Synonym Magazine – Issue 03: Spices

At Synonym, we are telling immigrant stories through food.

As strangers in a new land, a taste of home can provide comfort and familiarity. Bringing those tastes together with the food at hand creates new traditions, a new heritage. 

We’ll spotlight these stories and share how trade, politics, colonialism, and capitalism have changed food cultures around the world, for immigrants and countries’ natives alike. We’ll explore all of this in the most intimate ways possible —through generationally shared flavors, the dishes placed on a table, the spices packed in a suitcase.  

Issue 3: SPICES

Issue Three digs into spices, and all the different stories they tell, from romance to survival to providing a sense of place. We profile New York–based Van Van, a single-origin spice company based on the terroir of Vietnam. The couple behind the brand is not only sharing Vietnamese culture and cuisine, but also the vibrant flavors and quality of Vietnam’s herbs and spices as they are meant to be tasted. Our editor, Tien Nguyen, interviews writer and author Monique Truong about the use of salt as a literary device. The result is an extraordinarily beautiful take on an ordinary seasoning and the metaphors it can inspire. We also have some lovely essays, including one about how a bike ride–turned–foraging expedition in Texas transports the writer and private chef Umair Khakoo back home to Pakistan. Ruby Robina Saha writes about the colonialist history of nutmeg from Indonesia’s Banda Islands and how it destroyed a culture (and created New York City as we know it). Daphne K. Jenkins talks about the love for li hing mui with Neale Asato from Asato Family Shop in Hawai‘i, and shares recipes featuring this sweet, salty, and tangy powder. Our frequent contributor Kat Hong speaks with Taiwanese/Japanese comedian, Atsuko Okatsuka, about the Cheesecake Factory and the bay leaf conspiracy, as you can imagine it’s pretty hilarious. This issue is full of stunning imagery to go along with recipes, like the ones from Edy Massih, author of the cookbook Keep it Zesty, and a very special excerpt from Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice by Christina De Witte and Mallika Kauppinen.

Art and photos by Gabriel Cabrera, Evan Sung, Jennelle Fong, Andrew Bui, Ivan Cajina and more!

116 pages, spiral bound, full color
Cover photo by Bethany Mollenkof

Language: English