Cannabis

thcscience_admin
Hetty Lui McKinnon
BornSydney, Austrailia
Occupation
  • food writer
  • author
SubjectVegetarian/Plant-based/Vegan cookbooks
Notable worksTenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds
Notable awardsJames Beard Foundation Award

Hetty Lui McKinnon is an Australian Chinese Vegetarian/plant-based/vegan cookbook author, recipe developer, and James Beard Award finalist and winner. She has written five cookbooks with the fifth, Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds winning the James Beard Award for Vegetable Focused Cooking in 2024.

Early life[edit]

McKinnon was born in Sydney to Chinese immigrant parents from Guangdong, China.[1] Her father immigrated in the late 50s and her mom arrived in the early 1960s.[2] She has two siblings and is the youngest sibling.[3]

McKinnon's father worked at the Flemington Markets as an importer and exporter of bananas.[4] He brought fresh produce back for his family, which had a huge influence on McKinnon's later cooking.[4] McKinnon's father died in 1989, when she was 15 years old.[4][5]

McKinnon's Australian upbringing and cross-cultural experiences profoundly shaped her. She recalls feeling like a minority outside of her home while also growing up in a traditional Chinese household.[6] McKinnon has stated that food was central to her family, calling it a "common language."[6] Although McKinnon grew up eating her mother's Cantonese food, she did not really cook in her childhood.[6]

At school, McKinnon's career advisor dissuaded her from becoming a journalist, which led to her initial stint in public relations.[6]

Career[edit]

In the early 2000s, McKinnon moved to London because her husband got a job there.[1] She got a job at a PR agency.[1] McKinnon resided there for four years before moving back to Sydney with her husband.[1]

After her move back to Sydney, McKinnon was freelancing for a PR agency, but found herself gravitating towards cooking. When Mckinnon would put her children down for their naps, she would cook through Yotam Ottolenghi's first cookbook.[1] She credits this as a major turning point that helped her fall in love with cooking, learn practical techniques, and layer flavors.[1]

In 2011, McKinnon founded Arthur Street Kitchen, a community kitchen making salads that highlight local produce, in Sydney's Surry Hills neighborhood.[4] She made salads and sweets out of her home kitchen and delivered them by bike throughout the neighborhood.[1] The menu would rotate, ranging from salads she had been making for years to ones inspired by classic dishes.[7] McKinnon emailed out a weekly menu to subscribers that featured two salads a day, making deliveries on Thursday and Friday for up to forty people.[7]

After about a year, McKinnon decided to write a cookbook.[1] McKinnon was inspired by people asking for her salad recipes, which taught her to develop and write recipes.[1] She met the book's photographer, Luisa Brimble, during an interview with Broadsheet magazine, a Sydney-based magazine.[1] In 2013, McKinnon self-published Community, which was initially just supposed to be for Arthur Street Kitchen's subscribers.[1] However, after a feature in the Australian website The Design Files, McKinnon sold out of cookbooks.[1] A publisher at Pan Macmillan saw her cookbook and published it throughout Australia, where it sold upwards of 80,000 copies.[1] In 2015, Community was shortlisted for the 2015 Australian Book Industry Awards in the category of Illustrated Book of the Year.[8]

In 2015, McKinnon moved to New York City's Carroll Gardens.[1] There, she wrote her second book, Neighborhood, over the course of three months.[1]

In 2017, McKinnon began publishing a multicultural food magazine called The Peddler Journal.[1]

In 2018, McKinnon began a monthly column on ABC Everyday.[9] She is also a regular contributor to New York Times Cooking, The Washington Post, Bon Appetit, and Epicurious.[10] She has been featured on the New York Times Cooking YouTube channel.

