G AY
S E H C BIN
WHO COOK
A COOKBOOK/ZINE created by & for queer communities
3-4 5 6-7 8-9 10-12 13 14-15 16-18 19 20-21 22-23 24-25 26-27 28-31 32 33 34-41
FOREWORD: A Home PRELUDE: Reveling in Chaos RECIPE: Seasoned Egg on Rice RECIPE: Vinegar Room ESSAY: Soft Butch Vegetable Soup GAY FOOD TIP: Dumplings RECIPE: Flautas de Pollo RECIPE: Let Me Love You Please,,. , ,im cruying let me ple as e GAY FOOD TIP: Pancakes STORY: Confection Confessions RECIPE: Sweet Boys RECIPE: Fancy Feels Flan RECIPE: Sweet Creamy Mess RECIPE: Cinnamon Roll Cupcakes STORY: Frustration GAY FOOD TIP: Doing the Queer Food Thing QUEER VOICES SPOTLIGHT: John Birdsall
FOREWORD:
building a home. On learning how to embrace food, and the power cooking can hold in constructing queer homes.
Scripted in the language of my mother’s tongue is a generational idiom that I struggle more to forget the older I grow. Roughly translated into English, it reads less like a saying and more like a twisted premonition: “When the daughter grows to resemble the father, wealth is abundant across three households. But when the son grows to resemble the mother, suffering abounds across three lifetimes.” In many ways, this (honestly, kind of fucked up) idiom reveals its own roots; it’s hidden meanings are steeped in conservative patriarchy, archaic gender roles, and an entrenched fear of any expression of masculinity harnessed by the touch of a woman. It commands men to only love their mothers only in intention, to not say the things their mothers say, do the things their mothers do, or act the way their mothers act. Perhaps that’s why my father has always veered away from the kitchen, and holds no shame in his inability (and unwillingness) to cook. Perhaps that’s why my sister doesn’t cook either, and instead finds other life avenues to assert her womanhood. Perhaps that’s why I’m gay, and hiding, because I chose to snark against tradition and doomed myself for three lifetimes when I asked my mother, time and time again, to teach me how to cook. Like my mother before me, I find utmost joy in the service of others, and food has always been our chosen pathway to providing that service. But learning to love food and cooking, for me, has been a journey of navigating patriarchal expectations and combating shame. Learning to embrace food means grappling with a world steeped with domination, theft, extraction,
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erased narratives, untold stories, and a myriad of prescriptive roles and expectations that command us towards the violent heteronormative. At the same time, learning to ground my queer life in food is also about learning how to properly give care to the communities I love. For myself and many people, food is intricately tied to a feeling of being at home. And for us queer people, that sense of home can often be fleeting, transitory, or challenged in some capacity. In these situations, food and nourishment have always been, and can continue to be, vehicles to providing that temporary comfort. For some, the food our queer homes can be loud and proud spectacles: trays upon trays of lavish, phallic roast dinners, or the bottomless fountain of mimosas that cascade at gay brunches. For others, that food is a silent act of love: a simple breakfast in bed, a simmering pot of soup in the winter, or rice keeping warm through the darkest of hours. As queer people, we have the capacity to construct our own queer homes, built with and for our chosen families, and the queer food that is set on that queer table can sometimes make all of the difference. Like the millions of cookbook that came before, this little cookbook was written with nothing more than a desire to see more people enter the kitchen and learn to fall in love with food. But I hope you’ll forgive my bias when I say that these recipes, and the stories that they tell, are truly special. Through the language of cooking, these stories sing tunes of queer love, queer intimacy, and queer livelihood. They offer us a brief window into the lives and hearts of 8 queer people, without whom a project like this would fail to exist. None of these recipes are particularly extravagant in nature, and none were written with any assumptions of prior cooking expertise or abundant access to ingredients. I hope you’ll come to try these recipes, read their stories, and come to find that cooking and creating a queer home can be simple yet exceedingly meaningful all the same. From one queer to another: Be gay. Do crime. Eat good. H.D, 06/14/19
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~
reveling in chaos
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SOME LIGHT DRIVEL ABOUT QUEERING FORM This cookbook exudes minor chaotic gay energy. Heck, it’s probably not even a proper cookbook at all. For starters, it’s less than 150 pages, doesn’t sell for $19.99 on Amazon, and contains a meager 9 recipes originating haphazardly from countries all over the world. There are no chapters, no bridge separating mains from desserts, and if you hate the obscenely long essays that precede an actual list of ingredients, you’re in luck -- there are pages in this “book” that are just...straight up essays, with no recipe at all. But that, I think, is the charm of this little compilation. In true queering fashion, this book finds itself operating beyond the confines and restrictions of traditional cookbooks. Written by and for queer folks, this book bathes in bright colors and is designed around the capacity to experience and feel. Most of the copy will attempt to either make you cry or laugh. All of it is just gay, and all of it is deeply personal to the folks who graciously allowed their stories to be viewed. Oh, and the names? They’re truly something else. Here, we seek to do away with rigidity and proper form -- there are no straight lines, only sharp edges, waves, curves, circles, and a metric fuck ton of amorphous blobs. Speaking of metrics, don’t expect too many of those either. The earliest records of cooking instructions -- the predecessors to a recipe -- commanded no precise measurements, only touch, feel, and taste. We included some measurements here and there to not compromise on legibility -- after all, we do want you to make these dishes. However, most of these dishes also encourage the spirit of experimentation, of trusting your instincts and adapting their bases recipes to suit what you already have. Please don’t let quantities guide you away from your body. All in all, read the beautiful stories. Make the food. Feed your community. Give love. Get involved. Create your own gay recipe. And if this little book was good to you in some way, pass it on! It’s free and digital! Make knowledge accessible! Rant over.
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1. oozing rice
BY: H.D
A warm bed of rice, sopping with the golden ooze of egg yolk and the funky caress of the ocean.
