Soup, and Shared Humanity
Much more than broth and rice
At BIPOC Foodways Alliance and Immigrant Kitchen tables, we don’t get involved, administratively, with what our co-hosts choose to cook.
We simply ask that they cook something highly personal to them, something close to their heart, and something that they feel is imbued with story. Sometimes, this concept is a difficult sell-- anyone who is concerned with cooking and feeding people must first consider their guests. Will they like it? Will they eat this or that? What are their dislikes and aversions?
This is also a very American concept. I recently took an extensive trip to Bolivia, and I ate everything that was put in front of me at any given moment. This was basically an expectation, and I abided by it. Almost all of the food was delicious, but would I have ordered it off of a menu if given a choice? Sometimes yes, and other times no. But by eating everything that was set in front of me-- a sacrificial llama, a spiced purple corn drink called api morado that kept me going all day; giant Amazonian Ants-- I got a true taste of Bolivia that I most certainly would not have received had I been more particular about what I was willing to put in my mouth.
I am as aware anyone that what we put in our mouths is one of the most highly personal things any person can do-- and so we don’t ask anyone to eat something they seriously can’t, or don’t want to. I lived through the era of the American chef rediscovering nose-to-tail cooking, and if I have to face down another slab of headcheese again in my life, I swear I’ll flip the table.
Still, it’s endlessly fascinating to me what our co-hosts choose to serve once I soothe their misgivings that no, really, we want to eat what you eat.
I know that in Phonn Sann’s family-- who have co-hosted with us twice now-- there is endless debate about which dishes should be served. Even within a family, taste preferences, and meaning, is personal. At her first BFA Table, the family settled on salaw koko, a chicken and vegetable soup thickened with toasted rice powder, lemongrass paste, and prahok (or prohok,) a fermented fish paste ubiquitous in Cambodian cooking.
Asked why this dish was chosen, Phonn simply said, “It truly a Cambodian dish.” This turned out to be the title of the piece I wrote on Phonn, because everything she needed to say was in that bowl of soup. Phonn is not a loquacious woman-- in fact, I think she sees talking about food as a little bit stupid-- why talk about food when you can cook, and eat it? It’s all there in the bowl. The whole story. A whole world of words.
Interestingly, at our first-ever Immigrant Kitchen event, our second co-host, Sina War, also chose to cook salaw koko. While no dish can mean the same thing to any one person, even in a family, I loved how Sina described her soup as a “deep cuts” kind of dish. One that she wouldn’t serve to just anyone looking for an intro to Cambodian food, but instead something beloved by her own people, perhaps more than a bit challenging to the uninitiated. And here was a room full of willing strangers, eating it.
It’s worth asking ourselves what it takes to get these flavors to the table. The generations, borders, ordeals, pain, sorrow, victories, and unknowable histories and hands that these bowls are imbued with. If we were only interested in the parts of Cambodian food that serve us— that are pleasing to our own palates— we cannot be introduced to the fullness, the true integrity of the story.
My friend Michael Shaikh has recently published The Last Sweet Bite, Stories and Recipes of Culinary History Lost and Found, a book he was inspired to write after spending 20 years as a human rights investigator in global locations marred by political crisis and armed conflict. In his work, people kept coming up to him with parts of recipes, lists of ingredients, asking: “Can you help us save this knowledge?” Eventually, he knew he had to do something.
“Genocide, occupation, and civil war can disappear treasured recipes,” the book jacket describes. But Michael’s aim with the book is to introduce us to the “extraordinary yet overlooked home cooks and human rights activists trying to save them.”
Indeed, Phonn is not simply a home cook, but to my mind a human rights activist too, even if she doesn’t mean to be.
You can feel this activism it in her ba baw banh canh sach moun, a poultry porridge with rice and thick, chewy, cut noodles. As we ate, Phonn’s daughter Soktevy spoke of the killing fields, where entire families were forced to live on watery soup with only a few grains of rice.
As Phonn ladled bowls of ba baw banh canh sach moun with an abundance of rice and noodles, I couldn’t help but think that what we were witnessing was nothing short of shared humanity.
Phonn, who knows what it is like firsthand to starve, chose to feed our guests the abundance she did not always have access to herself. To me, his felt like a moment of reverent reallocation-- an offering of what she didn’t have, but now does. Phonn’s bowls were a counterpoint to what she had suffered-- and survived.
In his book How to Know A Person, the Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, David Brooks writes: “Evil happens when people are unseen-- when they don’t see the personhood in other human beings.”
Phonn and her family have experienced such evil. What we hope to accomplish at BFA and Immigrant Kitchen is to provide an entry point for us to tap into one another’s shared humanity. To recognize, and to dignify that which makes us all sacred as humans.
I believe that food has the power to open these portals. When Sina weeps while describing her grandfather-- his love of pro wrestling and American culture-- it’s not just conjuring his name that makes her memories so vibrant, but her decision to serve his beloved lemongrass skewers, meticulously holding them over the fire of the grill, igniting the fragrance of charred meat, and conjuring the very shadow of his own hand while doing so.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that bitter melon is so prominently featured in salaw koko, the”deep cuts” soup that both of these families chose to serve. The Cambodian refugee story, the way I am coming to understand it from my friends in the community, is one of such harsh reality, that it is often only spoken of in the most offhanded, mundane ways-- in between other subjects— while passing the salt, for instance.
In salaw koko, bitter melon is napped up against other, more prosaic veggies, like eggplant or zucchini, doing their balancing act. Then, there is the reassuring smoke of toasted rice powder, all giving the bite of melon the space to say what it finally needs to say.
Many members of Phonn’s family did not survive the Cambodian genocide. What Phonn is now doing with her survival-- filling the bowls of others-- is a quiet yet profound gesture in reaching not just across generations and borders, but touches the humanity of those of us open to receiving it.
Check back here for more story on Phonn and Sina, and also for preorder tickets for our next Immigrant Kitchen coming up in June. Tickets go on sale soon!
This is so wise and so beautiful Mecca,
Thank you!