Tenderhearted

Vegetables, the salad landscape, and expanding Australian-ness with Hetty McKinnon

If you live in Australia, chances are strong that you know the name Hetty Lui McKinnon — the woman responsible for “reinventing the salad landscape,” as one writer put it, of the entire country. Or maybe you came to know her, like me, by making one of her recipes in NYTCooking — and then seeking out more, and then buying To Asia, With Love, and then becoming such a Hetty stan that when the book publicist asked if you’d be interested in looking at a copy of her new cookbook, it made your week and you immediately texted half of your contacts. (OR MAYBE THAT’S JUST ME)

Maybe you’ve never heard her name but 1) love really good and robust and beautifully designed new cookbooks; 2) LOVE VEGETABLES; and/or 3) love thinking about the relationship between identity and food.

However you come to Hetty McKinnon’s work, I’m so honored to have her words here in the newsletter. Tenderheart is such a precious cookbook, at once unique and utilitarian. You’d love it even without this interview, but you’re going to love it even more with it rattling around in your memory as you cook through its delights.

Even as someone who’s written and sold four books myself, I have no idea how a cookbook is pitched and sold. Is it just the conceit, and then you start including recipes? Or do you include a smattering of recipes the way a non-fiction writer includes a sample chapter? How did the book change from pitch to completion, and how did you think about the art direction for the book?  [For example: I love, love, love the way the photos make your father’s and family’s history feel absolutely integral to the book itself. I love the big, bold font that introduces us to a story about each vegetable. And I love the little tiny sketch of each vegetable in the corner of the page.] As detailed as you’re willing to go into the process, I’d love to hear it. 

Firstly, I absolutely LOVE the creation of a cookbook. I am a bit of a publishing nerd. I love every single step of it, from the writing, the photographing of the recipes, collaborating with the art director on the fonts, how the recipes are laid out, the chapter opening pages, how the introduction to the book plays out. I love it all. 

In terms of this book, I felt like writing a book about vegetables was a rite of passage for me. I have been a vegetarian for 30 years, I have devoted my career to writing about vegetables, so this was the book I was itching to write. I knew immediately that I wanted to devote each chapter to a singular vegetable. For me, this was the only way to give them the respect they deserve, to dive deep into each vegetable and explore their potential. 

When I pitched the book, I had a fairly clear idea that the book would be structured this way. A chapter devoted to each of the vegetables I wanted to write about and cook with. When I sat down to list the vegetables I would focus upon, these are the ones that organically emerged. I wanted to focus upon everyday vegetables, ones that are accessible and economical. I also wanted to tell a story of vegetables from my unique perspective, as a Chinese Australian girl who has lived in many places around the world. So, there are chapters for broccoli and kale, alongside ones for Asian greens, ginger and seaweed. I really felt like this was an opportunity to create a conversation around vegetables that felt more inclusive, more multicultural, less elitist. 

As I thought and planned the book, the backstory of Tenderheart emerged. The story of my dad, who worked at the produce markets in Sydney, and who I lost as a teenager, and the subsequent exploration of loss, of unresolved grief, of exploring family and daughterly love, provided an anchor for the book. A good friend commented that it felt like my dad’s tenderhearted and generous energy runs through all the recipes - this is a very apt observation. In many ways, I consider Tenderheart my ‘vegetable origin story’ which is as complex and multi-layered as all family stories are. 

From the very outset, I had a very clear idea of how I wanted Tenderheart to look. I also photographed the book, so I envisioned every photo to be very stripped back, no props, the food to be the only focus on the page. For the design, I worked with my Australian-based Art Director Daniel New, who has worked with me on every one of my books. Daniel is a seasoned book designer but he is also an artist. He painted the Tenderheart masthead, the chapter headers and all the vegetables on the chapter opening pages. His work is incredible and impeccable and it is such an honor to have his work in my books. We wanted the book to feel whimsical yet timeless, to convey the creativity and LIFE of vegetables. Along with my Australian publisher Plum Books, who commissioned Daniel for the design, it is a unique, trans-continental relationship that has been deeply creatively rewarding. 

