Almost every culture seems to have its own version of grilled meat on flatbread: Mexican tacos al pastor, Lebanese shawarma, Greek gyros, Turkish doner kebabs, Persian shish kebabs—and my personal favorite—Indian seekh kebabs.

Most Indian restaurants pay homage to the food once served on the tables of the Mughal emperors. Cooked in ghee and redolent with aromatic spices, ubiquitous staples from tandoori chicken and butter chicken to saag paneer and rogan josh all owe their roots to Mughal high cuisine. But those dishes don’t tell the full story of the culinary influence of the Mughals. An equally important legacy is found in the streets and alleyways of almost every city in India. From Delhi to Calcutta, kebabwallas ply their trade, cooking skewers of marinated meats over glowing sigris (charcoal-fueled open-fire grills) and serving them on parathas—usually with a squeeze of lime and a few slivers of onions fragrant with chaat masala.

These late-night street grills were the inspiration behind my Botiwalla restaurants in Atlanta—and the menu below. Mix and match the skewers and sides for the ultimate cookout, starting with the iconic seekh kebab, a skewer of spiced minced meat—and the gold standard of kebabs in India. With a large enough grill, you can cook lamb in one corner, chicken in another, and still make room for fish and vegetables. You can also do as the SAVEUR test kitchen did and pull off the whole menu indoors: simply break out your grill pans and get those burners going.

The Menu

Lamb Seekh Kebabs

My riff on this beloved classic starts with ground lamb and dials back the heat and Indian spices—flavoring the meat with just a pinch each of turmeric, ground coriander, and Kashmiri chile powder. Then I bump up the cilantro, garlic, and ginger, and add lots of fresh mint to brighten the dish. The trick is to grill hot and fast so that the meat is smoky and charred on the outside, and tender, juicy, and almost delicate on the inside. Serve as a kebab with naan, lime wedges, and chutney; or form the meat into a skinny burger instead, and sandwich between pav, the soft, sweet Indian rolls, along with a cabbage slaw and Maggi ketchup. Get the recipe >

Chicken Tikka Kebabs

Chicken tikka is the sweet and sour pork or the beef and broccoli of Indian cuisine. The O.G. bastardized North Indian export has launched thousands of curry houses in the U.K. and U.S. This version calls for treating chunks of boneless chicken breast (you can also use thighs for even juicier results) with a dry rub and a wet marinade. The dry rub is super simple—just Kashmiri chile powder, turmeric, and salt—while the wet marinade is the perfect balance of yogurt, lime, and spices. Thread the double-infused chicken onto skewers, and again grill hot and fast, turning frequently to avoid over-charring. One bite of the smoky-spicy-juicy end result, and you’ll never again want to pony up for the dry, flavorless, and dyed-red chicken under the buffet heat lamps that’s trying to pass itself off as “chicken tikka.” Get the recipe >

Paneer Tikka Kebabs

Yes, you can grill cheese on a grill! Well, the right kind of cheese. Here, bite-sized chunks of paneer, a dense, pressed fresh cheese, is marinated in a gingery herbed yogurt and grilled with sweet, colorful bell peppers and onions. Get the recipe >

Machli Kebabs

While most fish in India is fried—I don’t think I’ve ever seen it grilled—this recipe inspired by my Persian ancestry rocks on the grill. Start with a firm, chunky fillet—swordfish is my go-to—and a bright, slightly sweet marinade of fresh mint, cumin, lime, and garlic. Baste with plenty of ghee on the grill, then garnish with fresh dill and dried sumac. Get the recipe >

Kachumber

A Hindi word for “chopped up into small pieces,” kachumber is also known as Parsi salad. It was served with pretty much every meal I had growing up in India. The first time I went to a Persian restaurant, I saw an almost identical dish called “salad Shirazi,” which made sense once I looked up the history: The Parsis immigrated to India from a region of Persia known as Pars, of which Shiraz is the capital. With just four main ingredients—cucumbers, tomatoes, red onions, and fresh herbs—the slaw-like salad couldn’t be simpler. Get the recipe >

Grilled Corn Bhel

Bhel is the closest that many Indians will come to eating some type of salad. We traditionally don’t eat a lot of fresh leafy greens. Our greens tend to be dark and fibrous (think mustard greens instead of baby spinach) and lend better to stewing instead of salads. Typically served by street vendors, bhel is a “salad” of puffed rice, crispy chickpea noodles, wheat crackers (puris), chiles, onions, cilantro, peanuts, and potatoes dressed with chutney and the occasional dollop of cold sweetened yogurt. My bhel-inspired corn salad keeps the crunch factor with homemade corn poha (you can substitute store-bought corn flakes) and adds grilled corn kernels, cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, and a three-minute cumin-lime vinaigrette. Get the recipe >

The post 6 Magnificent Indian Grilling Recipes You Can Pull Off Indoors or Outdoors appeared first on Saveur.

Rich, comforting stews laced with tomato and pepper. African music. Adinkra symbols illustrating Ghanaian proverbs and adages. Growing up in Yonkers, north of New York City, Eric Adjepong hadn’t yet realized the impact of these key memories. Today it’s clear to him that the tastes, smells, sights, and sounds of his childhood kitchen—the beating heart of his family home—pointed to Ghana. Eric was born and raised in the United States, but both of his parents grew up in the West African nation. His mother, Abena, passed down the wisdom of her culture to her children. When Eric started cooking, that understanding became the foundation of his culinary path.

I first met the now 36-year-old chef in 2019 at a pop-up at Craft in Manhattan. He had recently finished strong as a finalist on season 16 of Bravo’s “Top Chef,” where he explored the story of the transatlantic slave trade and the many ways that history still connects the flavors of West Africa to the United States, South America, and the Caribbean. As he and his team cooked in Craft’s private event space, I noticed West African ingredients like palm wine and shrimp powder alongside Asian, French, Italian, and North American products. He used these global components in tandem; each bolstered the next, lending their own individual flavors and textures. In dishes like jerk-rubbed steak tartare and corn and goat’s milk pudding with hibiscus-tinted tapioca, I could see that, in Eric’s kitchen, West African cuisine blended seamlessly with dishes from all over the world while retaining its identity and depth—echoing the wisdom of enslaved Africans forcibly moved to new lands centuries prior.

Now a fixture on food TV, Eric is also a children’s book author and an avid traveler. And he’s hard at work on his first cookbook, Ghana to the World: Cooking the Lessons of Sankofa, a project on which I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with him since 2020. Recently, I caught up with him in his Maryland home kitchen to learn about how his travels have shaped not just that room, but also the ways he cooks for his family today.

Let’s start at the beginning: We’ve talked a lot about your childhood kitchen while working on your cookbook. If you had to describe it in one word, what would that be?

I would say it was active. Growing up in a two-family household with my three other siblings in the house, and my cousins, there was always a lot going on. The energy in the kitchen as people were coming in and out, and my mom or my aunt were cooking or catching up over tea—there were always baskets of yams or plantains on the floor and big bags of rice—that active kitchen is the genesis of a lot of my family memories.

How would you describe your home kitchen? 

