Jun 30, 2022
I’ll Teach You Everything I Know: A Recipe for Ninjin-gohan
What a gift it is to be asked to feed a person, but what a further gift for that person to ask if they might be taught to make what you make.
Nina Li Coomes is a Japanese and American writer, currently living in Chicago, IL. Her writing has appeared in EATER, The Collapsar, and RHINO Poetry among other places. Her debut chapbook haircut poems was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2017.
What a gift it is to be asked to feed a person, but what a further gift for that person to ask if they might be taught to make what you make.
I find joy in being let into the idiosyncrasies of someone’s taste.
This is an essay about soup, but it is also about friendship. Or rather, this is an essay about soup and how a friendship ends.
I call it 子供丼 (kodomo-don), because it is only egg over rice. Something about it is simple, one rank lower in maturity than an adult dish.
In adolescence, weekend lunches meant fending for ourselves. On certain Saturdays, my sister and I ate wafu spaghetti together.
The trick to a good nostalgic curry rice is to finish it with honey. Just a drizzle at first.
The affectations of white anime enthusiasts made me feel fake, confusing my yearning for the language and familiarity I craved.
While I understood why theft or murder was wrong, this aspect didn’t make sense to me. What did sex and my body have to do with God?
In the etiquette class, everything had a proper place and use—even me.
