Anna Sulan Masing Blames the Victorians

Anna and Jonah at home in East London.

On Book Club this month: Anna Sulan Masing's Chinese and Any Other Asian, an eye-opening and moving book about East and South East Asian identity in Britain.

Chinese and Any Other Asian is out now. Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list. [aff link]

Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.

Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

Transcript below the embed (autogenerated so please excuse any errors)

Lecker25_March_AnnaSulanMasing_1

[00:00:00] Lucy: This is Lecker. I'm Lucy Dearlove.

[00:00:14] Anna: As a Malaysian, like, food is just being Malaysian. So you can't not have food in your life. Like, you don't understand the world without food. You know, like, food is constantly at the back of your head.

[00:00:35] Lucy: After a busy start to the year with releasing To Be Delicious, a five part in depth series about the cultural importance of MSG, listen in the Leica feed if you haven't already, I'm restarting the regular book club, Epps. It gives me a lot of joy to talk to authors working with food as a subject matter or sometimes as a metaphor, I'm pretty open.

And so every month you'll be able to [00:01:00] catch a recently published writer talking to me about their new book. And it seemed appropriate that we start with Anna, as she's been a familiar voice in your ears over the past few months. For those of you who don't know her, Anna Sulan Marsing is a writer and academic whose first book, Chinese and Any Other Asian, came out earlier this year.

Anna does so much. She has so many exciting strings to her bow. She's a drinks writer, a food writer, she works in drinks and brand strategy, she's got a magazine about cheese, she's got a fantastic subscription. about ingredients and foodways and she previously did an amazing narrative podcast about pepper for Whetstone.

The list is endless. I've known Anna for a few years. She contributed an essay to the kitchen zine in 2021, but this was the first time that we'd really properly worked together. And as I say to her in this conversation, It was a real joy to see how she works [00:02:00] and to collaborate with her. Before we get into the episode, I'd love to tell you about how you can support LECA if you enjoy listening.

This is an independent food podcast that's been running since 2016, almost a decade, unbelievable. I don't receive sponsorship for the audio side, though occasionally funding from external organisations helps me make particular projects, such as To Be Delicious. The rest of the costs are covered by me and a very, very appreciated group of paid subscribers on Substack, Patreon and Apple Podcasts.

The podcast itself will always be free to listen to, the main episodes that is, but if you have enjoyed the work I've done here, you can pay a small monthly or annual subscription to help fund future work and receive in return some exclusive bonus content. Find the links to this And if you're not in a position to do this, but you're able to leave a rating and [00:03:00] review on Apple Podcasts, or share an episode with a friend, or share it on social media, that would be amazing.

I'd love that. And more than anything, thank you very much for listening. Okay, let's get into this episode with Anna Sulanmasing. We cover food as performance, why Chinese and any other Asian isn't technically a food book, and also just some, you know, casual chat about how to reimagine the entire food media world for the better.

Anna and I had this conversation after recording the final voiceovers for To Be Delicious on her sofa in East London, with her dog Jonah audibly snoring between us.

I was thinking about this on the train at work. And I was trying to remember how I even found out about you and your work in the first place. Um, because I've never interviewed you. So, like, That's true. Like, we've known each other quite a long time, but I've never, we've never had, like, a conversation like that.

Um, and I literally just couldn't remember how I knew about it. I just [00:04:00] felt like I'd always known about you. You are 

[00:04:02] Anna: such a right in the kitchen thing. Yeah, but I already knew of you since, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 

[00:04:07] Lucy: already talking. Yeah. Like, internet friends. Just like, internet food, right, like, RIP internet food Twitter.

Yeah. Um. Yeah, I just feel like you're always present, always doing great work. I do, 

[00:04:17] Anna: thank you. 

[00:04:18] Lucy: I 

[00:04:18] Anna: do remember, I'd seen you a few times before but hadn't had a proper conversation with you. Yeah. But I remember seeing you at one of Jonathan's It was Jonathan's birthday party. And I came up to you and I was like, you, you were always in my ear.

I feel like I know you very intimately. 

[00:04:30] Lucy: I recognised your 

[00:04:31] Anna: voice across the 

[00:04:33] Lucy: crowd in the park. Yeah, because I, I remember that's the That's the first time I met you in person as well and, um, you brought Tuak, the, the Iban.... Oh yeah, I did! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, oh my god, yeah. And it's always on brand.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Always ripping. Um, yeah, working with you on the series that we've just done together, it's just been, yeah, so brilliant to like see up close. Like how, how you work, really, like, I think, um, your work is, I think your work is so [00:05:00] valuable and I think you've got such a unique voice, like there's no one else really doing what you're doing, and you have such a thoughtful, considered approach, but like with a core of steel.

Which like I really respect because like, I think there's so much space for like gentleness and like flexibility, but like to be principled and like to kind of, um, talk about the things you believe in, like really strongly, I think is really important in like good cultural writing in general. Um, and I think you do really well.

So , 

[00:05:27] Anna: thank you. That's really, I'm really pleased that. You know, that's what I would aspire to be, but it's hard to know whether you're actually pulling it off or doing it, or, you know. It is, isn't it? It's hard to know that, 

[00:05:35] Lucy: but I think you really do. Um, and obviously you've got this academic background, and that really comes across as well, the kind of like depth of research, and the approach to bringing that into your work is, I think, what makes, part of what makes your work really special.