It isn’t as busy as that one was. [Laughs] I’m barely home now between travel and filming. When I do get back I still like to cook. This week is a perfect example because it was my daughter, Lennox’s, birthday. I had family come down from New York and I made a bunch of food. When there’s a family event, I feel a similar energy to the kitchen that I remember growing up in, especially when everybody comes in and unpacks, and just naturally congregates in the kitchen. It made me feel a little nostalgic to be there, with the same cousins and siblings, but now it’s our children running through and playing. 

What was the menu for the day?


Well it was a sleepover, so I made some eggs, bacon, and cinnamon rolls in the morning for the kids. For lunch, I made a super simple shrimp fried rice, roasted cabbage, and fried chicken because my daughter is a big fan of fried chicken. 

What tools do you always have on hand?

I have a little bain-marie that I keep all of my go-to essentials in, like spatulas, wire whisks, a cake tester, tasting spoons, a mini strainer, tongs, and a Microplane. I travel with that everywhere I go and if I’m at home, it’s right next to my stovetop. 

What ingredients do you keep at home?


I always have roasted garlic and ginger paste somewhere in the freezer, like my mom did growing up. You can take a couple of tablespoons and add it to rice, pasta, marinara sauce, stew, whatever. It’s a great foundational building piece. Lemons and limes. And I also always have spices like berbere or all-purpose seasonings like seasoned salts, a bunch of ’em. 

Something that came up while we were working on your cookbook is the idea of how home kitchens can transport you via cooking. Your mom cooking West African dishes in Yonkers, for example, was trying to make sure you and your family had that connection to your culture. When you’re home from traveling, what do you like to make? Do you have a go-to meal or are you experimenting, playing around? 

I experiment the most with South [Asian] and Southeast Asian flavors at home. I love Thai, Vietnamese, and Indian food. There are a lot of similarities between West African cuisine and food from those areas, in the variety of textures, and in their earthy spices. I always try to take inspiration from recent travels—I may see a cool combination of ingredients or a dish and I keep that in my memory bank for when I’m back in my kitchen, or I just hop into the pantry or the freezer, see what I have in there and just start riffing. I may be looking through a cookbook and want to try something different. It really all depends on what the mood is. 

What inspires that kind of experimentation?

I think my impulse to combine food cultures happens organically through travel. I’m able to try foods from different mom-and-pop restaurants, Michelin-rated restaurants, and even food stalls, and I’m inspired by all kinds of cooks, really. You know, I don’t meet a lot of people who genuinely like to cook. I meet a lot of people who like to eat and like to go to restaurants. But cooking is such a craft and I always appreciate when somebody else, no matter where they’re from, loves that craft too.

That’s a great point. I worked with a bartender once who said people like to drink because they like the way alcohol makes them feel, and that rarely do they like the taste. It’s a means to an end. For a lot of people, cooking’s kind of the same: It’s a means to an end rather than a joyful process. 

I think a lot of people experience that. But for me, I really like the process. But there are also happy mistakes that can happen in a kitchen, you know what I mean? It’s all about not being afraid to try new things. 

That’s good advice. I think people assume when you cook professionally or write about food for a living that you don’t make mistakes, but we’re human! Have there been any recent happy accidents in your home kitchen? 

Yes. It wasn’t anything major, but I was embarrassed the other day ’cause I was making a grilled cheese sandwich for Lennox and I completely forgot that it was on the stove. The whole thing was burnt. [Laughs] So to your point, even chefs can mess up something as simple as a grilled cheese sandwich. Anything can go awry when you’re not paying attention.

The post At Home with Chef Eric Adjepong appeared first on Saveur.

Don’t fear the dinner party! We’re of the opinion that hosting is so much more fun when guests are welcomed into the kitchen. This is Dinner at Kat’s—a new series wherein SAVEUR editorial director Kat Craddock welcomes buzzy chefs, cookbook authors, and wine and spirits pros into her home for a day of cooking and connection. There’s no mystery behind throwing a successful dinner party. Find the menus, recipes, drinks, shopping tips, and tricks to make it happen right here.

The Guest: 

While winter root veggies and hearty braises have their charms, come December, I’m always jonesing for lighter and brighter fare. Chef and cookbook author Leah Cohen grew up in New York’s Westchester County and now lives in Jersey City, so she’s no stranger to the Northeast’s dragging, dreary winters. The food at her restaurants—Pig & Khao on the Lower East Side and Piggyback up by Madison Square Garden—is inspired by Leah’s extensive travels throughout Southeast Asia and her own Filipino heritage. In the bone-chilling depths of winter, her bright, chile-laced fare is the next-best-thing to a Southeast Asian vacation.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Leah kept her kitchens open, coming into the city daily to prepare meals for front-line workers through the Rethink Chinatown Initiative. These days, business is more or less back to normal, and between running her restaurants and raising her two sons with her husband and business partner Ben Byruch, and judging the hit PBS show, The Great American Recipe, Leah has plenty to keep her busy. So I was over-the-moon that she agreed to join me for dinner.

The Menu:

• Magbunga Cocktail (Coconut-Infused Rum, Banana, Pineapple, Calamansi)
• Ukoy (Shrimp and Sweet Potato Fritters)
• Red Snapper Sinigang
• Jasmine Rice
• Chocolate-Coconut Macaroons
• Coconut-Chip Sorbet

The Big Night: 

Leah and I hit up the Union Square Greenmarket for some provisions in the morning, then headed back to my apartment to cook. Back in my pastry cheffing days, I loved to perk up guests’ palates in the winter with tropical flavors and plenty of in-season citrus. So when she suggested expanding that sunny vibe throughout the meal with a crunchy green mango salad and a tart and tamarind-laced pot of sinigang, I knew we were in for a treat. 
SAVEUR’s senior recipes editor, Benjamin Kemper, was in town from Madrid that day too, so he came over to join us. Benjamin’s a good pal, and one of the people I work with the most every day. But, while I’ve tested, edited, and eaten so many of his recipes, we almost never get the chance to cook and eat together. A restaurant vet himself, he knows his way around the kitchen, and the three of us clicked into sync right away, slicing, shredding, and steaming through our mise en place over our tropical, happy-hour cocktails. 

Leah and I knew we were going to want to nosh on something salty and fried while we cooked, so she showed us how to make ukoy—crunchy sweet potato fritters with Chinese chives and baby shrimp. Doused in spicy, seasoned cane vinegar and paired with our sweet drinks, they were, in no uncertain terms, a revelation.

For our main course, Leah decided to make one of her family favorites. Sinigang—a tamarind-laced Filipino soup—is home cooking at its best. There are many traditional variations, which can include fatty pork, chicken, or seafood. The chef grew up eating her mom’s red snapper sinigang, and still today, it’s the only style of the dish she makes. Impressive and colorful enough for a dinner party, the recipe is also easy, mild, and nourishing enough for a soothing sick-day supper—in other words, you’re going to want to bookmark this one.

Anticipating that Leah’s savory dishes would take up a good bit of space in my little city kitchen, I made sure our dessert course was squared away a day ahead of time. I found a great, old-school chocolate-dipped macaroon recipe in our archives that I whipped up in homage to Leah’s native New York, then echoed the cookies’ tropical notes with a rum-spiked coconut sorbet.

