Let Her Cook: Senior Nina Yun connects to her Asian culture through cooking traditional recipes

The fried rice was sizzling on the stove. The cheesecake was cooling on the counter. The TV was playing “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.” Senior Nina Yun was prepped and ready to feast. 

It was 3 a.m.

Nina scooped some rice into a bowl and took her usual spot on the leftmost lounge chair. After all, it was the best seat in the living room with an adjacent table and direct view of the TV.

Cooking on weekends late at night — anywhere from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. — allows Nina full access to the kitchen without the intrusion of a family member. She often chooses to prepare Asian dishes — giving her a tasteful meal while connecting her to her Korean, Chinese and Hawaiian heritage.

“I’ve had to explore it on my own because none of my grandparents are living and we live really far away from our family,” Nina said. “Also Asian people do not have recipes. They have to show you how to do it. But since [my family isn’t] here, they can’t show me how to do it. So I have to teach myself.”

She makes Korean tteokbokki rice cakes and sticky toffee pudding one night and Korean tofu soup and gnocchi the next. All from scratch.

“I get food inspiration ideas from restaurants I go to and videos I see online, and I’m like, ‘Oh, that looks good, maybe I’ll just cook that up,’” Nina said. “Or if I’m craving something, then I’ll cook it. So really whatever I’m hungry for inspires me.”

Because of the unusual time of day, Nina cooks for herself — it wouldn’t make sense to put a fresh bowl of noodles into the fridge for her family to eat later. 

“What she does is kind of a mystery to me,” Nina’s twin sister Ella said. “I genuinely do not know what she eats. She’ll be like, ‘Oh, I made this,’ and I’m like ‘When?’”

Nina scrutinizes over chili oil and rice flour on trips to “the Asian Market”  — her nickname for the 888 International Market — with her dad. Ever since COVID when she had extra free time to grow her love for cooking, Nina has claimed a corner of the pantry for her non-perishable items like noodles, Japanese nori or seaweed sheets and Japanese dashi stock to the point that she has the ingredients to create “nearly any Asian meal except for meat.”

While wandering the aisles of the Asian market, Nina sees anything from aloe vera leaves to duck legs. Along with food items, she’s also bought her pots and chopsticks from the market.

“I got my wok from there,” Nina said. “[My parents] keep using my wok, they keep stealing it because it’s the perfect size wok. It can fit small things, but is big enough for larger things. I’m taking it to college with me.”

Nina’s authenticity doesn’t stop with her choice of cooking pan. When she makes a dish for the first time, Nina goes online to find the most authentic recipe possible. Over time, she’s learned how to distinguish between “Americanized” recipes and original ones — making sure her meals are filled with the ingredients and spices that the unauthentic recipes lack.

“Being able to make foods that [our Asian side of the family] makes or try foods from even other cultures I think is really cool,” Ella said.

Something that Ella doesn’t agree with is Nina’s timing.

“I’m on a normal sleep schedule like a normal person and eating meals at 2 a.m. is just not really my thing,” Ella said.

Because of this, Ella snacks on desserts like cheesecake and macarons that Nina puts in the fridge for safekeeping rather than fresh Korean gyeran bap — rice with fried egg — late at night.

Though Nina wishes she could cook whatever she wants, she does have some restrictions. Her dad has forbidden her to make kimchi — Korean sauerkraut — because “it’s very fragrant” and makes the whole house smell like fermented cabbage.

Nina hopes to one day make her own kimchi as well as seafood like escargot, duck confit, charbroiled oysters, crab cakes, butterfish and black cod once she travels to a more seafood-accessible city for college.