So I thought I'd just gas you up to begin with. Nice, good, keep going, keep going. So it's a good start. But this is your first book. This is my first book, yeah. Which is, seems amazing really. Tell us, for anyone that, oh hello [00:06:00] Jonah. We've got Jonah snoring on the sofa. For anyone that hasn't heard of it or doesn't know you and your work, how would you introduce the book to them?

[00:06:10] Anna: Oh, good. I mean, well, just simply the sort of, I think it's sort of, the title says what it does on the tin, which is Reminders of the title. Chinese and any other Asian, but exploring East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain. So that's sort of the basis of it. I think a lot of people know me from my food and now more recently my drinks writing.

And so expected my work to be, or my first book or whatever, to be a food book. And it isn't. And. That's quite interesting because I actually came into food writing a lot later. I was like 35, I think, when I first started writing, but really later in my 30s. So I had a whole life, a whole career before that, right?

And so I don't really see myself, I mean I do see myself as a food and drinks writer, but in some ways I really don't. [00:07:00] And I suppose this book is very much taking on board all of that stuff, like the stuff they did with my PhD and looking beyond food and drink or seeing, I guess, food and drink as part of culture and I guess this book is sort of almost like a cultural context.

Yeah, I think. That it is a book that looks at history, but it doesn't, it isn't telling you about history. Yeah, it's a cultural context. It's a context. It gives a context of why, how, who, East and Southeast Asian people are in Britain. 

[00:07:34] Lucy: You mentioned your PhD. I actually really wanted to talk to you about this because I don't know what your PhD was or like what form it took and what was it, what it was in.

And like, and you do reference it, you reference it in the book specifically when you talked about researching, um, Iban farming systems and how that made you, rethink your relationship with gender and race, which I just thought was so interesting. Can you tell me a bit about your PhD and kind of like that, how that gave you the kind of foundation of the work that you've done in the [00:08:00] book?

[00:08:00] Anna: So it was a performing arts PhD, so it was partly practical. It was looking at performing arts theory, but I was slightly unusual, had two lead Uh, supervisors, one was women's studies and one was performing arts. So it was a really joint, um, literature, literary investigation on one side of things, and then a really practical and also, well, literary, uh, look at, at performing arts.

And so my background is theater and performing arts originally, and it was looking at performance practices of Iban women, and it was looking at dance. Performance poetry and weaving. And these are all cultural practices that all tell stories. So they're all storytelling practices. Right. And all of them.

Um, were linked in some way to farming cycle, the farming cycle. So weaving is considered women's war, so men cannot go to war unless weavings have been done. Yeah. So 

[00:08:58] Lucy: fascinating. 

[00:08:59] Anna: [00:09:00] Yeah. So, and there was a real equalitarian society, the Iban society traditionally is very equal. What that means is that the gender roles have equal relevance and importance and positions of power, maybe more.

predominantly men, I guess, but that didn't mean like sort of head chiefman and stuff. It didn't mean that Women couldn't be in positions of power, or there was, or their positions of power were seen as unimportant, like less important or less equal. And you go to war to get new ground, so that you couldn't plant new rice, like those were, so even kind of war was about farming cycles.

Then I looked a lot at like Gawai, which is, which is the harvest festival, so obviously that's. You know, a part of five minutes cycle. So, you know, the stories you tell then the weaving that gets done for then the dreaming that gets done. So all this is like performance, right? So from that, I ended up talking and writing a lot about food unintentionally.

It ended up the fight. My final piece [00:10:00] was a thesis plus a performance and the performance was an hour long, uh, like epic poem performed by. Four women, myself included, and we asked people to come with a story, a line of a story, or a spice. And every night we made a curry, and Kat, who's in my book, Katriona, she was in charge of making the curries, of balancing all these spices that arrived.

You wrote your story wove it into one of these big looms. One loom was finished, one was half finished, and one was finished over the course of the performance week. As people wove their stories. And then, sort of, three quarters of the way through, we invited the audience onto stage, and sat down and ate the curry that everyone had made, contributed to, and continued telling the stories around the people.

One thing I learnt, and, um, I can imagine this will be the same actually with my book, is that once you start telling stories and [00:11:00] telling your own stories, people want to tell their stories back to you. And that can be quite hard to manage sometimes. A lot of 

[00:11:06] Lucy: emotional. Yeah. I don't want to say emotional labor, even though that is true, but it's just like quite emotionally exhausting, isn't it?

Yeah, you've 

[00:11:13] Anna: got to hold space for those stories and respect them, right? Um, so after the first. Um, I think it was the first show that we did, we were so exhausted because of that. And I remember saying to all the performers being like, okay, when we go on stage tomorrow, you only give 70%. You have to save 30 percent so that people can, you can be there for people to take on the stories.

[00:11:33] Lucy: Oh my God, that's so wild. And that being part of the performance is so interesting as well. 

[00:11:39] Anna: Mm. But that's what being part of a community is, right? Yeah. You're putting yourself into a community and your audience is your community. And like, your readers are your community. Like, that is, like, regard, like, you have to respect that, that process.

And I think if you don't, that's a very capitalist approach. Yeah. It's a very kind of possibly masculine approach [00:12:00] to be like quite linear about I am the big performer. I'm going to put 110 percent and then I'm going to walk away, but that's not what like community is, ceremony is, ritual is, you know, all that stuff.

