15 Years after Writing my First Cookbook, I'm Glad I was Wrong

Fifteen years ago this month, my first cookbook was released. The well-used copy pictured above is named “Number 1” -- the first one to arrive at my door. I figured that my cookbook writing career would not go beyond Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. My journey to getting the book published began in 1992, when I wrote the proposal for a mother-and-daughter Vietnamese cookbook titled, Pass the Fish Sauce. 

I didn’t sign a contract for the book until 2004 and the retitled publication, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen (IVK), didn’t release until October 1, 2006. By the time I landed at Ten Speed Press, I was ready to write and develop the 175 recipes for what would be the biggest, full-color English language cookbook on Vietnamese cooking published to date. 

Indie Press for an Indie Author

Before being purchased by Random House, Ten Speed Press was a Berkeley-based indie known for making quirky books and taking chances. It published many Asian subjects and had an affinity for cookbooks. Ten Speed’s founder and owner Phil Wood was an eccentric who made books from his gut. He loved food and published The Moosewood Cookbook and White Trash Cooking, for example. What Color is Your Parachute is also among his successful titles. 

When the book came out, I drove to Ten Speed Press with a bunch of food to do a presentation for the staff. About fifty people attended including my editor, Aaron Wehner, and his boss, Lorena Jones. I got to personally thank everyone, including a man named Hal who chose the creamy paper stock. There was also the book designing team that made sure that all diacritics (accent marks) were properly placed. Back then, typefaces weren’t as developed as they are now for foreign languages. It took time to present terms such as phở and Đại Việt in a publication. The book designers selected a handsome typeface, not the usual Times New Roman. After the event, I drove over to the warehouse and picked up author copies to share with my family and testers. 

Completely naive, I thought that was the typical author experience. I had no idea how legacy New York publishers functioned and frankly, I didn’t care. For all I knew, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen would be my only chance to write a cookbook.

A Cookbook Proposal that Lingered

I began writing my cookbook proposal in 1992, after I’d returned from a fellowship in Hong Kong and was under-employed. I had been an avid cookbook reader since I was young. By the time I was in my early twenties, I had a growing cookbook collection, built from a used bookshop near our apartment in West Los Angeles. Looking at the marketplace, I realized that there was no cookbook that spoke to the foodways and refugee and immigrant experience of Vietnamese Americans. In the main, most Asian cookbooks discussed cuisines from distant lands, not here in America, not so much about people’s lived experiences in the United States. 

The proposal for Pass the Fish Sauce didn’t get any action from agents who either ignored it or told me that I had to be on television to get a cookbook deal. I sent it as an unsolicited proposal to a publisher and it was also rejected. People didn’t see the marketability of the Asian American experience vis-a-vis food.

Since my potential as a cookbook writer was low, I worked in different capacities in higher education -- as an administrator of Asian Pacific American student services, consultant with a think tank on race relations, and strategic communication consultant. Along the way, I earned a Master's degree from the University of Southern California. Serendipity connected me to Phil Wood in 2004.

Yesterday, I pulled out a 2001 version of the proposal. It’s 60 pages long with an executive summary, overview, outline, and sample chapters. Library books schooled me in book proposal writing but I also did it like a business proposal. I had to convince publishers of the value of investing in my idea and in me.

Looking at the sample banh mi recipe, I laugh because I didn’t fully know the recipe writing style yet. They made me an offer anyway and I signed the book deal, after consulting with a lawyer and then negotiating a few fine points. 

Cookbook Publicity Before Social Media

Ten Speed put their top editor, Aaron, on my book. He taught me how to make a cookbook. He also hounded me late at night via email. He’s now one of the top people at Penguin Random House. We worked hard on the book and he pushed me to do my best.

Aaron assembled a topnotch photography team led by photographer Leigh Beisch and food stylist Karen Shinto. Karen scraped together frequent flyer miles and flew to Vietnam before the shoot. She wanted to do the food justice, she explained. We became fast friends and she has styled all of my cookbooks since IVK.

Once the book was designed, Aaron and I sought reviews and endorsements from heavyweights in food media and the cookbook world. These were among my heroes in writing, so I was naturally nervous about their responses.

