There aren’t that many original book ideas out there, but amazingly, here one is: The first Hmong cookbook has just been published, and it’s long overdue. “Cooking From the Heart” (University of Minnesota Press) is the first guide to preparing fresh and fiery Hmong cuisine at home.

The authors, Sami Scripter and Sheng Yang, met as neighbors when Yang was a young Laos-born girl who had recently moved to the United States with her family. Yang lived with the Scripters for a time, in order to improve her English and, in return, she introduced the Scripter family to her native cooking traditions.
 
“It was food unlike anything I’d ever tasted before, and it was so marvelous,” recalls Scripter, who was one of the few non-Hmong people to become familiar with the cuisine. “I showed them how to make raspberry jam and apple pie, too, so it went both ways.”

The cookbook serves both their cultures. This summer vegetable season, food-curious Euro-Americans will be able to solve the great mystery of the farmers’ market: What is that thing and how do you eat it? Hmong Americans, many of whom have been reared on apple pie, pizza and chocolate cookies, will be able to create traditional dishes.

“There are many, many young Hmong professionals with busy American lives who haven’t learned how to cook from their mothers or grandmothers, but they’d like to be able to have their favorite dishes,” says Scripter. The most popular ones are all in here, and Yang says she didn’t hold back any family secrets.

“Everything I know about Hmong cooking is in here. I love to share this food, and I hope I can help more people make it part of their lives,” she says.

Beyond recipes, this cookbook offers valuable insights into a culture that makes up Minnesota’s largest Asian population. Hmong culture and history are explained through anecdotes and poems; a dictionary of Hmong ingredients and cooking tools is included, and the connection between food and life is drawn in sections that cover foods for holidays and special events, such as childbirth and funerals. Would Hmong life be the same without Hmong food? Now a people need never find out.

Reading and tasting events
• 10:30 a.m. Saturday, May 23: Mill City Farmers Market, 704 Second St. S., 
Minneapolis.

• 2 p.m. Saturday, May 23: Barnes & Noble-HarMar Mall
, 2100 N. Snelling Ave., Roseville,
 651-639-9256.