It's like a cyclical or a reciprocative thing. That's so interesting because I actually 

[00:12:16] Lucy: really wanted, because after, I don't know if it was after your PhD or kind of concurrent, but you also previously ran a theatre company. Yes, yes. And I'm so interested by that because like there is so much performance in food.

Like whether you think of like quite literally in like kitchens and restaurants and stuff like that but also just the kind of like evening within your own home the kind of like cooking and serving and like eating with people like and how you're talking about the elements of performance there how that might actually be like.

after what we consider to be like, quote unquote, the performance. It's like the performance still continues. For sure. Like, what 

[00:12:50] Anna: did you learn about that? Especially with social media. It's like continuous, continuous, continuous, continuous. It's constant, like. It never ends. You know, those, those houses or whatever, those [00:13:00] fun houses with mirrors.

And you see, like, that is kind of like social media. The reflection just keeps going. To, to a restaurant or a, or a, or a. Hospitality space. Yeah, I think, I mean, absolutely, there's a reason why I ended up in hospitality is the reason I worked in hospitality alongside, you know, performance, you all prep for that, that moment that 12pm when suddenly you're like, we're on and you're like, have you polished enough cutlery?

You've got to, you know, have you set your props? It's the 

[00:13:26] Lucy: same thing, right? And there's the ritual and the kind of like, yeah, like the customer or like the, the attendee at the restaurant is playing a role as well. Yeah, 

[00:13:34] Anna: yeah, yeah. Yeah, and they don't see the back of house. They don't see what's going on.

They don't see the runners. They don't see the cutlery polishing, just like you don't see backstage. You don't see it's toe. It's so similar. 

[00:13:43] Lucy: Yeah. 

[00:13:44] Anna: Yeah. 

[00:13:45] Lucy: I also think like just that, that kind of like what you talked about, you know, coming to food writing late. I always think, I mean this is kind of, sort of my experience of this is more sort of specifically in working in audio, but I always think it's so interesting when people come to making radio [00:14:00] podcasts from a different, working in a different medium or working in a different industry, because they have so much like, to come to the medium with fresh eyes is so valuable, because you get very stuck in a rut and you think about, you think about making stuff in the way that you've made stuff before, instead of being like, what is the story I want to tell and what is the best way to do that.

So I think coming to food writing from from that perspective of performance and like theater and dance. Like, cause I know previously you were a dancer. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of physicality in the space is so fascinating. Yeah. 

[00:14:29] Anna: And like, for me, it's always like, what, like when I had my theater company, I was always like, why are we doing this show?

Like, what is the point? And the point can be, it's beautiful. Like, like there's nothing wrong with that, but if that is your point. And I think so much of writing is like, why are you writing this? Like, why are you doing this? You know? And if people ask that. more, maybe we'd have more consistently better food writing, food media.

[00:14:56] Lucy: Yeah, that'd be nice. Um, so as [00:15:00] you've acknowledged, it isn't, Chinese and Any Other Asian is not a food book. No. It's a book about, as you described it, uh, cultural context, a book about identity and kind of wider political systems and how they interact with each other. Um, this is a food podcast, so I am going to focus on the kind of like, elements of food in the book.

But it is I know, this is the thing though, and there is, there is not only a whole, there is not only a whole chapter about food, but there is also like, is everywhere, is like throughout the book, which I guess was inevitable. So, You know, you've talked about your background in performance and academia. How did you start working in food?

Like, how, when did that start for you? You know, you've said you didn't come to writing until later, but that's not when you started working with it altogether, right? No, 

[00:15:37] Anna: I mean, I had a job from the age of, from the age of 18. I've always worked front of house. Like, and I think it's only really in the last few years that I've not.

What was your first hospitality job? Um, I worked for a, um, so this is in Auckland. I worked for like a bistro, like by the, by the, the yachts, I was going to [00:16:00] say, by the sailing things, by the yachts, you know, so there was a lot of like rich. Men who had yachts who would come in for brunch and stuff. Yeah, an 18 year old.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was fun. Actually, it was all right. It was, it was all right. I had a really great female boss who was quite like hardcore. And actually, I really, I really enjoyed it. It was quite good. Yeah, it was quite casual. I think. Yeah, I think I had a lucky moment there, it could have been really bad.

That is good to have that. 

[00:16:27] Lucy: My first hospitality job was in a hotel, like, in my hometown, like, after I'd gone to uni and come back. And I had a, the, the maitre d was this, um, French guy, who, as soon as he found out I was at university in London, he asked me where he could buy weed in London. I was like, I don't really think that's how it works.

Like, just ask someone on the street in Camden, I don't know. Oh my god, that's so funny. Anyway, um So that was your kind of like initial introduction to it, and it just continued to be a constant in your life [00:17:00] in terms of what you were doing alongside everything else. Yeah, exactly. And 

[00:17:01] Anna: like, and I think one of the reasons, and I talk about this in the book, is like why food is so important is like, as a Malaysian, like, food is just being Malaysian.

