The father-and-son team behind “Hunger Pangs”
The peacemaking power of food – that’s what you witness as Kevin Pang and his dad, Jeffrey, get ready to shoot an episode of their YouTube show, “Hunger Pangs.” “Let’s rock ‘n’ roll – it’s shrimp time!”
Working through their recipe for honey walnut shrimp at the studios of America’s Test Kitchen in Boston (where the show is produced), you’d never know that it’s taken more than 30 years to get to this point.
CBS News
Kevin Pang was six when his family emigrated from Hong Kong to Toronto, eventually moving to Seattle, where Jeffrey opened an export business.
Chinese cooking demonstrations (2.2 million views and counting), punctuated with nods to a shared history that Kevin had ignored.
Everything Kevin could never say in person flooded out in a New York Times article he wrote in 2016, “My father, the YouTube star.”
“To bear my soul in front of my family, it’s just this inconceivable, just horrific idea,” Kevin said. “But to do so, like, in a national newspaper? I have no problem with that.”
Jeffrey Pang’s response? A voicemail message: “Hi Kevin. This is a good and true story. Thank you. Call me sometime. Dad.”
Now, father and son reminisce their way through Asian markets – and, of course, they cook. Kevin finally gets that with each ingredient, each dish, they’re re-telling their story, and preserving it.
For a year before they left Hong Kong in 1988, Catherine and Jeffrey Pang collected family recipes, afraid they would lose their heritage. “I still can recall the moment they taught us how to cook a specific dish,” said Catherine. “It’s our treasure.”
Some of those recipes have found their way into the cookbook Jeffrey and Kevin have just published together, titled, “A Very Chinese Cookbook: 100 Recipes from China & Not China (But Still Really Chinese).”
“Food is our common language,” said Kevin. “That’s the language that we speak. That’s what we can talk about. And who would’ve thought?”
America’s Test Kitchen
RECIPE: Honey-Walnut Shrimp from Kevin and Jeffrey Pang of America’s Test Kitchen
RECIPE: Simple Fried Rice – the “perfect leftovers dish”
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Story produced by Young Kim. Editor: Carol Ross.
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Source: cbsnews.com