The parts of this book that I enjoyed most were those taken up with Madang’s memories of these dishes, and his often hapless attempts to reproduce them with perfect accuracy: the dumplings, the kimchi, the soy bean paste bibimbap. This is a book about all the ways in which food, a proxy for love, can bring people closer; eating together, its author suggests, can make even the most complicated of families healthier and stronger and happier. In these strange times, such a message could hardly be more resonant. I put it down and went immediately to a cupboard, hard on the trail of a bottle of fish sauce.
