What can a recipe zine make room for?

Instant noodles are a small starting point for a conversation about gender and desire. In its profile of Spillll, It's Nice That describes the collective's third zine as bringing those subjects together through instant-noodle recipes. The pairing gives food something to do beyond illustrating a theme. A recipe offers a familiar structure through which a less familiar conversation can begin.

In its profile, It’s Nice That identifies Panita Siriwongwan-ngarm, Hyeda Park, Mika Tohmon and Nandal Seo as the four co-founders of Spillll, a queer East and Southeast Asian publishing collective. Its third issue connects conversations about gender and desire with instant-noodle recipes, as described by It’s Nice That.

Food connects the subject of the publication to the way it is made. A conversation has several participants; a collective publication gives several people a part in shaping what follows. Spillll told It's Nice That that its members write, illustrate and design together. The people contributing to the discussion also contribute to its published form. Shared authorship is therefore more than a name on the cover: it reaches into the work of making the pages.

It’s Nice That describes the collective’s use of digital co-design tools. There is a useful difference between a conversation and the means by which it becomes a publication. A shared digital workspace offers a way to develop the pages together. Writing, illustration and design turn the exchange into something that can circulate beyond its participants.

This makes a recipe zine interesting as an editorial form. A recipe has a practical direction, while a conversation can leave questions open. Bringing them into the same publication allows an ordinary activity to sit beside subjects that resist a single answer. The appeal is in that proximity, as suggested by the collective's published accounts, rather than in any claim that food resolves questions of identity.

The instant noodles remain a good point of entry. They give the discussion a specific subject without determining where it has to end. In Spillll's account of shared making, the next step belongs to the collective: what to write, what to draw and how to give those exchanges a page.