Chan Graham didn’t take home economics at her high school in Abilene, Texas. She had no desire to spend her time cooking and sewing, so the Laotian teenager played basketball instead.

Today, the 32-year-old woman’s cooking is much in demand in her east side Bangor neighborhood. Graham cooks a variety of dishes from Laos, Thailand, Vietnam as well as the Mexican and Cajun food she learned to appreciate growing up in Abilene, a city of 115,000 about 150 miles west of Fort Worth.

“Laotian food is like all Asian food,” she said, “but it is more similar to Thai than Chinese food. Vietnamese food was more influenced by the French. Our food is plainer, simpler and was influenced by India. We have rice and soup at every meal, often, with raw vegetables and a dipping sauce. We sit on the floor and eat with our hands. We don’t use chopsticks.”

Graham didn’t learn to cook at her mother’s side, but taught herself to prepare many different kinds of food through practice and experimentation. In fact, the first time she cooked a typical Texas Sunday dinner as a new-

lywed – fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy – she peeled, diced, boiled and mashed the entire 5-pound bag of potatoes.

According to her husband, Darin, Chan Graham “reads cookbooks like novels,” but rarely follows the recipes exactly. She also spends a lot of time explaining how Laotian food differs from other Asian cuisine.

What sets Laotian food apart from the Chinese fare typically available in America, is the liberal use of ginger, garlic, lemongrass and fish sauce. Graham said that Laotian food is spicier than the cuisines of neighboring Vietnam or Thailand. Very few foods are deep-fried, she said. In Laos, spring rolls are wrapped in a transparent rice paper and served with a spicy dipping sauce, rather than fried like Chinese spring and egg rolls.

She had no problem finding ingredients for her native dishes when the couple lived in Texas and Florida. When the Graham family moved to Maine three years ago, however, she found it difficult to find things like cooking papaya, fresh cilantro, typical seasonings like the Pho Ho spice packet used in the Vietnamese soup Pho. Some she was able to buy at health food stores and produce managers at local grocery stores were eager to order fresh ingredients for her.

The markup on such items, however, is expensive. Graham’s sister in New York often ships her rice wrappers and fish sauce at one-quarter the cost of purchasing it locally. The Graham family also travels to Boston to shop in the city’s Chinatown district.

A recent meal prepared for neighbors began with the Vietnamese soup Pho, pronounced fur. Graham served a garlicky beef broth with Pho noodles. On a large platter in the middle of the table, she arranged sliced red and green onions, chopped fresh cilantro and mint, sliced jalapeno peppers and limes.

Diners chose ingredients to add to their soup, then flavored it with sauces including fish, soy and chili sauces. Graham also served a salad made of fresh green cooking papaya, shredded carrots and tomato seasoned with garlic chili pepper, brown sugar and lime.

The main course was Laap, a spicy Laotian ground beef dish that included rice ground to a powder. She also fixed spring rolls full of fresh ingredients including mint, cilantro, bean sprouts, lettuce, and rice stick noodles with a sweet-and-sour dipping sauce.

Graham was born in Vientiane, a city on the Mekong River that separates Laos from Thailand. Her mother ran a grocery store there and her father was an officer in the military. Originally part of Siam, Laos gained it independence from France in the 1950s, following the First Indochina War.

At the 1954 Geneva conference, an independent Laos was established as a buffer state between communist-aligned North Vietnam and Western-oriented Thailand, formerly Siam. During the 1960s, Laos became increasingly involved in the Vietnam War. When anticommunist regimes fell in Saigon and Phnom Penh, a secret Laotian communist party gained control in Laos.

Graham said that many of her family’s friends and relative fled the country between 1972 and ’75, but her mother was reluctant to leave. For five years, her father lived in hiding moving often from place to place and had little contact with the family, she said.

“When I was 12, my dad came to the house and woke us all up at four in the morning,” said Graham. “My mom had sold everything, because she had to pay so many people so we’d be able to leave safely. We swam across the river to Thailand in the dark – my parents, two of my sisters and my little brother. He was only two or three.”

The eldest child, a girl, remained in Laos with a grandmother. The rest of the Vorasane family lived in Thailand for two years before immigrating to the United States in 1984. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas sponsored them, but urged the family to settle in Abilene, where there was a Vietnamese community but no other Laotian family.

“Abilene is really a hick town,” said Graham. “There are two high schools. Abilene has African-American and Hispanic students and Cooper is where the wealthier white kids go. We went to Cooper and we had a hard time with it. They made fun of us.”

After graduation, Graham lived at home and attended Abilene Christian University where she met her husband Darin, 35, a native Texan from a Dallas suburb. The story of how they met never fails to set friends and strangers laughing long and hard.

