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.

Long before the pandemic walloped fine-dining restaurants the world over, the writing was on the wall in Spain: molecular gastronomy was out. The foamed, centrifuged, and spherified wonders that put Catalonia and the Basque region at the culinary forefront in the aughts had all but lost their novelty. The pendulum had swung back toward minimalist, terroir-driven dishes: a fermented baby beet dribbled with single-source olive oil, perhaps, or claw-on roast squab splashed with blood-giblet jus. 

The question many were asking then—and are still asking now—is, what is next for Spanish fine dining? And will the chefs that defined Spanish alta cocina (haute cuisine) for so long, like Ferran Adrià, Martín Berasategui, Elena Arzak, and Joan Roca, fade into the past or evolve to meet, and potentially define, the zeitgeist? 

Joan Roca is culinary royalty. His restaurant, El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, has three Michelin stars and bagged the number-one spot of the (controversial) World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards in 2013 and 2015, dethroning René Redezepi’s Noma in Copenhagen. Diners’ glowing reviews landed El Celler among TripAdvisor’s 2019 top 10 restaurants. The perennial buzz keeps the waitlist at a cool one-year long, on average. 

Today, the three Roca brothers—Joan (chef), Jordi (pastry chef), and Josep (sommelier)—are making inroads in the U.S. building on the momentum created by the Netflix Chef’s Table episode that spotlighted Jordi and his sci-fi desserts. The Rocas will soon open a gelateria in Houston called Rocambolesc as their first American venture. Rocambolesc, with its popsicles shaped like human noses and gelato encased in hot brioche, already has a cult following in Spain.   

With the Rocas gaining more and more traction, it seemed timely to take stock with Joan—to get a refresher on Catalan cooking and to hear what he believes is in store for the future of fine dining.

What foods did you eat growing up? 

I remember lots of slow-cooked stews, which are the bedrock of Catalan cooking. Stews like beef and wild mushroom or braised pork ribs with chestnuts. You always start with a sofrito made with fried onion, garlic, and tomato, to which you might add meat or seafood or both, plus vegetables and stock. Before serving, you stir in a picada, which is akin to a Mexican mole in that it often contains ground nuts as well as saffron, dried bread, garlic—whatever the cook has lying around the pantry. A picada really brings a dish together.  

What dishes and flavors define Catalan cuisine? 

It’s hard to know where to start! Catalonia stretches from the Pyrenees on the French border down to the Mediterranean on the Costa Brava, and each area cooked with what was available. One dish that unites the region is escudella, a boiled one-pot dinner. You throw everything you have on hand into a pot—maybe a ham bone, some fatback, chickpeas, root vegetables—and boil it all together for hours. In my house, there was always a “pilota” added to the broth, a huge meatball made with ground pork, moistened bread, and milk.

So, Catalonia’s regional differences in food are mostly due to climate and geography?  

Yes, but our cuisine is also diverse because of cultural waves. Through the centuries we’ve absorbed knowledge from Arabs, Jews, Greeks… Take pa amb tomaquet, for instance. It’s an emblematic Catalan dish, but we didn’t have access to tomatoes until they were brought back from the Americas. That’s pretty recent in the grand scheme of things, which goes to show that we’ve always been open-minded—adept at incorporating new ingredients and techniques into our food traditions.  

Do you incorporate Catalan ingredients and techniques into dishes at El Celler de Can Roca?

I like applying innovative technology to familiar dishes. For example, I’ll flavor an oyster with a distillate that we make from soil from a nearby forest. This sounds thoroughly modern, but in reality it’s a wink to the very Catalan tradition of mixing surf and turf—chicken with lobster, rabbit with prawns. In this way, we create something novel, something that no one has ever made before, that is simultaneously deep-rooted.

El Bulli closed a decade ago, and with it, much of the hype around molecular gastronomy. Where do you think fine dining is headed? What’s the next big thing?

Spanish cuisine went public, in a sense, thanks to those technological advances in the kitchen, but it’s undeniable that we’re in a new phase now. We absorbed all of the creative freedom from that era, kept some of the techniques, and discarded others. The lines are open! Chefs in Spain today are increasingly focused on respecting ingredients as opposed to manipulating them. The future is going to be less interventionist with fewer additives and subtler cooking techniques. And it will be more sustainable: we’re moving away from sous vide in plastic, for instance. Fire cooking is on the rise, and so are preserved and fermented foods, both of which are a return to the forgotten ways of our ancestors. Lots happening with seaweed right now as well. It’s all on the move. And it’s extremely interesting.   

With inequality on the rise, an argument could be made that restaurants like El Celler de Can Roca are exclusionary by design, playgrounds for the super-rich. What would you say to that critique? 

I get why it’s difficult to understand the relationship between haute cuisine and society as a whole, especially given the circumstances you just mentioned. My feeling is, most everyone can afford one expensive meal every now and again, if that’s what they choose to save their money for. Furthermore, restaurants like El Celler de Can Roca are net wealth generators, providing a good living for people in the community. Like any chef, I’d love to solve world hunger and house all the homeless—and indeed, chefs are often at the forefront of solidarity efforts to help the needy. Sustainability needs to be social as well as environmental. This is what we should be focusing on. 

How have you made El Celler de Can Roca more socially sustainable? 

During the pandemic, it meant preventing layoffs by starting new initiatives. For example, we converted our event space, Mas Marroch, into a restaurant serving our most iconic dishes of all time. But more broadly, we have been reflecting on a simple question: How can we improve our employees’ lives? The most important thing has been cutting shifts from 14 to 8 hours—we wanted people to lead full, stable lives outside of work. That meant reorganizing our staff into two full brigades. It also meant adding a psychologist to our team to resolve conflicts and keep excitement at a maximum. Excitement begets excellence, which in turn provides guests with the best possible experience.

The post Joan Roca on Catalan Comfort Food, Kitchen Culture, and the Future of Fine Dining 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

Get the recipe >

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

If you’ve visited a natural wine bar in the past few years, odds are you’ve tasted orange wine. Once a niche Georgian style, the amber-hued beverage has become the trendy darling of organic and biodynamic wine wonks the world over. Made from white grapes, orange wine gets its sunny tint from “skin contact”—that is, being left to macerate along with the fruit’s skin and pulpy bits after pressing. Just like ordinary white wine, the orange stuff can vary widely. However, the style generally has more richness and depth than whites, coupled with the refreshing chuggability of rosé and the unexpected—occasionally feral—flavor profiles prized by adventure-seeking natural wine drinkers. 

But even many well-stocked shops can be skittish about offering orange wines. Detractors and the uninitiated often consider natural wines’ quirks and irregularities to be flaws, and teaching consumers to love them can be a daunting and expensive task.

That’s where Doreen Winkler comes in. The trailblazing German sommelier cut her teeth working in fine dining from Cyprus to Sydney to New York. She eventually focused her sights on consulting for restaurants interested in expanding their organic and biodynamic wine selections, most recently curating the cellars at Aska in Brooklyn and Sel Rrose in both Manhattan and Montauk.

Over the years, Winkler developed a particular love for orange wines. So in order to bring them to more people, she launched Orange Glou in 2019, the world’s first wine club dedicated to the style. Curating a rotating selection of these skin-contact wines, she began offering boxes of three or six bottles, shipped nationally to subscribers along with descriptions, tasting notes, and food pairing suggestions. The branding is light-hearted and inviting: “I wanted the name to reflect how fun and unpretentious orange wine can be,” she explains of her play on the cheeky French wine descriptive “glou glou” (“glug glug”)—in other words, chuggable or easy-drinking.