I really appreciate the way you conceive of vegetarianism as additive, instead of subtractive: this isn’t a book “just” for vegetarians, it’s a book overflowing with delicious vegetables. You’re also very mindful about the way you write about “eating seasonally” as something that’s lovely, but also very much out of reach for a lot of people (because of location, availability, price, etc.). How do you balance the impulse towards inclusion of all types of cooks with, say, the fact that acquiring Black vinegar and Chinese peppercorns really will make a much, MUCH better Kung Pao Cauliflower?

It strikes me as a really delicate balance to maintain, particularly when “accessible” in the publishing world (cookbook or not) is often code for “accessible to white people.” 

I appreciate you asking this. It is a balancing act, and accessibility is something that is front at mind, at all times, when I am writing recipes. The underlying throughline of all my work is community and in order to bring people together, to ask people to cook my point of view, I must share recipes which include them too. I meet home cooks where they are. I make them feel comfortable by offering flexibility. The ingredients you mention, like black vinegar and Sichuan peppercorns, are very “everyday” to me, but not to others. So, in my work, I slowly and steadily educate by giving home cooks the best option, but also providing substitutions where appropriate. 

Also, much of this work is about building trust and sometimes that takes time. Over the years, I have fostered that trust by delivering recipes that home cooks can rely on, again and again. And that trust means that if I say that making homemade black bean sauce is THAT much better than using store bought black bean sauce, then many will go that extra mile. I think a lot of recipes are very didactic and absolute, and make home cooks feel guilty if they aren’t using the right kind of salt or an exact ingredient, and I think this alienates cooks and creates boundaries. This is why I wrote about seasonality being a luxury. It is nice if we can eat seasonally and locally, but there are many real and valid reasons why many can’t and if this is the case, it is much more important to eat vegetables, wherever we can source them from, rather than not at all.

I am always trying to tear down walls through food, to bring people closer together, to use my privilege as a writer to tell my story authentically and honestly so that others, particularly those who grew up very differently to me, can experience life and flavor through another’s eyes. As a recipe writer of Chinese descent, I am absolutely aware that “accessibility” often means “accessible to white people” but I see this as an opportunity to change the way ingredients are talked about in the mainstream, to change the conversation about food and to recalibrate what ingredients are deemed “accessible”. It is a slow process which can have frustrations but I am willing to do the work because it is important.  

One of my favorite parts about preparing for this interview was reading and listening to a whole bunch of interviews with you from the past, particularly about your initial success in Australia. Can you talk a little about what it means when people say you reinvented the landscape of salad in Australia? (I personally love the idea of a salad landscape, it’s very evocative) 

There is definitely a salad landscape in Australia that feels very alive. I think that is why Australians fell in love with my first book Community. They loved the bold approach to both vegetables and flavors, the cross-cultural influences, and the message of sharing food with family, friends and neighbors. Australians took Community salads under their wing, and created their own community around those recipes. I have seen WhatsApp chats devoted to my salad recipes. There is a point in popular culture when a person or book takes on a life of its own, and I think this happened with Community. 

It feels surreal to hear statements like this about my work but I do see it as an honor and a privilege. For me, knowing that so many people love my recipes and have made my recipes a part of their own family culinary history, is my ultimate reward as a recipe writer and cookbook author. I always want my recipes to touch others on an emotional level and I think the recipes that we come back to again and again, are the ones we feel a deeper connection to. I love the idea that people are creating their own memories while eating my recipes. 

My background is in star studies, and I often think about how a star can have a very different cultural image in one place than another, simply because of histories (like revamping the salad landscape!) that people in another place lack. Was it liberating or frustrating to move to a place where many people didn’t immediately associate you with Arthur Street Kitchen…..while also dealing with Americans’ pretty limited understanding/stereotype of who an Australian is? [I’m thinking here of your comments in Liminal Mag re: Chris Hemsworth and Margot Robbie, and how the ‘understandable’ Australian is the one people seem to want] 

Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect when I first moved to America. When I arrived in New York at the beginning of 2015, Community had just been released in Australia a few months prior and was steadily building its own cult fanbase. Meanwhile, I was all the way across the world tucked away in Brooklyn, living a very different life to the one I left behind. In Australia, I was the salad queen but in America, that message was harder to convey.

