Takeaway Q&A: Food Chats with T Kira Madden
What we talk about when we talk about soup.
Photo: Hannah Beresford
T Kira Māhealani Madden is a diasporic Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) writer, photographer, and amateur magician. She is the Founding Editor of No Tokens, a magazine of literature and art, and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Tin House, DISQUIET, NYSCA/NYFA, and Yaddo. Her debut memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, was a New York Times Editors' Choice selection, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and a finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Award for lesbian memoir. Her debut novel, Whidbey, is forthcoming with Mariner, HarperCollins. Winner of the 2021 Judith A. Markowitz Award, she teaches at Mount Holyoke College, and served as Distinguished Writer in Residence at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2024.
So first question. It's an important one. Do you have a signature dish?
Yes. SOUP.
Is there a specific soup that's your signature soup?
I’ve got a lot of soups up my sleeve.
Say it's fall, it's rainy, and you’re having friends visit from out of town. What’s the first soup that comes to mind?
I often start with a color. So if it's fall and it's rainy, I would probably go with an Iranian Ash Reshteh soup. Legumes, herbs, noodles and lots of turmeric. Green green. Bright gold.
Sounds so good!
It’s a little bit of sunshine – any turmeric forward soup really. Oh also I would make Congee, what we Chinese call Jook. In the winter months, instead of just using a broth and rice to make it, I’ll use coconut milk and turmeric. When it's rainy and gloomy, I like a golden soup.
Amazing and then everyone’s also cooled down, in a good way, because of all the anti-inflammatory properties! Are you a dessert or sweets person?
I can't usually eat sweets because I'm allergic to milk, but when I can, I love it. I love fruit. Love any sort of rice and coconut milk pudding that I can eat. And I do love a vegan ice cream or soft serve.
Have you ever had the Van Leeuwen vegan ice cream? That’s a favorite of mine.
I have! It’s great.
The lemon is so good! Say you're going to a grocery store, like, Safeway - what kind of ice cream or confection, if you will, would you get?
I would probably go vegan Ben and Jerry's. They have a vegan mint chocolate cookie with Oreos.
Oh I’m gonna try that one! Oreo coffee ice cream is my favorite ice cream but there’s only one place in Seattle I know I can get it. When you're writing, is there a snack or a beverage that you gravitate toward or that feels essential when you’re writing?
That's a great question.
I tend to write best when I'm hungry. Because once I eat, I get sleepy. This is not something I'm particularly proud of. On a wide open writing day, I’ll end up working until some time mid-afternoon when I have to eat.
Most often, I start a writing day with black coffee and two hard boiled eggs – Maldon salt, black pepper, and Za’atar sprinkle. And then I'll just write until lunch, and then my brain changes, and it’s all reading after that. I can't write after I eat!
Always the same?
Yeah, always! I also forgot popcorn. You know I’m in the trenches of writing or editing when I have a jumbo bowl of popcorn in my lap or on my chest (if I’m writing on the couch). Magic of salt, I guess. Or maybe popcorn triggers the desire to entertain.
MUG BREAK! 🍵
Do you have a favorite mug and why?
The milk mug. I don't know why this is called "the milk mug" in our home, but I have a vague *memory (*did I dream it? imagine it? desire it?) of drinking cold milk from this mug as a child, which is extraordinary considering, as mentioned, I am very allergic to milk. It's small and aesthetically sweet, smooth to the touch, and no one drinks any milk from it, only coffee or espresso. Still, it is the mysterious milk mug of my past and it is my favorite.
Do you have any other signature dishes?
Poke is my other signature.
Much like soup, poke can be many things. Depending on where you're living, the fish selection will be different. What is the fish you would use where you're living right now, in Western Massachusetts?
If I can get my hands on good ahi (tuna), which I can sometimes source in upstate New York, I'll do that. I love ahi over any other fish for poke. I know it's not environmentally sustainable. If I don't use tuna, I'll use tofu over any other fish.
Whoa, tofu! Would love to try that.
Use a nice salty brine. I want it to taste all vinegar and shoyu – a quick fry if you like. Poke’s all about texture, for me. There are many different seaweeds, of course, some very environmentally sustainable. So add in your seaweed or limu, sesame seeds, sesame oil, maybe crushed nuts, fried onion, crunchy salt. I use Aloha shoyu, a Hawaiian brand. I get it shipped or bring it home. And it all has to be over rice. I’m not into the Continental U.S. zucchini noodle instead of rice thing. I find it very unsettling. It offends me.
As it should! Do you have a specific rice you like to use?
That’s a good question. Hawaiians often use Calrose, but I'll take any rice, as long as it's got vinegar and sugar mixed in. And it's got to be warm.
If I'm going to do a sushi bake, then it's got to be like, almost cartoonishly vibrant. After the bake, it mellows out a lot. And then I like to add furikake and sesame seeds over it, before I add the fish, so there’s that crunch. If you're not going vegetarian or vegan with it, Tobiko is a must. So I always have tobiko in my freezer, and then I’ll mix that in.
Love that! If you could visit a place to just eat, anywhere in the world, where would you go?
I would go to the Sichuan region of China – I've never been. I want to go where they make all the ferments and Sichuan pastes and chili oils I love. I'm Chinese, and I've never been to China. I've always wanted to go to Japan and Aotearoa as well.
What was your last super memorable meal?
This one! Without a doubt, because it's so thoughtful1. Everything about it is thoughtful - you're using the fish from Lisbon, which is such a lovely gesture, and you’ve chopped fresh herbs for the fish. And that's what stands out to me in a meal. Those gestures of thoughtfulness, those details.