Her customers are enthusiastically on board. Today, Orange Glou sends out about 200 boxes a month, some to subscribers who have been with her from day one, but also to a growing list of new buyers. And this month, Winkler set up shop in New York’s Lower East Side, opening the world’s first all-orange wine shop, by the same name. I hopped on a call with her to learn more about her love affair with orange wine, and the people who drink it.

What do you suggest folks do if they want to start shopping for orange wine? Is it just a matter of talking to a somm or winemaker you trust? 

Come to my store! And go to tastings. It’s all about trying out new bottles and seeing what you like. I mean, it’s hard because not every wine store is doing orange wine tastings. Even we are only doing them once a week at this point. Or visit a winery that makes some orange wine. Bloomer Creek in the Finger Lakes does amazing stuff, but there are a lot of wineries making it out there. Another really cool example is Hiyu Wine Farm in Oregon. It is beautiful, and just…wowzer! I hope you get to go there one day. Or go to a natural wine fair! 

The Orange Glou wine club has been operating since 2019. What made you decide to also open a brick-and-mortar business?

I always want to be the first with things. I knew at some point somebody would open an orange wine store—it was just a matter of time. Orange Glou was the first orange wine subscription, and that worked out. And I thought it would be so much fun to have 100 orange wines in one place! That’s what we’re going to do here. We haven’t expanded to 100 just yet—it’s been nuts and the contractor is still building. But yeah, I really love orange wine and I needed to have a place for it.

How did you decide on the Lower East Side?

That was the other thing: It had to be here or nowhere. We’re on Broome Street between Orchard and Allen, right where New York’s natural wine scene is. There are all kinds of natural places and the coolest little restaurants. There’s Ten Bells. There’s a place called Skin Contact that does all kinds of natural wines—not just orange—that’s where it’s at. 

Are most of your customers industry wine geeks, or are you getting a lot of interest from layfolks too?

The full spectrum. I have chefs, and several wine writers, another sommelier or two, and other people that have other sommelier qualifications, and some people that are in the WSET [Wine & Spirits Education Trust program]—because you don’t learn anything about natural wine there—who want to really dive into these other categories as well.

Do you think orange wine mostly appeals to younger wine-drinkers?

That’s what people want me to say, but I feel like it’s all over the place, from 22-year-olds all the way up to people in their late fifties and sixties. My oldest is 65, and he’s a principal in a school.

In general, I think a lot of folks have a loose idea of how to pair red and whites and rosés. Are there specific ingredients or cuisines that you think pair especially nicely with orange wines?

Well, the Georgians pair it with everything. They pair it with all meats, with grilled fish, with vegetables roasted in the oven. 

But spicy food is pretty good with orange wine, especially when you have an orange pinot, or the bubbly stuff, which works really well with Indian food. And there are all kinds of cheeses that orange wine seems to go really well with too—even better than white. But it obviously depends on the specific wine and the dish. 

What was one of your most successful food and orange wine pairings?

There was a Georgian wine—one of my favorite producers called Okros—and they have a mtsvane. We paired that with a Cabot Clothbound Cheddar from Jasper Hill, and it was crazy good.

Oh, that’s a beautiful cheese.

It’s a nutty cheese, and also the wine is a little bit nutty, and just has an amazing aroma overall. It has some saltiness and a lot of minerality to kind of take the salt out of the cheese. It melted together. It was great.

Georgia is the birthplace of orange wine, but you’re selling versions made from all over the world. What regions are you most excited about right now?

There are a lot! The most orange wine is produced in Italy. The Czech Republic is extremely exciting right now. When I was a kid, my parents always took me there and I never wanted to go. But now I really need to go, because there are a lot of cool things happening. It’s close to Austria, and they have a lot of similar grapes. Then there are multiple amazing producers in Australia, including my friends at Yetti and the Kokonut. I did the harvest with them a couple of years ago. And there are a lot of domestic producers doing an amazing job, too. Joe Swick, in Oregon, and Donkey & Goat in California. And so many more from Southern California! I actually did a Skin Contact pop-up in LA, just before the pandemic, because I’m so in love with a lot of these producers. We had 20 different wines and six producers. So there’s a lot of small-batch stuff happening. It’s amazing, honestly.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The post The Outlier of Natural Wines Just Got Its Very Own Shop appeared first on Saveur.

The Hawaiian phrase kama’āina has multiple meanings, but the most direct translation is “child of the land.” This has changed over time to embrace everyone local to the islands, regardless of their racial heritage. For Maui-based chef and Cook Real Hawai’i author Sheldon Simeon, the expression underscores the love for culture and community that comes with every nourishing meal. 

A descendent of sakadas—Filipino sugarcane workers who migrated in the early 20^th century—Simeon celebrates not only the food his grandparents brought with them, but also the joyful mashup that represents the local Hawaiian palate, from Chinese cake noodle to Okinawan pig’s feet rafute, Portuguese “pocho” steamed clams to Korean kalbi. Even ingredients as modest as canned sardines and Spam get respect in his new collection of everyday dishes, some developed at his mom-and-pop restaurant Tin Roof, others based on childhood takeout favorites from okazuya delis in Hilo. 

Simeon’s recipes reflect a deep connection to ‘ohana, the greater Hawaiian family that typically includes loosely related aunties and uncles, friends, and neighbors. All of whom show up for backyard luaus with big pots of stew, foraged pohole ferns and limu seaweed, reef fish snagged right off the beach, or a pan of butter mochi or pies made with half-wild fruit plucked roadside. Poi—pounded taro root—which appears on all Hawaiian tables regardless of ancestry, changing in character and flavor as it ferments, from sweet and soupy to dense and pleasantly sour, is another essential side dish at these ‘ohana gatherings.

In the introduction to his new book, Simeon writes: “These are foods that capture the spirit of immigrants, both recent and long-settled….though every local has their own traditions and perspectives, these are mine—one small fraction of what makes up the heart and soul of Hawai’i.”

Here, Simeon answers our burning questions about what’s cooking in his kitchen.

SM: What was it like growing up on the Island of Hawai’i?

SS: The Hamakua Coast is magical. My grandparents and brother still live out there. My family would go to Hakalau to pick pohole [fiddlehead fern], and catch opihi prawns and small fry in the rivers. We had a bartering system back then. Food was money. My dad was a welder, so if he fixed a fence, then smoke meat or fried fish would appear at the doorstep. That’s how we learned to respect food.

What was the first dish you learned to cook?

You grow up in Hawai’i, you better learn to cook rice. You wash it enough, add the right amount of water, and better press the button to turn the cooker on. Tiger is the old-school rice cooker brand that still lasts, but it didn’t have the warming feature back when I was growing up. Rice always sat in a pot on the countertop; sometimes I ate rice that sat out for two or three days. 

What do you cook on your days off?

Soups like Filipino-style lauya, made with pork shank or beef shank, hearty rough-tough meat that simmers down six to eight hours. You can’t make a small batch. Add some ginger, bay leaf, peppercorns, season it with a ton of fish sauce, cabbage, and potatoes. Start it Saturday night, wake up Sunday, eat it, take a nap, and then eat it again for dinner. Add some chile pepper water. It clears your palate, that moment of spice and acid.

Which recipes in the book are from your family?

