Wendy Tien
Posted on 16. Jan, 2010 by grace in Chefs
Wendy Tien was born and raised just outside Milwaukee, WI. Her parents both came from southern Taiwan – her mom from Tainan, and her dad from a very small town called Liujia, at the corner of Wushantou Reservoir. They came to the States for graduate study – like many people – and settled in suburban Milwaukee when my dad secured a tenure track position in the political science department at an area university.
Growing up, Wendy ate the typical foods of 1970s Wisconsin – chili con carne, meat lasagne, spaghetti with meat sauce, tacos made with the Ortega taco-in-a-box kit, a lot of pizza. My mom, the librarian at our local junior high during her youth, alternated these hearty midwestern standards with such Taiwanese classics as soy sauce-braised pork hocks with hard cooked eggs and stir-fried bean thread noodles with pork, carrot, and onion. Wendy was a picky eater and tended to reject anything that resembled vegetation. Things changed, though, after a series of trips abroad as an adult. A trip to China in 1987 broke her anti-vegetable stance – the mushrooms and greens were too delicious to pass up – and a holiday in Paris just before law school a couple years later finished the job. After pâté and sweetbreads at Tour d’Argent, she decided that she’d better learn to cook.
After practicing law in a variety of cities, Wendynmoved to the East Coast where she is in management at the Department of Justice during the day, and a recipe developer and cook on nights and weekends. Wendy’s blog is http://upstartkitchen.wordpress.com.
The following is a list of recipes by Upstart Kitchen, Wendy Tien:
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