Book Review: Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice: A Thai Comic Book Cookbook

reviewed by Cord A. Scott, UMGC Okinawa

Christina De Witte and Mallika Kauppinen. Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice:  A Thai Comic Book Cookbook. New York:  Ten Speed Graphic, 2024. 208 pp. US $22.99. ISBN:  978-1-9848-6160-3. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/709867/noodles-rice-and-everything-spice-by-christina-de-witte-and-mallika-kauppinen/

For the culinary curious, but challenged, any sort of cookbook can be fraught with anxiety and frustration. What might seem simple on paper may turn nightmarish in the kitchen. However, the origins of food are far more intriguing for readers and culinary practitioners. For Christina De Witte and Mallika Kauppinen, the goal of combining food origins, recipes, and an ease of explanation is in Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice. As with so many books, it is a labor of love, as well as a long creative process to the final product.

In the first part of the book, the authors describe the manner in which they came to work on this project. For Christina, it was growing up as a mixed-race woman in Belgium. While she spoke Flemish most of her life, she often felt not quite comfortable in either her European life, or that of her Thai origins, of which she knew very little. It was only after she became an adult that she decided to embark on a quest to learn her mother’s language, which led her to an online teacher, Mallika (10).

Mallika’s story was interesting and meandering. She grew up in southern Thailand and started assisting in her family restaurant early on. She moved to Bangkok and worked at an aunt’s restaurant through adulthood. As an adult, she worked as a travel guide, and while in Finland, she met her now husband. After establishing a new life, she started cooking for neighbors, started a restaurant, and then took on virtual students for a Thai language class, which is where the two met.

The first part of the book describes the general areas of Thailand and how the food is a reflection of the local interaction with related cultures. For example, southern Thai food is spicy and heavily influenced by Malay and Indonesian culture, while the northern area has a Chinese influence. The Northwest is influenced by India and Bangkok is metropolitan and almost unto itself (17-21). From this point, the book goes into a variety of dishes made with specific ingredients. These form the chapters and are reflective of the areas in which the recipes originated.

From this point, the book is divided into chapters on ingredients, snacks and starters, noodle dishes, rice dishes, curries and soups, desserts and drinks, and finally, staples of Thai cooking. The first section, which discusses equipment, as well as Asian spices and ingredients, emphasizes the importance of cooking devices such as rice cookers (for ease), woks (for a traditional feel), as well as items, such as a mortar and pestle, for properly blending some of the ingredients. The authors also note what ingredients work best, which can be frozen for later use, and which sauces are authentic. Of particular interest was the “three buddies” spice (34-35), consisting of cilantro, garlic and peppercorn, which is frequently used in Thai cooking. The use of spices is another area of detail, as those not overly familiar with Thai cooking may shy away from chilies. The authors note that it often is left to the cook to decide, but, overall, the chilies bring a balance of flavor to the dish (36-37).

From this point, the descriptions become more precise, and again offer historical context. In the noodles chapter, some noodles originate from China and their texture and style may alter the presentation of the dish. There is also a historical overview of the flooding in Bangkok in 1942, when roadside restaurants were able to make dishes that all could quickly get, and were delicious at the same time.

The chapter on curries even offers some humor. For example, it is recommended to wear either regular work goggles (or even swim goggles!) when preparing curries. The pounding of the chilies causes some to fly out and it runs a risk of getting into the eyes. The cosmopolitan nature of Thai food, especially from Bangkok, is expanded with the brief history of Maria Guyomor di Pinha. She was of mixed heritage and introduced egg yolk desserts from Europe to the Thai community. When combined with other items, such as papayas and pineapples, introduced from Portugal (23), it has given Thai food a unique taste profile and quality that is renown the world over.

This book is a lively read, with effective explanations of the recipes. The preparation may inhibit those who are culinarily challenged (reviewer included), but, at the same time, does have one minor issue:  substitutions for items such as fish sauce or squid sauce when preparing the food. This may frustrate those who have allergies to shellfish. Additionally, there are few truly vegetarian dishes, for those who do not consume meat. The assumption is that one would cook the dish without meat, but this will also alter the original taste. However, this was one of the few issues that was noted.