The pork and peas was taught to my dad by his uncle, and it’s the most requested dish for large parties. The coconut shrimp we created is kind of tongue-in-cheek. It’s a play on honey walnut shrimp that’s been in my family forever.

Who is the best cook in the Simeon ‘ohana?

Grandpa and his cousin. When it comes to the kitchen they’ve got the touch, but my mom was always in the background. I miss her so much.

What is the Hawaiian mother sauce?

Shoyu and sugar. That salty-sweet combo. Immigrants were limited to what was available, not like back home in Japan or Korea, where the sauce is more balanced and has a bigger flavor profile. Our teriyaki sauce is practically candy. And if it’s not like candy, it’s not Hawaiian kalbi. My shoyu sugar steak has a basting sauce thickened with brown rice that’s been toasted and pulverized. It helps the shoyu sugar cling to the steak, so you end up with a caramelized crust.

Which soy sauces are on your kitchen shelves?

I grew up with Aloha shoyu, but Yamasa is my favorite, especially with seafood. And for my adobo, I use Silver Swan. 

It’s grilling season, and your recipe for uhu (parrotfish) stuffed with lap cheong looks tempting. What’s a good substitute for reef fish species on the mainland?

You could sub a filet of salmon. I’ve also done it with barramundi and mahi mahi. And if you can’t get fresh ti leaves, look for banana leaves in the freezer aisle or fresh at Asian markets.

You write that poi has to be eaten in Hawai’i to be really appreciated. So tell me, two-finger or three-finger poi? The thicker the poi, the fewer fingers you need to scoop it up, right?

Two! Poi is like bread. If you only ever tasted white bread and you didn’t know about sourdough made from a 400-year-old mother—that’s how I feel about GMO poi blended in a Vitamix, instead of that hand-pounded kind from a Waipi’o Valley lo’i [taro pond].

Before you go back to the kitchen: What are some of the places that have inspired your cooking so we can eat local too?

The honey walnut shrimp at Tiffany’s Bar & Grill is a must in Wailuku. Pukulani Superette makes homestyle lau lau. Down from my house where I grew up in Hilo, Ling’s Chop Suey House for the crispy chicken with oyster sauce.  And Ken’s House of Pancakes. Me and the boys always find ourselves there.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Recipes

Shoyu Sugar Steak

Get the recipe for Shoyu Sugar Steak »

Stuffed Uhu with Lap Cheong

Get the recipe for Stuffed Uhu (Parrotfish) with Lap Cheong »

The post Talking Hawaiian Home Cooking with Sheldon Simeon appeared first on Saveur.

In the opening scene of Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy, the 97-year-old culinary anthropologist performs her morning exercise ritual from bed—sleep socks still on, legs scissoring in the air. It’s a rare moment of calm in an otherwise turbulent life. One that remains ongoing. After 60 years studying the regional cuisines of Mexico, and publishing nine books on the subject, Kennedy is not done yet. When she is, the Englishwoman informs the camera, it will be on her own terms.

“She wants things her way in life and death,” says director Elizabeth Carroll, who was granted access to Kennedy’s eight-acre ranch outside Zitácuaro, Michoacán, in western Mexico, while filming the documentary (which takes its title from Kennedy’s nostalgic 1998 book on comfort food.) “Being in Diana’s orbit is always intense.”

Talk about an understatement.

Chef José Andrés has described Kennedy as the “Indiana Jones of food.” She belongs to a cadre of cookbook writers—including Julia Child, Karen Hess, and Paula Wolfert—who devoted their careers to championing other cultures, teaching us history and appreciation rather than appropriation. Among all of them, Kennedy is likely the most scrupulous about crediting sources, acknowledging pioneering author Josefina Veláquez de León, as well as the matchless 19th-century volumes on Mexican cooking in her own archives. The earliest, 1828′s Arte Nuevo de Cocina y Reposteria Acommodado al Uso Mexicano, is so rare, only one other known copy exists. Last year, Kennedy sold her personal papers to the John Peace Library at University of Texas, San Antonio, one of the finest resources for studying Mesoamerican culinary arts. (I spent several days with Kennedy in the Special Collections vault, right before she said farewell to her prized books.) She also hopes to turn her ranch, Quinta Diana, with its antique pottery and time-worn kitchen gadgets, into a foundation for Mexican culinary education.

Kennedy’s response to the current controversy over a dish like #thestew would be unsuitable for family viewing. Then again, Carroll’s documentary captures Kennedy in all her foul-mouthed glory, especially when triggered by those less meticulous about method. She is downright ruthless in her criticism, and unapologetic in her tastes. No one escapes her censure of lazy field-research or poorly executed dishes. Not even Saveur. She once gave this magazine a tongue lashing for putting enchiladas on the cover.

Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy follows its subject to Puebla and Oaxaca as she bounces at breakneck speed along rough roads in her trusty Nissan pickup truck, terrifying other motorists who dare get in the way. It celebrates with Kennedy when she receives a James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame award for The Cuisines of Mexico. Archival footage traces her personal development—from a stint in the British Women’s Timber Corps amid World War II to her resettlement in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental after the early loss of her husband, a dashing foreign correspondent she met while stranded in Haiti during 1957.

“In a certain way, she got robbed by fate,” says Carroll. “She found the love of her life, and suddenly, tragedy strikes, and he’s gone. I can only imagine how I would change and shift emotionally.”

“I’ve led a very funny life,” Kennedy admits in the film.

One of her legacies will be serving as a vital link between the past, as represented by Veláquez de León, and present torchbearers, including Gabriela Cámara, Pati Jinich, Bricia Lopez, and Abigail Mendoza. While the film celebrates Kennedy for making Mexican cooking more accessible to an English-speaking audience, her unfiltered and obsessive personality has also garnered criticism and ignited famous feuds. At the beginning of the film, journalist Craig Claiborne, who encouraged Kennedy to write her first book, is quoted: “If her enthusiasm were not beautiful, it would border on mania.”

I certainly witnessed this firsthand when she chewed out a San Antonio pitmaster for his Tex-Mex version of pico de gallo. But she also signed my copy of The Art of Mexican Cooking, and will remain an inspiration to other culinary anthropologists.

During the film’s hilarious tutorial on guacamole, Kennedy insists: “If people say they don’t like cilantro, please don’t invite them.”

Diana, as always, plainspoken.

Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy will be beginning streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Google and a variety of other platforms starting Friday, June 19. Check out this link to learn more.

The post What Diana Kennedy Taught Us About Appreciation vs. Appropriation appeared first on Saveur.

As a Saveur reader, you’ve probably patted spiced lamb into Turkish-style kofte and tempted fate unmolding a saffrony Persian tahdig. Maybe you’ve dabbled in Georgian khachapuri or developed a predilection for real-deal Russian blini. In other words, you dig the food of Armenia’s neighbors. But how many Armenian recipes are in your repertoire? If you can’t tell your khash from your khorovats, we have good news: Lavash (Chronicle Books, 2019), this month’s pick for Saveur Cookbook Club, is the Armenian cuisine primer you’ve been waiting for.

Lavash, published in October, is a joint effort by writers and recipe developers Kate Leahy and Ara Zada, and photographer John Lee. (If Leahy’s name sounds familiar, that’s because she authored Burma Superstar, Cookie Love, and other popular titles.) All three food-industry pros had been blown away by Armenian cuisine at some point or another—Leahy via a college thesis on Armenian diaspora foodways, Zada through his Egyptian-Armenian roots, and Lee by way of a food photography workshop he taught in Armenia at the TUMO Center—and wondered why so many of the cuisine’s thrilling dishes weren’t better known. Realizing there was no Armenian cookbook on the market by a major company, they found each other and got to work on this gorgeously shot and meticulously researched cookbook.