SAVORY
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I hold very few absolutes when it comes to food, but here’s one of them: I will make this dish until I die. Super simple to prepare, this dish practically orients itself around pantry staples and leftovers without compromising on flavor. The punch of the fish sauce coats your tongue with salt and umami, while being tamed down by the gentle richness of the egg yolk. For me, this dish exudes sensuality from every angle, and will always invite you back for seconds, thirds, fourths, time and time again.
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INGREDIENTS: • 1 cup, long grain white rice, preferably from the giant 10lb. bag you hoarded greedily that last time you went to an Asian supermarket, because it’s what your mother would’ve done • 2 cups, water • 2 eggs
• Fish sauce, to taste • White pepper, to taste • Lime, to taste • A veritable mountain of herbs: scallion, cilantro, mint, holy basil, fresh ginger
PREPARATION: To start, rinse your rice 2-3 times under cold tap water to remove excess starch, until the water that escapes the bottom of your sieve runs clear. Then, cook your rice using whatever method that appeals best to your home setting; I, an Asian boy without the blessing of a rice cooker, usually opt for the stovetop, which calls for a 1:2 ratio of rice to water. Cook your rice until tender and fluffy, and set aside. Next, put a sauce pan full of water to a gentle boil. Then, carefully place in your eggs, and let them cook for 6-7 minutes. Rescue them from the boiling water after they’re done and submerge them in an ice bath to stop them from cooking further. Once cool enough to handle, peel the eggs, and set aside. At this point, your two main components are good to go, so scoop yourself a hefty portion of rice and top it with your eggs, now sliced in half. Season your eggs liberally with fish sauce and white pepper, and watch the clear orange-brown of the fish sauce blend beautifully with the golden ooze of egg yolk – all seeping into your bed of rice. Top this mixture with any garnishes that suit your fancy. For me, that’s a nighridiculous amount of thinly sliced herbs.
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2. vinegar room
BY: H.D
Thinly sliced carrots and daikon bathing in a pool of sweet, funky rice vinegar.
SAVORY
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Two summers ago, when I yearned for a taste of home, I asked her greedily to teach me this recipe and expected her to whip out the perfect brine ratio like the drop of a hat. But she took her time, and came back days later to fill the room with the perfume of rice vinegar and my heart with the taste of her love. Growing up means learning the harsh truth that mothers truly do not have all the answers, nor are they ever infallible. But Vietnamese people care an obscene amount about keeping appearances, so my mom will always try really hard to convince me she has all of the keys. Trying, then, and waiting, are perhaps the keys to learning how to give love.
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INGREDIENTS: • 2 carrots • 1 daikon radish • 1 tsp., salt • ½ cup, sugar • 1.5 cup, white or rice vinegar • 1 cup, water
PREPARATION: To start, peel your vegetables, and cut them into thin matchstick all roughly the same size. Once chopped, combine your vegetables in a bowl, and sprinkle over your salt. Get your hands in there, and thoroughly massage your vegetables. You know you’ve thoroughly massaged them when a solid amount of water is released at the bottom of the bowl, and when you can fold a piece of daikon in half without it snapping. Rinse thoroughly, drain, and set aside. To prepare your pickling brine, combine your water, vinegar, and sugar into a one sauce pot, and place on medium-low heat to reach a gentle simmer. Once the sugar fully dissolves and the aroma of vinegar perfumes your kitchen, you can take your brine off the heat and let cool. You’re all set to assemble your pickle! Take a decently-sized mason jar, and jam in a hefty amount of your drained vegetables. Thoroughly submerge your vegetables with your room-temperature brine, close the lid to seal, and you’re all set. Place your pickle jar in the fridge, and let it brine for at least 24 hours before consuming. This recipe is an amalgamation of my mother’s recipe with Andrea Nguyen’s version from her cookbook: “Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors” (2006, Ten Speed Press).
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3. soft butch
vegetable soup A recipe with another recipe in its ingredients, and a story about judgment, acceptance, and navigating a relationship with the kitchen.
SAVORY
INGREDIENTS:
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• Alton Brown’s minestrone soup recipe • Extra veggies from Imperfect Produce (savvy, environmentally friendly veggies are most queer) • Broccoli, but pronounced brogli and brogli only • Chicken broth • Potatoes for heart • Baby carrots (pre-soup snack as well as soup ingredient!) • Beans, because we’re soft butches on a budget • Bow tie noodles (clearly the most soft butch of all noodles!) • A bit of freshly squeezed lemon juice for freshness
PREPARATION:
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Chop up all your veggies into soup sized chunks while laughing about your inability to properly cut veggies. Eat every other baby carrot that you cut and laugh about how the crunching was totally not quiet. Follow Alton Brown’s directions in cook times and serve with a heaping glass of sweet tea. Think about how soup with chosen family tastes so much warmer, so much better. Realize how easy the laughter comes if messes inevitably happen - it’s easier to clean the kitchen than the amount of stress you used to get for trying to cook made you think. Savor the feelings of connection and community as you discuss with your soft butch best friend and gay best friend where various noodle shapes would fall on the butch/femme scale. Cooking and baking have always been hobbies of mine, but living in a tumultuous, harsh, and unaccepting house never made it easy. The noise of the Kitchenaid is never quite loud enough to drown out the noise of violent homophobic and transphobic commentary. The judgment in my parent’s eyes didn’t quite go away no matter how many of their favorite cookies I made them. Cooking became tinged with fear - where would I cross the line to make them mad at me for the day? A spot missed on the counter, too much time waiting for the pastries to finish in the oven, just generally taking up more space than usual? Would I let my emotions slip when they went on their frequent rants about what harm they think gay people deserve to receive? It became easier to ignore the kitchen, pretend I didn’t want to cook or try a new recipe, and instead hide out as much as I could manage.