On the whole, the book was a fast, engaging read that offers a new way to educate people on the history of food from a specific region, while offering visual references to the cooking process. In the end, there is also the additional engagement of not just reading but making the food. And in the end, it’s not only nourishment for the brain, but also the body.

 

Book Review: Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan. The World of Kusazōshi.

reviewed by John A. Lent

Laura Moretti and Satō Yukiko, eds. Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan. The World of Kusazōshi. Leiden and Boston:  Brill, 2024. 634 pp.+xxv. US $114.00 (Hardback). ISBN:  978-90-04-50410-3. https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/61019

 

In recent months, comics scholarship has been enriched by three characteristics that this reviewer has called for since the early 1990s--an approach that covers regions outside of the Euro-American sphere, specifically, Asia, a methodology that digs deep into plentiful, nearly-untouched archival materials, and a roster of foreign (to the U.S.) authors.

Two 2024 books that display these characteristics are Caricatures en Extrême Orient. Origines, Rencontres, Métissages, edited by Laurent Baridon and Marie Laureillard, that consists of 22 chapters dealing with comics in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, and written by nationals from eight countries, and the subject of this review, Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan, The World of Kusazōshi, edited by Laura Moretti and Satō Yukiko. Both volumes are lavishly-illustrated.

Moretti and Satō’s Graphic Narratives… is a weighty compendium, literally, because of the high-quality paper used and the inclusion of many colored plates; figuratively, because of the content that explores a virgin area (at least to foreign scholars) in a ponderous manner. The 17 chapters (including the Introduction) included nine by Japanese researchers (seven requiring translations), likely because kusazōshi and kibyōshi are relatively unknown topics in Western scholarship, except for the works of a few individuals, a large number of whom are represented in this volume--Laura Moretti, Adam L. Kern, Ellis Tinios, Frederick Feilden, Michael Emmerich, Jaqueline Berndt, Glynne Walley, and Joseph Bills. The book is labeled as the first English, multi-author study of kusazōshi.

Divided into three parts--“Modiality in Kusazōshi,” “The Pleasures of Reading,” and “Approaching Kusazōshi in a Global Context,” Graphic Narratives… goes to great lengths to introduce other affiliates/offshoots/similarities of kusazōshi in chapters on akahon (red cover books), kibyōshi (yellow cover books), and gōkan (combined booklets), meticulously define/describe all terms, and provide snippets of narrative plots and unique techniques employed.

Graphic narratives given as examples are sometimes serious; other times, humorous or facetious. One kibyōshi related the giddiness of a fart contest; another told how Inoue Hisashi overcame stuttering and tenseness by reading kibyōshi, concluding that, “Being silly and useless was just fine.” Some of the semiotic and linguistic techniques used to facilitate reading were ingenious; for instance, using marks to indicate direction, reading methods, and so on, or designing pages with empty space gaps arranged as waves between blocks of text to show motion, wind, or rain; both traits found in gōkan.

Kusazōshi were elaborate productions, every part of which was decorated, from the sales wrappers to the front and back and inside front and inside back covers. It is surprising how many of them have survived war, natural disasters, and normal wear-and-tear, and are found in abundance in the National Diet Library and, to a lesser extent, in some Japanese university libraries. To have 178 of them in one place, as in Graphic Narratives…, definitely augments the field of study.

A chapter that stands apart from the others, but is vital to understanding where kusazōshi and kibyōshi fit into comics studies, is that written by Adam L. Kern. An early Western scholar of kibyōshi (see, the symposium on kibyōshi that he edited in Vol. 9, No. 1 of IJOCA). Kern contributed an excellent critique of comics studies, while making a case that kusazōshi and kibyōshi are comparable to comics and decrying the prevalent notion that comics are Euro-American in origin. In one instance, he mentions my Asian Comics as a resource that defines comics as emanating from Western comic strips, using my chapter on India as an example, where I date the introduction of comics to an Indian imitation of The British Punch. However, Kern fails to mention that in both the Introduction and the first chapter, “A Lead-Up to Asian Comics,” I provide numerous examples of comics-like art that existed for centuries, before Western penetration, not only in India, but also China, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, and Persia.

