Since No One Asked: A Manifesto

As a final goodbye to 2023, here's why I write on this corner of the internet

Since No One Asked is a personal account of how food intersects with relationships, self-examination and growing up. 

For me, food has been the way I’ve come to understand myself, my history and my relationships. It’s become a language with which to show affection; an act of kindness for my body; a way to share my mother’s history and understand her joy, her challenges, her mess. Those things that I’ve inherited from her, like the way I salt a pot of boiling water or douse soy sauce over sticky white rice or stir buttery chive-flecked eggs. 

There’s beauty in noticing these smaller culinary moments. The taste of a sauce when you realised you’d fallen in love, or the way the risotto thickens and peels you away from your sadness. I’ve been documenting every bite in my mind for years now. I’ve collected these taste-laden memories and found the process of translating them to the page as therapeutic as the process of cooking itself. 

Why does any of this matter? Perhaps it’s cliché to gently remind ourselves that food is a connector; a thread that hangs between generations, friendships, family and parts of yourself. 

We’re all in a state of constant self-examination, scrupulously scrolling in a search for meaning in our lives. We know the Internet is probably bad for us, that social media is swallowing our attention and we’re all a bit confused about the politics of productivity and whether optimisation is a bad thing. But we’ll always have food. Cooking it and eating it. The tangible experience that pulls us away from our screens and into ourselves. Sometimes it’s the way it heals a broken heart – the rhythmic chop of the knife and the tear-inducing onions. Or it’s a way to disengage our brains and throw our bodies into action. 

From family and friendships to love and heartbreak; self-image and mental health to the meaning of home and happiness, the personal vignettes that I attempt to convey through this newsletter swing between two binaries that have always come up for me in my life: east and west, full and empty. 

East: paying homage to my South Korean heritage, but also the discomfort that came with it growing up. East for East London, too, the corner of this city where my perfectly sized galley kitchen is a constant companion. Where I’ve always come back to, making a home and cooking countless meals for friends (but mostly myself); and where uncertainty is always on the menu. East for the warmer climes of India and Sri Lanka and the spice and the heat; the hard falls and the warm winds; the coconuts and the daals and the masala dosas and the countless chais. 

West: my British identity born from my father’s Lancastrian roots, but also the whitewashing and the assimilating that came with it. West for the Cornish coast where I learned about living off the land and worked for a woodfired chef and fell down but grew up within the white wooden walls of the shed at the bottom of a boat builder’s garden. West for Northern California where I learnt about wine and the secret to a great Caesar salad and being on my own. 

Then empty: short, quick, sharp, intense bouts of sadness and anxiety. Heartbreak and all the challenges it comes with. An eating disorder born out of a severe discomfort in being in my own body, caught in the pull between east and west. 

And finally full: self-acceptance and learning to be alone. Falling in love for the first time. Sharing countless meals and bottles of wine with friends who feel like family. 

Throughout my life, food – and everything it’s attached to – has always been rooted in these seeming dichotomies. Although, like in food, I’ve come to realise that they aren’t in fact opposites; they’re ingredients of life that complement each other, much like sweet and sour, salty and spicy. 

The simple fact is that I believe food is a vehicle for identity and belonging. I attempt to tell these stories through the lens of my South Korean/British heritage and how that has filtered down from my mother through shared meals and heavy conversations, or even in the words left unspoken that lingered across the dinner table. I write about the binaries that have persisted over the years: great happiness and deep depression; an all-consuming love of food and a fractured relationship with eating; an assumption of not being good or white or thin or pretty enough; and the realisation that being alone means moving through all of these sadnesses and finding resilience in the pit of your stomach. 

Unmeasured recipes are shared and often they relate to the stories, moments and sentiments of the essays. The roast chicken ritual that signals self-acceptance. My mum’s fried rice that made growing up a comfort. Dumplings as a remedy for heartbreak. A risotto that quite literally picked me up off the floor of my shed. 

I persist in writing this newsletter for the mother who gave me my tongue; the people who are both east and west, full and empty, and sometimes all of these all at the same time. For anyone who has been utterly obsessed with the first taste of a meal. For those who couldn’t stomach the dish that felt like a loss. For the person who found belonging in a bite. 

I hope it serves you well, and I’m grateful for all of the comments, the shares, the emails and to everyone who subscribes. If you’d like to read more than just the Sunday essay and feel like gifting yourself or a friend a paid subscription, I’d be so happy! Either way, thank you for reading. I hope your Christmas is filled with good food, good friends, good family and good times.

Cat x