It was partly by using food to teach seventh-graders about the Shoah and trying to communicate the deeper ways to understand loss, memory, and a retained culture that I began to appreciate how much the cuisines of Black and Jewish Diasporas had in common. Civilizations without borders re-create themselves after tragedies and traumas, and they migrate and mutate in response. Just as important, and maybe more important, as what their canons dictate is how their constructs grow and push the culture and its cuisines forward. In particular, the legacies of African Atlantic/African American and Ashkenazi Jewish cultures in the West are important, given the rich dialogue generated by two hundred or so years of common concerns and evolving cooperation and conflict in the United States. Above all is the familiar guest, trauma, and its best friend, want.

Yiddish foodways are extremely beautiful because there are so many similar issues with their cultural interpretation of African American foodways. They even have the same kind of language transmission—the recipes were passed to the next generation in a terse vernacular that bridged ancient homelands and new realities. (Yiddish wasn’t “bad German,” and AAVE [African American Vernacular English, or Ebonics] wasn’t bad English; they were languages born in their place to facilitate specific communal transitions.) In my opinion, people ascribe way too much to ingenuity and poverty; “that’s all they had” gets said, and then a shrug, a look, a dismissal. No, that’s not enough. What does it mean to see these others and how they eat and know what you eat and what you have to have and translate everything in a vernacular born in exile, mixing ideas from all the places you’ve been?

What’s most galling is that we’ve generally missed the mood that looms over both Yiddish food and soul food traditions. They are exploited and extolled for their comfort but demeaned for their lack of health benefits or damned as irrelevant. There is a familiar feeling of shame among some: Yiddish food was pre-Shoah/ Holocaust food, the food of balobostehs (homemakers) and weakened, starving, pious yeshivah boys compared with Newish-Jewish (Israeli-Mediterranean food—the food of the sabra). Soul food was that of ignorant “slaves” fed a diet to match their bonds in other ways, something to keep them in physical chains that did not require shackles. One recent news story spoke of an employee at Ikea who was offended that his manager served watermelon because “the masters gave that to the slaves,” a complete fallacy.

In both cases, the foods of Ashkenazi Jews and Black Americans have been maligned and marginalized right along with the people. If the food was corrupt, so was the beleaguered, antiquated way of life we no longer have a taste for because it embarrasses us. However, these were survivors; they were hyperaware of the seasons, frugal and attentive, and most of all, they used their food to show transgenerational love. The idea that something somehow lacked in their gastronomy or worldview came from without, not from within. When people feel that connection between Jews and Blacks in America, it’s not just in struggle, or in satire or survival; it’s in the very soul of the cooking itself.

When people ask me about my favorite “Jewish” food, I say kasha varnishkes. I understand it. It’s the best of the earth in one bowl. The barley that people saw in fields, the pasta it took G-d and miller and mother to partner in making, and onions—the soul of any soul cuisine, brown and sweet and savory and present—are all in one dish with butter or schmaltz and salt. What more do you need? I see all the people and the feelings they had about their food and their position in life, their pride despite their degradation, and the sense of relief when they got to enjoy just one more thing in life.

As I write this bricolage narrative, it becomes clear that a linear account of Jews and Blacks eating and cooking together or for each other is thorny because we are so often oppressed and marginalized and pushed to the edges. So much is missing, but worse yet, the generations descended from the survivors sometimes do not know how to feel about or comprehend their Ancestors. And yet, our job is to bridge the chasms and feel our way back to a place where we can see beyond imposed lenses that regard us as earth-shatteringly oppositional and then to seek out history. Those accounts, where we find common ground in spirit and purpose, do exist. Food was where these common Ancestors of mine tucked away secrets, hopes, and tactics for overcoming being forgotten and telling a story in which all humans could see themselves reflected.

Excerpted from KOSHERSOUL by Michael Twitty. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, AMISTAD, an imprint of HarperCollins. Copyright © 2022 by Michael Twitty.

Recipe

Kosher Cachopa

Get the recipe >

The post For Cookbook Author Michael Twitty, African and Jewish Diaspora Cuisines Share a Crucial Bond appeared first on Saveur.