So you can't not have food in your life. Like you don't understand the world. Without food, you know, like like food is constantly at the back of your head going. What's what I'm eating next. What about this? How do I you know, so I think I think that is it's always been a part of my life It was always gonna feature and things that I do the fact that like my PhD was not about food and yet I still cooked, you know, it was just somehow is there and of course I could have done it in a totally different way Not had food, but I found the food bits, you know but also Why I left academia was because I didn't enjoy it.

I didn't enjoy the fact that I went into theatre because I wanted to speak to a wide range of people. I wanted things to be accessible and that's what my theatre company really was. [00:18:00] And academia is not accessible. Like you can't have, you know, it doesn't welcome people into the space. Academic books are so expensive, you know, so.

I was like, I don't want to be in here because I want to be talking and having these, these stories and these conversations to a wide group of people. And food allows you the starting point to have tough conversations. So through food, you can talk about colonialism. Through food, you can talk about racism, which we've just spent five episodes talking about, and it can be a space where you can have that conversation about racism with many people, with many people from different backgrounds, because it can be understood 

[00:18:41] Lucy: a lot easier.

[00:18:42] Anna: You know, it didn't have to be this podcast, To Be Delicious, didn't have to be a podcast just by me. It could easily, you know, it was very much a collaborative podcast between me and you. 

[00:18:54] Lucy: Yeah. Even though it was about 

[00:18:55] Anna: race and racism. 

[00:18:56] Lucy: Yeah, yeah, totally. That's [00:19:00] so interesting what you said about, uh, Growing up with the attitude towards food that you have because you're Malaysian.

Because, yeah, I agree with you that food is very universal, but I think also in this country we have this very specific approach to food, which I think has really informed a lot of the mainstream food writing you see, which is that it's sort of not a part of our everyday life because we don't allow it to, like, we don't allow it to And I don't quite know how to articulate this, but it's like there's always an element that to take pleasure in food is like somehow sinful.

[00:19:34] Anna: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I blame the Victorians. I mean, I blame Victorians for literally everything I can. But, um, that sort of puritanical side of things. Yeah. flip side of it, the, you know, Victorian, really enjoying food. So then becoming a thing about class as well, and then like restraint or class or, you know, markers of class or markers of like goodness.

[00:19:58] Lucy: Yeah. Yeah. And [00:20:00] so that's like. That's quite alienating, right? If you've come from this idea that, like, food is everything and food is for everyone, everyone has the right to take pleasure from it. Being like, oh, that chocolate bar's a bit naughty. Yeah, 

[00:20:12] Anna: yeah, the idea of food being naughty is such a, like, I don't know, like, feels like a very British thing.

Obviously, it's elsewhere in the West and America as well, but I wonder if it is a very, yeah, 

[00:20:23] Lucy: very 

[00:20:23] Anna: British thing. 

[00:20:23] Lucy: Yeah. Um, yeah, for sure. This is sort of tangentially connected, but I really enjoyed the quote in the book from, um, the feminist academic Irene Gedoloff, I think that's how you say her name, on kind of, um, rituals of domesticity within domestic space, so how making a home and what you do within that space, the kind of cooking and cleaning of everyday life, how that takes on new meanings within the context of migration, and like how significant it can be.

And I really love this because I think so often we reduce the food of particular cultures and communities to what is happening in more public [00:21:00] eating spaces, so like what we're seeing in restaurants. And Because it's accessible to essentially white people, so like you, like I as a white person can't necessarily access what is going on inside someone's home, but I can go to a restaurant and that gives me kind of like insight into what is being done, what is happening in that space.

What is the significance of making home for you? I mean, you know, you've lived in London a long time Like what what does that space mean to you in the context of you know, somebody who has moved around? 

[00:21:31] Anna: Yeah, so Irene is was my supervisor So she's amazing and that reflects a lot about what is that goes on my PhD in terms of Home and belonging and food is this idea that, uh, we don't see cooking and cleaning as creative practices.

But they are, because every repetition of them is something new, something organized. And it's, and it's, for me, like, home is [00:22:00] about the space I live in, the things that are in this space, looking after them, cleaning them, making sure that they, you know, sit well, choosing all the individual things that, exist in my space.

And so for me in terms of, so I do cook, but I'm not like a great cook or I'm not someone who, you know, particularly enjoys cooking necessarily, but there are things that I do enjoy. So it's, I have different pepper grinders for the different peppers I have, because I have different peppers. I have different salts.

I have different types of olive oil for different things. And I have different types of honey. So those are all these things, these elements. And. I mean, I know quite a lot about pepper, but the other things I don't know about and I don't care. I just know they taste different and they're really precious to me because I've purposely chosen them.

I've got that hunt, like every time I travel I get honey from somewhere, you know, so all these things have real meaning and then they come back to my home and I'm like They're part of the recreation of home, the re, like recreating the space to make it [00:23:00] mine. And I think that's really important. And just little things like, what jars am I keeping my tea in?

What, like, how is things organized? And. You know, when you migrate, uh, you know, particularly, you know, migrant women are often not seen as kind of creative agents. 

[00:23:17] Lucy: And they're, 

[00:23:18] Anna: they're responsible quite often for making sure that the family have home and have anchor and have belonging. And they do that every day.

By ensuring that there is food on tables, the house is clean or things like that, as well as, you know, all the other things that they do. 

[00:23:34] Lucy: But you're right, that, that work is definitely reduced and not seen as creative, I think. It's seen as survival as opposed to being 

[00:23:40] Anna: like, well, this 

[00:23:41] Lucy: is 

[00:23:42] Anna: why 

[00:23:42] Lucy: you're thriving.

