andrew x. pham

A Culinary Odyssey: My Cookbook Diary of Travel, Flavors, and Memories of Southeast Asia

 

 

 

A HUGE “THANK YOU!” to all my backers. We made goal!!! The stars have aligned and the project is a “GO!” 

Thank you everyone for getting the word out and for your cheerful support.

I’m really looking forward to sending you all this very special project. Please know that you all have a hand in bringing this work to the world.

A heartfelt Thank You to all of you who made this possible!

 

 

At my site

http://www.andrewxpham.com/kickstarter/Season%20Greetings.pdf

 

About This Project:

This is the culmination of a lifetime of passionate eating, traveling, writing, and cooking: 40 of my favorite and simplest recipes from the cuisines of my roots, then and now.

But it’s so much more than a cookbook. It’s love, it’s life. It’s everything I know about living, culture, and food from the land of my birth and my chosen home for the past decade.

In addition to 40 fantastic recipes with photos, you will find a host of essays, information, tips, and hard-earned insights, including the followings: 

• The secret of my grandmother’s coconut caramel–the soul of all claypot dishes–which has no parallel the world over (this alone is worth several times the price of the book–you’ll find it nowhere now, but it’ll be everywhere soon hereafter)
• Why food is such a profound expression of love in Asian culture
• The meaning of “eating bland/salty” and “chasing the fat”
• Table etiquette in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia (hint: they’re all different)
• How to behave and how to eat when invited to the Southeast Asian table/dining mat
• Where to go & what to savor when traveling in Southeast Asia
• The distinguishing characteristics of each cuisine
• How to become a restaurant critic (like yours truly)
• The flow of history and its influences on regional cuisines
• How the Vietnam conflicts have influenced other cuisines in the region
• How to cook rice perfectly on the stove top in an ordinary pot
• Morning glories–the truest vegetable of Southeast Asia–stir-fried four ways in four countries
• The significant implications of: “Waiter, there’s chicken stock in my fish soup!”
• The major changes in traditional cooking (for instance, how Thai cooks cope when the price of coconut jumped 500% in 3 years)
•  How to cook simply and effectively, tips and techniques from the primitive kitchen
• The eating habits of Vietnamese, Thais, Laotians, and Cambodians
• And so, so much more …

We made goal so I will be sending the books and goodies to all of you, my backers, in March 2012!

Now we come to the real question:

Why would anyone who doesn’t have a restaurant, cooking show, catering business, or culinary school want to publish a cookbook?

For me, it has been a passion and a gamble.

1.     THE PASSION:

It all started twelve years ago, after the successful publication of my first book. I had been working as a food writer and restaurant critic in the Bay Area for five years, since 1994, and as far as I knew, I was the first Vietnamese-American in this line of work. I had been toying with the idea of writing a dining guide for the Bay Area with the title “Silicon Bites”, an extensive dining guide to the smorgasbord of cuisines and restaurants available in this fertile and ethnically diverse region. 

When I approached my beautiful and wonderful agent (and now famous author of The Sky Is Everywhere) Jandy Nelson about this idea, she countered with an even more brilliant idea: a literary cookbook combining the skills of a professional writer and the culinary talents of a top chef. She introduced me to Charles Phan, the Vietnamese-American owner of the famous Slanted Door Restaurant in San Francisco.

It seemed a good match. With the Kiriyama Prize and the Whiting Award under my belt along with years in food writing, I could be a suitable partner for Charles Phan who was (and is) widely recognized as one of the best Vietnamese-American chefs. His smart revamp of Viet dishes, a la Chez Panise, started a wave of upscale Vietnamese restaurants across the country.

All three of us met at his establishment, excited about Jandy’s concept, and discussed ways to execute this visionary project. I would plan to relocate to the Mission District in San Francisco near his restaurant and spend a couple of months with Charles, watching him cook to take notes for the book and interviewing him to write essays about his life and approach to food. Charles would cook for me and re-write his “restaurant recipes” and make them appropriate for the home kitchen.

But, as the French saying goes: “L’homme propose, Dieu dispose” –Man proposes, God decides.

At the time, I was traveling up and down the West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego, chasing a story about Vietnamese gangs, gambling, and drugs. Charles had a second baby on the way and another restaurant opening up. We planned to get together the moment our lives settled down, but we both became too busy and distracted and never followed up on the project.