There’s a running joke among Americans in Paris about Europeans—Parisians especially—signing off the entire month of August. (True enough; I recently tried to reschedule a late July meeting only to be offered a raincheck for September.)

Sure, the joke’s a little tired, considering plenty of people work throughout the summer. But it does seem fair to say that August days are long and languid. Compared to the flurry of activity come September, big cities feel delightfully uneventful. And when it comes to cooking, no one wants to sweat by a stove, which means meals are often as simple and straightforward as dressing up seasonal produce. 

Despite the slightly muted vibe of the month of August, there’s still a lot that the SAVEUR team is excited about in the world of food and drink. We’ve rounded up the events that should be on your radar, as well as some of the forthcoming cookbooks we can’t wait to crack open, for filling the final dog days of summer with plenty of good food and inspiration.  

Smorgasburg — Toronto, Canada

The popular open-air food market that has become an institution in New York City is launching its first-ever international location in Toronto. Located at 7 Queens Quay East, the weekly market will feature dozens of local food vendors like Afrobeat Kitchen and LÀ LÁ Bakeshop. It will run for eight weeks, beginning July 23.  

EVERYBODY EATS — Houston

A novel concept from chefs Tobias Dorzon and Matt Price, EVERYBODY EATS is a multi-city dining experience that marries food and social media. The event’s name is also the very theme here: While in-person attendees will enjoy a multi-course menu, those unable to visit IRL can participate by accessing the chefs’ recipes via their social media. Additionally, part of the proceeds will be donated to charity to help feed families in need. The first dinners ran in Washington, D.C. in July, and the next will be hosted in Houston on Aug. 8. Future dates will be announced soon. 

Claud — New York City

Momofuku Ko alums chef Joshua Pinsky and wine director Chase Sinzer are opening a European-inspired restaurant and wine bar, Claud, in the East Village. According to the pair, their goal is to “create a space that leans on their roots but provides an everyday experience for the neighborhood.” With dishes like swordfish au poivre and half chicken with foie gras drippings, the establishment opens its doors on East 10th St. on Aug. 2.

Octopus Festival — Ourense, Spain

On Aug. 14, between 25,000 and 30,000 kilos (that’s 55,116 to 66,139 pounds) of octopus, or pulpo in Spanish, will be prepared in O Carballiño, a town in Galicia (pulpo capital of the world), for this year’s Octopus Festival. In addition to the main attraction, attendees can try other regional favorites like Cea bread and pies, with plenty of Ribeiro wine.

Prosperity Market Black Business Scavenger Hunt — Los Angeles

Throughout the month of August, a roving farmers market spotlighting Black farmers, food producers, and chefs will host a Black Business Scavenger Hunt across the city of Los Angeles. For the occasion, founders Kara Still and Carmen Dianne have partnered with more than 50 Black entrepreneurs across food, fashion, arts, and entertainment. Each week, Prosperity Market will release clues on its website and Instagram to unlock the designated locations, from wine bars to coffee shops to galleries and more. Participants earn points by visiting the locations, checking in, taking a photo with a QR code, and sharing on Instagram (or via email, for those without social media).

Forever Beirut: Recipes and Stories from the Heart of Lebanon

Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, is known for its unmatched cuisine that combines Arab, Turkish, and French influences. Forever Beirut, a love letter to the city’s vibrant dishes that publishes Aug. 23, is written by renowned chef and award-winning cookbook author Barbara Abdeni Massaad. 

I Am From Here – Stories and Recipes from a Southern Chef

Available on Aug. 16, I Am From Here takes readers on a journey through James Beard Award-winning chef Vishwesh Bhatt’s take on American Southern cuisine. The Indian-born, Mississippi-based chef shares dishes like Peanut Masala–Stuffed Baby Eggplant alongside fried okra tossed in tangy chaat masala, Collard-Wrapped Catfish with a spicy Peanut Pesto, and much more.

Gaby’s Latin American Kitchen

You might know Chef Gaby Melian from her viral videos during her reign as Bon Appétit’s Test Kitchen Manager. Her latest project is Gaby’s Latin American Kitchen, a cookbook aimed at young cooks in which the Buenos Aires-born chef shares her favorite recipes from Latin America, including Colombian-style Arepas con Queso and crepe-like Panqueques with sweet Dulce de Leche. It will be available Aug. 9. 