Her third cookbook, Family, focuses on "vegetarian comfort food."[1] She was inspired by the crowd-pleasing meals she cooked for her children, which were much more kid-friendly than the salads she made for Arthur Street Kitchen.[1] The book came out in 2019 and was awarded Best Illustrated Book of the Year in the 2019 Australian Book Industry Awards.[11]

Her fourth cookbook, To Asia, with Love, came out in 2020.[12] McKinnon shot all the photos for this book on film.[2] The book features easy Asian recipes and draws heavy influence from her experience as a third culture kid.[13] In interviews, McKinnon discussed how this cookbook was a way for her to reclaim her Chinese Australian heritage and celebrate Asian food culture.[13] In 2022, the book was a James Beard Award finalist.[14]

McKinnon credits her fifth cookbook, Tenderheart, as a major way that she was able to process the emotions around her father's death.[5] Originally, she planned to write the cookbook about her favorite vegetables, but felt gravitated to write about her father.[3] Many of the recipes in the book incorporate foods that he loved, like garlic chile oil, adobo, and tater tots.[15]

Honors and awards[edit]

Her first cookbook, Community, is regarded as an Australian cult classic.[16]

McKinnon's 2020 cookbook, To Asia, with Love, was a finalist for the 2022 James Beard Awards. [17] Her 2022 cookbook, Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds won the 2024 James Beard Foundation Award for Vegetable Focused Cooking.[18]

Published works[edit]

  • Community (2013) ISBN 9781760786571
  • Neighborhood (2016) ISBN 9781743538982
  • Family: New Vegetarian Comfort Foods to Nourish Every Day (2019) ISBN 9781760554576
  • To Asia, with Love: Everyday Asian Recipes and Stories from the Heart (2020) ISBN 9781760787677
  • Tenderheart: A Book about Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds (2022) ISBN 9780593534861

Personal life[edit]

McKinnon has been vegetarian since she was 19 years old.[4] In an interview, she stated that she had a general dislike of meat and went fully vegetarian once she started university.[4]

McKinnon has three children.[1][19]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s "Hetty McKinnon Transcript". Cherry Bombe. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  2. ^ a b Chase, Suzy (2021-05-11). "Interview with Hetty McKinnon | To Asia, With Love". Medium. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  3. ^ a b "Hetty Liu McKinnon navigates grief with an ode to her father and vegetables". KCRW. 2023-06-17. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Law, Benjamin (2021-03-19). "Cookbook author Hetty McKinnon: 'Food is foreplay, isn't it?'". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  5. ^ a b "'Tenderheart' tells one Chinese-Australian chef's stories of family, food, loss and joy". www.wbur.org. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  6. ^ a b c d "Interview #150 — Hetty McKinnon". LIMINAL. 2020-09-29. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  7. ^ a b Clements, Caroline (May 29, 2012). "Arthur Street Kitchen". Broadsheet. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  8. ^ "ABIA 2015 shortlists announced | Books+Publishing". Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  9. ^ "Love pad thai? Try this flavour-packed salad". ABC Everyday. 2018-10-04. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  10. ^ "In Conversation with Hetty Mckinnon". Middle Eastern Pantry & Recipes | New York Shuk. 2023-05-11. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  11. ^ W, Sally (2019-05-02). "2019 Winners Announced". ABIA. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  12. ^ Joseph, Lauren (2021-05-04). "The Most Cookable Book of Spring: 'To Asia, With Love'". Epicurious. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  13. ^ a b "Hetty McKinnon's New Cookbook Champions Easy Asian Cooking". Artful Living Magazine. 2021-05-17. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  14. ^ "Read Up on Our 2022 Book Award Nominees | James Beard Foundation". www.jamesbeard.org. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  15. ^ Cohen, Danielle (2023-06-05). "Hetty Lui McKinnon Is a Vegetable Whisperer". The Cut. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  16. ^ "Hetty McKinnon's Cult Cookbook Finally Comes to America". Cherry Bombe. 2020-09-01. Retrieved 2023-07-17.
  17. ^ "Awards Search". James Beard Foundation Award. Retrieved June 20, 2024.
  18. ^ "THE 2024 JAMES BEARD MEDIA AWARD WINNERS". James Beard Foundation Award. Retrieved June 20, 2024.
  19. ^ "Hetty Lui McKinnon on Málà Project's Secret Sauce and Why You Won't Find Coca-Cola in Her New Cookbook". Simply Recipes. Retrieved 2023-07-06.

External links[edit]

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetty_Lui_McKinnon

Leave a Reply