So just what exactly is Armenian cuisine?

In contrast to, say, Georgian or Russian cuisine, Armenian food is impossible to sum up in a few key flavors or signature dishes. Complicated geopolitcs, countless migrations, and, most recently, the Armenian Genocide (1914 to 1923)—in which the Ottomans killed some 1.5 million Armenians—have all contributed to the splintering of Armenian culinary traditions. Dishes that grace, say, Armenian-American tables in Los Angeles, such as manti (tiny lamb-stuffed dumplings) and choreg (a sweet bread flavored with aromatic cherry kernels called mahleb), are virtually unrecognizable in Armenia today, where Soviet influences (e.g., mayonnaise-y salads, sour cream, pickles) are acutely present.

Faced with the impossible task of defining what Armenian food is (and is not), Leahy, Zada, and Lee took a step back and moved the goalposts. Instead of penning the be-all-end-all bible of Armenian cuisine, they would fly to Armenia to learn how people cook in the mother country. The book would be a snapshot of the culinary zeitgeist of a nation reinventing itself after the peaceful Velvet Revolution of 2018, which upended a Russian-backed oligarchy and installed the Western-leaning journalist-cum-politician Nikol Pashinyan as prime minister.

With Armenia looming large on “Places to Travel in 2020” roundups, there’s no better time than now to get the skinny on the nation’s food and its untapped potential. To that end, we sat down with Leahy and Zada to ask about their favorite dishes and to hear more about what they learned while collecting recipes.

BK: Let’s address the elephant in the room. Does real-deal lavash have anything to do with the seeded crackers of my suburban American youth?

Ara Zada: It actually might, but let’s backtrack. Lavash in Armenia is a flatbread cooked on the wall of a tonir, or clay oven. It is at every table at every meal. It’s soft and slightly sour from a bit of so-called “old dough” (ttkhmor). In the winter, when it’s too cold to go outside to light up the tonir, families rely on dried lavash, which they’ll spritz with water and wrap in a towel to rehydrate—and, bam, you have your soft lavash back. So maybe this crunchy lavash has its roots in that tradition.

BK: Tell me more about this “old dough” method and about how lavash is made.

Kate Leahy: In the villages, bakers will always hold back one piece of dough to mix into the next batch. The direct translation of ttkhmor is “sour dough,” so you get the idea. We approximate this method with a pre-ferment of flour, water, and a pinch of yeast. When old dough is not used, it’s the missing link—you really need it to give the lavash its flavor and texture. Those little blisters on good lavash? That’s the ttkhmor at work.

To make lavash, you mix the old dough with water, flour, salt, and a little oil. You let that rise and portion it into balls, which actually keep in the fridge for several days. After the second rise, you roll out each ball into a thin oblong shape. In Armenia this is where the tonir would come in, but we replicate that ancient baking method with an overturned wok. A cast-iron griddle also works, though not quite as well. At first it can be tricky to roll out the dough and get familiar with your heat source, but don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it. The first lavash in a fresh batch is never pretty.

AZ: In Armenia, they say that the first lavash is like your first love—it goes in too hot and burns out quickly.

BK: Say I want to impress some guests. What dishes in the book are the biggest show-stoppers?

KL: For me it’s got to be jingalov hats. These flatbreads are filled to the brim with fresh herbs and greens, and I’m convinced they’re the breakout star of the book. They’re beautiful and vegan and a great way to eat a lot of greens. And they’re forgiving: You don’t have to scour the ends of the earth for obscure Armenian plants—fresh herbs, chard, and scallions, and you’re good to go!

AZ: Hands-down, ghapama. It’s a whole pumpkin stuffed with rice, dried fruit, nuts, and honey. You slice it down the side and it sort of spiders open. It’s sweet and savory and a great cold-weather dish.

BK: What about weeknight fare?

AZ: I keep going back to trout wrapped in lavash. It’s like making fish en papillote, and you can even use store-bought lavash with success. You just stuff the fish with butter and tarragon or pretty much any herbs you have on hand, roll it up in lavash, blast it in a hot oven for 15 minutes, and it’s done. The fish is perfectly steamed when it’s finished, and you can soak up the juices with the crusty bread. I eat the whole thing with my hands.

Then there’s panrkhash. To make it you tear up some old lavash, layer it with some cheese and caramelized onions and water, and bake it. It’s basically Armenian mac ‘n cheese. I make it for friends after football games. Just throw out some forks and let everybody dig in. And yeah, we add hot sauce because it’s L.A.

BK: How did you go about collecting recipes?

KL: At first I was a little stressed, like, how are we going to get all these recipes? But Ara told me not to worry because in Armenia the hospitality is second to none. He was right. We’d walk into a bakery and they’d just hand over whatever recipe we needed. In Goris, a town in southern Armenia, for instance, we were put in touch with a grandmother who was happy to show us how to cook a bunch of dishes as long as we paid for the ingredients. Goris is famous for its beans, and she made beans some 10 different ways in her tiny apartment. It was incredible. The fried bean lavash triangles in the book [p. 117 in the book; filled with mashed beans and fresh herbs] are her recipe.

BK: What’s Armenian food like in Armenia today?

KL: It’s definitely in flux. You have lots of Western Armenian dishes making inroads in cities like Yerevan because there are Syrian Armenians relocating there for obvious reasons. Lahmajo, a meat-topped flatbread, is one such recipe. But there are plenty of historical recipes that haven’t changed in millennia—harissa, for example. In Armenia, harissa has nothing to do with the pepper paste; it’s probably the original medieval porridge and has just four ingredients: chicken, wheat berries, water, salt.

BK: Why do you think people should add a trip to Armenia to their bucket lists?

AZ: If you like wildlife, culture, scenery, and history, and someplace that’s super affordable—we’re talking $40 for the fanciest soup-to-nuts meal—then Armenia is for you. Food-wise, everything is sourced from right around you, even in cities. Bread is made in the bakery next door, trout is naturally farmed in ponds out back, and pickles and preserves are often homemade.

KL: Going to Armenia today is like stepping back in time and going to Italy 70 years ago. You can have a really authentic travel experience in which you feel like you’re getting tons of culture without dodging selfie sticks. It’s rapidly changing, so now is the time to go.

Lavash is the February 2020 pick for Saveur’s Cookbook Club. Head over to our Facebook group or follow #saveurcookbookclub on social media to join in the fun—or just follow along!

The post A New Cookbook Finally Gives Armenian Food Its Due appeared first on Saveur.

That soggy teabag you just threw away? It’s one of the most Jewish foods on the planet, at least according to a new book titled The 100 Most Jewish Foods, our September pick for the SAVEUR Cookbook Club. The collection of recipes and essays calls itself “a highly debatable list,” a wise caveat on the part of author Alana Newhouse, since such hierarchical pronouncements are the stuff of food fights among Jews across the globe (as my Jewish grandfather would say, “where you have two Jews, you have three opinions”).

If the book looks familiar, that’s because it’s version 2.0 of Tablet‘s web feature of the same name—you know, the one that basically broke the food internet in 2018. Maybe, like me, you spent hours down that culinary rabbit hole, clicking through pull-apart Yemeni breads, slippery herring fillets, and hot, plump blintzes, your salivary glands in overdrive. And maybe you were duly deflated to learn that there were no accompanying recipes.