The Gracias Madre Cookbook

In California, the restaurant Gracias Madre is known for its tasty plant-based Mexican cuisine and exceptional cocktails. Now, the eatery is releasing a cookbook, which drops Aug. 9, featuring recipes from chef Alan Sánchez like Calabaza and Onion Quesadillas, Coliflor with Cashew Nacho Cheese, and Coffee Flan.

Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew

In Koshersoul, James Beard award-winning author and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty examines the crossroads of Jewish and African diaspora cuisine, and explores themes of identity, food, and memory. Part cookbook and part cultural exploration, Koshersoul includes over 50 recipes and is available beginning Aug. 9.

Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland The Cookbook 

Everybody knows Popeye’s, but the story of the man behind the famous fried-chicken empire has been largely overlooked—until now. Secrets of a Tastemaker shares stories from the life of New Orleans-born founder Al Copeland and includes more than 100 of his closely guarded family recipes. The book is now available for Kindle pre-order, and hardcover pre-order begins Aug. 13.

The post Cultural Calendar: Where to Go and What to Read in August 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.

When I was little, spending a night at a friend’s house was exciting for many reasons, and getting to try breakfast cereals that we didn’t have at home was high on the list. But when Claudine, the daughter of Jacques Pépin, invited her friends for sleepovers, her dad—the world-renowned chef who, among many other achievements, has cooked for three French presidents—would sometimes make them breakfast the next morning. And no, he didn’t serve the girls his perfect, pillowy omelettes. Pépin prepared crepes. 

The girls would line up at the kitchen counter or around the table, Pépin recalls, while he set out jars of apricot jam, strawberry preserves, and shaved chocolate in front of them, whisked together eggs, flour, and milk, and melted butter on the stove. As the crepes came hot out of the pan, each of Claudine’s friends decided for themselves what toppings to add. 

It certainly beat the heck out of Froot Loops.

But the French crepe is so much more than a confectionery fantasy topped with whipped cream and jam. “The basic crepe is usable in a savory dish or as a dessert,” says Pépin. The versatile recipe can serve as either a delicate garnish or provide a foundation for any number of ingredients. That’s the power of this ultra-thin pancake that has become an emblem of homestyle French cuisine. 

Featured in Essential Pépin, the chef’s carrot crepes showcase the sweet root vegetable in a savory batter. According to the chef, the flour content may need slight adjustment depending on the moisture from the carrots and the size of your eggs, so aim for a silky batter with a consistency thinner than that of pancakes. This mixture results in a pale orange-colored crepe, in line with the season’s pastel color palette. The recipe works well in sweet applications, too—just omit the scallions.

Whether you decide to go sweet or savory, one of the most ingenious parts of this dish is Pépin’s decision to incorporate the carrot-cooking liquid into the batter. This trick not only imparts a deep, sweetly vegetal flavor, it is also waste-conscious. When I made this dish at home, I cooked the carrots ahead of time and cooled them down right in the pot before blending.

When made savory as the recipe suggests, these crepes have faint sweetness and a tender texture punctuated by bits of lightly browned scallion. They work well as a brunch or simple supper with ginger-spiced shrimp or smoked salmon and crème fraîche. If you decide to go in a sweeter direction, a sprinkle of powdered sugar is sufficient adornment—or gild the lily and top them with a swish of mascarpone and seasonal berries. Versatility is really the point of the humble crepe, so do like Jacques and use it to elevate whatever you happen to have in your kitchen—whether that’s a few choice leftovers or, indeed, whipped cream and strawberries, the stuff of Saturday morning dreams.

Recipe

Carrot Crêpes

The post Jacques Pépin’s Carrot Crepes Go with Everything—from Leftovers to Weekend Brunch appeared first on Saveur.

At 86, Jacques Pépin still speaks with an unmistakable French accent that makes the chef immediately recognizable.

