Interview #150 — Hetty McKinnon
by Kim Lam
Hetty McKinnon is a Chinese-Australian cook and food writer. She has written four cookbooks: Community, Neighbourhood, Family and To Asia, With Love. She is also the editor and publisher of multicultural food journal Peddler and the host of the magazine’s podcast The House Specials. Hetty now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Hetty spoke to Kim Lam about cross-cultural upbringings, crazy career changes & community.
Your work has a cohesive theme around community, which has been thematic in your food writing, food photography, self-published magazine Peddler with its strapline: 'exploring the multi-cultures of food', as well as the titles of your three cookbooks being Community, Neighborhood and Family. Community ties all of those together. As a kid, what were your earliest memories of community?
Growing up a Chinese household, my community was very much my family. My mother kept it quite internal. We didn't socialise a lot outside of our own family and I had to make my own fun. When I think back to my childhood, all the expressions of love and affection were through food.
In a way that’s not dissimilar to many Chinese families, my mum wasn't sitting down playing with us. It was a solitary kind of childhood, I read and listened to records—but it wasn’t sad or lonely. I always felt loved and a part of a really tight family and that's what community meant to me. It's feeling really connected to something without those kind of preconceived notions of what a happy childhood is.
What did you start out doing? How did you come to be where you are? Have you always enjoyed cooking for yourself, others?
I was always around food growing up. As in most Asian households, food was the common language particularly where there is a language barrier between two generations. I know enough Cantonese to speak about food, but I actually didn't really cook that much. I helped my mum make dumplings and I observed her in the kitchen a lot, but I never had a dream to cook.
At school I loved writing—it has always been my thing. When I was around fifteen, my career advisor told me, ‘Look, you clearly love writing, but it’s almost impossible to get a job in journalism.’ He recommended PR as a good medium, so that’s what I pursued.
Overall, PR was a fun job that paired well with living in London, travelling through Europe and seeing the world. But after my oldest daughter was born I knew I didn't want to go back to that life. So we moved back to Sydney where I had two more kids in fairly quick succession.
I didn't really work during that time because I always had these babies around. Around the same time a PR company kept making me lucrative job offers, and I found myself making up reasons for not accepting those offers. One of those reasons was that I was starting a salad delivery business.
I don't think one person looked at me with a straight face. Everyone thought I was joking. That this was the most ridiculous thing they'd ever heard—to make vegetarian salads and cycle them around the neighborhood as a business. I guess the crazy idea worked out in the end.
With the overwhelmingly positive response to your work, how do you feel about stepping into the realm of being ‘trendy’? How do you feel about popularity?
What's ironic is I feel like I was on trend, with the salads...before it was trendy? When I wrote Community, there were no salad cookbooks on the market. My inspiration has never been to tap into a popular trend. In terms of my books and what's in Peddler, it's 100% just purely driven on the stories that I want (or need) to tell.
Do you have any thoughts in relation to being a person of color in the cookbook industry?
Every part of the cookbook industry is geared towards publishing ‘white’ stories. From the types of books being commissioned—keto, paleo, wellness, 5 -ingredients, etc.—to the exclusion and gentrification of multicultural stories and cherry-picking certain aspects of a culture to highlight. It is still hard for ‘multi-cultural’ cookbooks written by non-white authors to get published. I’m hoping with the recent racial reckoning in the US, that this will change soon.
I came to America in 2015 with this kind of huge expectation that I was going to revolutionise the way Americans ate vegetables. Instead, I was confronted by my colouredness. What I didn't realise is that I would really challenge people’s perceptions of what and who an ‘Australian’ is. People around the world have a Hollywood ideal of Australians—Chris Hemsworth or Margot Robbie. They're the Australians that people understand and they're the Australians that people want.
Now, I feel I have a responsibility to not only represent my culture, but also pave the way for others who feel Othered to have a voice.
As in most Asian households, food was the common language particularly where there is a language barrier between two generations.
What has been your experience of your Asian identity in Australia? Has it impacted your work?
In Australia, my readers didn’t initially think of me as a person of color. They knew me only for my food, which was very multicultural.
I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood where not a lot of Asians lived, but a lot of Eastern Europeans and a lot of Mediterranean, like Greeks and Slavic communities. And I definitely felt like Asians were in the minority of the minorities. Most of the time I was embarrassed to be Chinese, ashamed to be different. I just wanted to be white. And at school I worked very hard to feel like that. At home there was absolutely no question we were Chinese—we ate Chinese food all day long, we spoke Chinese at home. There was nothing Western about my life at home.
I had a cross-cultural upbringing in Sydney where you're Chinese when you're at home and as soon as you leave the doors you're expected to be Australian.
People often say that immigrants must assimilate, but I definitely think assimilation is the burden of the next generation, the children of the immigrants'. I probably didn't realise that I struggled with this burden until I was much older. When I started cooking, I finally reconnected with my heritage and rediscovered that side of myself. I finally felt proud of where I came from. Through cooking, and sharing recipes, I’ve reconnected with my own roots.
