When Yen Hoang began teaching her children family recipes during COVID-19 lockdowns, she did not expect it to lead to a project which would reach people on the other side of the world.
A Footscray resident who moved from Vietnam more than 30 years ago, she has a lifetime of experience cooking Vietnamese recipes she learnt from her mother growing up.
During COVID-19 lockdowns, Ms Hoang said she used cooking as a way to connect with her family.
“In lockdown, it made our family have more time together, more dinner together, food’s very important, it’s very important for family,” she said.
Her daughters convinced her to start writing down the wide variety of recipes she knew by heart and helped her translate them from Vietnamese into English.
At first, they shared these recipes with their friends, but then started spreading them more broadly.
The recipes were put on Facebook community groups and the app ReciMe, where they have gathered hundreds of likes collectively and reached people on the other side of the world.
One person from the Caribbean even reached out to Ms Hoang to tell her that they loved recreating her pho recipe.
They said many of the ingredients were not available in their country, and they needed to order them off Amazon.
Ms Hoang said finding out people so far away were using her recipes amazed her.
“I just think I cook normal, but when people try it, and they like it and enjoy it, I’m really happy,” she said.
“I feel really happy when [people] learn and they like it too.
“I love to try food from other cultures so I want to introduce our food to them.”
You can try Ms Hoang’s recipes for yourself by searching the account hai.yen on Recime.
She said she was proud of her popular dishes like pho and beef noodle soup, but wants people to try dishes less known in the west, like banh xeo (crispy yellow pancake), or bun vit mang (duck and bamboo noodle soup).
Liam McNally