Ten Speed Press lead publicist, Kristin Casemore, was in charge of my project. After the book was released, I was simply thrilled to have it out in the world. Ditto for my recipe testers and small community at Viet World Kitchen, which I’d launched a few years earlier. My parents were elated but didn’t know what to make of my potentially penniless project, to which I’d devoted two years of my life without gainful employment elsewhere. I was supposed to be in business (I studied business and East Asian Languages and Cultures as an undergrad) or communication management (my graduate degree). 

There was no social media fanfare as there is now because there was no social media yet. Kristin worked her publicity network and Into the Vietnamese Kitchen was well received. The primary way I knew about the book’s broader success was via news clippings and emails that Kristin sent. Nowadays, there are Google alerts, for example, so things happen much faster today. Because I didn’t think I’d get to write another cookbook, I kept the clippings in a box. 

A lot of people liked it, including the New York Times, Splendid Table, Saveur magazine, and newspapers as far as Australia. Nguoi Viet, the oldest Vietnamese newspaper in America, did a lovely story too. (I look like a mannequin but my mom looks beautiful.)

Measuring Success Beyond Awards

When cookbook awards season came around, IVK was named a finalist for three awards from the James Beard Foundation and International Association of Culinary Professionals. JFB and IACP awards are considered like the Oscar and Emmy equivalent of the cookbook award world. The book was up against works written by well known New York food people. I was an unknown.

I attended the awards ceremony and felt disappointed when the book lost. But heck, it came out of nowhere and was a contender! I didn’t write the book thinking about award possibilities. I just wanted to write a Vietnamese cookbook that I thought would resonate with curious cooks. IVK remains in print. (In 2007, the fully framed awards were mailed to recipients, even if they were finalists! Neither is the case now.)

A One Book Wonder or Not?

Many authors have multiple book ideas but I held on to just one for years. After IVK, I wasn’t going to write a quick-and-easy or healthy diet Vietnamese cookbook. That wasn’t my jam. Lorena recognized my ability to write recipes well and suggested dumplings. 

In thinking about how to frame the subject, I wanted to convey the vastness of Asia through the broad range of dumplings. Asia isn’t monolithic and neither are its dumplings. Assumptions about what is Asian can be demystified and better understood by way of making and eating dumplings. That was my motivation.

Having something to contribute to the conversation is why I initially conceived IVK. And so, I traveled to Asia, visited Asian American communities, perused lots of cookbooks, and worked in my kitchen. Asian Dumplings came out in 2009 and earned another IACP finalist award. 

It seemed like I knew what I was doing. Next up was Asian Tofu, followed by The Banh Mi Handbook and The Pho Cookbook, for which I earned a Beard award in 2018. That year, I also earned an IACP award for editing Unforgettable, a crowd-funded biography cookbook on culinary icon Paula Wolfert who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2013. 

During the past fifteen years, I’ve been able to make books that I want, and for that I’m incredibly grateful. There are well over 300,000 cookbooks with my name on them circulating around the planet! I'm lucky that my books are sold in many places, including Germany where Pho is available in German.

I've even spotted my cookbooks in Vietnam! Here's banh mi at the Saigon airport. I'm with Karen Shinto my travel buddy and stylist, plus a smart young woman who managed the book concession.

Teaching cooking classes has been utterly fun. My research and reporting for magazines and newspapers allowed me to meet all kinds of people, and travel near and far. I’ve consulted with restaurants and corporations. And, I’ve maintained this website and my social media presence to keep the conversation going.

In essence, I developed a career as a cookbook author. In 2019, at a Vietnamese Food Any Day book signing, a chef asked if it would be alright if I signed her copy of an earlier book that I had written. “Of course!” I said. 

Next Generation Asian Cooks and Cookbooks

Many first generation Asian refugees and immigrants to America went into food and cooking out of need. It was not their vocation. That has recently changed with a new generation of Vietnamese Americans in food and food media. They’re all over the United States. I met a bunch of them in Brooklyn in 2019 at three sold out VFAD dinners at Di An Di restaurant. (The photo below belongs to Dan Q. Dao.)

Some of the DAD team members introduced me to their parents, who had flown in to attend. I was gobsmacked. 

And to gauge what’s going on in the broader cookbook publishing scene, this is an incomplete stack that I pulled from my library. They represent Asian cookbooks that speak to the hyphenated American identities that we all have.

Publishers who doubted interest in Asian American titles changed their minds. I guess we all can be wrong for the right reasons. 

(P.S. My mom sewed a plastic book cover for Number 1.)