That’s where this cookbook, published this March, comes in: It features recipes for (nearly) all of the dishes that had us itching for our aprons last year, from Melissa Clark‘s black-and-white cookies to Michael Solomonov‘s noodle kugel to Ruth Reichl‘s roast lamb. But Newhouse’s compendium is titled “most” and not “best” for a reason. Peppered among the appealing borschts and bialys and bagels are more questionable inclusions like margarine, plain boiled chicken, and Kiddush cookies, those tasteless, post-shul hockey pucks of my youth that Newhouse is an unlikely advocate for—so long as they’re homemade.

To make the cut, dishes had to have history, nostalgia, and deep cultural significance, not just be well-known, delicious, or photogenic (cholent, on page 81, is a case in point)—which leads me back to the used teabag. Wayne Hoffman writes that his parents would “share a single tea bag between the two of them…and then leave it on the counter for the next night.” He grew up thinking his parents were penny-pinching eccentrics, only to later learn that there were seeping teabags on Jewish countertops across America, an emblem of post-Depression thriftiness.

Raw, personal anecdotes like these make Newhouse’s Jewish cookbook feel current and important. It isn’t academic or encyclopedic, nor does it aim to be. The 100 Most Jewish Foods is as much at home in the kitchen as it is on the coffee table: Read it like an anthology of short stories, or cook it cover to cover.

With the Jewish high holidays around the corner, I hopped on the phone with Newhouse to hear firsthand what it was like to create a Jewish culinary canon for the 21st century, and to get her take on which dishes deserve a special place on our tables this season.

What was the catalyst for the book?
Alana Newhouse: At Tablet, we’ve always published lots of “best of” lists, from best Jewish songs to films to books, and when we thought about the inheritance of the Jews, we realized that we couldn’t ignore food. Just like Jews have produced all these other creative canons, we’ve also produced a culinary one. So we decided to put together a list of the foods that maybe weren’t the tastiest or the most popular but rather those that contain what we saw as the deepest Jewish significance.

Sounds like a tall order!
Hah! We first had to define what “Jewish significance” meant, and we landed on foods that had a crucial role in the story of the Jews. So, we included popular dishes like chicken soup or challah or matzo alongside foods that are more symbolic: an apple, for the Garden of Eden story, for instance.

Still, it seems hard to winnow down.
Let me put it another way. A British Jewish writer asked me, if someone produced the same type of book in the U.K., would it feature the same dishes? I said, it shouldn’t, because there are so many Jewish foods out there, and even if you’re polling a diverse Jewish crowd, you’ll never arrive at the perfect list. Your vantage point is always different depending on where you stand.

What was your vantage point?
This was such a big team effort at Tablet that my personal perspective wasn’t that important.

Tell me about some of your favorite recipes in the book.
My absolute favorites would have to be schmaltz and gribenes. Both are super simple to make and offer great bang for your buck. All you need is chicken skin and time. The result is a ton of fun. In fact, a New York magazine writer basically invited herself over to my house to learn to make schmaltz and gribenes, and she wrote an amazing essay about Jewish identity through the lens of chicken fat. It was beautiful! She took the book for what it was meant to be: an entry into Jewish food and her own past.

Then there are more complex dishes. Even for knockout bakers, making great challah is a challenge. Chopped liver and gefilte fish are rewarding cooking projects, too. I wouldn’t try making babka myself, but god, that recipe’s good. Somewhere in the middle in terms of difficulty are chicken soup; two kinds of dumpling soup (one Eastern European and the other Middle Eastern); yebra, Syrian stuffed grape leaves topped with caramelized apricots; and Yemenite oxtail soup brightened with tons of fresh herbs.

What should readers make for the high holidays?
Apple cake and honey cake. Both recipes are excellent. Brisket is, of course, a classic holiday recipe, since historically such a nice cut of meat was reserved for special occasions. It’s a rubber band: You can make it complicated or make it simple.

About half the book is essays. Which stand out?
You’ve got to read Ed Lee‘s entry on chopped liver. It’s astonishing—I won’t spoil it. Elissa Goldstein’s piece on leftovers seems like it’s going to be funny and glib but turns out to be one of the most poignant and heart-stopping essays in the book. Another piece of required reading is the entry on adafina, a stew that Spanish Jews cooked in secret during the Inquisition. These three feel rooted in history and nostalgia and the warmth of looking back while also not being blind about the challenges of that history—in other words, exactly what we wanted the list and book to assert. But beyond that, we wanted to show the enormous gift of the engagement of the outside world with Jewish culture.

Éric Ripert and Action Bronson are definitely outsiders, and they have essays in the book. How did you choose them? Everyone has a right to talk about Jewish food. The contributors come from all over. Many are not Jewish. You really don’t need enormous academic expertise to talk about food—you just need your own memories and attachments to it. Our writers come from all different backgrounds and ages, but we did push to get Jews from a range of geographical regions, so for the Persian rice recipe, we wanted a Persian Jew; for a Sephardic stew, we wanted a Spanish Jew. This representation was especially important when it came to foods that were frequently overlooked as part of the Jewish story.

There are essays on Hydrox cookies, Bazooka gum, a used tea bag, seltzer… Why was it important to include non-recipe entries on foods like these?
When it comes to Jewish tradition, what’s hard to wrap our minds around is that, unlike other cuisines, it’s not ethnographically delineated. Peruvian Jews didn’t have the same ingredients as Hungarian Jews as Yemeni Jews. But what they had in common was imperative and symbolism, and they had to use local ingredients to meet symbolic, religious targets. I think of Jewish cuisine as intrinsically domestic—cooked and eaten in the home and in the community, which makes it more colloquial than other cuisines. In other words, schmaltz is great not just because of its flavor but also because of its history, the inventiveness of it, and the knowledge of how it was, and still is, often made: in homes. When I talk and think about these dishes, I can almost feel the hands making them.

The book has an entry on Chinese food and Jews’ love for it. It also features an essay on bagels that essentially argues that they’ve lost their “Jewishness” because of their ubiquity. What do you call this? Borrowing? Cultural appropriation?
I find the cultural appropriation debate constraining in this case because different cultures have different histories. Some cultures have been quite isolated, and as a result, the products that got generated from those cultures are distinct. But for Jews, anything we’ve produced has been affected by the outside and in turn, affected the outside world around us. If that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t have survived. That some things are ours and some things are others’ may be a notion that exists in other communities, or something that will take hold in the future, but Jews haven’t practiced this type of purism in the last few thousand years. It’s therefore hard to retrospectively judge a culture and put that kind of pressure on its culinary output. Of course, it depends on the tone and posture of the person asking the question. As for the creators of Jewish cuisine, we’re essentially talking about women in the kitchen doing their best with a lot of constraints, not least oppression and isolation and hunger.

What’s the next shakshuka? In other words, what Jewish dish is underrated or undiscovered and ready for its “moment”?
For sheer Insta-prettiness you cannot get any better than malida, far and away the prettiest dish in the book. It’s not even hard to make. It’s an Indian rice dish traditional to the Bene Israel Jews that has pistachios, apricots, dates, kumquats, tangerines, dried plums—and if you really want to make it right, you sprinkle rose petals all over it. It’s meant to be a gift to the prophet Elijah. Don’t be turned off by the fact you’ve never heard of it!