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Moving to college became my opportunity to rediscover family, and eventually rediscover cooking. I am continually surprised by how easy it feels. There isn’t a fear that my friends will yell at me if I drop broccoli on the floor or leave crumbs on the counter. We clean up together, casually chatting about how excited we are about trying this new recipe and planning what soup we’ll try next. Hate was swapped for community and acceptance. I think about the butch/femme noodles a lot. It’s small - a funny inside joke - but a bubble of a happy memory that cooked up queerness and family (and also delicious soup). Cooking time with my chosen family is an absolute treasure. Attempting to make do on tiny apartment stoves, minimal equipment, praying pots won’t boil over or that the spice was actually a suitable substitute for the recipe. Moments filled with laughter, triumph as our “kitchen hack” works somehow. I’ve discovered how much I love to make soup. Prepping ingredients, trying new recipes, adapting to our tastes and favorite veggies… It’s a moment where the stress of the quarter, stress of birth family, stress of existing as a queer person in a scary world melt away for a bit into family time. Trust and acceptance have become my squeeze of lemon juice, freshening and brightening me up. And I’m so happy and loved in my queer chosen family. Think about the warmth of soup made with your family, chosen or otherwise, next time you need a pick-me-up. And remember, if you want it to be the best soft butch vegetable soup, you better use bowtie noodles!
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dumplings. FROM: TANSY
PROS: If you’re near an Asian market, frozen Chinese dumplings cost around 5.99. They feed two starving people, or three regularly hungry people. CONS: Pork usually tastes the best, they’re not that great for your vegetarian or religious kids. TRICK: Heat up the pot to boiling first, and keep a spare mug on hand. Add a little bit of salt to the water. Add a good amount of dumplings to the pot. After the water begins to boil for the first time after the dumplings have been added in, add a cup of tap water into the pot using your mug. Once the water boils for the second time, add one more cup of tap water. After the dumplings are boiled the third time, they’re done. SEASONING: Soy sauce is a must, some of your kids with professional palates will enjoy equal parts rice vinegar and soy sauce.
TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD
FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP !!
GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD
!!TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY
BY: S.S
4. flautas de pollo A traditional Mexican dish, prepared and served in communal settings: it’s perfect for friends, family, and other social gatherings.
SAVORY
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Flautas literally means “flutes” in Spanish, named after its cylindrical shape for the musical instrument it resembles. I usually make mine with chicken as the filling (pollo), but you could do other fillings like cheese or beef. Flautas is probably one of my favorite dishes to make for friends, because it’s homemade and one of the recipes my mom has passed down to me! I enjoy the intimacy of cooking with others, setting aside the evening for both cooking and eating. While this meal takes some preptime, it is actually pretty easy to make and quite delicious—you can serve with crema, queso, lechuga, aguacate, or other toppings!!
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INGREDIENTS: • Pack of chicken breast • Goya adobo all purpose seasoning • Salt • Pepper • Paprika
• Can of diced tomatoes with jalapeños • 3-4 packs of Milagro tortillas • Oil for frying
PREPARATION: Take the thawed chicken breasts and season them generously. Use Sazón, salt, pepper, and then paprika to cover the chicken breasts in seasonings. Boil water in a pot large enough to hold the chicken breasts; once done seasoning, place the chicken breasts in the pot and boil for about 45 minutes on medium. Check occasionally and stir. Around the 45 minute mark, check the chicken with a fork to see how soft it is: it should be fully cooked, and shred easily. If it seems a bit tough, reduce to low-heat and boil for another 10-15 minutes. Once the chicken is cooked, take it out of the pot and shred the chicken in a mixing bowl: use two forks as shredding tools, as the chicken should be easy to tear apart. Be careful not to touch, as it will be hot! Once the chicken is shredded, mix in Can of diced tomatoes & jalapeños. Mix together thoroughly. Now, prep tortillas by heating them on stovetop: use a pan or any surface you can heat to warm your tortillas. This part is necessary, otherwise your flautas will come undone when frying! Fill the warm tortillas with chicken filling: roll into flautas, and rest them so that the flautas are lying on their seam (where the tortilla ends meet one another). Fill frying pan with a layer of oil for flautas. Place flautas in pan and fry them. You can fry to your preference: the less time spent, the softer it will be, the longer the more crunchy it will be. I usually wait about a minute or so on each side. When flautas are fried to your liking, remove and place on plate with paper towel to absorb excess grease. Continue frying and filling until you’re satisfied!! Serve with frijoles, aguacate, crema, lechuga, or any other sides you might like !
5.
BY: M.G
let me love you please,,. , ,im cruying let me ple as e,, Rice, beans, steak, and a whole lot of water sign energy.
SAVORY
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I really love this dish because it’s always been something that my mom would serve us not only to give us something to eat, but as a way to express her love and affection. It’s also super filling and so when I make it for other people, especially my chosen friends and family it’s a way of me telling them I love you in making sure that your body is wellnourished and warm (which is why I like to serve it hot).
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INGREDIENTS: Rice: • About a cup of rice • Vegetable oil • A handful of chopped onions • About half a little can of tomato sauce • 3 pinches of salt (or Adobo whatever your heart desires)
Beans: • Literally a can of pinto beans • Vegetable oil • More salt • You can do fresh beans?? That takes longer though and we’re in college so idk
Skirt Steak: • 3-4 slabs of skirt steak • Vegetable oil • However much adobo the meat needs • However much salt the meat needs • Lemon pepper (I love lemon pepper tbh I’m biased) • SPICE so cajun seasoning also
PREPARATION: The dish has 3 main portions; Mexican rice, pinto beans, and a third protein, usually skirt steak. To me it feels really hearty, especially with all the protein in the dish and it’s comforting; would say super savory and overall it’s supposed to be a comfort meal. I like serving it right off the stove so it’s piping hot (hot hot hot).
