The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook. Jaden Hair
rock star until I moved away from California (where my family lives) to a little town in Florida to start a family of my own with my husband, Scott. Suddenly, without easy access to good Asian markets, cheap Asian midnight eats and, of course, Mom’s kitchen, I was forced to learn via telephone calls while digging for ingredients at the supermarket, tossing fragrant garlic and ginger in a wok and virtual taste tastes at the dinner table.
What a fine education it was. $448.63 in cell phone minutes later (which, by the way, is way cheaper than three years at a fancy culinary institute), I discovered that I was insanely good at cooking. I must have inherited Mom’s natural talent of creating spectacularly simple meals for family and friends.
How it All Started
You might be wondering how I got from cell phone diploma to writing this book, and it’s kind of a silly story. Right after we moved from San Francisco to this little town in Florida, Scott started a computer repair shop in the middle of a local strip mall, and right next door was a restaurant called “Bangkok Tokyo”. I’d often walk next door to Bangkok Tokyo to grab a to-go order.
Well, one afternoon I was waiting for my order when I overheard a woman at the sushi bar just behind the hostess stand chatting loudly on her cell phone with her friend, “ . . . come meet me for lunch! I’m eating sushi at the Chinese restaurant!”
WTF?!!
Bangkok Toyko? HELLO? Last I checked, neither Bangkok nor Tokyo was in China.
Oooooooh . . . I was upset. And yeah, I totally overreacted and took it personally, having just moved from San Francisco, one of the greatest culinary destinations and cultural smorgasbords. It didn’t help that the week before I had watched a television celebrity chef feature an entire show on the foods of Thailand while wearing a Chinese cheongsam and cooking Japanese dumplings. Seriously, I’m so not kidding! (By the way, details have been changed to protect the guilty in case I happen to run into this particular celeb chef one day and then be forced to act all embarrassed, wondering if she has read my book! Ay-ya!)
Okay, back to the story. After the “eating sushi at a Chinese restaurant” incident, I cried and whined to Scott, wanting to move back to San Fran. And do you know what he said to me?
“Honey, don’t you see that this is such a great opportunity for you?”
Welllll . . . truthfully, it went something like this: “Quit your bitchin’. If you don’t like this situation, why don’t you do something about it?”
And so I did.
I called a local cooking school called “The Chef’s Table” and asked if I could teach some cooking classes, focusing on teaching Mom’s family recipes, the virtues of fish sauce, how to stir-fry and, of course, the differences between Chinese and Japanese food.
That’s how it all began. Oh, and the blog, SteamyKitchen. com? I started the blog because I needed a place to store all of Mom’s kitchen wisdom and recipes. I was too lazy to write by hand, too unorganized to record audio notes and too scared to leave precious family recipes on my laptop hard drive. A blog was an ideal solution, and I named it Steamy Kitchen, as it perfectly described both my Mom and me, though in different ways. There’s always something cooking in Mom’s kitchen, a soup simmering away for hours or the flash-bang-cling-clang of her speedy wok master action. Basically, the kitchen was always steamy, with a variety of goodies cooking away. And then there’s me. “Steamy” perfectly describes my fiery-hot nature and passionate personality.
Actin’ all crazy on the beach (from back row) Steve Anna, David Lebovitz, Elise Bauer, Adam Pearson, Romain, me, Matt Armendariz, Diane Cu; Ochazuke Rice with Crispy Salmon Skin, my boys Andrew and Nathan; my brother, Jay and I; Quick Vietnamese Chicken Pho, page 58; Andrew not wanting to go to school.
What this Book is About?
This cookbook is a collection of Asian recipes that I prepare at home for my family and friends. These days, every one is limited on time, especially if you’ve got kids. If I don’t get dinner on the table quickly, my rug rats will begin shimmying up the pantry shelves to help themselves to sugary treats. . . so the recipes I’ve included in this book are fast. Most of the dishes are quick cooking or involve little hands-on time. There are a couple of exceptions—my Mom’s Famous Crispy Egg Rolls (page 50) and the Pork and Mango Potstickers (page 46). I included them because these are super-awesome dishes and also because they are great for freezing and saving for a lazy kitchen day or last minute party nibbles. Both recipes go from frozen to dinner table in about 15 minutes. Can’t beat that!
Fast is not the only thing you’ll find in this book. I love vibrant vegetables, aromatic herbs and ripe, juicy fruits. You’ll find that each dish is incredibly colorful with fresh herbs, chilli peppers and veggies. Food comes so fresh these days—it’s a shame to do too much to them other than a quick stir-fry in a pan!
But I think if there was one thing that defines this book, it’s that the recipes are simple. Simple enough for tonight’s family dinner. I’ve got lots of step-by-step photos to help break the steps down so you can visually see how to do something, like rolling Mom’s Famous Crispy Egg Rolls (page 50) or deveining a shrimp with the shell-on (page 71).
Because I’ve been teaching hands-on cooking classes for a few years now, I’m really good at knowing what questions you’ll want answers to and how to explain things clearly. At the end of class, people always proclaim, “I never knew it was that EASY!”
What is Asian Cooking?
I put a lot of thought into what “Asian cooking” really means, and it’s more complex than just a section of a shelf at a bookstore. You see, I grew up in North Platte, Nebraska, in the ’70s, during a time when I was the only Asian kid in my entire school. So, you can imagine some of the comments and attitudes that I had to endure as a child.
When we moved to Los Angeles, California, things changed. It was actually quite a bit of a culture shock for me, being surrounded by “my peeps” everywhere! No longer was I any different than the general population. When Scott and I moved to a small town in Florida to start a family… and as you read earlier, it kinda jarred me back to the days of childhood.
I think calling my style of cooking “Asian” will be short-lived because Asia is made up of so many different countries! We don’t use the term “European Cooking” as we can differentiate between French and Italian cuisines. And if I called what I specialize as “Asian” I would be just as guilty as the ignorant.
But at the same time, we’ve got to start somewhere. I hope this book inspires you to explore the ingredients in your local Asian market and play with them in your kitchen, and at the same time I hope to teach you some things about each spice, herb and vegetable, such as their origins and popular uses. And maybe one day, the foods of Laos will be just as popular as the specialties of Germany.
Having been born in Hong Kong, having grown up in secluded Nebraska, and having lived in crazy California and now in Florida, I think all Asian food is relative. It depends in part on geography (living nearby the bustling Los Angeles Chinatown versus having to drive four hours to the nearest Asian market in Nebraska), but also on learning how to take whatcha got and adapt it to your family meal. With several Asian online grocers in business (see the Resource Guide for a list) and many “ethnic” ingredients popping up at your regular grocery store, it’s easier than ever to create fabulous meals with ingredients from all over Asia at home. This is why Martin Yan, Ming Tsai and Andrea Nguyen—my cooking idols— are such amazing chefs. They are able to keep the authenticity and essence of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Thai ingredients and help us integrate them into our American lifestyle without “dumbing down” Asian food. My style of cooking is really a combination of my Mom’s home-style dishes and and of course influence from chefs and my fellow food bloggers.
With this book, I wanted to showcase all types of Asian ingredients, but specifically pantry items (like canned goods,