It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. And that kind of relates to, you know, you mentioned that one of the reasons, one of the ways we sort of first interacted was when you wrote a piece for the zine that I did about kitchens. And the piece that you wrote for that was. It's about, you know, the two kitchens that are very common in [00:24:00] Malaysia, work more widely and you know, use the example of Sarawak, where your family is from, and the idea of like, like almost being able to recreate the second kitchen within your one kitchen in London.

Yeah. And I think you use, I think in this, in this particular essay, you talked about like doing that by by. Putting on a sarong to, yeah, and I really, yeah, I really love that idea. And again, it comes to the, like the, the idea of creativity and kind of beauty within the domestic space, but, you know, I think that's one of the things I really liked about the book as well is that, and it's the thing that I always want to see more of, which is that, yeah, like positioning food in a wider cultural context, like it's not, it's not this kind of silo where.

Nothing else interacts with it. Like it relates to like sex, power, fashion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it's so political. It's impossible 

[00:24:49] Anna: for it not to be political. It's impossible for it not to be cultural. Like we sort of forget it and it becomes like instead in this country it becomes entertainment. 

[00:24:57] Lucy: Right!

That's so true. And I just, [00:25:00] and I just don't 

[00:25:00] Anna: want food to be entertainment. Yeah, that's a really interesting distinction. Like, food can be fun, 

[00:25:05] Lucy: right? But it doesn't, it's not entertainment. But if we expect, if we expect from it what we do with like, other forms of entertainment, that really changes the dynamic.

Exactly, exactly. Because we feel very entitled, like, within that, to have a good time. 

[00:25:18] Anna: Exactly, exactly, and then so like, people's labour, I mean all entertainment obviously is labour, but there's something different about like, consuming that labor, like physically eating that labor, like physically eating that person.

There's something kind of like, like grotesque, like, um, physical theater piece thing that I kind of like in my brain about this idea of what, like, yeah, I don't know, or some cartoon of something. Yeah. 

[00:25:45] Lucy: That idea of entertainment, I feel like really relates to the food chapter in the book, actually, where you begin it with.

you're in the park with Jenny Lau of Celestial Bridge and you're talking about the words you hate when people talk about food. Yeah. Namely when people describe food as banging. [00:26:00] Yeah. Or saying that it slaps. Yeah. And I thought that was so fascinating. It made me, like, in this way that, like, you just talking about food as entertainment has made me really think about, like, the entitlement that we have within that.

Thinking about those words made me really think about, like, What, like, people in the UK often demand of food of different communities, like, they, they believe they are entitled to deliciousness, like, without question from those communities. And their context of deliciousness. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That's, I guess that's what I'm trying to get to.

You have to make it delicious for me. For me. Yeah. And feeling sort of entitled to talk about, like, authenticity within. That as well, as if you're qualified to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:26:41] Anna: Yeah, 

[00:26:41] Lucy: yeah, 

[00:26:42] Anna: yeah. I mean, 

[00:26:42] Lucy: yeah. You also talked, sort of, in coming back to this idea of creating home, you talked in the book, and I've heard you talk before about how, um, it was actually your mum who was a big part in making you feel Like you were Malaysian.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and your mum was a white [00:27:00] New Zealander. How did she do that at home? 

[00:27:02] Anna: Yeah, it's quite hard because when I was writing the book I was sort of thinking about that and then I was kind of like, I don't know how to articulate. I don't even know how to articulate this. But it was things like Malaysian or Asian, Southeast Asian food flavours were really familiar to me.

Yeah. So I guess there was a lot of cooking with them, like stir fries and things like that. 

[00:27:20] Lucy: Yeah. 

[00:27:20] Anna: Um, but I can't even particularly name. Like, this is so bad. Anyway. 

[00:27:25] Lucy: No, but actually I think the fact you don't have specific examples sort of says it was just sort of like a general vibe. 

[00:27:29] Anna: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And it was, you know, she was always talking about, like, being in Malaysia and what Sarawak was like and that kind of stuff was always there. And then I think there was a bit about, um Like we would go to dim sum and on Sundays and things like that And yeah, there was just a real recognition having sarongs.

Sarongs are so huge Like we always there was always sarongs in the house, you know, that was such a big part of understanding Identity. Um, [00:28:00] and so it's just these, all these little things that added up to like remind me and kind of accentuate the fact that, yeah. And so I felt like I belonged to Iban ness as opposed to feeling othered.

Um, I obviously, which is huge. I mean, I did obviously feel othered and other people made me feel othered, but I was like, 

[00:28:19] Lucy: Not within the home. 

[00:28:20] Anna: Not within the home, but also like I was like, Ooh, you're weird for making me feel weird because I have a belonging. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:28:26] Lucy: So it was de centering the idea that like other people's reactions was the default or like the correct.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It was kind of just 

[00:28:32] Anna: like, I mean, that's sort of fine that you can say that. Like all the microaggressions, which like do add up. Still a problem. Still a problem, but in my brain I could sort of be like, Oh, that's, I mean, you're just weird. Like, I have a belonging, it's okay. 

[00:28:45] Lucy: Yeah. Yeah, that's really powerful, actually.