Even when I started cooking, I didn't see that as my responsibility to have this narrative that emphasised how important it is to be an Asian Australian—that wasn't my modus operandi back then. But now, I feel like I'm in a really unique position where I can influence people and open their eyes to my world as an Asian Australian. I am lucky that I have a loyal fanbase who really appreciate my work so I can leverage this to continue to bring people together and foster understanding at the table.
What is the greatest misconception about you that most people might not know about?
Sometimes people forget that I'm Chinese, you know?
I didn't realise how important the Chinese side of me really was growing up. The older I get it becomes more important. I don't know if that's from having children and needing them to be exposed to that part of my heritage. Perhaps I’m trying to uphold the traditions and values that my mother instilled in me.
Authenticity still seems to be one the most persistent superstitions out there, in particular in relation to food—when really there's no such thing as truly authentic food. Cross-cultural inspiration happens and everything that's created has been created out of something else. It seems that when it comes to food in your work, it's less about the authenticity and more about honoring, enjoying, comforting, sharing.
Most of the food in my work has some personal connection. Memory is probably my biggest inspiration in food right now. I very rarely just come up with a recipe out of my head that doesn't have some sort of reference point to something that I've experienced in my life.
When we write recipes, we must always respect the origins of that recipe. As we saw with the recent shakedown of Bon Appetit in the US, gentrifying recipes to make them more palatable to a white audience not only strips the recipe of its origins, but also erases the cultures from where that recipe originates. I am always conscious of this when I’m writing the recipe headnotes.
You've been an ‘expat’ for a big chunk of your life. What do you think it takes for a place to become home?
It’s the people who make create that feeling of home. Always the people.
Through cooking, and sharing recipes, I’ve reconnected with my own roots.
What are you working on at the moment?
My new book To Asia With Love—I just love this book so much. I'm so excited to share this story that is very unique to children of immigrants. I call it third culture cooking—some of the recipes aren’t particularly that Chinese or Asian, and some of the recipes aren’t particularly Australian either. It's just like this amalgam of both cultures, to create something very new, with exciting flavours. Throughout the book, I share very personal stories about growing up in Australia in a Chinese household, and coming to terms with my cultural identity.
I'm also working on the new issue of Peddler, which is themed IMMIGRANT and Season Two of the podcast, which has the same theme.
Can you share a poignant food memory with us?
There’s a macaroni soup recipe that I mention in the upcoming book—a Hong Kong inspired dish. It's basically like macaroni pasta in clear broth. My mum would put spam in it along with frozen vegetables. It was one of the dishes she made for breakfast all the time. I grew up almost my entire life thinking that this was my mum's own dish, because it just felt so unusual. When I went to Hong Kong in 2019, the first time I had been back since I was five-years-old, I discovered that everyone ate this dish. Macaroni soup is an iconic Hong Kong dish, sold everywhere, including McDonalds.
Do you have any advice for emerging book makers and food creatives?
Look for the stories in the ordinary, everyday moments. In every small moment, every far-reaching memory, there are important stories to be told that will resonate with others. Every recipe should be a story, with the ingredients being your characters. Recipes with a story are so much more delicious.
Who are you inspired by?
This is a very trite answer, but I’m inspired by my mum. She has lived many lives, has had to reinvent herself many times throughout her life, and through it all, she has remained so resilient, strong and adaptable to the world. Her immigrant story keeps me grounded. We are lucky to have this life, and our fortunate life was made possible by her struggle.
What are you listening to?
I’m re-listening to the New York Times podcast 1619, the story of how slavery shaped America. I’m also obsessed with a podcast called Come Through with Rebecca Carroll.
And on my music playlist is always the best of eighties and early nineties music. There was a point when I was trying to keep up with the latest artists and now, I’m just like fuck it—this is the music I enjoy. I love George Michael and Bowie and REM and Talking Heads, so I’m just gonna listen to them on repeat. This music was a really big part of my childhood—in many respects, it was my only connection to the outside world.
What are you reading?
I’m currently reading Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, whose writing is so powerful, so insightful and so modern, that you’d think it was written in 2020.
How do you practice self-care?
Honestly, I don’t always practice self-care. I feel like it’s quite a foreign idea to Asians, to stop and take care of our own mental and emotional health. But I try to take long walks to clear my head. I used to be a huge yogi. I hope to be that again one day.
What does being Asian-Australian mean to you?
To be an Australian of Chinese heritage is a huge responsibility because it means someone has toiled for me to have this life in Australia. It means the generation before mine has suffered and has risked everything to fight for a better life for their children. There is gratitude in being Asian-Australian, but not that indebtedness to the new country that many immigrants feel; rather it’s an opportunity to celebrate how rich my life is being raised amongst these ancient Chinese customs, but in a modern world. I am the walking, talking melting pot.
Look for the stories in the ordinary, everyday moments.
Interview & Illustrations by Kim Lam