Embedded in my mind, the idea kept evolving over the years as I left America for adventures in Southeast Asia where I traveled far and wide on a shoestring budget, searching for the best dishes, and following an idea for another book–all the while working on my second novel, taking food notes, and collecting recipes. I’ve been abroad ten years and counting.

Why am I doing this? Two reasons.

First, I love good food. If I weren’t a writer and a wanderer, I’d be a chef/restaurant owner (I suppose, if I’m lucky, there is time yet. Reminder to self: buy lottery tickets).

Second, I treasure good memories, and nothing brings back treasured moments, feelings, atmosphere of places, and faces of people I adore like food–the taste, texture, aroma, and flavor profile from the first bite to the last lingering aftertaste.

So, at last, after years of dining, writing, recipe collecting, cooking and refining, I am nearly ready to publish my cookbook diary–but it’s not just any cookbook. It’s my life, much of what I know about food, my family’s heirloom culinary secrets, Asian cuisines and cultures, and dishes from my other books. Most are things I have cooked and eaten all my life. I’ve picked 40 of my favorite and simplest recipes that are also representative of my preferred region of Southeast Asia, namely, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.

These recipes are, in my mind, a sort of mile markers of my life. Between them are the things I’ve experienced and learned, captured within the covers in the form of essays and anecdotes. I hope you will find some of them interesting and helpful.

ABOUT MY APPROACH TO COOKING

I cook the way I live: simple and intense.

My kitchen comprises of a two-burner gas range, one wok, one sauce pot, one soup pot, a Pyrex glass mixing/cooking bowl, a cutting board, a mortar pestle set, three knives, a peeler, a long pair of cooking chopsticks, a spatula, and a Swiss army knife (can opener, wine corkscrew, bottle opener, etc.). My entire collection of Asian sauces and spices fits inside a plastic container the size of a shoe box. As I relocate quite frequently, my whole cooking set easily travels in a large suitcase.

In life as in cooking, if you know what you’re doing, you can do a lot with a little.

(*Although sometimes, it’s much more fun to have no idea what you’re doing.)

2.     THE GAMBLE: 

According to a friend who published three years ago, there is no money to be made in writing cookbooks. In his case, the $10,000 book advance was immediately used for buying food, props, and cooking supplies ($2k), paying for professional photography ($6k), and hiring another chef to assist and test his recipes ($2k). He spent three intensive months cooking and writing. When the book landed on store shelves, he used another $4,000 of his own money to promote it. He did eventually earn out his advance, but his yearly royalties were only enough to buy a few bottles of wine.

His primary motivation for publishing was to market his corporate catering business, and in this respect, his efforts paid much better dividends.

But that was several years ago–ancient history in the print world. Recently, the quick rise of cooking websites pushed cookbooks right off the publishing table. Since recipes can not be copyrighted, good dishes discovered in cookbooks often get posted on the internet, rarely with credit to their origins.

So, generally speaking, traditional cookbook publishing (and making a living writing cookbooks) have gone the way of the water buffalo, which is a little sad for me because I haven’t delivered my humble little book to the world.

However, there is a glimmer of hope, a new niche, in the digital world for books such as mine, and I am curious enough about this new medium to take the gamble of writing and publishing my own book. I’ve already invested more money and time into this project than I can afford. Now, to go the final step, I’m seeking funding from donors and supporters on Kickstarter.

About half of the funds raised on Kickstarter will be for design and formatting the book for e-publication and for printing a limited edition of the book (with a softcover, full color photos, 120 pages). Another portion will be spent on rewards/gifts for Kickstarter donors. The rest will be spent on food, photography, and props.

I’m putting my savings, heart, and soul into this project because I believe in it. I know that what I have to say in my book have not yet been published anywhere.

A Culinary Odyssey is only 40 recipes. It is a humble work from the heart, not an ambitious encyclopedic tome filled with dishes most readers will never cook. I have no desire to repeat what others have done. This is my personal collection of the best of the best–recipes I’ve cooked, refined, and enjoyed for decades, more times than I can recall. 

And I’m bringing it all to you for the modest price of a small latte: $3

If you love Southeast Asian food, literature, travel, or even simply cheering for the underdog, please help me bring this vision to life.

Please visit my Kickstarter funding venture.

You have my heartfelt thanks!

Cheers,

Andrew X. Pham