Cooking with Comics
Let’s break up these upsetting, serious topics with something a little more fun.
One slight benefit to being out of work and quarantined at home all day during these terrifying times is that I have the time to cook a fresh, healthy dinner for my partner after her long day of working from home. Also, plenty of time for reading comics. With a few recently published works, you can have both! Over the past months, I’ve read a few comic books devoted to cooking, illustrating recipes and dishes in a way that makes them fun and informative.
Combining comics and cooking is nothing new, though. I had some fun a few years ago with They Draw and Cook, an anthology of cartoonists and artists illustrating their favorite recipes, originally published online. If I recall, there were a lot of diverse and interesting dishes, though a few might have been a little difficult to follow due to the stylization of the recipes.
Meal is a charming short comic focused on culinary entomophagy, the practice of eating insects. Cartoonist Blue Delliquanti collaborated with chef and food writer Soleil Ho to create a fun, vibrant story that explores the cultural as well as the culinary aspects of cooking bugs, along with a little romance. Meal tells the story of young chef Yarrow, who moves to Minneapolis hoping to work at Casa Chicatana, an upcoming entomophagy centered restaurant founded by influential chef, Chandra Flores. Unfortunately, Yarrow’s enthusiasm comes off as exploitative rather than merely passionate to the older chef, and she must prove her motives as well as her culinary chops, with the help of her neighbor/crush Milani. Along the way, the reader learns just as much as Yarrow. Delliquanti is an expert at weaving interesting informational tidbits into this wonderfully diverse, loving GLBTQ+ friendly comic, and as with their previous work, really captures the quirky feeling of Minneapolis, with plenty of local references for the local reader to catch.
Most interesting was Soleil Ho’s closing essay, exploring both the ecological promise of insects that make some think them the “food of the future,” and the reality that they have been a dietary staple for many people for millennia. She even provides some tasty sounding recipes for meal worms, tarantulas, and chicatanas (Oaxacan flying ants), that I would definitely try if I could find the ingredients!
In Let’s Make Ramen! Hugh Amano writes a comprehensive and compelling culinary history and guide to ramen, clearly and beautifully illustrated by Sarah Becan. Amano and Becan not only present a readable introduction to the topic of ramen, a relatively recent staple of Japanese cuisine with a variety of regional styles and specialties, but they provide instruction on how to cook each part of the deceptively simple comfort food. In addition, they bring in experts to expand on certain topics. The bulk of the comic is the recipes, though.
Full of charts, ingredient lists, and other helpful information, Let’s Make Ramen! gives you everything you need to know to make your own ramen. From the broth, or dashi, tare, or the sauces that give it is flavors, to the ramen noodles themselves, Amano and Becan provide step by step instructions on lovingly crafting each element to go into your ramen. Not exactly something you can just throw together, though, a good ramen requires time and effort to put together. More of an entire weekend endeavor, rather than a weekday dinner. I haven’t yet been able to tackle trying out any of the recipes, but I really enjoyed reading this comic.
Cook Korean! By Robin Ha, on the other hand, is a fun comic that makes cooking some Korean standards fun and easy. My favorite of the comics reviewed here, the recipes in Cook Korean! are concise and inspiring, just inviting you to try some out. As Ha points out in her introduction, the basics of cooking Korean cuisine are simple and easy to pick up. Ha includes a variety of Korean dishes and gives a nice run down on ingredients and tips on using them. Colorful and clear, her recipes are tempting and easy to follow. From a variety of kimchi types, to vegetables, meat and seafood dishes, noodles, soups, and even cocktails, there’s something for nearly any occasion.
I whipped up a few of her recipes, for soy spinach, steamed Asian eggplant, and pan fried tofu for quick dinners over the past week. They each turned out super tasty and were fast and simple to put together. I’m looking forward to trying more of them too, especially the fascinating sounding dotorimuk, or acorn salad, made with congealed acorn flour.
I hope that more comic artists or food writers try out this form, I would be very interested in reading and trying out more cooking comics.