Boston was on my mind frequently over the past year. I was a post-grad there on 9/11 trying to eke out a living, carrying around a brick of a cell phone. When uncertainty permeated everything, a local Cambodian-French restaurant provided respite.

This restaurant served an incredible dish called mee Siem. It was unlike anything I’d ever tried at that point: rice noodles in a complex spicy sauce piled with bean sprouts, sweet bell peppers, fresh cilantro, fried tofu strips, crackly pork, and omelet ribbons. They published a cookbook. That recipe wasn’t in it.

An early Google search for the dish produced zero results.