I really enjoyed your description of Jamie Oliver as being viewed as a cultural translator, which I think really captured something that I, you know, [00:29:00] sort of like, I think is really apparent in lots of UK food media in general, and sort of food news. writing more broadly, is that we can only sort of, like, adopt or even appropriate a type of food in the UK if it's been presented to us by a white chef.

Do you think there's a possibility that we'll ever move away from this? 

[00:29:22] Anna: Yeah. But like, it's still about power though, right? Like, the whiteness is about power. So, like, will we be able to move away from the idea of, like, Who do we? Give power to and who do we legitimize and why do we legitimize them? 

[00:29:37] Lucy: Yeah 

[00:29:39] Anna: And obviously you always have to have so of course you have to have someone and I you know, I'm not like Anti science and anti academic or whatever like that But it's I think it's it's more like understanding what different types of authority looks like 

[00:29:52] Lucy: Yeah, and I cuz I was thinking about this because you know, like obviously cookbook commissioning is kind of a lot more representative than it used to be [00:30:00] in lots of ways.

I think there are still lots of sort of progress. There's still lots of progress to be made within cookbook publishing in general, but also like surely what equity would look like really is like people from any type of background. any type of chef or cook or writer being allowed to be an authority on something they know a lot about, like regardless of their background.

[00:30:20] Anna: Exactly. Exactly. And being like, well, I'm an authority of this because I have studied it in this way that isn't a French cooking way. You know what I mean? I think that's the thing of like, what do we see? Firstly, the question is like, what do we see and understand as authority? What does it mean? What does that authority mean?

Like if you look at, um, MasterChef, the professionals, you know, The people who win and the people who get to the end of it, the people who get to the finals. Are all people who have done some kind of like traditional quote unquote French training, you know? Yeah. And so that means that like, regardless of whether the individuals are racist or not, it is, it is a [00:31:00] structurally racist program.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And is, you know, so if you get to the end, if you have, if you start off with like all these, like people from variety of backgrounds, bearing in mind every single person on that program has got there because this is their profession. So they earn money from it, so they have a certain, you know, and of course there's a range of that.

And yet, by the time you get to the end of it, the finals, which is 14 people or 12 people or whatever it is, there are only two people of color and only three women. You're like, this is structurally racist and this is structurally misogynistic. Because your values What you value and see as authority is X.

[00:31:39] Lucy: Yeah, it doesn't matter how diverse your booking is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If the structure that you're judging people by is 

[00:31:45] Anna: inequitable. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so it's like thinking, but that, so that doesn't mean just like any Tom, Dick or Harry can come up and be like, Look, I'm, I'm Egon, so I can, you know, like.

Like, I can talk about Eban ness because I've got a PhD looking at it. Yeah. [00:32:00] You know. Or if it wasn't a PhD, so, because that's probably like a traditional structure, but like if it was someone who. I don't know, you know, has, has worked grassroots and has got this, you know, background and like understanding that authority sits within a different, within lots of different, you know.

[00:32:15] Lucy: Right. Totally. Yeah. I was actually just thinking when you said, but like, it'd be really cool to, I'd love to hear about kind of like an interrogation of French cooking techniques. and like customs from like a chef from like, I don't know, Guadeloupe or like from a country that was colonized by France and grew up with it, you know, as its motherland.

How they feel about it and what they might do to, yeah, to reimagine it. I think that would be really cool to see that kind of approach. 

[00:32:41] Anna: If we're thinking about food and the book, I think one of the things that like, I really wanted to get across was this idea of, and we talk about it in the podcast, is this idea of evolving, [00:33:00] like constantly on the move and food is constantly changing and reflecting and like the people here Making the food from their home or their heritage like should be allowed to be given space to evolve instead of constantly replicating this idea of tradition and Like again this authenticity that's totally made up and I just don't think people of East and Southeast Asia Are allowed to do that often because I think some of their food, some of our food is knowable, right?

And understandable. So people are like, well, I had that fried rice. I want to continue having that fried rice. Why are you not serving rice at all in your restaurant? You know, or something like that. You know what I mean? Like, and so Yeah, I think there's been some critiques of people here doing really amazing work, but they haven't been replicating, like, this idea of what tradition looks like in [00:34:00] this country.

It's not even what tradition looks like in Malaysia, for example. It's tradition, what, what traditional Malaysian food looks like here. Yeah, you know, um. And, you know, I speak specifically, I think in the book about Malaysian food in that way, like we're representing, you know, Malaysia is represented by five dishes and that's not even, you know, like, and then you can't really stray from those dishes.

So I think that's like, and I think that we talk about that a lot in the MSG, in the podcast is this idea of giving space for creativity and movement and understanding how things travel, which isn't about like appropriation or stripping. 

[00:34:35] Lucy: Yeah. 

[00:34:36] Anna: Cultural heritage or context, but it's understanding how, how things and people and food travel.

[00:34:43] Lucy: I really like, I think there's a line from Chin where he says, it's not fusion food, it's just evolving food. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And that's exactly it, isn't it? And I 

[00:34:51] Anna: think that's what I talk about. Like, that's exactly what I talk about in the book. You know, it's really, yeah. 

[00:34:56] Lucy: Yeah. And it's allowed to constantly evolve further.

