WONTON WOMEN
Why Chinese-ish?
During the pandemic, Rosheen Kaul began documenting all the inauthentic Asian recipes she loved to eat and asked her friend Jo Hu to illustrate them. That became The Isol (Asian) Cookbook on which this book, Chinese-ish, is based. As immigrants with Chinese heritage, who both moved to Australia as kids, Rosheen and Joanna spent their formative years living between (at least) two cultures and wondering how they fitted in. Food was a huge part of this journey: should they cling to the traditional comfort of their parents’ varied culinary heritage, attempt to assimilate wholly by learning to love shepherd’s pie, or forge a new path where flavour and the freedom to choose trumped authenticity? They chose option three.
Chinese-ish celebrates the confident blending of culture and identity through food – taking what you love and rejecting what doesn’t work for you. It’s a bounty of inauthentic Chinese-influenced dishes from Hong Kong to Southeast Asia, including the best rice and noodle dishes, wontons and dumplings, classic and not-so-classic Chinese mains, and even a Sichuan sausage sanga that would sit proudly at any backyard barbie.
Rosheen Kaul is head chef at Melbourne’s Etta restaurant, where she cooks a menu as culturally diverse as she is, born in Singapore to parents of mixed Asian heritage (Kashmiri, Peranakan Chinese and Filipino). Joanna Hu is an illustrator and ex front-of-house at Vue de Monde, Saint Crispin and Fat Duck restuarants, as well as being the daughter of Chinese Australian parents.
