LA Sonby Roy Choi, Tien Nguyen, and Natasha Phan
I read it for the recipes and was surprised by the story.
First, about the recipes. I think I want to own them. There are dozens I want to try, starting with kimchi and not ending wtih Gumbo, pounded pork schnitzel, and beef cheek tacos. Dunno about the cheek--I'll probably cheat on that. The kimchi is going to be weird enough--take a head of Napa cabbage and stuff between the leaves with fish sauce, shrimp, oysters, garlic, onion, and other stinky stuff; let it ferment at room temperature for a couple of days, then refrigerate for a few weeks. Maybe I'll see if I can buy a jar at the supermarket rather than risk poisoning myself. Plus I'm not sure if I can find kochukaru, ground Korean chili pepper. Maybe if I printed out the characters and went to an Asian grocery, comparing my printout to the labels, I could recognize some.
Second, the story. Mr. Choi's life is a classic story of, "How many times can a person go wrong and still turn out all right?" Growing up amid a cultural collision, he jumped on every time-wasting brain-draining bandwagon he encountered--drugs, fighting, drinking, gambling, and worst of all, banking! Yes, he spent a short eternity selling mutual funds.
(That previous paragraph isn't a spoiler--you know he gets to cooking in the end or this book would never have been written.)
You don't hear much about his personal life after the cooking starts, but I'll give him an okay on that one. He mentions this and apologizes and that's all right. We'll give him the privacy--he's told an awesome enough already.
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