At The Bar:

Our classic cocktail expert, Shannon Mustipher, wrote a fantastic book on Tiki drinks, so when she saw our menu, she was thrilled to develop a recipe that honored the genre’s Filipino roots. For the Mabunga cocktail, she infused a bottle of Kasama’s aged Filipino rum with unrefined coconut oil, then added classic Tiki and Filipino flavors: banana, coconut, and calamansi. Shannon was on her way to a specialty rum event in Philly and couldn’t stick around long. But, once she dropped off the ingredients, Benjamin took over the necessary bartending duties, crushing ice and mixing drinks for us like a pro. 

Shopping All-Stars:

• Kasama Rum
• Datu Puti Spiced Sukang Maasim
• Red Boat Palm Sugar
• Mama Sita’s Sinigang Powder
• Unrefined Coconut Oil
• Thai-Style Julienne Peeler

Pro Tips:

• Many Tiki-style drinks benefit from a generous scoop of crushed ice. If your fridge doesn’t have a crushed ice maker, do yourself a favor and break out the food processor early. Before your guests arrive, pulse ordinary ice cubes in small batches, then transfer immediately to a container in your freezer. Also note: crushed ice melts far more quickly than cubes; process double the amount of ice that you think you’ll need.
• While infusing spirits with fresh or dried coconut works great, I’ve always hated how much booze was lost in the process due to absorption. “Fat-washing” is a pro bartender technique in which oils and other high-fat foods are used to infuse flavor and fragrance into spirits. Shannon’s clever use of unrefined coconut oil results in a potently coconut-scented rum with just about 100 percent yield.
• I take dessert seriously, but like to get the heavy lifting out of the way ahead of time so I can focus on dinner and my guests. Popping classic coconut macaroons into the fridge immediately after dipping them in melted chocolate eliminates the need for fussy and time-consuming tempering—though if that’s your jam, by all means check out our handy how-to.
• Since I had plenty of melted chocolate left over from the cookies, I took a page out of my former chef, Mindy Segal’s playbook and swirled the leftovers into half of my vegan coconut sorbet, stracciatella-style.

Get the Recipes:

Magbunga Cocktail (Coconut-Infused Rum, Banana, Pineapple, Calamansi)

Get the recipe >

Ukoy (Shrimp and Sweet Potato Fritters)

Get the recipe >

Red Snapper Sinigang

Get the recipe >

Chocolate-Coconut Macaroons

Get the recipe >

Coconut-Chip Sorbet

Get the recipe >

The post Shake Off the Winter Blues with Leah Cohen’s Tropical Seafood Feast appeared first on Saveur.

The last of the day’s visitors trickle out from Singapore’s famed Botanic Gardens, leaving the footpaths that wind through the lush foliage and throngs of orchids deserted. But listen carefully and you can hear the din of dinner service emanating from within the flora. The source? Pangium, a new fine-dining restaurant that opened in June, tucked away in the heart of this 163-year-old UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

Inside, chef Malcolm Lee serves a contemporary tasting menu that spotlights heritage flavors as emblematic of the country’s identity as these tropical surroundings. As a Peranakan, Lee is one of the chefs driving a revival of Singapore’s indigenous cuisine and diverse heritage foods. “I’m quite a traditionalist,” says Lee. “I really liked the way things were done before.”

Peranakans descend from early settlers, many from Southern China, who began migrating to the Indonesian archipelago around the 14th century, where they married local women. “For me, you are a Peranakan if you can trace one of your ancestors to being an offspring of the intermarriage at that time,” says Alvin Yapp, owner and curator of the Peranakan private-home museum The Intan. In Chinese Peranakan family kitchens, Chinese cooking practices coalesced with Malay flavors into a distinct and colorful hybridized cuisine characterized by aromatic, herbaceous dishes—foods like mee siam (rice vermicelli tossed in a spicy gravy), babi pongteh (pork stew cooked with fermented soybeans), and kueh salat (glutinous rice and coconut milk topped with custard)—that were complex and time-consuming to make, but bold and hearty to eat. “Peranakan cuisine started off as home cooking,” Yapp adds, and in the home it largely remained. 

Early in his career, Lee, now 37, felt that young people—many of whom were, like him, among the third generation to build a life in Singapore—were losing touch with the culture and traditional dishes that defined their childhoods. He notes how the city-state has absorbed so much foreign influence throughout history that, for many young Singaporeans, the link to their ancestral roots can feel tenuous. “Any new nation struggles to find its identity, and to assert its identity,” says Christopher Tan, a Singaporean cookbook author of Peranakan descent. (Singapore gained independence on Aug. 9, 1965.) The Peranakan community’s matriarchs, who orchestrated large family meals with care and took great pride in their homestyle recipes, were also fading away, explains Peranakan cookbook author Sharon Wee. As young people saw their grandparents aging, “it coincides with this young generation that realizes, ‘if I don’t learn how to cook this, or if I don’t record this for posterity, I’m going to lose it altogether,’” she says.

In hopes of reinvigorating interest in Peranakan cuisine and heritage, Lee decided to reimagine the traditional flavors he loved. Lee’s first restaurant Candlenut, which he opened in 2010 after culinary school, had been serving Peranakan food for five years when he dreamed up a tasting menu of contemporary takes on classic dishes. The following year, Candlenut won a Michelin star, the world’s first ever awarded to a Peranakan restaurant.

At his new sophomore endeavor Pangium, Lee’s culinary mission has broadened beyond the dishes of his Peranakan community to focus on understanding Singapore’s past and bringing it into the future. In the multicultural fabric of the country’s heritage cooking, Peranakan cuisine is only one component; Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Eurasian dishes also comprise Singapore’s heritage cooking. Though many diners may describe his new tasting menu at Pangium as innovative, Lee is more preoccupied with capturing heritage ingredients, reviving lost dishes, and showcasing them intentionally with a modern flair. “I’m trying to preserve those stories,” he explains. “The whole idea is how to present [dishes in ways] that will connect them back to the past.” On a foundation of respect for inherited tradition, Lee acknowledges the contemporary context of Singapore today. He garnishes the classic deep-fried fish dish ikan chuan chuan with hand-knotted lily buds; he serves sagun, a powdery coconut snack enjoyed by his parents’ generation but rarely seen nowadays, atop a dollop of young coconut sorbet; the nasi ulam, rice mixed with an array of herbs, arrives alongside a collection of side dishes that feature ingredients like fermented durian sambal and banana flower.

Documenting Singapore’s complex past and present is no small undertaking. Chef Damian D’Silva, the MasterChef Singapore judge who opened his latest restaurant Rempapa at the end of 2021, is among the most enthusiastic champions for upholding the vast breadth of Singapore’s heritage dishes. “If no one does that, it’s going to disappear,” says D’Silva. He points out that the country, shaped by centuries of colonialism and immigration, has four official languages—English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil—reflecting the diversity of the demographic landscape. At Rempapa, he honors the threads that make up Singapore’s cultural tapestry by cooking a wide array of traditional dishes in homestyle fashion and serving them in family-style portions. The menu is anchored by deeply personal recipes (many from his paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother) that D’Silva, who describes his roots as Peranakan and Eurasian, once enjoyed at his childhood dinner table. He also makes space in the kitchen for other chefs to document dishes from their own heritage. A meal at Rempapa might include everything from kedondong salad (a Peranakan dish of wing beans and makrut lime leaves tossed with peanut brittle and shrimp floss) to Hakka fried pork (Chinese marinated pork belly) to baca assam (Eurasian-style beef cheeks cooked in tangy tamarind water). 