“I was at the local dance hall where a lot of the students went on weekends, and this beautiful Asian girl came across the room and asked me to dance,” he recalled. “I couldn’t believe it. The next day, I was kicking myself because I hadn’t asked for her phone number. A few days later, she walked right into the store I worked at in the mall and asked me for my phone number. I couldn’t believe it.”

Her version of the story, of course, differs slightly. Chan Graham said that a girlfriend had dragged her out to the dance hall because she was nursing a broken heart. The friend offered her $20 to ask Darin Graham to dance. Then, at the mall, the same friend offered her $20 to ask for her future husband’s phone number.

A few days later, she called him and they began a yearlong courtship. Fairly quickly, he introduced her to his family, but she was reluctant to invite him to meet her very traditional Laotian family.

“In Laos, if you bring your boyfriend home to meet your parents, it means you’re going to marry him,” she said. “He kept bugging me to meet my family, and I kept saying, ‘I’m not ready to marry you, yet.'”

The couple was married on Aug. 24 and Aug. 31, 1991. The first wedding was a Buddhist ceremony at her parents’ home; the second was a traditional Christian service at the Church of Christ.

While Graham has been working toward a degree in computer programming at the University of Maine, she said that her real love is cooking. She often prepares meals for neighbors.

“Chan is passionate about cooking,” said Susan Maasch, owner of the Clark House Gallery in Bangor, who lives three houses away from the Grahams. “She has this broad range of cuisine that she does so well. Not only can she prepare a variety of Asian foods, she also cooks Cajun. She’s not afraid of spices and bold flavors. Plus, she’s also a phenomenal baker.”

Graham said that no matter what path her career takes, her passion will always be cooking a variety of foods for family and friends.

Fresh Spring Rolls

Rice paper wrappers

Leaf lettuce

Bean sprout

Cilantro

Shredded carrots

Minced green onion

Rice stick noodle

Pork or chicken breast

Saute pork or chicken in a little oil, seasoned with garlic powder, salt and pepper. Cut pork or chicken into slim strips.

Bring water to a rolling boil and add rice stick noodles. Cook until soft and rinse with cold water to cool.

Bring water to boil. Pour some into a deep-dish pan and soak individual rice paper wrappers in water until soft. Keep some water hot and add as needed to the pan.

Chop cilantro and green onion. Have all vegetables prepared and pork or chicken cut. Soak wrapper individually in hot water until soft and spread out on cutting board. Add carrot, a small amount of lettuce, bean sprout, noodles, herbs and meat, in that order. Roll tightly. Lay a paper towel, dipped in hot water, over spring rolls to keep moist. Do not deep fry.

Spring Roll Dipping Sauce:

Garlic clove

Dry red pepper

Lime

Sugar

Water

Fish sauce

Smash garlic cloves, red pepper and sugar. All items should added to taste. Add water, lime and a small amount of fish sauce.

Papaya Salad

Fresh green cooking papaya

Carrots

1 tomato

1 clove garlic

Chile pepper

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1/2 lime

Peel and shred the papaya and carrots. Add 1 clove of smashed garlic, red chile pepper to taste, chopped tomato, fish sauce and brown sugar. Squeeze juice from lime to salad.

Laap

1 pound ground beef

Ground red chile pepper

Roasted rice

Lime

Cilantro

Green onions

Mint

Fish sauce

Salt and pepper to taste

Brown ground beef sauteed with salt and pepper. In a pan, brown dry sweet Asian rice, cooking until brown. Grind rice into a powder. (A coffee grinder can be used.) Add 2 heaping tablespoons of ground roasted rice to beef. Add lime juice and fish sauce. Garnish with fresh cilantro green onion and mint.

Pho

Beef bones

1 head of garlic

large chunk of ginger

1 onion

Water

Pho Hoa seasoning package (available at Natural Living Center)

In pot, bring water to a boil and add all ingredients. Reduce heat and let simmer 2 to 3 hours.

Lean beef shoulder

Pho noodles

1 sliced red onion

Chopped cilantro

Chopped green onion

Jalapeno pepper, sliced

Mint

Hoysin sauce

Spiracha hot chile sauce

Sliced limes

Fried garlic

Soy sauce

Fish sauce

Soak Pho noodles in hot tap water for 30 minutes. Noodles must be soft. Slice beef thinly. Bring soup broth to a boil and dip beef into boiling broth briefly to cook. Add to noodles in bowl and pour strained broth to desired amount. Add all other ingredients to taste. Hoysin sauce is sweet and will counter the tartness of the lime.