I’m biased, but my grandmother’s recipe for haminados, Sephardic slow-cooked eggs, always comes out beautifully: The white gets all these veins and swirls from the brown cooking liquid, which also makes them taste chickeny somehow. There were a bunch of people on Instagram who made them, and I saw some incredible pics!

It’s hard to talk about being Jewish these days without the conversation turning political. The book seems to lack a political agenda. Was that intentional? Absolutely. But let me backtrack a little: I would not argue that the book is apolitical. Sure, it isn’t meant to follow what’s going on in 2019, but it does aim to animate and pull at a history that’s many thousands of years old. We wanted to ensure the book be relevant in two, three, even 10 years, so we placed it inside of a broader historical narrative. But anti-Semitism is all over the book. The isolation and oppression of Jews is almost an ingredient in half of these recipes.

There are tons of Jewish cookbooks out there. What makes this one unique to this moment?
The broad answer is this: Being Jewish is somehow a radioactive topic again. Jews and non-Jews alike are trying to figure out their feelings about Jewishness. They want to be more knowledgeable on Jewish identity, to understand it better. This can be intimidating. Giving those people an entry point like this book will hopefully give them the confidence to keep going, to keep learning. The narrow answer is: Why have kids if there are so many people on the planet? Because this one might be the one for you!

The post A Jewish Cookbook for the 21st Century appeared first on Saveur.

“The things that grow here, that come from here, are your best bet to make something fantastic,” says Suzanne Rousseau, co-author of Provisions: The Roots of Caribbean Cooking, a cookbook highlighting ingredients native to Jamaica and the Caribbean. Over the course of the book, Suzanne and her sister Michelle traverse the Caribbean looking at the fundamental and often overlooked ingredients and flavors of the region while adding modern, global touches, a style they employ at their restaurant Summerhouse in Kingston.

Unlike their first cookbook, Caribbean Potluck, Provisions takes a more detailed look at the fruits and vegetables of the region to create what the sisters call “modern heritage cooking,” dishes that are simple and rooted in the history of the island. In Jamaica, provisions is a word that describes not just a store of food, but specifically refers to the diverse array of starch fruits and root vegetables native to the area, such as plantains, cassava, yams, and taro.

The approach is at once very stylish and an act of rebellion. Dishes born out of slavery and a lack of resources under English colonial rule are served on pristine china, with delicate lace. Provisions does not shy away from delving into this history and showing how these elements come together to create Caribbean cuisine today. But alongside these images, the Rousseaus share stories of their experiences with Caribbean culture and cooking, the joy of eating with family, and their deep respect for the legacy of generations of Caribbean women that defined the islands’ cuisine.

Here, the sisters talk about their great-grandmother who inspired the book, how it fits into the current evolution of Caribbean cooking, and what future Caribbean chefs can learn from its pages.

What was the inspiration for Provisions?
Michelle Rousseau: The inspiration really came two-fold: One was research into our own lineage for our first cookbook Caribbean Potluck, which is when we came across our great-grandmother’s story. She was one of the first commercial patty makers in Jamaica, and we wanted to look at food from the perspective of history and the women who made it. We realized that had never been done before in this region. There were a lot of books about food and culture and history in the region, but there was very little from a female perspective.

The second piece was we had never really seen an ingredient-driven cookbook come out of the Caribbean. There were a lot of situation-driven cookbooks, like family get-together cookbooks, but not really any focusing on the starchy fruits or tree fruits. Looking at Caribbean food over the years, we’ve tried to find a common definer among all of the islands, because each island has such a distinct perspective on Caribbean cooking. What we recognized was that the unifying thing is the ingredients. Every island has a fried plantain or a version of breadfruit or something like that, so we really wanted to look at it from that ingredient perspective and tie women in, too, to honor the legacy of our great-grandmother.

Can you expand on what you mean by “situational cookbooks”?
Michelle: If you look at past cookbooks, they would’ve had categories like appetizers, dinner, the family lunch, or the Sunday supper. For the most part Caribbean cookbooks followed a very traditional trajectory of cookbooks from other regions. Our first book was a bit like that. With Provisions we wanted a book where each chapter focused on a category of ingredients and the recipes could be a snack, an appetizer, whatever. The ingredients drove the story because that’s the culinary history of the region itself. How they came to the islands, how they were consumed, and how they were prepared by different hands all inform a part of the culinary history.

Suzanne: We also felt that the ingredient-focused approach was symbolic of how we live. What we use in the book are ingredients we found on every island, on every table. They might be prepared in different methods with different flavor profiles, but the ingredients are common among the islands and speak to the colonial history and the slave legacy of the islands.

There is a sort of choose-your-own-adventure element to the book where cooks can just jump in and make whatever they want without much forethought. Was that intentional?
Suzanne: Yes, it’s how we cook and eat here in Jamaica. We have traditional dining times, but we also have a “take what’s available” approach in certain moments, and we wanted cooks to be able to jump in at any point. It’s a way of living here, and the book lends itself to a casual sort of approach to food.

Michelle: We want to create cookbooks that are usable, that people go back to over and over again because they love it. We always wanted a book that people could really cook from, like Ottolenghi.

Ottolenghi is a great comparison for Provisions because the recipes are modern, fresh, and clean, but they’re also so deeply rooted in history. Was it tough to balance tradition with a modern sensibility?
Michelle: In many ways, no, because the more we researched, the more we realized how simply our ancestors cooked. A meal would have just been roasted provisions or roasted saltfish topped with butter and pounded mint. So there was all this simplicity, which gave us the base for a very modern look at the food and allowed us to add in shots of Mediterranean ingredients or whatever else. People often think that Caribbean food is very labor-intensive and a lot of slow cooking, and we really wanted to break that myth because when you approach it from this perspective, it’s actually very fresh and very quick.

There’s a synergy between Mediterranean cooking and Caribbean cooking: both cuisines are mostly eaten al fresco, use open fire, and include lots of fresh vegetables. What people really forget about Caribbean food is that there’s all this fresh stuff. People think of it as just rice and peas, curry goat, oxtail, roti, and stewed chicken, but if you go to any Caribbean market on any island, there’s all this gorgeous produce in many colors and flavors and textures. We deliberately tried to be modern and simple, but it wasn’t as hard to do as one would’ve expected.

How do you see Provisions fitting into the evolution of Caribbean food? How does this book speak to what’s happening in Caribbean food today?
Suzanne: It was an opportunity to honor the women and the cooks of the past, and to take a look at the region in a new way. These ingredients have never been seen as valuable because people looked at it as poor-people food on the island, and the fancy food was what you got from overseas. We wanted to make people see that there is beauty and refinement in even the most simple ingredients here. Serving them in humble environments with simple toppings is no less worthy than a meal in Paris with French chefs.

Michelle: We’re presenting things that people do not see as special, but we’re not trying to make them into a French mousse. Provisions positions itself as part of a wave of African-American chefs who are looking at the foods of their childhoods and growing up a completely different way than someone who grew up in the Caribbean. Chefs like Kwame Onwuachi or JJ Johnson or Nina Compton are also telling Caribbean stories, but we’re doing it different because we’ve only ever lived in the Caribbean. I think ours is really true to how we got into the food industry, which was being home cooks who loved this culture and this food.