(recipe continues on next page)
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PREPARATION (cont.): Rice: Heat up some vegetable oil in a pot on low Put in your chopped onions and wait until they’re a little brown Put in a cup of rice and stir it around until some of the rice is a little brown Pour in half a little can of tomato sauce and stir in a little bit until you feel like the flavors are mixed together Pour in water until the rice is submerged and turn the stove up on high until it boils Add in the salt, adobo, and stir Turn the stove on low and cover for 30 minutes Wait for 15 minutes more because they just need to “get ready” even though they should’ve been ready an hour ago Complain a little Serve hot Beans: Put vegetable oil in a pan on low Pour in a can of beans Add the salt and stir Turn the stove on high and wait until the beans boil a little bit Then back on low Smash them a little bit Whisper a love song Skirt Steak: Put vegetable oil in a pan on low Season the steak with salt, adobo, lemon pepper, and cajun seasoning because she’s Flavorful Slide in the skirt steak and flip until she’s brown/dark brown Love her She deserves it
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fluffiest haus pancakes. FROM: TANSY PROS: Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix, although a couple more cents expensive than the cheapest brand, is around 2.39 per box, and can successfully feed around four people. Can get fun and creative with toppings. If you can splurge for the good syrup, do it. CONS: A little more labor intensive than dumplings, less sitting down and more up and moving. Could really use a hot griddle to make things faster if you have one, but that shit’s expensive. Make it a group purchase? TRICK: Follow the instructions to a T on the back of the box, but use a ladle spoon when scooping out the pancake batter. Fill about ½- ¾ of the ladle full when scooping. The pancakes will take more time, but once they hit properly cooked on the outside, the inside will still be a little tender and gooey. The kids tend to love that. FAV. TOPPINGSs: Blueberries and raspberries combo, Nutella and raspberry jam spread on top, classic chocolate chip.
TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD
FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP !!
GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD
!!TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY
BY: TANSY A SHORT STORY
confection confessions Untold secrets, affection, and baking your heart into a gift.
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My fingers were uncomfortably tacky from sweat as I rang the doorbell to her dad’s new home, partially from the merciless Midwestern heat and partially from unfounded apprehension that tapped against my chest like an extra heartbeat. The macarons rolled slightly in their plastic box, despite my best efforts to keep them still. Poppy opened the door with that small, quiet smile of hers and a soft greeting. I smile back. “Hey, happy birthday! I can’t stay long, but I made this for you. There’s three flavors.” Three confessions, a response to a conversation we had a handful of days ago. The last time we had hung out, Poppy had talked about a girl at her workplace. I had known from the private Instagram profile she had followed with me that Poppy was queer. Probably bi, if I had to guess. Like me. In response I had talked a little about drag- commenting, evading, and never admitting. After coming home that evening I had immediately started planning out what I’d bake with a renewed intensity.
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“The colorful ones are lavender-flavored shells with lemon curd.” Surprise! I’m bi! And I’m a drag king! But I kind of think you already know that. “The blue ones are earl-grey tea shells with dulce de leche filling.” I definitely had a crush on you in high school. I’m a sucker for girls with long curly hair and biting wit. “The last ones are green tea shells with vanilla cream. I think I made a mistake while making that batch though. They’re, actually a little gross… Sorry.” I don’t think I can ever come out to my parents. Either they wouldn’t believe me, or they’d never look at me the same way again. I don’t know what to do with these weird, bitter feelings. Poppy grinned. “Aww, thank you! You didn’t have to,” she said, accepting them carefully. I know she didn’t understand. This must be the fourth or fifth time I’ve given her home-baked confessions. Every time I try to speak about my own sexuality, the words turn into a small rock in my throat. Sometimes it’s the size of a jelly bean (swallow it down, keep talking) and sometimes it’s bigger than a Chinese dumpling. (Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.) It’s easier to let my actions speak for myself. What I perform, what I bake, what I write. But I’m working on it, I’m always working on it, and one day I want to be able to walk up those steps, look you in the eye, and tell you everything I’ve always wanted to say. Until then, though, I hope you don’t mind the macarons.
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6. sweet boys!
BY: H.G
They’re fried, covered in cinnamon and sugar, and hard to fuck up.
SWEET
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This recipe is my poor excuse for a Mexican buñuelo, those of which i grew up making with my dad and my brothers. I don’t make the dough myself like my dad would mainly because I’m disastrous in the kitchen and short on time. But the smell of them especially reminds me of home. Getting older and going to college has simultaneously meant being away from my family and forging a new one. The latter of which also meant coming further into my queerness and finding community through it. I make this for potlucks, events, and meetings usually.
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INGREDIENTS: • 1 pack of flour tortillas (from the mexican grocery store you had to take a 20 minute train ride to get to that always smells vaguely of fabuloso and chicharron). • Literally any kind of oil. • An absurd amount of sugar. • An equally absurd amount of cinnamon.
PREPARATION: Mix the cinnamon and sugar together in equal parts in a large bowl, and put it off to the side. Next, cut the flour tortillas into triangles. Fill a pot with a generous amount of oil (I wait until it starts making that crackling sound you know the one!). Drop those triangles in there and absolutely scream when the oil jumps out at you, then wait until they get nice and brown and probably start developing some air bubbles. As you pull them out, drop them into the cinnamon sugar mixture, and that’s literally it. If you burn them, just add more cinnamon and sugar. It cancels out like PEMDAS.
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BY: TANSY
7. fancy feels flan Makes 4: one for you, one for you at midnight, and two for your fancy occasion.
SWEET
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Wear your cutest apron and play a queer anthem suitable for the occasion!
