Food unites family on PBS show

One of my earliest food memories is helping my popo (Chinese grandmother) make pork hash. She took me to Chinatown looking for the best cuts of pork, fresh water chestnuts and chung choi (preserved turnip) and then we’d came back to our kitchen where we’d spend time talking and cooking.

In a place like Hawaii, where immigrant experiences and flavors blend, the tradition of food as culture is passed from one generation to the next no matter what our ethnic roots — whether we’re Chinese, Korean, Irish or Native Hawaiian. The dishes may be different but the family bonding, cultural identity and storytelling is the same.

That’s what the PBS series, “Family Ingredients,” is all about. The show follows the host, local chef Ed Kenney, and a guest co-host as they track the origins of their favorite family foods.

This season “Family Ingredients” goes to California for smoked fish with singer-songwriter Jack Johnson, the Philippines for adobo with chef Sheldon Simeon, Wisconsin for fiddlehead fern with farmer Valerie Kaneshiro, Lanai for venison with Hawaiian cultural practitioner Anela Marie Kawehikulaonalani Evans and Vietnam for pho with chef Andrew Le.

Tomorrow night’s episode follows Le, of the Pig and the Lady and Piggy Smalls restaurants, to Hanoi to taste the difference between pho in the north and the pho of Ho Chi Minh City in the south. Pho in Hawaii is closer to the southern style of the rice noodle soup.

On the surface, the show is about food and travel. But the meat of each episode are the stories that come out over food, as the co-host gains a new appreciation for his or her culture.

During last week’s episode, Le learned about what his mother and father went through to escape Vietnam as the war was ending so that he and his siblings could grow up in Hawaii.

In tomorrow night’s episode, Le shares how his mother’s stroke, while in Vietnam, changed his life.

As his mother recovered, she learned how to do things again by cooking and that’s how Le learned the recipes that led to his opening of the famed Pig and the Lady restaurant.

“I hadn’t really explored our Vietnamese heritage,” he said. “I learned a lot about our family history and food ways.”

Le notes that his family, like many others, is diverse and sometimes headstrong. They don’t always agree on things – but enjoying food at the family table is something they bond over.

“Cooking with family is a way to bring us together,” he said.

The passing of knowledge and culture, the learning from elders, the common bond of food – that’s why AARP Hawaii is a sponsor of the broadcast of “Family Ingredients” on PBS Hawaii.

The show premiered last month, but the episodes repeat through the end of the year, so it’s still possible to watch all six episodes as well as last season’s episodes.

Watch the show at your next family get-together — perhaps later this month at Thanksgiving — and you’ll look at food in a different way. It might even start a conversation that will give you a new appreciation of your family and your heritage.

Barbara Kim Stanton is the state director for AARP Hawaii, an organization dedicated to empowering people to choose how they live as they age.