Food and Identity: Cooking with College Students

By Erin Zubarik

Do undergraduate students cook? If they cook, how do they cook? What do they cook? In this ebook, New York University student Erin Zubarik explores these questions by cooking with six undergraduate students. Each installment a student shares a recipe, and the history, methodology, and personal significance of each dish is observed. This collection suggests that cooking in college can be more than ramen and pasta, and that recipes often contain memories that say a lot about who we are and where we are coming from.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781716173820

Book preview

Food and Identity: Cooking with College Students 

Food and Identity: Cooking with College Students

First Edition

Copyright © 2021 by Erin Zubarik

All rights reserved.

ISBN:978-1-716-17382-0

Alison’s Lu Rou Fan

The smell of sizzling pork and shallots wafts through the hallway, and I eagerly follow the smell by stepping into Room 914. My friend Alison is making Lu Rou Fan 滷肉饭--a beloved Taiwanese pork stew. I am eager to learn how to make the dish, which I have researched a bit beforehand.

The origins of Lu Rou Fan are disputed, however, most people claim the Han and Hakka people from China’s Fujian province brought this style of pork stew to Taiwan. In the 1850s, there was an influx of Fujianese settlers in Taiwan. These immigrants were mostly poor farmers who were creative about using the least appetizing animal parts. They discovered mincing pork and boiling it in soy sauce did the trick, and this was likely the beginnings of Lu Rou Fan.

There is a sensory overload in the kitchen. Alison’s roommate chats on the phone while carving a Jack-O-Lantern. A guest speaker for one of her engineering classes lectures about computer security. On top of this, a small speaker hums lofi music. This is an amount of multitasking I can’t wrap my head around, and I ask how she does it.

Oh, ya know. I figure the class doesn’t take up much of my attention, and cooking doesn’t take much. So if I only did one thing it would just be a waste of time.

Fair enough. I hope my interview will not be a task too many!

Alison is from the bay area in San Francisco, and I met her during my freshman year at NYU Florence. The first time we talked she told me she wanted to be an