Behind the Book | Kristina Cho Author of 'Mooncakes and Milk Bread'
Let’s start at the beginning! Do you remember the first thing you ever baked or cooked that made a lasting impression on you?
My family honestly did bake a lot growing up, but there's a photo of me when I was a toddler wearing a tiny apron and holding a tray of panda cookies. Panda cookies were something my mom and aunt created with vanilla and chocolate shortbread cookie dough and a lot of Play-Doh skills. I can’t tell if it’s a real memory or if I reconstructed it in my mind through the photo but I feel like I need to recreate panda cookies soon!
As a fellow Ohioan (I’m from Akron!), you grew up in your family’s restaurant. Did that immediately inspire you to also follow a path of food or did you initially want to pursue something else?
Ohio! I loved growing up in my family’s restaurant. Being surround by family and cooking definitely helped me develop a passion for food. For a moment, I thought about going to culinary school and ultimately decided to study architecture instead. I still love painting, drawing, and creating beautiful things with my hands. I also think my family didn’t necessarily want to push a culinary career onto me because they knew how difficult it was to work in the food industry. As I studied and worked in design, I continued to cook and obsess about food.
What inspired you to launch your blog, Eat Cho Food, was it a passion project while you had a different career?
I started Eat Cho Food in early 2017 when I was unhappy working as an architectural designer. I felt like I wasn’t creatively fulfilled and needed something else to channel my energy into. Eat Cho Food started with no serious intention of becoming anything resembling a full-time job, although that was the dream. I consistently shared a recipe and a life update each week and eventually gained more readers and followers. Eat Cho Food combines my love of cooking, storytelling, photography, and design all in one place!
Now to talk about Mooncakes & Milk Bread, congratulations, it’s beautiful! What inspired you to write your first cookbook?
The first baked bun recipe I ever posted were these Flower Hot Dog Buns back in 2019. They are a nostalgic childhood favorite and I wanted to recreate the recipe myself. The recipe got so much love and I realized that there really weren’t many recipes, either online or in books, that represented the baked goods I loved so much from Chinese bakeries. Around that same time my now literary agent reached out to me about writing a book and the rest is history.
As someone who usually travels, my cookbooks have been a lifeline to travel around the world in my kitchen during the pandemic. For those who aren’t familiar, can you share what a mooncake is and what makes them so beautiful and delicious?
A mooncake is a traditional Chinese pastry that is typically made during Mid-Autumn Festival (also known as Harvest Moon Festival). I grew up with the Cantonese style mooncakes, which are typically filled with sweet pastes, nuts, and salted egg yolks. The crust is a soft chewy dough that’s stamped with a mooncake mold, which gives them their stunning pattern. I love making mooncakes each year and gifting them to my family and friends. Mooncakes are normally round to represent the moon and togetherness and they are meant to be shared by cutting them into small wedges. There are so many different styles of mooncakes though, every region in Chinatown has their own version of a mooncake.
I love talking process! How did you go about writing the book? Did you find it easy, challenging, fun, do share!
I wrote the bulk of my cookbook during the pandemic so that definitely caused some challenges, but overall writing the book was fun and allowed me to reflect on my own relationship with baking. Deciding what recipes were going to make it into the book was probably the easiest part because there are so many iconic bakery items that I felt needed to make an appearance in the book. Recipe testing during early pandemic times made it a little difficult to acquire ingredients but I made it work (by ordering 50 pound bags of bread flour) and ultimately, I think it made the recipes in the book more efficient and simple. Now I’m in the party mode of the cookbook process and I can’t wait to share the book with everyone!
You host a variety of workshops like dumplings and mooncakes. Can you talk a bit more about this and this and what else you have coming down the pipeline for people to learn?
I LOVE teaching workshops. I used to teach workshops in person and it was so rewarding to meet readers in real life and share food together. I transitioned to virtual workshops during the pandemic and it allowed me to connect with a much wider range of students. I have four virtual workshops scheduled for the fall and each of them are for recipes found in the book. I hope to keep the workshops coming and maybe host them in person again. One day I would love to open up a studio kitchen where I can host workshops all the time!
This might be a bit existential but life lessons can be found in many places including baking and cooking. What lessons have you learned while baking?
I tend to be a multitasker and schedule too many things into a single day, but baking has taught me to embrace slowing down and exercise patience. Dough needs time to proof and relax, cookie dough needs time to hydrate and chill, and butter needs time to soften. Rushing for the sake of efficiency isn't always best!
Quick Questions!
What is one of the most memorable meals you have ever eaten?
Last holiday season, my fiancé and I went over to my parents’ house for dinner one night with zero warning or planning and yet my parents cooked the most incredible feast with whatever was already in the kitchen. We had a Cantonese-style Tomato Egg, Black Bean and Garlic Squid with Bell Peppers, Chinese sausage, wintermelon soup, and rice. It was inspiring to see my parents cook this way.
You have 15 minutes to prepare a meal, what are you making?
Instant ramen with a fried egg and whatever is in my freezer (fish tofu, cuttlefish balls, corn, etc).
My five staple kitchen ingredients are…
Oyster Sauce, Sesame Oil, Jasmine Rice, Green Onions, Chili Oil.
My favorite food city is…
Portland, Oregon. Every single meal I’ve had in Portland has been incredible. I sort of regret not moving there but we have friends who live there and keep us coming back to visit.
You currently live in the Bay Area, what is your favorite:
Coffee Shop…Stonemill Matcha (not coffee though!)
Bakery…Harvest Wheat Field in Inner Richmond
Restaurant…Good Luck Dim Sum
Photographs taken from ‘Mooncakes and Milk Bread’ by Kristina Cho. Copyright 2021 by Kristina Cho. Photographs copyright Kristina Cho. Used by permission of Harper Horizon, an imprint of HarperCollins Focus LLC.
Brown Sugar Shao Bing
From 'Mooncakes & Milk Bread’