[00:34:58] Anna: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:35:00] As long as like a white man isn't making money off it. Just like, that's just the rule. That's the caveat. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:35:09] Lucy: Yeah. Yeah. We, so there's, you know, in, in the book you talk about a lot about this very kind of like colonial approach really you describe it I think quite accurately like it's the whole structures of kind of that are kind of present in everything from TV shows to government that do centre westernness and whiteness do you think that there's any way we could reimagine like a food publishing system that Is better.

I realise this is a very big question. Let me like narrow it down a bit. If you were gonna commission like one cookbook tomorrow that you feel would like change the world. 

[00:35:53] Anna: Oh my god. 

[00:35:54] Lucy: What would you commission? We can cut this because I feel like this is a rogue question. Okay, 

[00:35:57] Anna: no, so, so what, the problem, okay, so [00:36:00] the problem is, is that as someone who doesn't really cook a lot.

Or, I do cook a lot, but, you know, like I'm not a cooker. 

[00:36:07] Lucy: Maybe what book? No, no, no, but, no, I want to 

[00:36:10] Anna: answer this question, because I do love cookbooks. 

[00:36:13] Lucy: Yeah, you do, 

[00:36:13] Anna: you do have 

[00:36:14] Lucy: like full shelves full of cookbooks. Because I love reading 

[00:36:16] Anna: them. Yeah. So it would be a cookbook that is like 50 percent history and context and then 50 percent recipes.

Like this recipe is because of X and these ingredients are in it because of the way this ingredient has come to this, you know. Yeah. It would definitely be a cookbook that is based. In place, so it has to be about the place, like whatever that place is, and then an interrogation into the ingredients and why those ingredients are in that recipe.

[00:36:46] Lucy: Yeah. Yeah, it's like a cookbook for, like, keen amateur historians. 

[00:36:51] Anna: Yeah. Yeah. Like, like, you know, it's, it's a cookbook that like Sourced would, would edit, you know, be like, okay, so we're going to take the spaghetti bolognese and then suddenly [00:37:00] we've got a whole fucking 15 essays about all the different ingredients.

But I would love that. That would actually be amazing. Yeah, exactly. I would love that. 

[00:37:10] Lucy: Um, let's talk about MSG because obviously we've just done this, um, five part series about MSG and this is how we're kind of wrapping it up. Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, you don't actually talk about MSG chapter specifically, but it absolutely kind of fits into the narrative that you write in that chapter, which is kind of how white, like predominantly white UK food culture has insisted on telling the stories of the foods of East and Southeast Asian people itself, kind of policing how dishes are described and essentially often how they're cooked as well.

How do you think the portrayal of And the demonization really of MSG fits into the structures that you're talking about in the book. 

[00:37:52] Anna: I do actually mention MSG. Ah, I'm, I stand corrected. In the violence chapter. 

[00:37:57] Lucy: Ah, 

[00:37:57] Anna: I 

[00:37:57] Lucy: missed that. I was looking for it in the food [00:38:00] chapter. 

[00:38:00] Anna: No, but, but it's not like. I think it's like one sentence because it's about how it is the repetition throughout the years centuries of Chinese and specific but then that kind of like Filters out to anyone that like looks chinese and you know, eastern south asian people it's a repetition right from back in in victorian times and charles dickens and the way that chinese people Was spoken about with opium dens in Limehouse.

Oh yeah, I do remember this now, actually. And then. Again, and that sort of constant, and then you see it with MSG, you see it with the foot and mouth disease, which got blamed on Chinese restaurants in the UK. You saw it in COVID and like the repetition of like, I mean, you could map those sentences that got used and utilized almost onto each other, you know, and, and they are all misinformation.

It's the same with MSG. It's the same with [00:39:00] what happened with the opium dents, a foot, a mouth, etc, etc. Yeah, this is misinformation that gets It's put into the public via media and then the media replicate it. And then someone comes back and says, that's actually not true, here are the facts. And then on like, whatever, sometimes occasionally some people, you know, they'll put on page 10, sorry, we wrote an article on the front page three weeks ago and it's incorrect.

No one reads that. So the myth stays, exactly, stays in the cultural narrative of, of a community. And so MSG is part of that. continued narrative which is that these foreign people have come over here to poison us. Like that is, that's the same narrative that happened over and over again. Yeah, 

[00:39:45] Lucy: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did you, so you know, this, this podcast that we did together was also a culmination of a year that you spent researching both kind of um, I guess like textually, but also just talking to lots of different people [00:40:00] about MSG, like some of which kind of ended up in the podcast in one way or another. Did you learn anything surprising from it?

You know, obviously it was something I imagine you knew about anyway, and you were kind of aware of the Chinese restaurant syndrome, like racism kind of origins. But is there anything that you learned that particularly surprised you? I think how 

[00:40:22] Anna: Attached people are and were to Chinese restaurants if they weren't part of that community.

Um, cause I interviewed a lot of people who, who aren't, you know, Chinese or East and Southeast Asian and their relationship to Chinese restaurants and Chinese food, you know, particularly people who. You know, we're very passionate about that. Like Jonathan Nunn and, and, um, a bunch of people who are also in the podcast as well, I thought that was really interesting and really cool.

And a lot of that would diaspora communities as well, that had an attachment to it. Um, actually this morning I was reading Jenny Lau's book and the chapter on. Kosher. Okay, it's for kosher. [00:41:00] And you know, and I think that's what's really interesting and exciting was how much Chinese food, British Chinese food, really meant to a lot of people and how people interpreted that.

