This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

Hey, this is Annie. And Samantha.

I'm welcome to Stuff Never Told You, a production of IHeart Radio.

And for today's activist around the world, we are still celebrating AAPI Heritage Month,

and we are going to talk about chef, author, and change maker, chef Ratanak Ross, also known as

chef knock, which is what I'm going to reference her as throughout this episode,

because she doesn't actually say her full name. I have a feeling she does it for us English speakers,

non-Cambonian speakers, to help us out. But she is known around the world as Chef Nac. And

Chef Nac is a Cambodian self-taught chef who has brought her love of her home and community into her food.

Honoring the local ingredients and recipes, Chef Knock has put Cambodian food on the map, and I love it.

Growing up in Cambodia with her family, this pushed her in her early age to start learning to cook and feed her siblings.

When she was young, like around five, her parents had to stay

for an extended amount of time in the hospital after a serious traffic accident. From then,

she would go on to be the one to cook and feed her siblings, and she did this alongside her

oldest sister, eldest sister, when her parents had to work extended hours. So it just became a

part of her duties. Later, she did

start working at the Cambodian living arts, where she would learn about Cambodian cuisine,

as well as the performing arts. Here's a quote from an article featuring her works from

Robreport.com. As one of five children not grew up in the chaos of life in Cambodia before the death of

Pulpot in 1998, it was the era of plain rice kanji. As a child, she would get up after midnight

to travel with her mother on the hour-long walk to buy vegetables for resale at their local

market. Her interest in food really began at age 19 when she

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