The recipes in this book follow the trail of Sam's grandmother's cooking back to Lao. The food her grandmother cooked has remained a constant in Sam's life, providing her with a connection back to a country she left as a child. They celebrate the uniqueness of the Lao food tradition. Each recipe, like the scent of a signature perfume, evokes memories of a certain moment in time, and tells the story her family's journey from Lao to Australia. Through compiling these recipes, Sam have discovered the central role that food has played in her life, and how food was used to communicate empathy and love, in a family where hugs and kisses were substituted with soups and braises.

The recipes in this book aim to keep those memories alive and to share the unique flavours, joy and love of cooking from a Lao kitchen.