Though D’Silva supports chefs applying newfangled spins to tradition (and has introduced his own fresh takes like limpeh sliders, made with beef brisket cooked in spicy rempah), he sees himself primarily as a custodian of the history and collective memories buoying the foodways of Singapore’s many ethnic groups. He encourages cooks and eaters alike to understand and appreciate that bedrock. “If you don’t do that, then you’re creating a dish out of thin air,” says D’Silva. “And that, to me, makes a dish lose its soul.”

Now, a resurgence of interest in the country’s heritage cooking is well underway. “We grew up in this modernizing Singapore,” says Wee. “I think it came to a point where we realized that we weren’t quite treasuring what we had.” 

The urgency of reviving and preserving these traditions is even greater knowing that the community upholding it is very small—and getting older. Though Chinese descendants make up the majority of the Peranakan community today, the group also includes the Jawi Peranakans, who descend from locally born Muslims with mixed South Asian and Malay ancestry; and the Chitty Melaka, also known as the Peranakan Indians, who descend from locally born children of South Indian merchants and Malays. To illustrate and preserve the special cultural hybridization that created Chitty Melaka food customs, Singaporean home cook Tanya Pillay-Nair is collecting recipes from her community for a cookbook that will be published in 2023.

Though many in the community no longer have direct family ties to India or Malaysia, appreciating the food of one’s heritage can maintain a poignant link to one’s ancestral roots. Pillay-Nair herself has “visceral connections to the past” anchored by vivid memories of her grandmother puttering about in the kitchen, and her family sitting on the floor eating food from banana leaves. “Now that they’ve gone, I’ve had to find ways to retrieve those old recipes,” she says. “There are so many dishes that you would never have heard of,” including many that were new even to Pillay-Nair. “To me, that’s treasure.” 

The pandemic had a hand in encouraging Singaporeans looking to reconnect with the dishes of their childhoods to turn to their kitchens. Limitations on restaurant visits sparked a private home-dining movement throughout the country, with countless locals opening up their own dining rooms to strangers hoping to enjoy home-cooked food in the comfort and safety of a small private group. “When you go to somebody’s house to eat, you feel the love,” says Tinoq Russell Goh, a hairstylist and makeup artist who, alongside his partner Dylan Chan, quietly launched private dinners in their home in 2020. Now, the waitlist is two years long.

As awareness of the diversity of Singapore’s heritage foods continues to build, and as chefs continue to reach diners through contemporary avenues, Yapp, for one, is curious and excited to see where the reinvention will lead. “I don’t think culture should be stuck in time,” he says, pointing out that the Peranakan cuisine of his own background was born from applying modern ingredients and presentation to existing traditions.

One of Lee’s proudest creations is Candlenut’s signature ice cream made from the hydrogen cyanide-containing poisonous seed of the indigenous buah keluak tree (also known as Pangium edule). Making it edible is a lengthy process that involves boiling, burying, and fermenting it before extracting the pasty filling, which Lee’s ancestors thought would work well with chicken and pork. But for Lee, “it’s almost like dark chocolate. A bit bitter, like rich coffee, slightly acidic.” He wondered if it might shine in a dessert. Now, the dish has been on Candlenut’s menu for nine years, served on a bed of salted caramel and embellished with chocolate espuma.

“That’s truly Peranakan,” says Yapp. “We are not afraid to try new things.”

The post The Revival of Singapore’s Indigenous Cuisine appeared first on Saveur.

Kwame Onwuachi has been busy. In June he was on Late Night With Seth Meyers cooking an admirably legit crawfish boil—corn on the cob, newspapered tables, wriggly critters, and all. A month prior, he published his first cookbook, My America: Recipes From a Young Black Chef (our current Saveur Cookbook Club pick), which came on the heels of his award-winning novel, Notes From a Young Black Chef, out just a year before that. 

Between books, Onwuachi has managed to release a nail polish line with ORLY, host the James Beard Awards in Chicago, and seal the deal on a biopic portraying his life. So when a rare window opened up in Onwuachi’s agenda, we pounced at the opportunity to take stock of his trajectory. Here’s our interview.

What inspired you to write this book?

It’s every chef’s dream to have their own cookbook. I wanted to document the dishes that make me who I am, that tell my version of America. Everyone who grew up here has their own version, and this is mine. 

What surprised you most in your research?

The pantry. I guess I hadn’t realized that to do these recipes right, you need an arsenal of sauces and spices and marinades. That’s why there’s a section on them in the front of the book. 

What sauce or spice blend do you reach for the most?

My magic bullet is ginger-garlic purée. It goes good in everything. I use it to bump up a lot of dishes. You can rub it on a steak and sear it and have yourself a good time. The other thing is house spice, my blend that’s a match made in heaven. It’s my mom’s recipe. We grew up using it in lieu of salt. 

How did you choose what recipes to include?

I just listed everything I grew up eating and then wrote the recipes the way I would make them.  My father is Nigerian and Jamaican and my mother Trinidadian and Creole, so there was a lot to work with. 

What dishes in the book do you cook over and over?

Jerk chicken. It’s in-depth but it’s the most flavorful thing ever. When you make really good jerk, you understand why it’s a worldwide phenomenon. My recipe is all about attention to detail: the brine, the homemade marinade, pimento wood—these are the things that can make jerk extremely special. 

What ingredient are you most excited about right now?

Honestly? Rice [laughing]. I want it with every meal. White or joloff or fried or Mexican—rice is just it for me.

Beyond your family, what influences your cooking? 

I’m still figuring that out. I recently got into acting. I used to act when i was a kid, but I forgot about it. I’m taking acting classes to see what’ll happen. Acting—why not? We are humans on this earth for a short time. Traveling has also been important.

Tell me more about that. 

Food can be a love language. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world. You can connect with someone and learn about their culture and who they are by sitting down and breaking bread. I remember this lady in Thailand. I was walking past, and she was eating these clams with some type of sauce and I wanted to ask what was in them. She didn’t speak English but just offered her food to me. Sometimes you don’t need language.

Your book illustrates the extraordinary range and richness of Black food. Do you feel that anything is missing from the current conversation?

You can’t talk about American cuisine without talking about West African food. When enslaved people came here, their food came with them. American food is West African food. Jollof rice became jambalaya. Suya became barbecue. Watermelon, rice, bene seeds, okra—all of these ingredients came straight from West Africa and are the fabric of America’s culinary DNA.

Why are so many Americans unaware of those roots?

A lot of erasure of Black identity was intentional. But this book is helping to bring these things back to life.

What’s next for you, chef?

I’ve got a movie coming out. A movie about my life that starts filming soon. And you can find me in August at The Family Reunion, a Black food festival in Middleburg, Virginia.

The post The Ingredient Kwame Onwuachi Can’t Stop Cooking With Is in Your Pantry Right Now appeared first on Saveur.

You wouldn’t think space exploration would have any influence on how a margherita pie is made, but a new Los Angeles company is drawing that far-out connection.