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INGREDIENTS: Custard: • 1 ¾ cups milk • 3 eggs • 5 tbsp. sugar • Dash of vanilla
Caramel Sauce: • 3 tbsp. sugar • 1 tbsp. water
PREPARATION: 1. Put the milk and sugar in a saucepan on low heat. Stir until the sugar melts, then stop the heat and let cool for a hot minute. Don’t let the milk boil! 2. Break the eggs into a bowl and whisk away your worries. 3. Once the eggs are whisked, slowly whisk the milk into the eggs and add the vanilla. Feel free to experiment with other extracts, there’s nothing wrong with either lifestyle. 4. Pour the egg and milk mix through a strainer for future creaminess. This step can be skipped if you’re short a strainer, or you frankly don’t give a damn. 5. For the caramel- in a small pot, put the water and sugar in a pot and stir it quickly over high heat. When it turns brown, remove from the heat and pour into four cups. 6. Pour the egg and milk mix into the cups over the caramel. Muse over how perfect it’s going to be. 7. Fill a pot with water and put a steamer above it. When the water starts steaming, put the cups into the steamer. After 2-3 minutes on high heat, lower the heat and steam for another 13-15 minutes. Move the lid a little to let the heat escape. Alternatively, use a rice cooker. Learn how to vogue for fifteen minutes- my suggestions are Clue for late at night, and To Wong Foo for a mid-afternoon lounge. 8. Poke a hole in a flan with a toothpick. If juice doesn’t come out, it’s ready! Put it in the fridge to cool. Finish the campy classic with your preferred beverage. By the end of the movie your delicious desserts should be ready. Decorate and enjoy in any way you see fit.
8. creamy mess
BY: H.D
Smashed meringues, decadent whipped cream, and literally anything you want.
SWEET
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This recipe is technically an adapted version of an “Eton Mess,” a British recipe that emerged in the late 19th century consisting of smashed meringues, whipped cream, and fresh strawberries all mixed together into one yummy mess. But since you’re not confined in 19th century Britain, you can do whatever the fuck you want! The meringues add sweetness and texture, and the whipped cream acts as a binding agent that is also fucking delicious. But the rest is your call. Baking is both an art and a science, but you’re allowed to revel in disorder, step out of the box, and have fun with flavors and textures. Make a mess. Fuck it up.
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INGREDIENTS: Meringue: • 3 large egg whites • 1 cup, granulated sugar • ¼ tsp., cream of tartar, or a small squeeze of lemon juice • A pinch of salt
Garnishes: • A metric fuck ton of whipped cream • Whatever fruit is cheap at your closest grocery store • Alternatively, whatever you have in your fridge and pantry that would not taste gross mixed with sweet egg whites and whipped cream
PREPARATION: Meringues: Heat your oven to approximately 220 degrees F. While your oven pre-heats, add your egg whites to a super clean bow and start beating them on low speed with a hand-mixer, until frothy. Then, gradually add in your sugar, salt, and cream of tartar, and continue beating the whole mixture on medium speed. Beat the egg whites with the rest of the sugar until you reach what is called a stiff peak, where you can lift your mixer off of the surface and the meringue batter can form a peak that can stand on its own. At this point, most TV cooks will do that trick of upturning the bowl over their heads and watching as the meringue stays firmly put inside the bowl. This is fun, and I would highly recommend you try it out. Line a baking tray with parchment paper and place your meringue batter on top. Have fun with this process! Just make sure the batter gets on the baking tray and place it in the oven. It’ll take approximately one hour to bake depending on how you’ve shaped the meringues. You’re looking for meringues that are crispy on the outside, but slightly chewy and bouncy in the middle. Congratulations – you’ve just baked what is considered a French meringue, but who cares! You’re about to smash it all up anyway. Assembly: Literally smash your delicate meringues into pieces, toss them into a giant bowl of whipped cream, and throw in whatever garnishes suit your fancy. Nuts, fruits, jams, heck, even potato chips! Go wild, have fun, just…make sure it tastes decent!
BY: E.M
9. cinnamon roll cupcakes
SWEET
Recipe Created by La Fuji Mama (some Mom blog with a whole story behind the recipe whose cupcake week she ran in 2009 has played an outsized part in my life, at least, outsized for a blog’s 2009 cupcake week).
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To me this recipe that I associate with home because it is one that I have made both for and with so many people. I think the first time I made it was for a friend who had gotten really sick and had to be hospitalized, missing her high school graduation. I remember going over to her house with these cupcakes, as a way to say hello and check in. I can’t remember if I knew this at the time but she happens to be queer. Many of the people I have cooked these cupcakes with have been queer friends – I don’t think these cupcakes are necessarily queer but that my community is and that they get brought into my community. I have always loved cooking and baking –since we could reasonably be trusted to operate an oven, that was what my friends and I would do from middle school on. I have a distinct memory of being home from middle school on a snow day, baking bagels with my friend, and while the bagels boiled (bagels cook REAL WEIRD) chatting about how we both swore to never have a boyfriend until we were 16 (she’s ace, and I’m a lesbian sooo). That is maybe the earliest I can remember having some sense that my relationship to …relationships… wasn’t normative. The late nights of waiting for dough to rise have been some of the best senses of connection I’ve had with friends. These cupcakes are so good for this because they take so long and have sooo much downtime. It’s a recipe that’s built for a long evening of not doing much but spending time together. To me, making these cupcakes with people is a way to make space for each other, and making them for other is a way to show up for my people, in whatever way I can. Also, they’re delicious and can be eaten in mass quantities, so what’s not to love?
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INGREDIENTS: • 2 1/4 tsp. or 1 packet (1/4 oz./7 g) dry active yeast
(just hope it
isn’t expired lol) • 1/2 cup granulated sugar, divided • 1 cup warm milk, approximately 110 degrees Fahrenheit
(divided in half!)
(this is strangely precise but don’t kill the yeast so maybe use a thermometer for that? Also non dairy milk can take this role beautifully) • 2 eggs, room temperature (lmao no) • 1/3 cup butter, melted (if your stupid stomach “can’t digest lactose” dairy free butter doesn’t screw things up too much) • 1 tsp. salt (DON’t forget the salt) • 4 1/2 cups bread flour
(you def need more than this. But who needs bread flour? Just use the regular flour) • 1 cup brown sugar, packed • 2 1/2 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
(or more if you want rly?)
