Jacqueline Chio-Lauri

Rejected by the parents of the girl he loves for being poor, Ma Mon Luk strikes out from China and boards a steamship headed for the Philippines in 1918. He vows to make a fortune and return for his beloved. Ma creates a chicken noddle soup he calls mami--"ma" for his name and "mi" for noodles--and peddles it as a street vendor. He eventually earns enough to open his own restaurant and wins the approval of the parents of his true love. Joyful illustrations from award-winning illustrator Kristin Sorra and heartwarming text from debut picture book author Jacqueline Chio-Lauri blend together to create a delicious story about creativity, perseverance, and the perfect bowl of soup. Satisfy your hunger with this Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection "A savory success story."--Booklist"An absolutely wonderful and inspiring story, beautifully illustrated. So much depth, so many layers But at its core, this is fundamentally a story about the enduring power of love and how that helped Ma Mon Luk to achieve the impossible... A valuable addition to any bookshelf."--Emma Pearl, author of Mending the Moon and Saving the Sun.

“An engrossing, page-turner of a cookbook.” —Brian McGinn, Emmy-nominated director and executive producer, Chef’s TableYou may not realize that Filipino Americans are the second-largest Asian American group living in the United States, especially when you compare the number of, say, Japanese, Thai, and Korean restaurants to Filipino ones. There’s a lot of speculation about why Filipino food hasn’t taken off the way other Asian cuisines have, but one thing’s for sure: there’s something for everyone here. Lauded as the next big thing by the likes of Anthony Bourdain and Jonathan Gold, Filipino food can be somewhat difficult to define, as it melds indigenous dishes with myriad foreign influences from Chinese and Spanish to South East Asian and even American. And as Filipinos have left their archipelago and set down roots all over the world, it has proven to be a highly adaptable cuisine, lending itself to different diets, preferences, and ingredients. The New Filipino Kitchen collects 30 recipes and stories from expat Filipinos, all of whom have taken their favorite dishes with them, preserving their food memories and, if necessary, tweaking their recipes to work in a new environment or, in the case of some chefs, a more modern context. With contributions from the White House executive chef Cristeta Comerford, Bocuse d’Or Europe winner Christian André Pettersen, 2015 MasterChef New Zealand runner-up Leo Fernandez, five-time Palanca Award winner and poet Francis Macansantos, and the “Food Buddha” Rodelio Aglibot, this is a multifaceted, nuanced introduction to the world of Filipino food and food culture.