Launching later this summer, Stellar Pizza hasn’t been shy about advertising its non-earthbound connections: last year, the start-up hired Ted Cizma, a Chicago-born chef who previously worked for Elon Musk to feed 12,000 SpaceX employees. (Now, Stellar Pizza counts numerous SpaceX alumni, including 24 former engineers, among its staff.) But while Cizma, who calls himself the Rocket Chef, might be in charge of coming up with the company’s recipes, his creations won’t be made with human hands.

In a press release, the founders of Stellar Pizza announced that the company has invented a truck manned entirely by machines (with the exception of old-fashioned human drivers) that can “deliver a larger quantity of fresh, made-to-order pizzas” perfectly timed to arrive at the homes of pie-hungry customers.

Though the pizza purveyor on wheels might be the most ostentatious robotic food company to tout its futuristic tech connections (an astronaut theme permeates the website), it is hardly the first. Since the mid-2010s, companies and entrepreneurs have toyed with the (controversial) idea of replacing food workers with machines, but have mostly kept the automation confined to front of house. Now, a growing number of companies are getting robots involved in the culinary arts—particularly when it comes to pizza.

Earlier this month, Nala Robotics, an Illinois-based tech company specializing in artificial intelligence, announced its latest product: Pizzaiola, a voice-controlled and fully automated commercial kitchen with technology that can serve up not just its namesake food but also burgers, wings, pastas, and salads.

According to Cizma, these kinds of changes are a reflection of the current reality: “The combination of fractured supply chains, rising labor and food costs, as well as consumers’ increasing desire to obtain meals on their own terms, will drive the growth and development of technologically advanced food making machines and equipment.”

While sci-fi writers have long imagined that robots would one day handle the day-to-day drudgery of preparing and serving what we eat, the ramifications have often been imagined as a Star Trek-esque utopia or a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy farce. But for restaurant workers, the notion of machines taking over the kitchen has been a simmering threat. In 2018, nearly 50,000 Las Vegas food workers threatened to strike in a move partially inspired by fears they would be replaced. A 2020 survey published in the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research found that respondents were generally concerned about the societal implications that food-service robots would have for workers. 

Now, as the industry is undergoing a major overhaul—with COVID-19 serving as a catalyst—the future is unclear when it comes to machines entering the food space. For Cizma, it’s a matter of adapting to the moment: “The pandemic has impacted the hospitality workforce to such an extent that I believe it is irreversibly changed. Operators will need to embrace technology not just to succeed, but to survive.”

The post Your Next Pizza Delivery Might Come From a Former SpaceX Chef—By Way of Robots appeared first on Saveur.

Pick up an ingredient in your kitchen, and there’s a pretty good chance it is native to the Western Hemisphere. Avocados, squash, corn, and potatoes are just some of the Indigenous foods that have been cultivated in the Americas by Native communities over centuries, and have become staples of nutrition around the world. 

Though these ingredients are living pieces of American agricultural history, the culinary world rarely acknowledges their Native origins. And many other foods still enjoyed in Native American communities—including bison, blue corn, huckleberries, and acorn, to name a few—have been largely forgotten in the broader American diet due to colonization and industrial agriculture.

Not only is the survival of these food sources essential for preserving Native culture and traditions, it also has significant environmental implications: plants that are indigenous to a place are naturally hardier and more weather- and pest-resistant than their non-native counterparts. And promoting food sovereignty can empower people, from growers and harvesters to cooks and chefs, to continue to sustain these ingredients.

Today, Native American restaurants in the U.S. where Indigenous chefs are the ones spotlighting these ingredients are still rare. But a community of Native chefs across the country is working to change that—through dining experiences that uplift their heritage ingredients, support the people who grow them, and proudly celebrate Native culinary traditions. These historians and educators are inviting diners to learn about the ways in which Native foods are tied to American history and soil, and to make room on their tables for these ingredients, both the ones they already know and the ones that aren’t yet familiar to them.

Meet a few of the Indigenous chefs who are reacquainting diners with Native foods.

Crystal Wahpepah

After several years in the catering industry, chef Crystal Wahpepah, a member of the Kickapoo Nation, opened the restaurant Wahpepah’s Kitchen in Oakland, California. “It’s always been a dream of mine—having a Native restaurant,” she says. 

To educate diners about foods indigenous to the area, the 2022 James Beard Award Semifinalist for Emerging Chef works closely with Native producers and, based on what their gardens are producing, incorporates the ingredients into her menu. The Native pillar of “cooking in season based on what you have available,” she explains, is an ethos she hopes her food will inspire more people to adopt. “We flow in seasons for a reason.”

Wahpepah is particularly proud of a veggie bowl on her menu that pays homage to the three sisters, which refers to an intercropping method practiced by Indigenous peoples in North America that involves cultivating corn, beans, and squash in a symbiotic arrangement. The dish features Kickapoo white corn that originates from Kansas, Hubbard squash that represents her tribe, and heirloom beans from the Pima-Maricopa Nation. “I feel that we can tell a story on a plate,” she says. 

Wahpepah is optimistic that the industry is headed in a positive direction of better acknowledging the culture and history behind different ingredients. Restaurant owners and chefs, she believes, are increasingly asking themselves “where our foods come from, what we represent, how we want to feed our communities,” she says. “What I’m seeing? We’re in this beautiful change.”

Pyet Despain

When Prairie Band Potawatomi and Mexican American private chef Pyet Despain began digging into the foodways of her Indigenous heritage and incorporating them more into her cooking, it dawned on her the extent to which most Americans are unacquainted with traditional Native foods, such as amaranth and cactus. “Realizing the evolution of Indigenous food because of colonization was kind of heartbreaking,” says Despain. “A lot of the recipes and a lot of the food that my ancestors ate and the original people of this country ate were entirely forgotten.”

By interpreting Native ingredients using modern techniques, Despain, who was the first winner of Gordon Ramsay’s TV show Next Level Chef, wants diners “not to look at our food as a past tense.” She regularly marries Indigenous foodways with cooking styles and techniques from her Mexican heritage to illustrate the versatility and vibrance of Native ingredients, while simultaneously honoring both of her heritages. 

For Despain, who is now based in Los Angeles, being a private chef also facilitates a dialogue with diners that cooking in a restaurant doesn’t provide. “I love being able to have that person-to-person connection and be able to express fully my love for the food,” she says. And by seeing firsthand how she prepares certain ingredients, her clients may be inspired to cook those foods for themselves. “I want them to be able to implement these traditions into their own family,” she says, “regardless of their cultural background or their upbringing.”

Freddie Bitsoie

Diné chef Freddie Bitsoie, who wrote the cookbook New Native Kitchens, is on a quest to improve food sovereignty around Native foods, beginning with education. The owner of FJBits Concepts, a New Mexico-based firm focused on promoting Native American foodways, Bitsoie wants people to know not only what foods are indigenous to North America, but also who grows and harvests these ingredients and what techniques and methods are involved in cultivating them. According to Bitsoie, “It’s important because it has a lot to do with pride in one’s own culture, pride in one’s own land,” and eaters have a shared responsibility to uplift the foods that naturally grow on this soil.