Laura Moretti and Satō Yukiko should hold an exalted space in the world of comics scholarship for what they have contributed with Graphic Narratives… .They have lifted kusazōshi from a brief footnote to a full-fledged area of study, pulling together a mix of Japanese and Western scholars, bent on providing varying perspectives on the medium, from different approaches, backed up with much first-hand information, sourced from plenty of primary and secondary materials, fully explained in the text, footnotes, and explanatory notes to the reader, and profusely- and brilliantly-illustrated. What more can one ask for? A masterful job!

 

Book Review: We Are Not Strangers by Josh Tuininga

reviewed by Shanna Hollich, retired librarian

Josh Tuininga. We Are Not Strangers: Based on a True Story. Abrams Comicarts, 2023. $24.99 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-1-4197-5994-9. https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/we-are-not-strangers_9781419759949/

Josh Tuininga’s We Are Not Strangers is not getting nearly as much hype as it deserves. Often billed as yet another “touching tale of friendship during World War II” (Kirkus), or a “slice of Seattle history” (Seattle Times), this historical graphic novel delivers much more than a trite tale of being nice to your neighbors, even (perhaps especially) during times of great turmoil.

The story itself is a relatively simple one, and though it is based on a true story from Tuininga’s own family lore, this work is first and foremost one of historical fiction. The tale follows Marco, a Sephardic Jewish immigrant in the Seattle area, as he witnesses the impact of American policies towards Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants during World War II. In his own quiet way, he works tirelessly to do what he can to help his friend Sam Akiyama, who is about to lose his family home and business. In this way, it is a familiar story of discrimination and its ripple effects throughout an entire community.

What makes this story unique, however, is the meticulous care and attention to detail that Tuininga has demonstrated throughout. The book begins with a foreword from Ken Mochizuki that gives some initial historical context and ends with an extensive Notes and Sources section that includes hand-drawn historical maps of Seattle, detailed descriptions of historical landmarks featured throughout the story, actual newspaper headlines from the time, and a glossary of terms. One of the most satisfying reader experiences I have ever had involved looking through the list and drawings of historical landmarks from the Notes and Sources section and then going back through the actual graphic novel to find where those same landmarks are drawn into the story, often only in backgrounds or scene settings.

This attention to detail in the artwork is perhaps the most satisfying piece of the entire book. One could pore over the pictures on these pages for hours and still find new details to admire. The art is realistic without crossing into the uncanny valley, a perfect dividing line between feeling real enough to drive powerful points home, but still being cartoony enough to allow the reader some degree of self-preserving psychic separation. The chapters tend to jump back and forth between the present and the past, and while this sort of narrative device can sometimes be confusing for readers, the detailed artistic settings and color schemes make it easy for readers to keep their place and bridge the gap between time periods. We can expect no less from Tuininga, who has a solid background in art and design.

This is truly a book for all ages, which makes it a valuable addition to any library (public, school, or personal). Younger children will appreciate looking at the artwork and having a simple understanding of the basic story, while older teens and adults will be able to delve in to more of the nuance and history that lies beneath. An afterword by Devin E. Naar, Professor in Sephardic Studies, sheds light on a particularly interesting and understated aspect of the story: the fact that Marco, while attempting to help fight discrimination against a marginalized community (Japanese immigrants), is himself a member of a marginalized community (a Sephardic Jew and speaker of Ladino). The cross-cultural solidarity on display here is both remarkable in that we see it so rarely in stories like this, but also in that it is not over-dramatized or used purely as a selling point. There are thankfully no “white saviors” here; even Marco provides his help quietly and mostly in the background, never seeking spotlights or accolades, just quietly doing what is right.

