I've Always Grown Up Helping My Mom in the Kitchen

Even as a first-gen American, I never wanted to help my mom in the kitchen. It wasn't something that I wanted to do, it was just something that I had to be because that's what tradition dictated. But sure enough, as I grew older and pursued a degree in marketing and advertising, establishing a career for a decade, I found myself enjoying being in the kitchen more than I thought possible. It wasn't until I decided to quit my job and attend culinary school that I was able to see the value that my mom had seen for decades. Now, as a professional chef, I can appreciate the hard work and dedication that goes into cooking.

This is My Old Recipe

Growing up, one of our favorite dishes was this spicy and fiery recipe that my mom would make. It's called "blood sucker" and it's been a family staple for years. The name of this dish is literally "blood sucker" because of the way the flavors combine to create a taste that's both spicy and savory at the same time. I love this dish almost as much as I love my husband, and I have to say that when I was younger, I wished that our firstborn had inherited his hair and my eye, but it seems like fate had other plans.

My Mom's Spirit

My mom is probably the most loving, hospitable, and generous person that I know. She's come from a background of hardship and war in the 1970s, when the Vietnam War was taking place. Cambodia is a neighboring country to Vietnam, and the conflict spilled over into Cambodia, creating instability and regime change. When my parents were in their early twenties, they fled their home in Cambodia, traveling by foot for four months to get to Thailand, where they eventually immigrated to Southern California. Despite the trauma and struggle that she endured as a refugee, my mom has become a survivor and thrives.

The Power of Food

My brother is the one who really started pushing our food project along, and I've always wanted to share my mom's cooking with others because it's a way for me to show my love to my friends and family. We don't have a marketing plan, and we haven't even had time to approach stores yet, but everything has been word-of-mouth through social media. Our Instagram account has been our best friend, and we're selling jars of our hot sauce one at a time. It's a slow process, but it takes a lot of time to package and build relationships with people who've reached out to us.

Baba's House

We recently partnered with Baba's House, a community space in downtown Oakland that specializes in Asian snacks. They're located just across the street from my brother's apartment, which is convenient since we often visit each other. When I went to Mumbai for the first time, one of the things that I remember most was the hot sauce they served me at this restaurant. It was amazing, and I've been trying to recreate it ever since. Our food project has come a long way since then, and we're proud to have my mom's seal of approval.

