Chefs and cookbook authors talk a lot about using food to break down barriers and stereotypes. For Natalie Keng, it’s a lifetime passion that began with her parents, who immigrated from Taiwan to Atlanta in the 1960s before she was born.
In “Egg Rolls and Sweet Tea: Asian Inspired, Southern Style” (Gibbs Smith, $32), Keng recalls how her mother, Margaret, a three-time Cobb County Teacher of the Year who taught math and PE, frequently fed her family dishes melding influences of both her heritage and adopted home, such as Hot Hunan Catfish Fillets and Five-Spice Mashed Rutabaga. And she shares how she sometimes pitched in at the chain of mall restaurants her dad, Edward, ran, which were known as much for their barbecued chicken wings and sweet iced tea as their homemade egg rolls.
After earning degrees from Vassar College and the Harvard Kennedy School, Keng became a Fortune 100 marketing executive before concluding that corporate life wasn’t for her. She returned to Smyrna and in 2009 joined forces with her mom to launch Chinese Southern Belle, a company that produces family-recipe sauces and offers cooking classes and Asian market tours. The charismatic duo has demonstrated their fusion-style recipes in numerous venues and on local TV, and Keng regularly collaborates with organizations around the city on promoting multicultural relationships through healthy eating.
In her first book, Keng communicates those messages through her engaging stories of growing up in a close-knit, outgoing family in Georgia, and the creative recipes they inspired. She gives clear instructions for filling and wrapping egg rolls with bacon and collards and, having inherited her parents’ love of fishing, gives the details for preparing a Banquet-Style Whole Pompano — including the cleaning.
Most of the recipes, however, require less ambition: Georgia Bourbon and Coca-Cola Meatloaf with Homemade Teriyaki, Okra and Tomato Stir-Fry, Gotcha Matcha Ice Cream Pie, and several versions of home-brewed sweet tea. I can verify the practicality — and deliciousness — of her mom’s Chinese Spaghetti, flavored with hefty doses of her ubiquitous “three G’s:” ginger, garlic, and green onions.
Each reinforces Keng’s belief that “diversity, after all, is the ingredient that makes our country great.”
AUTHOR APPEARANCE
7-9 p.m. June 22. Natalie Keng will demonstrate dishes from “Egg Rolls and Sweet Tea.” Eagle Eye Book Store, 2076 N. Decatur Road, Decatur. 404-486-0307, eagleeyebooks.com.
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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