(make sure you have cinnamon on hand because otherwise why are you making cinnamon rolls I don’t know this from experience why are you asking) • 1/3 cup butter, softened
(actually just melt thisss)
PREPARATION: 1. Dissolve the yeast and 1/4 cup of the granulated sugar in the warm milk in a large bowl and let stand for about 10 minutes until foamy. (
this 10 minute waiting is annoying lol you get so excited for cupcakes and then ~chill~.) 2. Mix in the eggs, butter, salt, and other 1/4 cup of granulated sugar. Add flour and mix until well blended and the dough forms a ball. Put in a bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size (about one hour).
(Now this waiting is a lil bit better. Honestly so good to make these with friends and a good show to binge. This is the bulk of the work here, your hands will get so sticky but it’s silly and fun.)
3. After the dough has doubled in size, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, cover and let rest for 10 minutes. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar and cinnamon. Line cupcake pan with cupcake liners (I like to double them up because these cinnamon rolls are so moist), and lightly spray over the top of them with cooking spray.
(I have never remembered the cooking spray. To be fair I also often realize I don’t have cupcake liners, in which case I just kinda put them in cupcake tins and hope for the best.) 4. Roll dough into a 12×22 inch rectangle. Spread dough with 1/3 cup butter and sprinkle evenly with sugar/cinnamon mixture. Roll up dough and cut into 24 rolls (I use a length of dental floss–works like a charm!).
(this part is very fun. It’s cathartic. It also NEVER makes just 24 cinnamon rolls. It’s always way more than that, but that’s never a reason to be sad.) 5. Place each roll in a cupcake liner. Cover and let rise until nearly doubled, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
(There is so much rising involved in this recipe wow but it the great british baking show has taught us anything just let it prove and then you get much better dough and just keep telling yourself that when suddenly it is 2 AM and your cinnamon rolls aren’t even in the oven because you didn’t think about time well.) 6. Bake rolls in preheated oven until golden brown, about 10-12 minutes. Let rolls cool completely before frosting (or else the frosting will melt and slide off).
(Lmao don’t wait. Eat warm gooey cinnamon rolls and enjoy your life. <3)
FROSTING: The recipe has an elaborate frosting recipe but who ever has cream cheese in the house? Also I can’t eat dairy and am lazy. You can find your own frosting if you want. I usually just throw a bunch of powdered sugar in a bowl. Then I add water until the frosting is inevitably too thin, then I add more sugar, and more water until it’s the consistency I want. Add the water slowly. You probably need like at most a tablespoon per cup of powdered sugar. It’s almost certainly an exact science but I never learned it so I treat it like a complex mystery. Once you have frosting, put it on the cupcake 31
BY: TANSY
frustration. Every year, it feels like the things that I can’t tell my family grows by another. Another walk into the dark city, another wig in the closet, another poem when nobody’s reading, another kiss when nobody’s looking. Maybe it’s normal not to tell your family everything. Maybe it’s normal to feel like if I were more like them, and if they were more like others, we could talk openly around a big table, having a meal the American Way with American Ideals and American Happiness. Maybe it’s normal to tense up every time “controversial topics” come up in a conversation and feel your heartbeat spike while your head runs cool. Maybe it’s normal to rhythmically go down the Facebook list, finding the names of the people you’re closest to in order to ensure that they never see this post full of pride. Maybe it’s normal to be so proud of your accomplishments that you want to tell the world, only to stop because in fact you only want to tell the people that matter the most, and the people that matter the most to you can’t know about the world you live in. Maybe it’s normal to lie so easily that sometimes you do it even when it’s not completely necessary. Just because you don’t want to create a single hole in the “truth” that you’ve built. Just in case they try and peek in. But I don’t want it to be.
doing the queer food thing. 1 QUEER SOUP NIGHT www.queersoupnight.com Queer Soup Night is a Brooklyn-born queer party with soup at its center. Each event raises money for a community org, highlights the talent of queer chefs, and nourishes our community by gathering in an atmosphere of authentic inclusiveness.
2 EQUITY AT THE TABLE equityatthetable.com EATT is an easy-to-navigate database for food industry professionals featuring only women/gender non-conforming individuals and focusing primarily on POC and the LGBTQ community.
3 JOHN BIRDSALL johnwbirdsall.tumblr.com
TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD
FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP !!
GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD
!!TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY FOOD TIP GAY
U Q
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VO
: A SPOTLIG ICES
HT
john birdsall.
John Birdsall is a queer freelance writer whose work has been featured on Lucky Peach, Jarry, Bon AppĂŠtit, Eater, and Food & Wine. Having written extensively about the intersection of food, culture, and queer history, John is currently working on a biography of the late James Beard, and will soon be taking the helm at the inaugural Food Media Lab.