The Journey Continues

For now, our goal is just to continue to grow and find new ways to share our product with as many people as possible. We're not there yet, but we're getting closer every day. I'm proud of what we've accomplished so far, and I know that it's only the beginning. Whether it's through word-of-mouth or online orders, we're excited to see where this journey takes us next.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ena lot of people say it's wildly addicting it's the right amount of heat in the sense that it doesn't kill the palate but it's definitely spicy i like spicy and garlic is part of my life i love garlic we don't have a marketing plan and we have not even had time to even approach stores ourselves everything has been just very word of mouth through social media if you're not learning or building something then i feel like you're kind of dying so we just like to always be doing stuff i'm christina t liu and i am the co-founding chef of mamatea's hot garlic mama teaves hot garlic is a condiment that my mom has been making for decades it is symbolic of her journey as an immigrant finding her way in american cuisine lots and lots of bits of crunchy garlic that's been fried in local cold press grapeseed oil but all together it's just in our opinion the the best blend for a chili crunch we're making hot garlic we're going to be jarring up the 25 pounds that we made yesterday after we make a batch we let it sit for i don't know at least 12 hours and let all the flavors kind of meld together infuse settle in the oil picks up all the spices and chilies garlic flavor here we go cheers first thing i've had this morning we get our garlic already pre-peeled we blitz it in the roboku to get it to the right size that we want and then from there we're gonna fry it in salo sante grape seed oil cold pressed and we just fry it in small batches and the key to the perfect crispy garlic is to keep the garlic moving in the pot the frying is going to get the garlic super crispy the oil that we fry it in is what goes into the jar so all of that garlic flavor is infused into this oil and it all goes back into the same place and the color's starting to change but we're looking good so what we're doing now is we're just prepping the sweet onions for the dehydration process as well as our caramelized onions that we also dehydrate i'm just going to cut into small strips we're going to throw it in the dehydrator until it's dried out and then we'll powder it the reason why we do caramelized onion flakes as well as sweet onion powder it's just adding different more layers of complexity and sweetness and umami we're just gonna come in here and crunch this all up now that we've fried our garlic to perfection it is time for the seasoning currently in our mix we have some onion powder mushroom powder some celery salt caramelized onion flakes some salt and now i'm going to add this batch of hand roasted thai bird chili that we get from a sustainable farm in cambodia farm that my dad works with and now we are finished with our 20 pound batch and this will sit overnight and we'll be back tomorrow ready to jar it is very symbolic for my brother and i my brother anthony who is my best friend and also business partner tony and i are the chefs we are indeed the project we are the producers we are the packagers we jar everything ourselves we do sales we do marketing branding social media invoicing bookkeeping all of it we do everything i've always grown up helping my mom in the kitchen even as a first-gen american it wasn't something that i wanted to do it was somewhere i had to be because that was just the tradition but sure enough you know even after going to college getting a degree in marketing and advertising establishing a career for a decade i really just found myself enjoying being in the kitchen more i decided to quit the field and drop everything and go to culinary school but it did come full circle because that's what my mom's been doing her entire life and now as a professional i was able to see and understand the value that she's seen for decades this is the spicy and fiery lady herself mama thief through divine intervention she has her kids living across the street from each other so she regularly visits especially because of her first grandson today we're going to be cooking together she's going to make some of our favorite dishes uh growing up this one on my blood sucker i call blood like a this is my old one you know i'm when i have him i said okay i love my husband's hair but i don't lay out his eye but i said i wish our firstborn got your hair and got my eye and god answer right away opposite you got my hair gray early and got dad's eyes my mom is probably the most loving hospitable generous kind person that i know it's her spirit you know she's come from a background of hardship and war in the 70s when the vietnam war was taking place because cambodia is a neighboring country there was a lot of spillage into cambodia which created a lot of instabilities regime took place called my rouge and so my parents being in their early early 20s fleed the country not much of learning cooking when i'm young because the communists took our life you know when i'm fully 17 years old teenager a four-year in in communist time it's just wipe everything working hard like like concentrate can we leave our home in january 19 1779 we traveling from kampung jam to thailand four months by walking walked from cambodia to thailand and from there they immigrated to southern california first while pregnant with tony for her to have overcome those traumas the struggles of immigrating and building a new life and creating a new identity here as an american she's just she's a survivor and not only just a survivor but like she thrives my brother is the one who really started pushing the project along i've always wanted to share her food just because it's it's my way of showing my love to my friends and family once i started sharing mama's hot garlic you know everybody would always comment and go oh how how can i get some of that because we we we don't have a marketing plan and we have not even had time to even approach stores ourselves everything has been just very word of mouth uh through social media instagram has been our best friend so we're just selling these jars one at a time and it's a very slow process and it takes a lot of time to package bees and build relationships with people who've reached out to us we just gotta order it in for this snack shop slash restaurant slash community space called baba's house uh they are located in downtown oakland baba's house specializes in um finding asian snacks what's up good how are you good to see you good to see you here's yeah thank you thank you appreciate it yeah good to see you yeah did i ever tell you the first time i went to mumbai it was you were serving me actually i hella remember a word and like the first thing i remember from numbai was the hot sauce because i was like oh my god are you ever going to jar this this is so amazing i want some at home and i think i tried to get some takeout tools can i get a i'm so proud of them i'm so proud when they bring that out of which one more really which one this one yeah the process that i'm most proud about is the fact that we've been able to recreate something that my mom's really happy and proud about you know through the r d process we would bring her a small sampling to taste and she would give us her feedback especially for her and i that it the kitchen is definitely where our bond is so for her to kind of give me that seal of approval was really a special moment for us but for now i mean i think just to continue to grow and to continue to find our way into new homes and new pantries that's the goal is just to be able