By CASEY NEILL
COOKING can transport Keysborough’s Kalyan Ky back to her homeland Cambodia.
Now anyone can take that journey.
Her refugee story and favourite recipes appear in Every Bite Takes You Home, out on 6 December.
It features 16 refugees who now call Australia home, and profits will support asylum seekers and refugees through Stand Up, Ondru, and Foundation House.
Ms Ky was born in the Khao-I-Dang Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand, on the Thai-Cambodian border, and moved to Malaysia when she was six months old.
The family spent three years in Malaysian refugee camps before leaving for New Zealand where they initially lived in a refugee centre in Auckland.
They spent 15 years in New Zealand before moving to join relatives in Australia in 2005.
Ms Ky learnt how to cook Cambodian dishes during visits back to her homeland.
“When you’re in New Zealand or Australia, you’re either working or going to school, but when you’re in Cambodia you’re just spending time with your family, and I spent several months there just learning how to cook,” she said.
“I love preparing food. At that moment when it’s ready to serve, I love decorating a dish, making it special.”
One of her favourites is dried smoked fish with pickled mustard leaves.
“It’s not completely salty. It tastes like a delicacy but it is very easy to make,” she said.
“I love eating mustard leaves, especially when I eat rice. It’s so delicious.
“Sometimes I can live on mustard leaves, I can have them for lunch and dinner and breakfast!”
She’s contributed recipes for fried fish with three flavour chilli sauce, marinated beef salad and sadao to the book.
“Beef Salad is normally for parties, and gatherings. People wouldn’t usually make it to eat at home because it’s a big meal,” she said.
“Normally if you make it, you make a lot.
“Sadao is the same. It incorporates a lot of ingredients and it takes a long time to pick off all the pieces of the sadao, so you only see it made on special occasions.”
Ms Ky said food was comforting and had the power to bring people together, something she saw as a significant aspect of multicultural Melbourne.
