Cooking from the Heart: Reviews and Recipes

I just received my copy of Sheng Yang and Sami Scripter's Hmong cookbook, Cooking from the Heart, and it doesn't disappoint. I haven't read all of it yet, but I've enjoyed skipping around, looking at the recipes for some of my favorite foods (all of which make my mouth water). Besides being a joy to read (and a pratical cookbook), there is enough context to make it helpful resource for learning about Hmong cultural practices, both traditional and modern. The role of food in rituals is described as well as food practices associated with health and illness. It's also a book about the friendship between Yang and Scripter and the creativity of the individual cooks they worked with. Even the book itself is beautifully designed and well-organized.

There have been a number of positive reivews around the web, but one of the best is from The Heavy Table, a Twin Cities-based website. The review is broken up into two pages. In A Day in the Kitchen of a Hmong Family, the reviewer tags along with a Hmong family as they shop for the day and prepare a big dinner. Among other stops, they visit the International Hmong Market on Como, a sprawling, labyrinthine collection of stalls containing everything from karaoke to qeej (not to mention an amazing variety of food). While the book isn't the main focus here, the review does conclude with a recipe for papaya salad and another recipe based on the cooking of the Hmong family in the review. Of great interest to everyone, a video is included that demonstrates how to de-bone a chicken wing so it can be stuffed with eggroll filling and baked. (The one time I got to help out with this time consuming, but worthwhile task, we later deep-fried the wings in a giant vat of oil.)

The review of the book featured on the site is equally rich and detailed. It also includes two more recipes as well as links to other websites
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Yang and Scripter were recently interviewed by Lynne Rossetto Kasper of The Splendid Table and their segment will be airing sometime in July. It's clear the book has already been a success and more great things are in store for the authors.

Pictured: My personal speciality, fawm kauv. By the way, blogger Mozemoua has several nice posts on Hmong cooking (which include much nicer pictures than the above).

More Hmong food - New cookbooks available

Just got the word that Cooking from the Heart: The Hmong Kitchen in America (website), a new Hmong cookbook by Sami Scripter and Sheng Yang is now available for pre-order from Amazon. The book places recipes in the context of folklore and healing practices and sounds very promising.

In the meantime, the Eau Claire County UW Extension has a Hmong cookbook with 15 recipes along with profiles of the contributors. Just $10, including shipping, and the proceeds benefit entrepreneur grants and scholarships in western Wisconsin. (Ordering information, pdf)

See also: Authentic Hmong food

Authentic Hmong food

This month's issue of Saveur magazine (proprietor of "authentic cuisine") has a feature article about a Hmong farmer from Fresno, his family, and the food they eat. The magazine tends toward pretension, but compared to other food magazines, it digs deeply into the stories of people and places. "Taking root " (by Andrea Nguyen) contextualizes some interesting recipes within the daily life John Xiong's family (lots of great pictures, too). Xiong favors hard work over chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and the article emphasizes the importance of freshness in his produce and cooking. Recipes include: zaub ntsuab hau xyaw nqaij npuas sawv (Chinese mustard green soup), xwbkuab kib xyaw nqaij nyug (stir-fried angle luffa with beef), and good-looking recipe for a chili sauce with onion and cilantro (kua txob tuav xyaw dos). If anything, the article is a useful resource when wondering what to do with those unfamiliar vegetables you see at the farmers' market.

The article does raise the question: what is "authentic Hmong food?" Is it food that is unique to Hmong culture? Is it just food that Hmong people eat? Is it food that Hmong people used to eat but don't anymore? Is it daily food or food for special occasion's? Many Hmong Americans identify with foods like fawm kauv (stuffed rice crêpes, aka. noodle wraps), tuav qaub (green papaya salad), and kab yob (egg rolls). These foods are enjoyed by a wide range or Asian Americans. Does that make them any less "Hmong"? The other side of Hmong cooking has been described to me as "rice, vegetables, and water." This is the food that comes out the experience of subsisting in high, mountain farms. Does that make it more "authentic"?

Food, like music, is one of the crucial ways we define ourselves. For me, eating a plateful of deep-fried, beer-battered cheese curds manifests my Wisconsin-ness (as does constantly pointing out to Ohioans how sadly empty their lives are for not eating them). "Authenticity" is found in "doing." That doesn't mean that we shouldn't recognize the diverse history of our cultural practices, but that history cannot be used to deny the status of other practices.

What is it that Hmong Americans "do" with food? A lot of things, but many dishes seem to favor simple combinations of vegetables (with small amounts of meat) accompanied by searing hot dash of chili. But there are also foot-long sausages at New Year Festivals, tapioca pearls soaked in sweetened coconut milk, and mango in fish sauce with chili. I would not be eager to exclude any of it from "Hmong cuisine."

For those interested in Hmong recipes, you can find more information at:

• Cooking from the heart: Hmong cooking in a America - only contains a few recipes (and hasn't been updated in a while), but it does a have a recipe at the extreme end of the "rice, vegetable, and water" spectrum: rice porridge (mov kua tsuag) - basically rice cooked with too much water.
• Hmong Recipe Cookbook (Kathy Finkle) - available as a .pdf from the REN Bookshelf. Contains a great deal of information about a variety of food practices, vegetables, and following recipe for some "nostalgic food":

"Sy Xiong Vang's fresh Hmong corn bread/cake

Ears of fresh tender sweet corn are scraped to remove corn kernels, juice, and tender fiber next to corn cob. In Laos, Hmong cooks wrapped each 3 T. of the corn mixture in a banana leaf. In America, they use foil.

The wrapped corn bread (like a small American pancake) is steamed for 45 min. or baked in an oven at low temperature - 250 degrees - for an hour. On special occasions the corn bread is eaten plain with the main meal.

NOTE: This bread/cake is a nostalgic food for older Hmong people."

I couldn't write a post about Hmong food without mentioning at least a couple of my favorite Hmong restaurants. Eau Claire, Wisconsin has two great restaurants: Egg Roll Plus (outstanding coconut curry soups) and Pang Cher Vue's Hmong Noodle Wrap (get the ginger, chicken stir fry) where each meal is cooked fresh when you order. In Madison, I always save room for the buffet at Mai Zong Vue's Taste of Asia (be sure to go for the dinner buffet to get some stuffed chicken wings).

Follow-up: As I finished writing the post, the following article popped into my news reader - "Variety and spice: cooks faithful to authenticity of Asian fare." It features an interview with a Hmong chef who will be preparing food for the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival this weekend (28-29 July). Souzana Vang efficiently sums up the diverse history of Hmong food and its specialness for Hmong people:

"Typical Hmong food takes a little from Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese foods. It has similar ingredients, but the way we use spices makes it distinct from the other tastes. ... It's as important as the language, and it's unique to eat something other people don't know about."

There are also two recipes which sound really good whether they're "authentic" or not:

• Nqaij Ntses Kib Nrog Txuj Lom (Fried Tilapia With Smothered Tomato Sauce)
• Nqaij Qab Zib (Sweet Meat Delight)

7.30.07 Udpate:

Sami Scripter, from the Cooking from the heart website wrote to inform me that the cookbook she is co-authoring with Sheng Yang is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press. In her words:

We hope that our book will be an honest, positive look into Hmong culture, from the vantage point of the kitchen (something most people can relate to).

The book will also contain poetry and prose from Hmong writers and Sami promises that they too will tackle the question: "What exactly is Hmong cooking?"

2.09.09 Update: New Cookbooks Available