For chef Nite Yun, a 2018 Eater Young Gun and the author of the just-released cookbook, My Cambodia, an ingredient as simple as corn can be transportive. “When we would go out to barbecues or have family gatherings, grilled corn with coconut milk was the highlight,” she says. Not only does this style of corn — bathed in a potion of coconut milk, sugar, green onion, and fish sauce — make Yun nostalgic, it also served as a stepping stone to better understanding her heritage.
“When I went to Cambodia and had [the corn] in the motherland, that was so special,” Yun says. It tasted familiar, yes, but it also spoke to her about the possibilities of learning more about her family’s past, retracing their steps through the foods they once ate.
It’s a part of the reason why Yun wanted to write a cookbook. Food has been the driving force behind getting to know her parents, and subsequently, Cambodia better. It’s a challenge for refugees who fled from the brutal Khmer Rouge regime to discuss the past; the horrors are often so potent that memories are repressed or simply never mentioned at all. “I grew up with this void of not knowing who my parents were, but having a deep curiosity about them,” Yun explains. “I wanted to use food as a way to put this puzzle and this mystery — my family’s history — together.”
Food, even something as simple as corn, “is a way to talk about certain memories that can eventually lead to bigger storytelling,” Yun says. As she wrote the cookbook, she also found herself documenting aspects of her own life, including growing up in Stockton and the process of opening her Oakland restaurant, Nyum Bai.
And, of course, her childhood favorite corn had to make an appearance. “Because it’s corn, you think of summer, you think of the outdoors,” Yun says. Her family always grilled the corn over charcoal. “We used coal because we would literally take it to the park and use a public grill,” she explains, but notes that campfires and backyard barbecues — or even a hot oven — work, too. The smoke, however, adds an additional layer of flavor that can’t be found in baked corn.
Still, it’s corn, and however you make it, it’ll be good. “We could just have this corn at the barbecue and everyone would be happy,” Yun says.
Grilled Corn with Coconut Milk and Green Onion Recipe
Grapeseed or other neutral oil, for greasing
1 cup coconut milk
1/8 cup palm sugar, chopped
1/8 cup fish sauce
½ cup sliced green onions
1 ½ teaspoons to 1 tablespoon chile flakes, depending on your preference for heat
4 ears corn, shucked
Step 1: Oil the grill grates and preheat the grill to medium-high.
Step 2: As the grill heats, stir together the coconut milk and palm sugar in a small pot over medium heat to melt the palm sugar. Turn off the heat and add the fish sauce. Give the sauce a good stir, then set aside to cool. Add the green onions and chile flakes.
Step 3: Place the corn on the grill. When the kernels start to get a little bit of shine on them, about 5 minutes, brush the sauce all over the corn and rotate. Grill until you start to see char marks on the kernels, about 5 minutes, then brush more sauce on the corn and rotate again. Continue grilling and rotating, adding more sauce as you do so, until the kernels are tender and cooked through, about 30 minutes in total. Place the corn on a platter or plate, drizzle any remaining sauce all over, and serve.
Adapted with permission from My Cambodia: A Khmer Cookbook by Nite Yun with Tien Nguyen. Photographs by Nicola Parisi © 2025. Illustrations by Kann “Nak” Bou © 2025. Published by 4 Color Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Dina Ávila is a photographer living in Portland, Oregon.
Recipe tested by Ivy Manning