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I’d love to first hear a little bit about you! What was food like for you growing up? I grew up in Bay Area, live in Oakland now, and my family has lived in the Bay Area for several generations. My mom was a great cook who often made un-fancy food, full of comfortable California sensibilities, which meant lots of vegetables, even if they were sometimes canned or frozen because of the time period. We would always wait in anticipation for certain things to come into season, like artichokes and asparagus. I have a lot of fond memories of living with that level of seasonality. I wrote about this, but my neighbors across the canyon were a gay couple, Pat and Lou, who were basically considered our “uncles.” They were really close friends of parents, so I spent a lot of time over at their place. Lou did all the cooking in that family, so I ate a fair amount of Lou’s food as well, which tended to be meat-based dishes. Lou cooked what was considered “men’s food” or men’s “gourmet food” at the time — lots of meats, lots of rich sauces, pork roast, decadent hamburgers with things like blue cheese. It was very unlike my mother’s cooking. When did your first start your foray into food and writing? I considered myself a formal full-time food writer in 2002, since it took a couple of years to really be able to sell stories, to be anything close to being able to support myself. I actually started in the late 1980s. I went to undergrad at UC Berkeley with an English degree, and afterwards started writing (not about food) at a trade magazine in San Francisco. After a while I found that I didn’t like working in an office and switched to cooking professionally. I got an apprenticeship turned full-time job at a vegetarian restaurant called Greens. I learnt how to cook and worked professionally in restaurants for about 17 years after that. At some point, perhaps in 1986, I started writing a few things about food for an LGBTQ+ weekly paper that existed in San Francisco called The Sentinel, and that was the first thing I wrote that got published. Out of the 3 LGBTQ+ weekly papers that existed in the area at the time, The Sentinel was more of a feature-based weekly as opposed to a news outlet, and was mostly geared towards gay men. I had a friend who was the music writer there, who
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introduced me to the editor who was looking for a food writer. So I got hired, but I had no idea what I was doing. It may seem a little crazy and hard to believe now, but in the ‘80s, a queer publication that wrote about food was a difficult thing to wrap your mind around. Queer publications back then were really about politics, or information for the community, descriptions of night life and bars and parties…etc.. So for me, I was constantly questioning: “What is gay food? Can you identify it? Can you articulate it?” Questions like this became the big riddle that I thought about all the time. It’s so interesting that you bring that up, because I feel like those questions are still being grappled with and still being asked in our current food media climate, even with more queer voices and queer storytelling. Is this something you still experience, and are there other challenges? I don’t know if you follow Eric Kim [the Senior Editor and columnist at Food52] on Twitter, but he recently released a story on Pride and baking and received a lot of hateful messages. Those responses were both unsurprising and surprising to me. These days, I personally don’t get too much of the whole “stick to food” and “don’t talk about politics”kind of comments, probably because I have a specific flavor to my writing, and have sort of accumulated a small fanbase of people who still want that content. A lot of the resistance came earlier in my career, right around when I was my first “breakthrough” as a food writer in 2004. I was freelance, but was also the weekly restaurant critic for a daily newspaper at the East Bay - it was a pretty big paper with lots of circulation. I had an editor who liked my voice and would let me do a lot of crazy, experimental things with restaurant reviews. I didn’t specifically address any queer or culture issues at the time, but I tried to play around with the form. Readership of the paper, however, was super conservative, and I would get a lot of pushback comments saying things like: “if you want to write a novel, just write a novel.” In classic alt-weekly fashion, I kept trying to push beyond the role of critic, but that pushback was the biggest at that point.
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It seems like this rhetoric is still pretty prevalent today. I remember seeing on Twitter a few months back a lot of people saying things like: “Recipes these days make you read through somebody’s entire life story before giving you the recipe. Just give me the damn recipe.” What do you think about this? I also saw that thing about head notes being too long. These days, I can’t deny the role of food writing and recipe writing in providing a useful service and providing good information to the public. There has to be a balance between that goal and seeing all of that as an opportunity to both talk about culture and also to do it in a distinctive voice. It’s a fine balance to strike. Another big issue related to this is the economics of journalism and publishing. These days, there aren’t that many good editors who can help writer find that balance, so it’s definitely the challenge right now. So backtracking to queer food writing: on your Twitter bio, there is a specific sentence that reads: “Un-erasing queer experience in American food.” What do you mean by this? This really has to do with the James Beard biography that I’m writing now. In doing research for this, among many other things, I wanted to focus on Beard semi or completely hidden life as a gay man. Beard inhabited a really complicated world — especially after World War II — full of lots of elaborate coding, and then so much of Beard’s life was about erasing his tracks, sort of destroying letters and “incriminating evidence” that would indicate that he was gay and in a long-term relationship with a man. That really has been the focus of this project, and I feel like, at some point, writing the biography became a way to honor beard’s gayness. I feel like I have a responsibility to do that, and a responsibility to Beard to let him speak in a way that he would otherwise be inhibited to speak. The problem was: one of Beard’s long time editors who was also a closeted gay man sort of de-queered his voice. This editor basically re-wrote Beard’s voice to sound a certain way to make it sound almost professorial, not too effusive, not too [particularly] mannered, as a way to make him sound not gay. A process of de-gaying beard’s voice. There was also the problematic area of men in cooking, men writing recipes, men teaching cooking classes.
