while living in Australia, but never at home and not since I left. It was part of a job at a bakery, the first of the two I’ve ever worked. This would have been towards the end of my first year at Monash University. After an ill fated stint as a kitchen hand and a waiter at a Vietnamese restaurant, I found another part-time job at Parisien Bakery in Richmond. It was a family-run business which supplied local shops pastries and a small number of savory items, most notably sausage rolls and meat pies, the latter of which I very much loved. The bakery was in this a old building, roughly divided into sections for making, baking, decorating, and cleaning. Head bakers were in charge of the mixers, ovens, and machines like the one making croissants. The rest of us were given various tasks that required any two of the following: fine motor skills, willingness to follow basic instructions, and showing up on time for your shift. And like our tasks, we were a motley group of people. There was the 60-something-year old Patrick, your standard wise-and-dignified grandfather. There was Mel, perpetually pissed off and therefore only tolerated by everyone because she’d been there a long time (i.e., more than a year) and quite decent at her job. There was an Israeli, former IDF, who tried to convince me to join the Air Force. There was this stereotypical handsome and gregarious Aussie guy who owned a shitty hatchback with the doors permanently unlocked and windows permanently down, and who was always on the verge of quitting to do something with his life. And of course, there were Nick, the party pusher, and little Tanya, who always wore baker stripy trousers and a white apron smudged with fresh dough and who would shortly become my close friend and flatmate for the rest of my time in Melbourne. Anyway, to make lamington, you start with sponge cake, often in the form of large cubes. You then coat these cubes in a layer of warm chocolate and finally roll them in desiccated coconut. If this sounds simple, that’s because it really is. And as was my life then. I wasn’t doing great in school but my scholarship was not grade-dependent. And because of the generous scholarship, I didn’t really need this part-time job. It was just something I did to avoid being bored or isolated in a new country where, for some reason, I found friendships much more easily formed among the high school-educated workers who hopped from job to job. In short, nothing was crossing my unworried mind. And unlike the lamington in desiccated coconut, I was impervious to most things thrown at me, be it from my fellow workers or the bosses. Nothing seemed to stick. This somehow gained me Mel’s approval after a while. One day Tan(ya) found out that Michael, one of the bakery co-owners, had attended Led Zeppelin concerts at least three times in his 20s. We were in disbelief for none of us could reconcile the image of a fun concert-going young Michael with the now-older-uptight-and-decidedly-not-fun person who would make contemptuous remarks about Tan’s smoking habit and our collective work ethics. “I hope I won’t turn into someone like him. What a wanker!”, Nick once said behind Michael’s back. “Bloody oath!”, replied Tan as she put her stained apron back on and returned from another unsanctioned ciggie break.

Kimchi jjigae: Quite possibly my favorite dish from my second favorite cuisine (Korean). What you need is well fermented kimchi (the sourer and spicier the better), a fatty cut of pork, tofu, onion, daikon, gochujang, and a good broth made ahead of time with dried anchovies and kombu. You more or less put everything in the pot at the same time (the tofu can go in later especially if it is of the soft variety which I personally prefer) and cook for 15-20 minutes. The cooking process is relatively simple, which belies the complex favors of the dish. Kimchi jjigae is served hot, boiling hot, with a side of white rice. Since pork is no longer part of my diet, I now use mackerel or saury instead, which of course makes it mackerel kimchi stew, a dish of its own. These are strong ingredients but they work wonderfully together. And whether it’s pork or mackerel, the best thing about kimchi jjigae remains the broth. It’s sour, spicy, and earthy; the combination of which wakes you up and at once comforts you. The best kimchi jjigae is, however, likely not the one from your kitchen (or mine). It may occasionally be found at 2 in the morning in K Town. A weary traveler got off a late flight at JFK. Their backpack is heavy. It’s been a long journey but instead of heading straight for home, they make a detour in the night to Penn Station. From here, they walk a couple of blocks to West 32nd and Fifth where many restaurants (Kunjip, New Wonjo to name a couple) are still open. Table for one. They pick at the side dishes while waiting. A side glance at the next table where someone is trying to sober up with hot food before the morning comes. Then the kimchi jjigae arrives on a small stove lit by a little yellow flame, all bubbles and steam. Was the late flight caused by a missed connection, a lengthy delay, or lack of earlier options? Or perhaps it was by design after all?

Bánh chưng: There are few dishes as culturally significant and emotionally intertwined as bánh chưng in Vietnamese cuisine. Here in the States, people may think of pho, spring rolls, or banh mi when talking about Vietnamese food. They may not even have heard of bánh chưng even though one can find it (or its southern cousin) relatively easily at any decent Vietnamese grocery store at the right time of year. That time is the Lunar New Year, which remains the most important holiday in Vietnam. In the old days, bánh chưng were made for this occasion only. To make bánh chưng, you need sticky rice and mung beans, both of which require soaking for 24 hours. You also need thick strips of fatty pork, well seasoned in salt and pepper. Everything goes in layers, pork in the middle, next the bright yellow mung beans, then the milky white sticky rice, and finally all tightly wrapped in the lush green leaves of the stachyphrynium placentarium plant. The leaves impart a distinct but subtle flavor that makes bánh chưng what it is. The most common shape of bánh chưng is square, sometimes necessitating the use of a mold during the making of it. And to keep everything in place prior to cooking, you use four bamboo strings, two across each direction. Stacks of bánh chưng then go in to a large pot (large enough to be a small bathtub) filled with water. Due to the size of the pot, most families simply make a woodfire stove out of bricks for the occasion. And it really is a family affair and an all-day event. In my family, Dad would be in charge of the entire process, particularly assembling and cooking, but mom would certainly be the one preparing the ingredients. Some time around noon, we would clear the floor of the living room and take several hours to assemble 15-20 of them. After all said and done, you end up with something about 2/3 the size of A4 paper and weighing about 3 lbs. 

Repeated ingredients: garlic (x 4), anchovies (x 4), olives (x 3), capers (x 3), tomatoes (x 3), chilies (x 3), parsley (x 2), basil (x 2), ginger (x 2)