For the first few years, I did feel misunderstood in the US. Early on, one person saw my photo in Neighborhood and commented “but I thought she is Australian?” In the world, I don’t feel like there was much understanding of who an Australian is outside of the ones they see in the movies – Nicole, Chris, Margot etc – who all fulfill an archetype of Australianness. If you google ‘famous Australians’, you are not seeing Asian, indigenous, or brown faces there. I think people didn’t quite understand how a Chinese person with an Australian accent and a Scottish surname could be an expert on salads. I’m being a little facetious but you know what I mean? I was ‘lost in translation’. 

I think the turning point was when I wrote To Asia, With Love. I think by declaring, YES I AM CHINESE, AND I AM ALSO AUSTRALIAN, put things in perspective for a lot of people. It put my food and my recipes in perspective. For me, writing that book gave me the courage to lean into my identity and embrace all the parts of being Australian, being Chinese, being an immigrant in America, and channel all of that confidently, unapologetically and triumphantly in my food and writing.  

It has become very important to me to change the face of Australia and to convey the unique experience of being a non-white Australian in America. In the past, we have felt like we are not able to own our identity because we don’t look like how many perceive an Australian should look, but by showing up, but talking very openly about it, we will gradually rewrite the story of what it means to be Australian. 

I’ve seen other people ask you to name your favorite vegetable, and I’ve seen you call out broccoli as your favorite all-around people pleaser. But I want to know about how you think of the other vegetables’ personalities. Who’s the asshole with a tender center? Who’s the wallflower who opens up if you just get them to talk about something they’re passionate about? You can see where I’m going here. 

Ha amazing question. Very provocative because in truth, I do consider vegetables to have personalities! I love broccoli because it’s a people pleaser, a peacemaker, in our home. When I cook with it, everyone eats it. I love the ease of broccoli. Peas (frozen, of course!) are like reliable friends who always have your back when you need them. Carrots are like the best supporting actors that are the backbone of a movie, making others look good, but are rarely given the chance to shine. Similarly, celery is underestimated too; even though they are in most vegetable crispers, they carry such big flavor and textures that they are crying out to be elevated to main veg status.

Potatoes are the all rounders, good in everything. Cauliflowers are elegant, they bring sophistication to every dish. Turnips are definitely the wallflowers - they sit in the vegetable aisles, often overlooked, and misunderstood. But given the chance, and when cooked with care, they unleash their sweetness and juiciness. And the arsehole, I think it’s kale! Because they have so much swagger after being lauded as a superfood and for a time they were so trendy, but I think beyond the superficial hoopla, kale are real workhorses in the kitchen. They can be used in so many different ways – raw, in sauces, roasted – and their robust leaves over excellent texture in veggie meals. 

There are some really gorgeous and eye-catching recipes that I marked the first time I went through this cookbook as MUST COOK IMMEDIATELY (hello, Spinach Boxes).  Are there a few recipes that might be less obvious magnets that you hope people don’t flip past? 

Yes! I would love everyone to try the marinated celery with couscous recipe. It is one of my favorite recipes in the book. There is sweetness from the pickled golden raisins, liveliness from the marinated celery and heartiness from the couscous. It is a ‘complete’ salad experience. There is the eggplant char siu which is so simple but rather mind blowing.

The sweet potato rendang is something special – it is based upon beef rendang of course, which is a bold dry curry, and my sweet potato version holds all of those big flavors but is sweet and tangy too. I also love to encourage readers to try a new technique and flavor profile and a rendang is one that many may not have tried before. And special mention to the entire taro chapter because it is very special to me. It is a vegetable which I ate a lot with my mum so it means so much to be able to write about it, to share my love of this starchy star, and also perhaps encourage others to try it for the first time. ●

You can buy Tenderheart here — and follow Hetty on Instagram here.

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This Week’s Things I Read and Loved:

• A Taylor Swift take that made me think

• The Rage and Joy of MAGA America (to be clear, I think the source of the joy is fucked up, but this article is pointing out something I think most miss re: the attraction to MAGA)

• The Internet is for 12 Year Olds

• How to Sleep Better at Every Age

• Clutter Makes a Home

• This week’s just trust me

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