What do you hope future Jamaican chefs and Caribbean chefs do with Provisions in the future?
Michelle: This is from the perspective of Jamaica, and I think a lot of our younger generation has lost the palate and the taste and the understanding of how to cook and how to cook simply. I hope this inspires them to explore not just cooking, but the culture and the ingredients from where they’re from more, instead of those imported flavors. You know, instead of Burger King, getting a patty. I would hope that books like this make it trendy and easy for them, and make them want to explore the food from that perspective.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The post “Provisions” Is an Ode to the Remarkable Women Behind Caribbean Cuisine appeared first on Saveur.

I am a cake person. Some people are pie people, or ice-cream people, or fro-yo people (which are very different from ice-cream people), and some people still are not dessert people at all. And then I’m not sure what kind of people they are.

I did not know I was a cake person until I met Maira Kalman, the artist and author behind The Principles of Uncertainty, And The Pursuit of Happiness, Daniel Handler’s Why We Broke Up, and more New Yorker covers than I can count. When we sat down to discuss her latest book Cake, an illustrated memoir of sorts with recipes from Barbara Scott-Goodman, I wanted to know, as yet uninitiated into the tribe of cake people, why cake?

There’s a certain grandeur in a towering layer cake, enveloped in glistening ganache, studded with candles or buttercream roses, all growing dewy as they come to room temperature. Those are essential to any celebration. But some cakes are more nonchalant, effortlessly cool and quotidien, a single piece of pound cake served with afternoon tea.

Despite the nature of the moment, a slice of cake can create one, even between two relative strangers sitting at a café in the West Village, one of them discussing her most recent book, the other trying to contain his wonderment at sharing a table with a personal hero. It turns out, every cake tells a story, and no two stories are the same.

So, with two slices of cake between us—one chocolate ganache and one lemon meringue—I asked Maira how this story came to be. It begins, as many great stories do, with a dinner party.

Maira Kalman: It’s the serendipity of all things, really. I was at a party with Barbara Scott-Goodman, who wrote recipes to this book, and we’ve known each other for a long time and we were just chatting about things, and talking about how much we love cake and she said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to do a book about cake?” And I agreed. It’s the nature of what cake is, too. I don’t like to cook very much, but I do like to bake. I’m not a ‘baker’ by any means, but if I were to choose something to make for you, I would make you a cake over a brisket.

Alex Testere: And is there a cake in particular that first came to mind when you set out to make this book?

MK: Well, probably my favorite cake is lemon pound cake, in general. Anything with lemon attached to it, but I’ve written before about that honey cake that everybody in my family makes, and so I don’t know if there’s a cake I’ve met that I don’t like, but probably the lemon pound cake was the glorious image.

AT: What is it about the lemon pound cake that stands out?

MK: There’s just something about a lemon pound cake, when I was younger, that seemed incredibly sophisticated. That anything made with a lemon was just very, very chic.

AT: Yes, I can imagine a lemon as a very sophisticated fruit. Was there another kind of cake you enjoyed growing up, one that triggers a certain memory?

MK: The first one that comes to mind is the one in the very beginning of the book, that my aunt Shoshana would make in Tel-Aviv. It was a chocolate cake with no chocolate in it; just cocoa and coffee. We would come home from the beach, and all of us would sit on the terrace—there were five of us, my sister and I and my three cousins—and there was a sense of incredible calm and pleasure and ease. And when you’re a kid and somebody hands you a plate without asking for it, you just think, ‘This is a very good life indeed.’

AT: A very uncomplicated sense of pleasure, in being a kid.

MK: Right, and anything after the beach, I mean, any food you have after a trip to the beach is a delight.

AT: Those moments just automatically imprint into your memory.

MK: It does, just a moment of complete loveliness.

AT: So, does each cake you and Barbara created for this book come from such a moment like that?

MK: Well, we went back and forth. Everybody has opinions about the best cakes in the world, the cakes we couldn’t live without. And many of those are pulled from the history of all those significant moments in life, birthdays, anniversaries, bringing a cake to someone who doesn’t feel well. Our job was to figure out a list of cakes, which is not a bad problem to have, and so we just kept exchanging lists and then we’d make new lists, and finally we said, here are the 16 cakes that everyone should know.

AT: And I bet there are some cakes that tell stories better than others.

MK: And sometimes it’s more about the sense of what it’s connected to, the memories of the cake. There is the cake of the broken heart, one my aunt made me when a boy broke my heart as a teenager. There’s the cake of philosophy, one I made in Rome that had all kinds of texts from philosophers on it because we were thinking a lot then about Spinoza and Lucretius, and all the weighty questions in this world. ‘What’s the meaning of life? Oh, well, let’s have some cake.’ Somehow, that’s always the play in this world; you have the incredibly intense heavy moments, and then you have a celebratory …

AT: … Slice of cake to make them light.

MK: There’s also, especially coming from Israel, but also here, is the sense of a mid-afternoon break. In Israel, it happens at five o’clock. The British were there then, and it was always a bit too hot for tea at four o’clock, so at five, everybody gathered in cafés, or we went to someone’s house the adults would have tea and coffee. We’d have cake and ice cream.

AT: Sounds like a good deal.

MK: Mm-hmm, and that pause, that sort of celebratory pause, or even just a relaxation pause, it’s the idea that whatever has happened to you during the day, whatever catastrophe has befallen you, you can simply stop and have a piece of cake.

AT: It’s exemplary of this idea that we need to take breaks to do good work, to move forward. A friend told me recently, when I told her I was struggling with making new work, and feeling like I needed to take a break, she said, “Every religion has a Sunday.”

MK: Absolutely. People need rest. I say during the day, too, not just once a week!

AT: So you’ve written and illustrated many books, including the 2011 edition of Michael Pollan’s Food Rules. And I’ve seen various scenes pop up in your books over the years, like the woman eating a sliced egg sandwich at a New York luncheonette in The Principles of Uncertainty. Do you feel any affinity for drawing food in particular?

MK: I’ve never done a food book specifically, though I bring food into every single project I’ve ever painted, especially with Daniel Handler and his 13 Words. There are a lot of cakes in that book, because he wrote the book knowing that I love to paint cakes. I’m always painting meals, and people sitting at tables, taking that kind of break.

AT: As an artist, do you find you handle the painting of a cake differently than, say, if you were painting a person?

MK: I’m probably happier painting a cake or a fruit platter, but no, it’s all still painting. But I’m very happy to paint those scenes of eating, or just the table all set, the way it looks, because it gives me great joy. I always think that the moments of family, or gathering around a table—one hopes that they’re moments of great joy, and funniness, and naturalness. And just hopefully you can be yourself when you’re around the table with people that you know pretty well.

AT: Definitely. Food has a way of acting as an equalizer among new people. I think that’s why we all love to have a dinner party more than we love to stand around and make small talk.

MK: Yeah, it’s true. And I, actually, I would much rather serve at a dinner party than sit at a dinner party.

AT: Exactly! That’s something I’ve realized recently too; I love to host people, I love to cook for them and bring them around a table. I like doing that so much more than going to other people’s parties.

MK: Right? There’s something about … It’s interesting. When you’re with your family, or with close friends, it’s very different. But when you’re going to a ‘dinner party,’ there’s some performance aspect to it, and it’s a little bit exhausting, and you think, ‘If I can’t think of one more story to tell, I’m just going to have to go home and get into my pajamas immediately.’ I’m going to one tonight, and I’m hoping that—

AT: —you have enough stories to tell?

MK: Precisely.

AT: Do you cook often at home? Besides the occasional cake?