Modern education, however, often misrepresents the history of the country’s foodways. To illustrate this, Bitsoie often turns to the potato. “It really came from South America,” he says, explaining that the tuber eventually made its way to Europe through Atlantic trade routes before being brought over to the United States by Irish immigrants. “We tend to not think that it’s indigenous to the Western Hemisphere because we’re told that it’s from Ireland.” Explaining the true roots of America’s potatoes is one way Bitsoie hopes to “bring a more eye-opening thought process to how Indigenous foods are really taken for granted.”

Elena Terry

Chef Elena Terry, a member of Ho-Chunk Nation, founded the community outreach catering organization Wild Bearies in Wisconsin to help people overcoming alcohol and drug abuse or emotional traumas find healing through cooking and sharing meals.

According to Terry, though “we have been trained to trust only the food that we purchase off the shelf,” wild and cultivated ancestral foods have undeniable nutritional value. And as a seed-to-table chef who grows the ingredients she cooks, she believes the process of cultivating and harvesting food can be just as nourishing and healing as the ingredients themselves. ”Being out in the land or walking through the woods to forage,” she says, can foster a powerful connection with the natural environment.

“Our culture has suffered a lot of emotional trauma and it is intergenerational,” says Terry. By advocating for the power of growing and cooking food as an approach to recovery, she says she hopes to “show my children what healing looks like. It really is about the next generation.”

The post These 4 Indigenous Chefs Are Bringing Native Foods To The Table appeared first on Saveur.

Condiments may be served on the side, but in reality, they’re the linchpin of a dish—take them away and the whole meal can fall apart. 

“Imagine french fries, hotdogs, or burgers without ketchup. Half the population would revolt. Our customers love to add sriracha to our pho, sandwiches, and noodle bowls. It’s not the same without it,” said Nhi Mundy, chef-owner of Bà & Me, a small chain of Viet-American restaurants in the Catskills. A severe shortage of chili peppers recently brought production of sriracha by global hot sauce brand Huy Fong Foods to a sputtering standstill—and Mundy and other chefs and restaurateurs around the world risk losing the key condiment for their beloved dishes. 

Widespread panic began simmering earlier this week when an April letter from Huy Fong made the rounds online. It blamed the shortage on weather conditions, and said orders of Chili Garlic, Sambal Oelek, and Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce were consequently on hold until Labor Day. Twitter was ablaze. 

“The hoarding has begun #srirachashortage,” tweeted one user, with a photo of a tumbleweed-empty grocery store shelf. “Bidding starts at $1,000,” tweeted another, with a row of laughing emojis and a photo of a single bottle of sriracha.

For restaurants, especially those specializing in Southeast Asian cuisine, the issue was less of a laughing matter but rather yet another hurdle for their already pandemic-weary businesses. “Guys, we are rationing sriracha at work like it’s Purell in 2020,” tweeted one user, a bartender and server at a Japanese restaurant in Washington. “It’s so embarrassing to tell people that we don’t give it out to customers when it’s an [A]sian restaurant.”

Many chefs and restaurant owners are once again finding themselves under pressure to conjure up creative solutions to save their businesses—this time, to replace the spicy kick customers have come to expect. 

“I’ve considered taking the sriracha bottles off my dining room tables entirely and offering them to clients on a request-only basis,” said Mundy. “We haven’t gotten to this point yet, but it’s my backup plan. Worst-case scenario, I could also make a pretty decent chili oil sauce.” 

Restaurants in higher-traffic locations are already needing to improvise. According to Tuan Phung, chef-owner of the Vietnamese bar and eatery Bánh Mì & Bottles in Philadelphia, “We have a couple different [sriracha] vendors. All of them are out of it.” He’s planning on switching to a housemade sauce that he grew up eating in his hometown of Haiphong, Vietnam. “It’s a vinegary chili sauce, and actually complements a bowl of pho really well, if not better than sriracha,” said Phung.

Peter Nguyen, chef-owner of Banh Mi Boys, a pair of New Orleans-based restaurants, said sriracha makes a cameo in several of their dishes, such as the Vietnamese Po Boys and the pho wings dressed in honey sriracha sauce. Noticing a growing scarcity of various Asian ingredients, Nguyen had already stocked up his supply. “Fortunately, [the shortage] hasn’t impacted me yet. But I have plans to research other brands,” he said. ”There are many other companies that serve the same kind of product.”

Mundy of Bà & Me wasn’t so sure. “I’ve tried alternative brands and they are all inferior to David Tran’s sriracha recipe,” she said, referring to the food company’s founder. “His is the Heinz Ketchup of chili sauce. It’s perfection in a bottle.” 

It seems likely that a time will come, before the end of the summer, when chefs may have to bite the bullet and switch brands, or roll up their sleeves and whip up their own. 

As far as substitutes go, Ron Capistrano, owner of Manhattan specialty grocery store Southeast, recommends srirachas from the brands Lee Kum Kee and Shark. The latter, said Capistrano, is the “if you know, you know” option. 

Chef Christina Arokiasamy, author of The Malaysian Kitchen cookbook and proprietor of a cooking school in Kent, Washington, considers chili sauce the “soul and backbone of Southeast Asian cooking.” She teaches her students how to prepare her recipe for sambal, a chili sauce that includes shallots, garlic, lemon grass, mangoes, vinegar, peanuts, lime juice, and shrimp paste. One of the benefits of a DIY sauce, according to Arokiasamy, is the ability to tweak it to your taste. “From the fresh red jalapeño to a full-blown spicy explosion of Thai bird’s eye chili, sambals can vary in flavor depending on the type of chili used.” 

Across the pond, restaurateurs are likewise murmuring about the impending scarcity. In Paris, Nonette Bành Mí & Donuts had already been preparing its own housemade sriracha before the shortage, which was prescient, as the eatery uses the ingredient in almost all of its dishes. The restaurant’s recipe came from Vietnamese chef and co-owner Khánh-Ly Huynh’s mother. According to Huynh, “We use a mix of different chilis, both fresh and flakes, to add different types of spice. We also use apple, which makes it dense because of the pectin in the fruit, and brings some lightness to the sauce—that’s my mother’s secret touch.” She finishes the sriracha by mixing it with a blend of fresh ginger and lemon juice for acidity. Huynh added, “The point is to have a very aromatic and fruity condiment, instead of something too spicy.” The restaurant also makes two versions of sambal in house.

Though they were spared the impact of one shortage, Nonette Bành Mí & Donuts is suffering from another: sunflower oil, due to the Ukraine-Russia conflict. As temperatures soared in Paris this week to record-breaking highs for mid-June, the effects of climate change were acutely felt. For restaurateurs, the future will likely see even more improvising alternatives to staple ingredients in the kitchen.

For more sriracha varieties to try, check out our round-up of the best ones.

The post How Chefs Are Handling the Summer Sriracha Shortage appeared first on Saveur.

Like the alchemy of acid and fat, the balance of sweet and salty, and the classic pairing of peanut butter and jelly, two is so often better than one in the world of food. This is Culinary Duos, a series by senior culture editor Megan Zhang spotlighting dynamic pairs—from couples to siblings to friends—whose partnerships produce flavor-filled magic.

When chef Jeff Chanchaleune and his mixologist sister Jeslyn decided to open a Lao restaurant in their hometown of Oklahoma City, the two had already worked together on several restaurant concepts. But a foray into Lao food, the cuisine of their heritage, was different. The venture felt deeply personal. 

