Although she never got to meet her Grandma Eileen, Meileen Taw keeps her memory alive by cooking ohn no khao swe.

Now in college, she honored her grandmother by sharing the Burmese chicken coconut noodle soup with the UCLA community. Recipes From Home, a UCLA Dining initiative, featured different student-submitted dishes Feb. 18 to Feb. 21.

UCLA Dining considered nearly 200 recipes for the initiative, said Senior Executive Chef Joey Martin.

“It’s a great way for our students to give a little bit of their background about what dishes they grew up with,” he said. “It fosters a lot of connection and conversation through the food.”

The dishes included ghormeh sabzi – a Persian herb stew – at Epicuria on Tuesday, ohn no khao swe at Bruin Plate on Wednesday, a Mexican tomato corn soup at De Neve on Thursday and malabar parotta – an Indian flatbread beef curry – at Feast at Rieber on Friday.

Ruth Simon, a second-year bioengineering student who submitted the Indian dish, said she was excited to share a recipe so special to her family and community. As a member of an Indian Christian club at UCLA, which she described as a relatively small community on campusl, seeing the dish served in a UCLA dining hall was meaningful, she added.

“It’s really nice to get it represented on this larger scale and for people to be able to connect with our culture in this way,” Simon said.

UCLA Dining collaborated with Residential Life and the Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies to narrow down the submitted recipes. A key part of the process was determining which dishes fit the themes of dining halls on the Hill, Martin said.

On Feb. 19, the line for ohn no khao swe snaked through Bruin Plate, where Taw, a third-year human biology and society student, stood behind the counter, suggesting additional toppings to students from the bowls of limes, onions and fish sauce that laid on the counter.

“I chose it because I’m Chinese, but my grandparents immigrated from Burma, so that’s where we get the Burmese culture,” Taw said.

She added that her grandparents coming to pursue the American dream is an important part of her family’s story – and ultimately enabled her to grow up in the U.S. and study at UCLA.

The submission process began around a year ago, when students could scan a QR code on advertisements in dining halls on the Hill to send in a recipe. After UCLA Dining selected Taw’s dish, she and her mom met with staff to teach them how to prepare ohn no khao swe.

“I live in the dorms, so I don’t really cook when I’m at school, but in terms of cooking experience – it has always just pretty much been at home and in the kitchen with my mom,” Taw said. “So cooking in a really big kitchen, with really nice amenities and stuff, was really cool.”

Richa Thakre, a first-year computational and systems biology student who ate the ohn no khao swe Feb. 19, said she enjoyed trying a dish submitted by one of her peers.

“I think it’s really creative,” she said. “It’s nice to see a little bit of everyone’s family at UCLA because we all have unique traditions and different things that make our family special.”

Thakre added that she was anticipating this dish because she knows Taw’s family from home. She added that experiencing a dish so close to their family while at UCLA was special.

Simon’s dish, Malabar Parotta with Kerala beef curry, was served at Feast at Rieber on Feb. 21 and is a staple in South Indian culture, she said.

“It’s a very important part of the Malayali Christian and Muslim communities in Kerala, which, we’re not huge populations, but we’re definitely very proud of our food, our culture,” Simon said.

Because the dish has many components and is difficult to prepare, it was catered from Mayura, the only restaurant in Southern California that specializes in Keralan food, she said.

“They’re actually a restaurant that I’ve been going to since I was three years old, since we came to America,” Simon said.

Martin said he hopes Recipes From Home will continue as an annual event on the Hill. He added that he wants the collaboration between students and the culinary department to continue.

“I think it stimulated growth in our culinary department as well,” Martin said.