SU SCOTT, QUADRILLE, $55

It’s not a revelation that food can evoke longing, belonging and a sense of self. Su Scott adds moments of heart-walloping rawness and searing tenderness with her account of leaving Korea aged 19, wanting desperately to embrace all things British. Only decades later, after becoming a mother, did she appreciate how much of her identity had been lost, tearing a hole in her soul. Food brings memories and memories bring food, both are generously shared here with the home-style recipes she craved: charred cabbage of intensely caramelised sweetness laced with smoky gochujang; the deep umami of crisped spring onion pancakes saturated in salty, sweet, vinegary dipping sauce; wobbly, velvety steamed egg with the deep taste of the ocean; spicy ginger tea steeped with pear – I want to eat it all. Folded through the recipes are vivid, intimate stories of her family’s everyday: the eye-watering charcoal smoke as the juices of sweet soy marinade hit sizzling white-hot coals, binge-eating kimchi to calm a heart shaky with loss, her dad’s unerring knack of finding the best food hidden away in markets or unnamed alleys, gleefully eating everything to fend off the slam of a childhood of poverty. This book is a record of Su finding her own way home to herself. But it’s mainly a book about delicious food to cook for yourself. TRACY WHITMEY