Abrams typically delivers a nice physical artifact with its books, and this one is no exception; make sure to remove the dust jacket in order to fully appreciate the illustrative details on the actual hardcover and both front and back endpapers. This book is a welcome addition to a pantheon of graphic novels that portray the experiences of marginalized folks, immigrants, and the history of America during World War II. Don’t sleep on this one.

 A version of this review will appear in the print edition of IJOCA.

Book Review: Cooking with Deadpool

reviewed by 

Lizzy Walker

Wichita State University Libraries

Marc Sumerak, Elena P. Craig, and Ted Thomas. Cooking with Deadpool. San Rafael, California: Insight Editions, 2021. 143 pages, $29.99 978-1683838449 https://insighteditions.com/products/marvel-comics-cooking-with-deadpool

Fandom cookbooks, from comics to movies to video games, have become popular items. Cooking with Deadpool is a great addition to the genre. The book, totaling 63 recipes, contains six sections: Small Bites for Big Mouths; Side Jobs; Maximum Efforts; What the People Really Want; Waking Up with Wade; and Sweetest Things. X-Men’s Cable even has a few recipes in here. Each recipe includes an introduction by Deadpool, which are highly entertaining, as well as provide some history about the Marvel universe, or the dish itself. Other information included with the recipes are serving totals, the occasional helpful tip, and detailed instructions. While Deadpool helps the reader out with handy tips within some recipes, there are more in-depth explanations in Just the Tips, such as folding the perfect chimichanga before popping it into frying oil, making an accurate knife selection for the job, and spatchcocking a chicken. Provided at the end of the cookbook is a menu section that helps the reader combine different recipes to host the perfect meal. Deadpool, also known as Wade Winston Wilson, is the Merc with a Mouth, and Sumerak has a solid grasp on how to write the character, even in a cookbook. Along with the recipes and tips, Deadpool delivers snarky one-liners and casual poses.

As I read through the recipes, something that was refreshing is that all of the ingredients can be found at your local or big box grocery store. This makes the ingredients, and the meals, quite accessible. From creating the shopping list, to preparation and cooking, to serving, everything in here is understandable for the beginning chef and gourmand alike.

The design of the hardcover cookbook is fantastic. It can stand up to kitchen use well. The spine allows for the book to lay flat on a counter or other flat surface. The glossy pages are also easy to clean if anything happens to drip onto them in the preparation of the delicious recipes.

A Review of Selected Recipes (photos by Lizzy Walker)

Ya Basic Chimi: This one was easy to prep, except for folding the chimichangas. Even with the detailed instructions, toward the end steps of the process I couldn't get the wrap to cooperate. This could be because I can't even do origami well, or there is a step missed in the instructions. Regardless, with the aid of some well-placed toothpicks to keep them sealed, frying them up was easy. Accompanied with homemade salsa, these chimis were more than basic.  

Pool-tine: I have to admit, I used a tip provided by Deadpool and used frozen steak fries instead of making my own. The gravy was delightful, and the instructions were clear and easy to follow. Combining the flavor of the steak fries, cheese curds, and gravy was the perfect meal after a long day. This one will become a staple in my household.

Smells Like Victory: Combining two different pancake flavors is a brilliant idea. In this case, it was chocolate and malted milk pancakes. I did omit the malt powder, since I didn’t have any on hand. The chocolate batter cooked a bit faster and the pancakes came out thinner than the plain pancakes, but the texture and flavor were great together.

With relatively simple to make recipes, Deadpool’s witty remarks, and special appearances by Cable, Cooking with Deadpool would make an excellent addition to a cookbook collection. The creative team behind this cookbook is great. Marc Sumerak is a Harvey- and Eisner Award nominated comic writer, and he earned his BFA in Creative Writing at Bowling Green State University. Between writing and editing comics, his body of work is impressive. Elena P. Craig is a food stylist and cookbook developer working in the field for over 25 years and she enjoys telling food stories. Ted Thomas provided the beautiful photography that accompanies the recipes.