MK: I’d much rather be the assistant. I’d rather be the chopper, the cleaner, the table setter. I love the world of setting the table and getting flowers and just looking at the colors of the napkins and the tablecloth. I love ironing everything beforehand, that’s a big part of it. I’m the attendant around everything more than the cook.

AT: Who usually does the cooking?

MK: My daughter’s an amazing cook, but she longer lives at home. But my boyfriend is a great cook also, and he cooks most of the food.

AT: I have someone like that too. That’s great to have.

MK: I’m happy to be his assistant. Then, somehow, the week goes by and you’ve managed to eat. I always say that after I’ve gone shopping, and I have to peel a cucumber or something, I’m exhausted. I’m thinking, ‘How has anybody ever worked so hard as to peel this cucumber? I couldn’t possibly make an entire dinner.’ You first decide what you want to eat, then you make the list, then you go shopping, you bring it home, you organize it, and then you have to cook it and serve it. But I really do long to have a repertoire of, let’s say, a dozen magnificent dishes. The perfect lasagna, the perfect short rib recipe.

AT: Did the addition of recipes change anything about your approach to this book?

MK: Well, it’s a useful book, with actual recipes that people can use. I was very happy with that, I love the counterpoint of lyrical stories, or sad stories, or funny stories with something very pragmatic interspersed, like a recipe. I thought, ‘This is a delightful way to make a book, you’re offering some help, and then offering some story and some art.’

AT: Had you considered handwriting the recipes?

MK: We discussed it, you know there’s always a question of the balance of my handwriting in a book, and I think we understood that there should be a separation between the stories and the recipes. And so the recipes are all clear and crisp, and the stories are more lyrical. There’s no wondering ‘what is this word?’ in the recipes.

AT: I’ve been thinking about illustrations in cookbooks a lot recently, specifically after a conversation with Samin Nosrat and Wendy MacNaughton about their book, Salt Fat Acid Heat. We had talked then about there almost being an unfair sense of perfection tied to the big, glossy photographs in many cookbooks.

MK: Right. I’m hoping the nice things about these paintings is the imperfection of life and cake, and all those things. Barbara even mentions in her intro that no matter how good you are, there will always be the potential for a mishap.

AT: A mishap.

MK: A mishap is really something wonderful to contemplate! For unknown reasons, inexplicable reasons, you won’t always get it right, and there’s no reason to despair. I’ve made cakes that are really … I couldn’t even call them cakes. I’d have to call them sludge on a pate.

AT: It can be such a terrible feeling to destroy something like that. To put in all the time and effort—

MK: —You feel like such a failure. But, then again, it’s a nice thing to be reminded that you can fail and still the world will not come to an end.

Cake, by Maira Kalman, with recipes by Barbara Scott-Goodman, will be published by Penguin Press on April 10, 2018.

The post Life, Love, and Lemon Cake with Artist Maira Kalman appeared first on Saveur.

A friend of mine who was born and raised on Sapelo Island, in a lush and self-sufficient Gullah community they call “Hog Hammock,” once shared something with me I will never forget. He said the old folks used to say: “You don’t plant anything in the ground until you see the pecan trees bloom.” I asked why the pecan tree, and his response was, “it’s one of the oldest and wisest, and it knows when the season’s last frost has hit.”

This wasn’t something he learned in school; it was something he learned from his father, and his father from his father, all by word of mouth. When I think back to the fullness of their citrus trees, weighed down and overflowing with fruit, or to their ability to not only maintain their abundant crops, but to share them with others, I started to consider this as fact over folklore.

This all makes me wonder how many other things go unwritten and are eventually lost. Recipes, traditions, names, and full histories can be at risk of becoming null and void until someone takes notice and gives them life for another generation. In Mali, the Griots were the storytellers that shared the land’s history. They were advisors to the king, and they memorized all of a village’s significant events—births, death, marriages, seasons, wars—ensuring that the collective culture and lineage of each clan continued. This oral inheritance has been a way of life throughout the African Diaspora for centuries, but who are the storytellers now?

I recently sat down Dr. Jessica B. Harris, one of these modern storytellers, to discuss our vast, interesting, and colorful history. But that rich color isn’t without pain too, and we also discussed some of the stigmas caught in the misunderstanding of our history. Over a glass of wine, I gifted her some okra seeds in a small silk pouch collected from my family’s garden and soon-to-be homestead in North Carolina. We both took a sip and deep breathed into my first question:

You made the statement once that African-Americans might be the only people that demonize their own food. What exactly did you mean by that?

Our traditional food comes out of our history, and when I say “our,” I’m talking about “up from the south” African-Americans, who are here not as immigrants but as a result of enslavement. It’s not all of us that demonize our food (I don’t think you do, that’s why you gave me those okra seeds, and I don’t think I do, which is why I’ve got okra on the front of my business card and watermelon on the back) but we often demonize our food, I think, because ours is such a difficult and torturous history. Because it involves unspeakable pain. Because it involves us making the best of stuff that was not even given to us, but thrown at us. It’s an easy thing to say, “that’s not my food, I don’t eat pig’s feet.” But the reality is if somebody hadn’t eaten that then, we wouldn’t be here today. So, we at least need to honor the journey that they had to take, and acknowledge that we stand on their shoulders. I am not here to be an advocate for chitlins, but we do have to acknowledge that that’s the food that enabled survival then. That food enabled me to be here and eat lamb chops, or for someone to be vegan. That’s the stuff that allowed it to happen, and we should not demonize it.

I feel connected to my rich ancestral legacy when I’m in the garden, especially knowing that agriculture was a major part of our lives both pre- and post-slavery, and we were skilled at cultivating various cereals and plants that surpassed mere sustenance. The act of growing food almost activates this part of you that feels dormant until you’re in the soil. Do you feel like growing our own food is an important part of our culture as African-Americans?

Oh, God, yes. If we hadn’t gardened, if we hadn’t foraged, if we hadn’t then passed on a knowledge of plants … A friend of mine told me a story about “break it and taste it.” You don’t wanna put something in your mouth ‘cause it could kill you. But you can put it on the tip of your tongue, you think about it, experiment and see if this is the thing you think it is. That’s knowledge. All those folks we talk about “workin’ roots,” what are they doing? They’re working with plants—the root itself, the leaves, the fruit, the blossom—”workin’ roots” ain’t nothing but agriculture. And so when you think about all of those knowledges, and how they were transmitted, it was strictly oral. Ain’t nobody written no book.

We are profoundly, literally rooted in the soul, wherever we are. It can be an old tomato juice can on a fire escape in the Bronx—it’s a seed, we’re growin it, and we are connected. We are just beginning to know how intensely and absolutely connected we are, and we are just beginning to unbraid to see what some of those connections may be.

I can see in your book some of these moments where people have taken you into their yards and homes, and shared with you what might have only been a memory had you not recorded it. Now that you’ve been all over Africa, how would you describe your Africa?

The continent is sort of like black Americans, or just like people in general; it is so multifaceted, so kaleidoscopically rich, that we have no complete understanding of it. And, I mean, it’s not like I took a deep dive; I have not been in the peace corps, I did not live out somewhere in a hut. I was in major cities. I did make extraordinary friends, though they were mainly, probably, friends out of the elite. But they took me into their homes and I got to know who they were—and in some cases, the people that cooked for them.

OK, and one last thing: Jollof … Nigerian or Ghanaian?

They all lead back to Senegal (the Senegambian region), where the Djoloff Empire ruled from 1350 to 1549. I won’t choose!

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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