#ChineseFoodiesofIG: Coral Lee of Meant To Be Eaten

 

This is part of an ongoing series of interviews I’m doing with my favourite Chinese foodies that I follow on Instagram. Come and follow the #ChineseFoodiesofIG hashtag on Instagram and leave a comment showing your support for these talented folk!

Where are you from? Where are you really from?

Southern California. Newport Beach, California. ;-)

What does home taste like?

Eggs fried in sweet soy sauce. Leftover rice fried with ginger.

How did you learn to cook?

I was probably 16? I was flipping through channels, and came across Paula Deen making a bisquick chicken pot pie (I know, awful). I approximated a version with what we had on hand: bisquick, cream of chicken soup, frozen peas. It was pretty gross. But it stuck — I was fascinated with American cuisine/culture that usually existed only outside of my home. But here it was, inside our kitchen, albeit in this warped form.
I have since been trying to reconcile that tension— a struggle not uniquely mine: the external perception of me as Asian, my family seeing me as Americanized, my self-perception as not being either, fully.

Share a food memory:

Sitting on gung-gung’s lap at dim sum, eating an egg tart. I was probably two? Most of the egg tart ended up all over myself.

What’s in your fridge?

Egg yolks currently salt-curing, every kind of rendered animal fat, mujadarra and pasta for my week’s meals, half a bottle of Channing Daughters aperitivo wine, MOKA cold brew, oat milk.

Most underrated Chinese ingredient:

I currently am on a salted egg yolk kick! They add a perfectly savory ooziness to everything they touch.

Dream dinner party guests:

Gabrielle Hamilton, Mary H.K. Choi, David Foster Wallace.

Who’s your Chinese food legend?

Turkey, played by Karen Mok, from God of Cookery.

What would you like to tell the world about Chinese food?

This has been getting better lately, because of interest in regionality, but — don’t let one understanding or experience of Chinese food define the rest. American-Chinese food is very different from Cantonese, from Sichuanese, from Taiwanese (...is Taiwanese food Chinese, even?). It’s unfair, inaccurate, and ignorant to call Chinese food greasy, sickly-sweet, or headache-inducing without knowing the history of American-Chinese food :-)

 
#ChineseFoodiesofIGJenny Lauchinese identity, podcast, chinese american food, chinese americanComment