There are over 50,000 Hmong people in Minnesota, but very few Hmong restaurants and no mainstream Hmong cookbooks... until now. The University of Minnesota Press has just published "Cooking from the Heart: the Hmong Kitchen in America."
Morning Edition's Jim Bickal met up with the two women behind book, Sami Scripter and Sheng Yang, when they visited the Twin Cities. Yang was born in Laos and came to the United States with her family as a refugee. When she was a teenager living in Portland Oregon, Yang became friends with Scripter and taught her about Hmong cooking.