Born to Lao immigrant parents, Jeff and Jeslyn grew up eating dishes from the Southeast Asian country but rarely saw their culture represented in mainstream American society, much less in their home city. In the U.S, restaurants focused on the cuisine of Laos are far less common than those cooking food from neighboring countries like Thailand and Vietnam. “A Laotian restaurant has always been something I wanted to do,” says Jeff. But there was pressure from knowing that his cooking would be many local patrons’ first experience of his ancestral country’s foodways. “I didn’t think the city was ready. And also, I wasn’t ready.” 

After launching a handful of successful projects focused on Japanese food—the food truck Kaiteki Ramen, a pop-up series called Project Slurp OKC, and the brick-and-mortar shops Gorō Ramen and Gun Izakaya, all with Jeslyn’s help—Jeff couldn’t ignore the overwhelmingly positive reception to his cooking. The moment felt right to finally take the next step. “I was like, alright, I believe in it. And I think the city will trust me.”

In 2021, Jeff and Jeslyn opened the doors to Ma Der Lao Kitchen in Oklahoma City’s Plaza District, the first full-service restaurant in the area to exclusively serve Lao cuisine. Every aspect of the presentation, from the name to the decor, is an homage to their family’s roots. A neon sign hanging in the window reads “ma der,” which means “come eat” or “come through.” Upon entering, guests are greeted with ruby-red floral wallpaper and a mural of the siblings’ grandmother dressed in a traditional Lao gown. 

When he was developing the menu, Jeff frequently consulted his mother to make sure the recipes would closely replicate what she cooked at home throughout his upbringing. This approach, relying in large part on feeling and memory, was a departure from the strict adherence to technique and tradition that had defined Jeff’s Japanese cooking. 

Rather than diluting Lao cuisine’s bold and vibrant flavors to cater to American palates, the siblings strive to genuinely capture the aromas of their childhood. “The first thing about Lao food is that it’s funky. We’re very spicy, umami-forward,” explains Jeff, adding that at the restaurant, “we use a lot of fermented unfiltered fish sauce.” The ingredient features heavily across the menu, including in the most popular dish, Nam Khao, a crispy rice salad with lime juice, mint leaves, and pork sausage. Fish sauce even appears in the bar’s best-selling cocktail, Little Dragon, which Jeslyn describes as a savory, spicy, and fruity concoction reminiscent of a margarita. “That’s probably the drink that I’m most proud of,” she says. 

It turns out landlocked Oklahoma is actually an ideal location for cooking the food of Laos, which is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia and has a similar terroir, according to Jeff. Ingredients naturally found in both regions include white freshwater fish such as catfish, greens like sorrel, and various mushrooms. To source other harder-to-get specialty ingredients, the duo turns to the city’s longtime Asian supermarket, Super Cao Nguyen, which first opened in 1979. 

“Jeff and Jeslyn actually shopped at my store when they were little kids. Their mom would always come by,” says owner Hai Luong, who recalls seeing the two playing on the rice pallets with other kids while their parents shopped. It wasn’t until Jeff grew up and launched his food truck that he approached Luong for help sourcing ingredients. For Ma Der, Luong supplied Jeff with specialty food items like a crab paste that is key in the menu’s papaya salad. Luong was also instrumental in bringing Beerlao, a range of Lao-made beers, to Ma Der, which is now the only restaurant in Oklahoma to carry the beverage.

According to Luong, Jeff is one of the first chefs of Asian descent in Oklahoma City to open a restaurant not out of necessity or survival, but to celebrate and uplift his heritage cuisine. “We’re starting to see more [young] people taking initiative,” says Luong. “That next generation is having their own ideas and going in with the right set of skills.” Luong, who is Vietnamese American, notes that there has long been a sense of friendship between Oklahoma City’s Vietnamese and Lao communities. “We’ve been kind of side by side—to a point where my parents, who started the store, actually can speak Laotian,” he tells me, adding that he considers Jeff’s successful launch of Ma Der a win for the city’s entire Southeast Asian restaurant community. “I can cheer on the sidelines and root for him, and I feel proud.”

The Chanchaleune siblings’ restaurant careers might seem like no surprise, considering their father is a trained chef who worked in many New American and French restaurants and later opened a diner. When Jeff was growing up, though, cooking professionally wasn’t in his long-term plans. “I actually worked my way through high school and college in a kitchen, hoping I would get out, because I was in it for so long,” he says. (His first gig was dishwashing at a Japanese restaurant, which sparked an interest in Japanese cuisine.) After finishing college, he decided to pursue advertising, but after working for two years as a graphic designer, he concluded that the industry wasn’t for him; he had little creative autonomy and felt limited by other people’s visions. All the while, his thoughts kept gravitating back to the familiarity and excitement of the kitchen. “In my downtime, I would always be on some food website or blog,” he recalls.

Like Jeff, Jeslyn was once firmly set on a path far from food. As early as Jeff’s first food truck, Jeslyn, who was still in high school at the time, would stop by after class and on weekends to help out. However, she was interested in photography and, after graduating college, relocated to Oregon to begin her career. When Jeff was prepping to launch his food truck, Jeslyn came home to Oklahoma City to help him—and wound up falling in love with the food service industry. At Gun Izakaya, beverage director Ryan Goodman began teaching Jeslyn cocktail technique and theory, which she quickly soaked up. After building a foundation in mixology, she started pushing creative boundaries. “She does stuff that I would never think of,” says Goodman of Jeslyn’s inventiveness behind the bar. For Ma Der, in addition to the Little Dragon cocktail, Jeslyn developed her own version of an old fashioned with cognac, rye, and coconut syrup. Cognac, she notes, became a popular spirit in Laos after the country’s colonization by the French. “My whole bar program really relies on the flavors from Laos, and I try to bring them out as much as I can,” she says.

It’s important to the Chanchaleunes that guests not only enjoy the restaurant’s food, but also learn about Lao culture in the process. “The attention to detail comes through,” says Goodman, who notes that details like staff members using the correct pronunciations of Lao words are important to the siblings. Before launching Ma Der, Jeff spoke to many relatives and did copious research to put together detailed manuals and guides for training staff members in the intricacies of how history—including French occupation during the 19th and 20th centuries—has shaped the country’s cuisine and the way people outside of Laos perceive its food.

“When the French came in, a lot of people migrated up north towards Chiang Mai, Thailand,” says Jeff. “A lot of dishes, like laab, papaya salad and sticky rice, all originated in Laos, but [the origins] got lost through migration.” Nationalist policies in Thailand promoting the unification of Thai culture erased non-Thai descriptors from products and practices that were considered imported, decoupling Lao foods from their source. When immigrants opened up Lao eateries in America, many found that their businesses attracted more customers if they tacked “Thai” onto the menu and also served Thai food, in part because there were more Thai immigrants than Lao immigrants in the U.S. and hence more awareness of Thai food, Jeff explains. He hopes that, through Ma Der, guests will acquire a greater understanding of Lao foodways that have been overlooked, hidden within Thai-looking menus. 

