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He shared fusion dishes celebrating local ingredients enhanced my knife skills and introduced me to Japanese steel. Mun does not cook-he creates edible stories.Įach of Mun’s recipes is significant a spice from his childhood, or a dish only served to the Korean royal court. I wanted to learn from this Wall Street executive-turned-executive chef, so I convinced him to take me under his wing. I met Mun, a Korean-American chef, at an Asian American event, and subsequently dined at his “puertas cerradas,” a restaurant for guests with reservations only. By then I had happily slaved away in a few kitchens and stepped up my “chef de partie” game. Rolling gnocchi always brings me back to that magical day.įast forward to post number four: Buenos Aires. By the time we got back to the embassy gates, happy tears soaked my flour-covered PPE. My students promised to try the recipes at home, and pleaded for me to teach again. For two tasty hours, I forgot I was in a war zone.

They were curious about life away from the chaos, T-walls and daily explosions. We discussed American cuisine and jokingly threw flour at each other.

(FYI, the security detail granted me permission to remove PPE while at the venue.) Forming perfect gnocchi in front of 20 students is impossible when you are dressed like a metal ninja turtle.

I wore the bulletproof vest for a third of the class, but eventually took that off, too. The second-floor kitchen was warm, but quickly became a sauna with steel-plated personal protective equipment (PPE) on. Given creative control, I led the mission’s first cooking course in the Red Zone. Edible Storiesĭuring my second tour, in Iraq, I volunteered to teach an English class as part of the embassy’s outreach program to Iraqi youth. I wore an American flag pin inside my coat collar as a secret reminder of my day job. After that I cooked anywhere chefs would let me in and relished my delectable double life. One kitchen was all it took to make me fall in love with the intense, creative, culinary environment. embassy employee, but no one else in the tiny restaurant did. “Yes, I just want to slice and dice to my heart’s content,” I replied. I can still see his raised eyebrows as he asked, “Wait, you don’t want a job, you just want to cook for me?”

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OK, maybe it was my offer to cook for free that made him amenable. He must have had a wild side, as he agreed to let me, a stranger, in to play with knives. I worked up the nerve to ask the young chef inside if I could join his team. One evening in Bolivia, I went out to a small restaurant that scrawled the day’s specials on a chalkboard. I had no idea almost 13 years ago that sharing family recipes would lead to incredible international culinary adventures. Preparing meals for Marines grew into a fullblown addiction to feeding others. That evening I promised them that I’d cook for the “Devil Dogs” every month for the rest of my career. In 2006 in La Paz, one month into my first tour, I made my mom’s recipes for the Marine Security Guards. The cities, languages and people may be new, but the familiar aromas wafting from a bubbling pot of Filipino adobo made from my mother’s recipe tell me I’m home. The Foreign Service moves us every two to three years. Shown, left to right: iLatina Chef Santiago Macias Acuña, Line Cook Miguel Valenzuela, Pastry Chef Vanessa Zorzoli and the author. The author plates her dish, “Malene’s Special Chicken,” at iLatina in Buenos Aires in 2013.

Florida gators unpacking 2010 shirts