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Nika Hazelton, who used to run the Food section of the New York Times, used to do a December round up of the best cookbooks of the year, and in 1965, a lot of the cookbooks were written by men, men who were closeted. The beginning of her piece that yearwas an interesting/disturbing piece talking about this phenomenon about men writing cookbooks and how strange it was that the kitchen apron was the new mark of “transvestites.” It shows how deeply uncomfortable the food culture was with men. Back then, there was was a very specific genre of male cookbooks: the role of men in cooking was to be “gourmets” who cook occasionally as recreation and would usually cook elaborate things to seduce women. In this prescription, men would only make “something women would be incapable of making,” things with elaborate strong flavors. This was the prescriptive role for men writing cookbooks. Here, you have male authors writing cookbooks about feeding your family, and not just be the “ntrepid man rolling into the kitchen on a sunday to make a mess. Of course, the real battle was happening with women. With the Cold War, gender roles in America were loosening in the 20s-30s, and during the disruption of the wars a lot of rules were put aside. After the war, these draconian gender rules sort of came smiting down, and women had to do things like cook for the family, keep the men interested, keep the men from having affairs by cooking them a delicious dinner, looking nice and not complaining, all of that stuff. And during all this time was also the lavender scare: not only were we rooting out the communist, we were also rooting out the homosexuals. There’s this myth about Stonewall that talks about people standing up for the first time and that we “fought for our rights,” but it wasn’t entirely like that at all. There wasn’t this kind of thriving New York gay city culture, and a lot of the work and harm fell onto people of color, black and brown people. There’s really a lot of queer history that is still being hidden from the public today. The second season of POSE premiered on FX several days ago, and I saw on Twitter that it was through that episode that a fair
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amount of young queer people — people around my age — even learned about ACT UP for the first time, which was wild to me. There is this enormous inertia for queer people not to know our history and not to know these things. For me, I’m constantly checking myself with my writing about whether or not I’m making it too gay. I have 2 literary agents who are both gay men, and we spent 10 months writing a proposal for the Beard book, and that was a super long process. We went back and forth a lot because they were really responding to things in the market. So sometimes, my agents would come back and tell me: “we told you to make it gay and now you’ve made it a little too gay.” Other times, they would come back again to say: “last time we told you to make it less gay, but we need you to make it gayer again.” Of course, they were trying their best to sell it they were trying to sell it. And even myself, I constantly hear this voice saying “Oh this is trivial, just keep writing about food. Why are you pushing so hard for this gay thing?” There is still this internalized voice that still says: “Why does it matter?” How do you bring yourself away from that voice? Like I said before, I feel like I have a responsibility to Beard himself to present authentically who he was. I’ve never written a biography before and it’s a weird task — I have to be truthful to who the person was, and that’s a huge psychic weight. Beard died in 1985, and previous biographies were written when Beard and many people close to Beard were still alive [and accessible]. Now, there aren’t many people alive who knew Beard, and those who are constantly tell me to “not make [the biography] too gay.” It’s been a process of overcoming all of that resistance. Let’s move onto another part of your writing career. You wrote for and edited a lot of cookbooks, such as “Hawker Fare: Stories & Recipes from a Refugee Chef’s Isan Thai & Lao Roots” with James Syhabout, “Season” with Nik Sharma, and “The New Filipino Kitchen,” which was coincidentally an assigned text for our class. What is it like working on cookbooks?
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So “Hawker Fare” was the only cookbook that I actually contributed more than a foreword to. Before we wrote that book, James [Syhabout, author of “Hawker Fare”] was only an acquaintance; we weren’t close friends or anything. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do a chef’s cookbook — it just felt like [writing a chef’s cookbook] was not a thing I wanted to do, but I eventually did it because I loved James’ story, a story very rooted in Oakland. It took a couple of years and 2 trips to Southeast Asia to do the book, and that was really a process of getting to know James to write in his voice. James doesn’t write for a living, so I had to put in lots of work writing for the book, and get it in shape. It was really a process of getting James’ psychology, the psychology of a chef who has the experiences that he has. In a way, it is actually very similar to writing the biography of a deceased person — looking at the material long enough to get a sense of a person’s voice and see and taste things from their perspective. I only edited and worked on the recipes and didn’t test anything, and wasn’t involved in the recipe development in any way. Would I do another chef’s book? It would have to be a very, very special chef. James is not gay but, in a way, he had a queer story, perspective, and point of view; that was a way I could enter and tell that story. James was somebody who felt constrained in all kinds of ways in being his authentic self and cooking the food he was rooted in and needed a breakthrough to continue. It’s very much a sort of coming-out narrative of discovering himself. These days, there’s a certain way that fine dining chefs incorporate the food of their mothers, and that’s not the way that James does it, so I could feel the pressure and inhibition on him. Just the pressure of cooking a Southeast Asian cuisine for a white audience or a non-SEA audience. How you run a profitable business? Do you change the food to fit what the people expect? Or are you a purist, following through with traditions? Perhaps in a traditional recipe the meat is tough and chewy and that is its virtue. You have chew through fat, chew through meat, and let the flavor linger in your mouth, which is not always a common experience. Educating the public about things that can be super hard.
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If you have to scream one thing into the void and everybody has to listen to it, what would it be? The general, prescriptive answer would be: “put fear aside.” Doing that is perhaps flirting with the fantasy of standing up — maybe it’s the stonewall myth of people being fed up and fighting back. But [much like the untold stories before and behind Stonewall,] fighting is a life long process of realizing the extent of the fear under which one lives, and so many shackles that you place on yourself that keep you from speaking or realizing that you have a right to speak. I remember this quote from Kristin Perry, a plaintiff at the Hollingsworth v. Perry trial (about the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, which excluded same-sex couples from marriage). In an interview with OUT magazine in 2014, Perry said something along the lines of: “You just grow up, you just accept things…At some point little by little you realize you’ve been denied all these things, a system that have denied you all these things, at some point you have to stand up and say that you can’t be denied all these things anymore.” All of this was about fighting against fear, and it connects well once again to the Beard book. I hope that could be my legacy, that I could be a voice that would say: “Take the time that it takes to realize the amount of oppression and fear you’ve been living in.” Finally, as queer people, we often talk a lot about the idea of building a home and building a chosen family. What is one dish that you would make for your chosen family? I learned to cook in the specific landscape of the Bay Area, and specifically at Greens. There, they had a farm that they raised all sorts of things for the restaurant. Because of this, I was really steeped in that way of cooking, the classic Alice Water style, really cooking from the landscape you’re living in. So I would cook a salad, and it would always be different, depending on what’s around, finding harmony and balance with what’s growing and what’s at hand. This actually also speaks to my “scream in the void” answer. You can see where you are, you can look at all the forces that hold you back, and making a perfect salad that has these elements that are balanced and seasonal is a way of taking these restrictions and making them beautiful.
with deepest thanks: To the incredible folks who extended their time, love, and kindness to write these recipes and allowed me a brief window into their worlds. To B.W, who doubles as my rational Capricorn support and basically my creative director. To John Birdsall, for clearing a brief space in his incredibly busy schedule to share with me his life stories and his wisdom. To professor Patricia Nguyen and my peers in Performing Asian Diaspora Foodways, for creating a space that challenged me to make shit happen. To my mother, for giving me life, passion, empathy, and a voracious appetite, even if sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll never actually read these words. And to queer people all over the world, for existing, living, thriving, fighting, and moving us all forward.