“He thinks there is an untold story there, a story that needs to be heard, that needs to be shared,” says The Oklahoman’s food editor Dave Cathey, who has reviewed Ma Der. “I’d had laab, and I’d had papaya salad, because there are a number of Thai restaurants around the city—not knowing that those are actually Lao dishes. I’m like a lot of people, I had had Lao food without knowing it, before [Jeff] started really emphasizing it.”

“90 percent of the people who walk through our door have never had our cuisine,” says Jeslyn. “That’s the one thing we were mostly scared of—are people going to accept this? And so far, [reception has] been really, really good.” 

Fueled by the positive feedback, Jeff and Jeslyn are more focused than ever on bringing the food and flavors of their heritage to more diners. The siblings have become active members of the Lao Food Movement, a nationwide initiative spearheaded by chef Seng Luangrath to increase awareness, education, and celebration around Lao cuisine. Ma Der is also hosting regular pop-ups in collaboration with chefs from across Oklahoma and other states, to showcase the potential of Lao ingredients in different contexts. (The restaurant previously partnered with chef Kevin Lee, owner of Oklahoma City’s Korean fried chicken restaurant Birdie’s, and a collaboration with the Japanese sando purveyor Sandoitchi is slated for July.) 

Sibling rivalry is nowhere to be found at Ma Der. In fact, working as a team has brought Jeff and Jeslyn, who are 10 years apart, closer than ever. When their parents divorced, Jeslyn was nine and Jeff was already out of college, so “we didn’t really connect until I opened up the food truck,” says Jeff. Rather than operate in separate silos, the two regularly discuss ingredient tweaks that will allow Jeff’s food and Jeslyn’s drinks to better balance each other—and to bring out the best in the other. “I’m pretty proud to have that connection with a sibling,” says Jeslyn. “The food and beverage space is kind of highly charged,” adds Goodman, noting that family partnerships he’s seen in the restaurant industry tend to have one person who’s clearly in charge. “That’s definitely not the way it is with Jeff and Jes. It’s collaborative, and it’s fun to see them build up each other.”

“I feel like we’re on the right track to showcasing our culture and our food and what we have to offer,” says Jeslyn.

“It is about to be a good time for Lao food, and the exposure to our food is going to open people’s eyes to what they’ve been missing out on,” says Jeff. “It really feels good to be a part of it.”

Recipes

Nam Khao (Crispy Rice Salad)

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Little Dragon Cocktail

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The post This Restaurant Reveals Your Favorite Thai Dishes Might Actually Be Lao appeared first on Saveur.

American chef Chris Fischer makes this version of a New England clambake on a stovetop, no sand required. Use quahog (hard-shell) clams like topneck or cherrystone: they’re larger and have more liquor—the brine inside shellfish—to flavor the broth.

Featured in: “A Gathering by the Sea.”

The post Clams and Mussels with Spicy Pork Sausage Broth appeared first on Saveur.

For Chopped judge and Nashville restaurateur Maneet Chauhan, Diwali has long been a source of sweet memories—many of them tied to a lavish holiday dessert.

The five-day-long pandenominational holiday takes place during the autumn month of Kartika on the Hindu calendar (early November, this year), and is often called the “festival of lights.” This nickname refers to the shining diyas, or lanterns, celebrants traditionally hang to mark the occasion, which is observed widely throughout the Indian subcontinent and beyond, as family and friends gather to enjoy an eye-popping amount of food, drinks, and plenty of desserts. 

Chauhan, who grew up in India, describes the extended feast as an “embarrassment of opulence,” and today, likes to set her own Diwali table with goat biryani, as well as vegetarian dishes like cauliflower and saffron rice. Dahi bhalla—lentil croquettes in yogurt sauce—and chaats are part of the spread, too. But sweets are at the heart of so many South Asian holidays and Diwali is no exception. 

One of the chef’s favorite Diwali desserts is gulab jamun, a decadent dish consisting of pillowy balls of fried dough soaked in a rosewater- and saffron-infused syrup. The result has a luscious, almost pudding-like consistency. “It’s a very revered recipe for us.” she says. 

Chauhan’s version of the dish deviates from the norm in that she fills her gulab jamun with paneer and nuts before frying, introducing a bit of savory balance and crunch to the otherwise soft and sugary confection. In a recent conversation, I spoke with her about how she developed her riff on the classic recipe, what it means to her, and how home cooks can tweak the dish to their liking. Read it below—and don’t forget to check out the recipe, too.

The following has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Let’s talk about gulab jamun. Can you walk me through the process of how you created this recipe? 

So, gulab jamuns are iconic Indian desserts. If there’s a big occasion, gulab jamun is always served, and growing up in India, to me, it was always like, how do they do it? How do they make it? Because it was one of those recipes which seemed very complicated.

So when I got older, I started getting recipes from family and friends. Over the years I tweaked and changed it. One thing I do differently is stuff the gulab jamun—usually it is just a plain donut ball, soaked in a sugar syrup. I also added some warming spices, like star anise and cinnamon. Usually it’s made with only cardamom and saffron. 

I also changed the proportion of milk powder. Traditionally in India, gulab jamun is made with khoya, a reduced milk you can buy from the local dessert shops. Getting khoya over here is difficult, so I adapted this recipe so that if somebody cannot get it, they can still make the dish.

For the home cook who may not have all of these ingredients, what are some substitutions that one could reasonably make without affecting the quality of the dish?

Diwali is one of our biggest holidays and gulab jamun is a celebratory dish, so that’s why there are really rich ingredients in it. That being said, you can remove the saffron or the rosewater and the flavor is going to come from the cardamom, the star anise, and the cinnamon. The flavor profile will be slightly different, but that’s pretty much it.

You mentioned that this is a Diwali recipe. When you were growing up, do you have any memories associated with the dish? 

When we used to go to our grandparents’ place in Bangalore, there was one place which was known for the gulab jamun, and there would always be a line. We would take our uncle and make him stand for hours in the line to get those gulab jamuns. So it’s a very revered recipe for us, because kids absolutely love it.

One of my favorite combinations—and I think this would go for pretty much the majority of the population in India—is warm gulab jamun with cold vanilla ice cream. Oh my god. I am in heaven with that combination.

Wow. You said that and I just started salivating. 

Oh my god. À la mode.

I see a step here that says you should let gulab jamun dough rest for 10 to 15 minutes. There’s no yeast, so it doesn’t have to rise—can you explain why it needs to rest?

There is all-purpose flour in it. So as soon as you start mixing all-purpose flour, the gluten begins to develop. We want that gluten to relax. So when you let it rest, the gulab jamun will not be chewy, but rather more crumbly when you bite into it.

What are some other potential variations that a home cook might make to this recipe?

I think the filling can be completely different. Instead of paneer, you can go ahead and get some dates and nuts, or dried cranberries if you want a little bit of tartness. You can use chocolate ganache. Coconut filling is fantastic in this also, and once I made the gulab jamun with an apple pie filling.

The other variation could also be the sugar syrup. For the holidays, I’ve made it with a pumpkin-spiced syrup. So to me, I always say that a recipe is just a guideline. And I love for people to put their own signature on it and make it their own; that’s when the recipe becomes so much more unique.

Recipe

Gulab Jamun Recipe

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The post Meet the Sweet Star of Maneet Chauhan’s Diwali Table appeared first on Saveur.