Growing up in a bustling Minneapolis household, the daughter of a white father and a Thai mother who immigrated to the US, the interdisciplinary artist and musician Mary Prescott had a limited opportunity to learn about her Thai culture. The one constant connection, however, was through her mother’s cooking.
Years later, she says, “I really began to understand that for many families, the story of the mother’s line is connected from the ancestors to the children to the future generations through the food. We lose our last names if we get married, and we’ve not been written about in history books until now, basically.”
This idea is central to Prescott’s multisensory performance, Ancestral Table, presented as part of the LA Phil’s Body & Sound festival. The event unfolds as a communal meal featuring Prescott’s mother’s recipes, prepared by Jazz Singsanong, chef and owner of LA Thai restaurant Jitlada. Incorporating music, spoken word, film, and more, Ancestral Table explores how food, often passed down from woman to woman, has social, ecological, cultural, and personal meaning.
In advance of the performance, Prescott and Singsanong joined to talk about the significance of some of the items on the menu:
Khao Tom
Chicken and Rice Porridge
Mary: For me, this is sort of a cross-cultural dish because I grew up in the States and the morning after Thanksgiving dinner my mom would make Khao Tom, but she would use turkey, because that’s what we had. That was sort of like her way to keep Thailand at the forefront of our very American tradition.
Jazz: You can use chicken or pork in the Khao Tom, but you have to shred the meat by hand, you don’t slice it. It’s one of the things that we had, with 12 kids in the family.
Mary: One of the great things about Khao Tom is that it can be stretched. If you need more, you just add more broth and rice, and you can feed a lot of family members with it.
Jazz: My mom didn’t know how to cook, I learned from my dad. At five in the morning, 12 kids in the family, whoever was up would go to the market with dad, and he will tell you how to look for the fish with clear eyes, how to pick the vegetables that are heavy.
Tender Beef Green Curry
Jazz: When I came to America, my mom sent me a cookbook called Maeban. Maeban means “housewife.” I learned green curry from there, and it became the talk of the town. You have to have passion and patience because the curry is not really easy to make. People ask me how did you make your curry so good? And I tell them, when you cook with love and you love to cook, the passion comes out every time.
Mary: We’re going to be doing a Southern Thai-style curry, which Jazz also talked about. Like a lot of other countries, the food is regional. So, Southern Thai food is specific, and it’s different than what you’ll get in Bangkok or in the North. And Jazz is from Nakhon Si Thammarat, which is not too far from where my mom grew up in Songkhla.
Pak Boong
Morning Glories
Mary: This is not like the morning glory flowers that we have here in the States, but it’s a Chinese watercress, so it’s like a very nutritious, dark leafy green.
Jazz: Everyone loves crispy morning glory salad because it’s like a tempura, but so light. Every single day our passion is how healthy food that you give to people—you’re cutting the vegetables fresh, you give them quality, taste. That’s what I tell Sugar [Sungkamee, Jazz’s niece]: you have to believe in good karma, the good job that you do for the customer, because you owe it to your food. And your food brings the whole world back to you.