And then how interestingly enough they could then kind of flip that and turn that and, and, and always weaponize it. Even though on the other hand there was a lot of love and a lot of Affection for the food. So yeah, and I think I think so one side that was really lovely, but then they're really reminding of how people can disassociate labor and people with Desire that they want to eat the entertainment that the entitlement to deliciousness I think it's what you were saying before, like actually I think that's what tapped into it.

So yeah, that, that, that relationship, that, that negotiation that happens in the UK with British Chinese food, I think was really fascinating. 

[00:41:58] Lucy: Yeah, right. And like the loyalty to [00:42:00] it can sort of be revoked. 

[00:42:02] Anna: Yeah. To an 

[00:42:03] Lucy: extent. Yeah. If people feel so strongly about it, but then they're like, oh, but it's actually.

Yeah, rather. Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. And, you know, kind of at the end of it, I guess I was trying to think about whether. Making the series has changed anything for me in terms of how I think about it. And I think it wasn't something that I was wildly well informed about. I mean, I'd read the MSG issue of Pitt and kind of Mimi A's writing around it.

But I think the thing that has been really lovely for me at the sort of at the end of making this series is like the gentleness and like homeliness of it. And like the potential for that. It's so nice. Yeah. There's so much like fun possibility within that. Yes. 

[00:42:48] Anna: Yeah, definitely. And MSU was not something I used before.

Yeah, I remember you saying this before. And so that was been really fun to learn how to use it. Yeah, yeah. Um, and sort of go along with this, like hearing about how people [00:43:00] use it and then experimenting with it at home and seeing how, you know, and there was a, there was one time where I just like used too much of it and I was like, Oh, that was a lot.

Okay. 

[00:43:08] Lucy: But that's part of it, right? It is part of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like pushing the boundaries. Like I've definitely done that with soul. Yeah, exactly. And like sugar in like something as well. And seeing it like as one of those things just to kind of play with. Exactly. Like it's a fun tool. Exactly.

Exactly. 

[00:43:21] Anna: Yeah. And it's, and it was nice. And yeah, it was good to not, um, you sort of go into these things, or I do, but having like quite a strong opinion and wanting to be quite. rigorous in it and the research, et cetera, but then not finding like it, cause it's about so many different people really, that really sort of not finding any like hard lines or any kind of particular, you know, the research was sort of endless because once you go down this umami.

Topic it's like it's such a rabbit hole. It's such a rabbit hole and that was kind of lovely And I do feel like the gentleness [00:44:00] and all that was such a part of this podcast series that Yeah was surprising as part of that kind of like yeah, we sort of stripped away unintentionally, maybe stripped away some of the hardness to it.

[00:44:14] Lucy: Yeah, I think that's really interesting. Like I was sort of like, there's not really obvious takeaways from each episode. No. And I think that's really nice to not have like that learning. 

[00:44:23] Anna: Yes, exactly. Exactly. 

[00:44:24] Lucy: Yeah. And I thought it would 

[00:44:25] Anna: come in and be like, and this is the hypothesis of Yeah, and I think it's so tempting to do that, right?

Because I 

[00:44:31] Lucy: think that there's such a convention for doing that within thematic series. But actually, I really like making and listening to and watching work where you kind of sit in. the edges, or like sit in the middle of it. 

[00:44:44] Anna: Yeah, and I think, I hope that there's some kind of sitting around comfortableness with it.

You know, like, oh why, I don't know why that makes me feel unusual, but maybe 

[00:44:52] Lucy: yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure, like it definitely made me reflect on like, I don't know, even hearing about like how people [00:45:00] talked about McDonald's when I was a kid. Yeah, 

[00:45:01] Anna: yeah, yeah. Being 

[00:45:02] Lucy: like, oh there must be something in it that's like addictive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, and kind of like extrapolating that to like, yeah, how people talk about Yeah. This kind of like nefarious idea of people putting things in Chinese food to like, make you want more of it. And it's like, you probably just want more of it because it's good. 

[00:45:17] Anna: Yeah, exactly. Well, the reason we, we have like desire for flavors is because we need all those things for survival, right?

Like we live a very different lifestyle than we lived was hunter gatherers, but like etymology wise, we haven't really changed. Is that the right word? Etymology? Anyway, whatever. Our bodies haven't really changed. Right. So like, we're still craving and wanting all that, like. Yeah, like Johnny talks about that, doesn't he, with the kind of 

[00:45:42] Lucy: like craving for umami being part of survival.

Yeah. It's really interesting. Jonah has verses. Oh, Jonah. So unsociable. I know. Lekka[00:46:00] 

is hosted and produced by me, Lucy Dearlove. Thanks to Anna Sulanmasingh for being part of this episode. Chinese and any other Asian isn't out now. And don't forget to listen to To Be Delicious, the five part series we made together about MSG, right below this episode in the Lekker feed, wherever you're listening right now.

Music is by Blue Dot Sessions. One more reminder before I go, that you can sign up as a paid subscriber to support Lekker on Substack, Patreon and Apple Podcasts. Links in the show notes. And to any paid subscribers who are listening, thank you so much for your continued support. Thanks for listening, I'll be back soon.