to share our product with as many people as possible there's a mind see that because the way i wrap i make sure the end is tight and i can feel it if it's too tight i know it's too loose i know and tina lose a little bita lot of people say it's wildly addicting it's the right amount of heat in the sense that it doesn't kill the palate but it's definitely spicy i like spicy and garlic is part of my life i love garlic we don't have a marketing plan and we have not even had time to even approach stores ourselves everything has been just very word of mouth through social media if you're not learning or building something then i feel like you're kind of dying so we just like to always be doing stuff i'm christina t liu and i am the co-founding chef of mamatea's hot garlic mama teaves hot garlic is a condiment that my mom has been making for decades it is symbolic of her journey as an immigrant finding her way in american cuisine lots and lots of bits of crunchy garlic that's been fried in local cold press grapeseed oil but all together it's just in our opinion the the best blend for a chili crunch we're making hot garlic we're going to be jarring up the 25 pounds that we made yesterday after we make a batch we let it sit for i don't know at least 12 hours and let all the flavors kind of meld together infuse settle in the oil picks up all the spices and chilies garlic flavor here we go cheers first thing i've had this morning we get our garlic already pre-peeled we blitz it in the roboku to get it to the right size that we want and then from there we're gonna fry it in salo sante grape seed oil cold pressed and we just fry it in small batches and the key to the perfect crispy garlic is to keep the garlic moving in the pot the frying is going to get the garlic super crispy the oil that we fry it in is what goes into the jar so all of that garlic flavor is infused into this oil and it all goes back into the same place and the color's starting to change but we're looking good so what we're doing now is we're just prepping the sweet onions for the dehydration process as well as our caramelized onions that we also dehydrate i'm just going to cut into small strips we're going to throw it in the dehydrator until it's dried out and then we'll powder it the reason why we do caramelized onion flakes as well as sweet onion powder it's just adding different more layers of complexity and sweetness and umami we're just gonna come in here and crunch this all up now that we've fried our garlic to perfection it is time for the seasoning currently in our mix we have some onion powder mushroom powder some celery salt caramelized onion flakes some salt and now i'm going to add this batch of hand roasted thai bird chili that we get from a sustainable farm in cambodia farm that my dad works with and now we are finished with our 20 pound batch and this will sit overnight and we'll be back tomorrow ready to jar it is very symbolic for my brother and i my brother anthony who is my best friend and also business partner tony and i are the chefs we are indeed the project we are the producers we are the packagers we jar everything ourselves we do sales we do marketing branding social media invoicing bookkeeping all of it we do everything i've always grown up helping my mom in the kitchen even as a first-gen american it wasn't something that i wanted to do it was somewhere i had to be because that was just the tradition but sure enough you know even after going to college getting a degree in marketing and advertising establishing a career for a decade i really just found myself enjoying being in the kitchen more i decided to quit the field and drop everything and go to culinary school but it did come full circle because that's what my mom's been doing her entire life and now as a professional i was able to see and understand the value that she's seen for decades this is the spicy and fiery lady herself mama thief through divine intervention she has her kids living across the street from each other so she regularly visits especially because of her first grandson today we're going to be cooking together she's going to make some of our favorite dishes uh growing up this one on my blood sucker i call blood like a this is my old one you know i'm when i have him i said okay i love my husband's hair but i don't lay out his eye but i said i wish our firstborn got your hair and got my eye and god answer right away opposite you got my hair gray early and got dad's eyes my mom is probably the most loving hospitable generous kind person that i know it's her spirit you know she's come from a background of hardship and war in the 70s when the vietnam war was taking place because cambodia is a neighboring country there was a lot of spillage into cambodia which created a lot of instabilities regime took place called my rouge and so my parents being in their early early 20s fleed the country not much of learning cooking when i'm young because the communists took our life you know when i'm fully 17 years old teenager a four-year in in communist time it's just wipe everything working hard like like concentrate can we leave our home in january 19 1779 we traveling from kampung jam to thailand four months by walking walked from cambodia to thailand and from there they immigrated to southern california first while pregnant with tony for her to have overcome those traumas the struggles of immigrating and building a new life and creating a new identity here as an american she's just she's a survivor and not only just a survivor but like she thrives my brother is the one who really started pushing the project along i've always wanted to share her food just because it's it's my way of showing my love to my friends and family once i started sharing mama's hot garlic you know everybody would always comment and go oh how how can i get some of that because we we we don't have a marketing plan and we have not even had time to even approach stores ourselves everything has been just very word of mouth uh through social media instagram has been our best friend so we're just selling these jars one at a time and it's a very slow process and it takes a lot of time to package bees and build relationships with people who've reached out to us we just gotta order it in for this snack shop slash restaurant slash community space called baba's house uh they are located in downtown oakland baba's house specializes in um finding asian snacks what's up good how are you good to see you good to see you here's yeah thank you thank you appreciate it yeah good to see you yeah did i ever tell you the first time i went to mumbai it was you were serving me actually i hella remember a word and like the first thing i remember from numbai was the hot sauce because i was like oh my god are you ever going to jar this this is so amazing i want some at home and i think i tried to get some takeout tools can i get a i'm so proud of them i'm so proud when they bring that out of which one more really which one this one yeah the process that i'm most proud about is the fact that we've been able to recreate something that my mom's really happy and proud about you know through the r d process we would bring her a small sampling to taste and she would give us her feedback especially for her and i that it the kitchen is definitely where our bond is so for her to kind of give me that seal of approval was really a special moment for us but for now i mean i think just to continue to grow and to continue to find our way into new homes and new pantries that's the goal is just to be able to share our product with as many people as possible there's a mind see that because the way i wrap i make sure the end is tight and i can feel it if it's too tight i know it's too loose i know and tina lose a little bit\n"