My Cambodia: A Khmer Cookbook

Celebrate Khmer and Cambodian American cuisine with award-winning chef and restaurateur Nite Yun, featuring over 100 recipes for her favorite dishes.

Khmer recipes and culinary techniques are traditionally passed orally from generation to generation, and in My Cambodia, Nite takes special care to preserve these dishes. Filled with the historical context of Cambodia’s Golden Era, cultural fun facts like the rules of rice, and introspective anecdotes on using food as a tool to connect with community, My Cambodia aims to make Khmer American cuisine accessible to all.

With recipes organized by different times and places throughout Nite’s life, this cookbook takes you on a journey from her childhood in Stockton, California to Cambodia to Nite’s popular Bay Area restaurants Nyum Bai and Lunette. Discover her take on dishes such as Kuy Teav Phnom Penh, the fragrant pork and noodle soup that started it all for Nite; Nom Pachok Somlar Khmer, a delicate, rustic chowder filled with rice noodles; and Amok, fish tucked into an aromatic mixture of kroeung and coconut milk and steamed until it puffs up like a souffle. For dessert, try the decadent Nom Kong, donuts glazed in palm sugar and topped with sesame seeds.

Whether you are new to Cambodian food or have a bowl of kuy teav every morning for breakfast, My Cambodia will inspire you to connect with your own communities and stir up new, joyful creations.

Nite Yun was born in a refugee camp after her parents escaped war-torn Cambodia. Her family eventually moved to California, where she grew up listening to her father’s Khmer rock n’ roll music and learned to cook traditional Cambodian dishes from her mother. Inspired by trips to Cambodia to learn about her heritage, Nite dedicated herself to bringing the flavors of Cambodian food back to the Bay Area. She opened her first restaurant, Nyum Bai, in Oakland in 2018 and now runs Lunette, in San Francisco. Nite has been recognized as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, named a Food and Wine Best New Chef 2019, was a recipient of the Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise in Culinary Arts, 2019 and was featured on Netflix’s Chef’s Table in 2024. She lives in San Francisco with her French bulldog, queen Nola.

Tien Nguyen is a food and culture writer. She is the co-author of several cookbooks, including the New York Timesbestseller L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food with chef Roy Choi and the IACP-nominated Sohn-Mat: Recipes and Flavors of Korean Home Cooking. Her work also has been honored by the Association of Food Journalists. She teaches food journalism at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.