Aw thanks! I sometimes memorize what people like and don't like, in the off chance that I will get to eat a meal with them. Especially my coworkers over the years, I try to listen and figure out what they like. And so if I ever go to lunch with them, we could really enjoy it together.
That’s really nice! I have a journal where I write down the clues I get. Or allergies people have, because I’ll forget. And so I go back to my little planner and see, oh, right, so and so doesn't eat eggplant!
Yes, totally! Today I vaguely remembered you don’t like mustard. I don't even know how I knew that. And I was like, how much is too much? And we were making the dressing and I was suddenly worried about how much to put in. It's important to me. To include that care and warmth. Do you have a comfort food when you're sick?
Jook. It’s the first thing I go to when I'm sick. I love broth and stock. I have 1,000 freezer bags of stock or soon-to-be stock vegetable or bone scraps. I never have an empty freezer. I’ll always have chicken broth, vegetable broth, turkey broth, parmesan bean broth, shrimp or fish broth. A full broth library, if you will.
You’ve made all of those broths??
Yeah!
Britt’s made so many batches of soup at different points. And then she just freezes them all and we don’t get to eat any until winter! It’s devastating.2
That was me all summer with tomatoes. Every day Hannah would be like, woah, you picked all the tomatoes from the garden, and I’d have to say, I’m sorry they are now all frozen. I need great tomato sauce to get me through winter!
But then it will be a celebration!
Yeah! That's another winter favorite. Sardine pasta with summer tomatoes, bread crumbs, lemon zest.
MUG BREAK ROUND TWO! 🍵
Here’s a second favorite! The Yu & Me Books mug. Yu & Me is the first woman Asian American owned bookstore in NYC celebrating diverse and immigrant voices on their shelves. Immediately, this place felt like home, and owner Lucy Yu is a force of good. The mug is the perfect size for any beverage, any soup, any ice cream (which, imo, should always be enjoyed out of a mug).
If you're stuck in an airport what is your go to? I feel like everyone has different comfort airport food.
I usually go for a bag of pretzels.
Nice - mine is chocolate covered pretzels! I hardly ever eat them anytime else, just at the airport.
Yup, a bag of pretzels. I often get a stomachache on the plane. But I feel I can trust pretzels. I can rely on them. Oh sometimes airports have those vending machines of the little farmers cups. I like those.
Farmers cups?? I have never heard of those. Like from actual farmers?
Yeah, Farmer Fridge – I guess it’s locally sourced food? Or so they say! They are these recycled cups, and you can get, like, pasta or a little salad with couscous. I love those machines.
Ok I'm totally gonna look for one next time I'm traveling. Ok. This question is important. What are your current favorite foods or any that you are hyper fixated on right now?
I tend to be that way with spices. Like some seasons everything has to have sumac on it, or everything has Za'atar, or Sichuan peppercorns on everything including sweets. Last year it was coriander seeds, just crushing them on everything. Right now I'm weirdly into lemon pepper and a lot of MSG.
Did you ever get go through a hot honey phase?
I love a hot honey pizza. Hot honey on ice cream. I’m also very olive oil forward. Love a good olive oil on ice cream with cardamom and salt. Olive oil on most things - just not Asian food, that’s a pet peeve of mine.
Oh! I remembered my other recent food fixation. My fixation of summer, and it's persisted. Breakfast burritos. Like, I never really cared about them, but then we were going to Kansas on a road trip, and I found this amazing one in Nashville. And since then, everywhere I go, I'm looking up where I can get a breakfast burrito and then I judge them. I care about them a lot. Notably I have never made one in my life.
Do you remember the name of the place you got the first breakfast burrito that started at all? What was that burrito like?
Flora and Fauna in Nashville. It had a fresh tomato salsa in it, and I’m not usually a fan of salsa stuffed into anything because I don’t trust it’s going to be real salsa, and I also hate anything soggy. But the freshness of this was divine, and there was pickled onion and gorgeous pesto in there too.
Then there was this place called Mildred’s in Kansas City that had extremely good vegan chorizo and tofu scramble in it – spicy and tangy burrito, lovely potatoes, wow, so delicious.
Last question! What’s one restaurant that you loved that you wish was still open? I guess that kind of a big question, because you've lived a lot of places.
The 8th Street 6th Ave Gray’s Papaya. I don't even eat meat anymore, but I really loved those dogs. Snappy hot dogs and orange juice, and it was cheap. And it was the location. Other New York gems, for the memories and company and the former selves I’ve been while eating there, not necessarily the food - Angelica Kitchen, Woo Lae Oak, French Roast, Yakiniku West, Robataya, Jeepney. I also miss every saimin shop that’s shuttered in Hawai’i.
There was also a place called Bill Hong's in New York. When I was a kid we would go for special occasions. They had this giant, deep fried lobster spring roll, and you needed a fork and knife to cut it. I remember Hong’s as this really beautiful, almost palatial Chinese restaurant. Like a dream. I wish it still existed.
Amazing. I would have loved to try that egg roll! Thank you T Kira!
…. <3
Britt and I were hosting T Kira for lunch and we were eating a spread of tinned fish, bread, cheeses, salad, and things with a lot of crunch. I knew T Kira loved tinned fish and we both are huge fans of Sol e Pesca in Lisbon, which she had introduced me to when we were both at the Disquiet Literary Program in the summer.
At this point in the Q&A Britt assures me she will never do this again which she has promised many times ;)