Please introduce yourself and your work briefly. I write health and wellness content as well as vegan cookbooks. While I was in college, I started the Veggiekins blog to share recipes and promote the vegan lifestyle. Since then, it has become my full-time job, which has been absolutely amazing. Frauth, a brand of matcha, is also my creation. I divide my time between New York and Los Angeles for my personal life, and you can usually find me at a farmers market! How have you found that food can tell a story and shape culture in your experience? I believe that food plays a significant role in culture because it is one way that it is passed down from generation to generation. I believe that’s why passing down recipes is so important for preserving culture. I believe that food is very important in my Asian cultures—Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese—because it is also how we communicate with one another and share love. In our cultures, it’s not quite as common to express verbally that you love someone. Although we rarely discuss our emotions, we always eat together at the table, and many of our family holidays and gatherings revolve around food. There is a joke that your Asian parents will never apologise to you or tell you how much they love you, but they will always serve you food or cut up fruit for you to show that. As a result, I believe that food plays a significant role in Asian culture. For me personally, a lot of my memories from childhood revolve around a specific meal or have a specific dish tied to it. Food evokes a lot of really powerful memories, and I think it’s a really great vehicle for storytelling in that way.
How can people be taught about the connection between food, health, community, and culture? I find it incredible that dairy is so sparsely used in the majority of Asian dishes. It also makes them such great foundations for lots of vegan-friendly options. In addition, religious groups, for instance, adhere to a variety of plant-based diets in my three cultures. Similar to the majority of cultures, I believe there is a lot to learn. In Korea, monks eat temple food that is mostly made of plants; in Japan, Shojin cuisine is also mostly made of plants; and many Buddhists in China don’t eat any meat or animal products at all. Also, my grandparents always said that when they were younger, they mostly ate grains and vegetables because meat and animal products were so expensive and only for the rich and famous. Despite the fact that a lot of Asian cuisine has historically revolved around grains and plants, I believe that people now associate meat with Asian cuisine, such as Korean barbecue. What plant-based ingredients and vegan dishes do you think are traditional to your and/or other Asian cultures? Which are your go-to ingredients for cooking? Tofu, of course, is a plant-based ingredient that I believe is essential to Asian culture! Tofu is so abundant in plant protein that I find it remarkable that no Asian person is unfamiliar with it. Rice and other grains are also used a lot in Asian cuisine. Some of my favorites, like tempeh and some of the more unusual Asian vegetables you won’t find in a typical grocery store (like bean sprouts, bok choy, morning glory, and pea shoots), are rice and other grains. In Asian cuisine, there is a wide variety of vegetables to choose from. As a plant-based chef, what do you envision as the way forward to encourage people to include more fruits and vegetables into their diets?
The fact that vegetables can be treated with as much, if not more, care than meat and other animal products is one of the things I like to emphasize the most. When it comes to preparing vegetables, I believe that many individuals either consume them raw or with minimal preparation. The outcome is so distinct when we marinate, smoke, sous vide, roast, or slow cook them. People today have developed a hunger for more international cuisines and are more interested in trying foods from other cultures. This is a great way to encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables. There are so many different kinds of fruits and vegetables that you can enjoy when you start to look beyond just the United States, for instance, and see what else the world has to offer. Additionally, there are a plethora of additional spice blends and flavor profiles that can be utilized to season vegetables. It’s so important to keep it interesting for the palate! How do you commemorate your heritage and what significance do you attach to AAPI Month? Because I am both Asian and Asian American, AAPI month has a significant significance for me.
I was born in the United States to parents who had already immigrated here, and the family mostly speaks English. I believe that the distinction is very nuanced and makes me feel seen because I don’t feel entirely Asian or American. It is an incredible indication that people are truly accepting of diversity and others, which is crucial. It has helped people learn about other cultures and stoked their curiosity and thirst for knowledge. I share recipes that I feel are true to my Asian-American family and culture, and I really celebrate my heritage through food. To be able to share that with others and, especially, to eat plant-based is such a treat! Please tell us a little bit about your cookbook, Sesame, Soy, and Spice, and how you got the idea to write it. My upbringing and family provided a lot of inspiration for my cookbook. My family is Asian, and there are three different kinds of Asians, but we are also very much American, so the best way to describe our food and culture is “Asian American.” The food on our table when I was a kid looked like a mix of Western and American cuisine, as well as the Asian dishes I grew up eating. For example, one thing I love is popcorn, but with Japanese furikake seasoning on top. Gochujang, a fermented red pepper paste from Korea, may occasionally replace hot sauce or chili paste. I really wanted to stress throughout my cookbook that going vegan doesn’t mean you have to give up your culture. In fact, it can be so much fun to reconnect with your culture by trying to make your favorite recipes vegan. There is more variety in the foods you eat, which not only makes living a vegan lifestyle more exciting and inclusive but also more sustainable. I was under the impression that I could only consume salad bowls, grain bowls, and smoothie bowls when I first became vegan. After that, I came to the conclusion that it is not really a diet but rather a way of life, and that if you are creative in the kitchen, you can make almost any dish vegan-friendly. I also document my journey to becoming vegan and reconciling my relationship with food through the short stories in my cookbook. I share the story of how becoming vegan taught me compassion and aided in that journey. Because we were able to really connect with one another through food more than ever before, the process of writing the cookbook was very meaningful to my family. We would talk on the phone while we were both in the kitchen trying to come up with a recipe and discuss childhood recipes that I wanted to try to recreate. Because we would frequently end up reminiscing about memories from my childhood while cooking, it was a very nostalgic time for me.