“But I am the most quintessential American chef,” he asserts, citing his long tenure in the U.S., his focus on a wide range of culinary influences beyond traditional French culinary training, and his stint at Howard Johnson’s, a beacon of mid-century American dining. For Pépin, his journey has cemented his place in American culture: a culinary icon who has remained accessible through the intimacy of his role as chef instructor and master of technique. 

Throughout his career, Pépin has shared his vast culinary knowledge through multiple mediums. He has released more than 30 books, starred in various instructional television shows through a longstanding partnership with PBS, and even filmed a series of videos in his Connecticut kitchen for Facebook and Instagram. But Jacques Pépin’s most comprehensive cooking primer is perhaps the 685-page Essential Pépin: More Than 700 All-Time Favorites from My Life in Food. First published in 2011, the volume compiles many recipes from across his wide-ranging source material.

Although Pépin started working in professional kitchens at 14, his interests have always been diverse. At one point, he thought he might teach a literary subject at Columbia University, where he earned a graduate degree in French literature, but he “went back to cooking, what I know the best, and what I’m the best at,” he says. Through the connections he made while working at New York’s Le Pavillon (one of the top French restaurants in the world during its time), he later went upstate and taught private cooking classes in the Catskills. To reconnect with his love of writing, he also penned a food column for Helen McCollough, food editor of House Beautiful, who had become a good friend and introduced him to James Beard, Julia Child, and Craig Claiborne. 

In 1974, Pépin suffered a bad car accident. After recovering, he found that teaching was more palatable than spending hours behind a restaurant stove. By the mid-70s, cookware shops equipped with kitchens were popping up all over the U.S., so Pépin began touring and teaching, all the while hosting a lecture series at Boston University. Then PBS came calling, and his career reached a new stratosphere; suddenly, Pépin graced TV screens across America on a weekly basis, cheerfully deboning a fish alongside Julia Child or showing his daughter Claudine how to make rice paper rolls with avocado and sun-dried tomatoes. His skill is undeniable on camera; his knife moves deftly as if an extension of his fingers, while he calmly chats with a co-host or instructs viewers.

Pépin stresses that, as a teacher, he is not so much patient as he is pragmatic. His practical approach to technique shines brightly across his canon of work—from his television series Jacques Pépin: Fast Food My Way, to the cookbook The Art of Cooking which includes 1500 images, to Facebook videos he shared during the pandemic demonstrating how to make eggs en cocotte and butter roses in step-by-step fashion. His explanations are easy to follow, and his careful guidance helps readers and viewers believe that they, too, can master the recipe or technique.

Pépin himself learned to cook by visual instruction, repetition, and a hefty dose of osmosis during his formative years. He grew up in the family’s restaurant and began his career with a formal apprenticeship at Le Grand Hôtel de l’Europe in Bourg-en-Bresse. He later joined the military, where his cooking skills were lauded and he even cooked for heads of state. At every step of his journey, Pépin gleaned culinary techniques and practiced different preparation styles. The education was immersive, and his resulting understanding of different ways to learn has made him not only a beloved teacher, but also an innovator in a culture hungry for…well, culture. 

When Essential Pépin debuted in 2011, Bonnie Benwick of The Washington Post wrote: “This cookbook is not all dacquoise and cocottes and foie gras in aspic. The [then] almost-76-year-old master was an early adapter of good food prepared fast. His inventiveness outshines any fix-it-quick, Food Network fodder I’ve seen.”

Dishes such as shrimp-cilantro pizza, cucumbers in cream, and eggs with brown butter are all “fast and easy” recipes—ready to eat in the time it takes to bake a frozen pizza—yet they’re still real food, with a dash of panache. 

In Pépin’s eyes, he still has work to do. There is always more to teach and more people with whom to share his knowledge. He has always been willing to try something new, and that impulse remains. 

Most recently, Pépin shared subscription-based videos on the new platform Rouxbe, which offers—among other expert-led courses—exclusive content from Pépin, grading from industry experts, and certification. Pépin’s proceeds will go toward The Jacques Pépin Foundation, a non-profit he launched in 2016 to support community kitchens that offer free skills and culinary training to adults with high barriers to employment, including previous incarceration, homelessness, and lack of work history. 

Pépin’s work with both Rouxbe and the Foundation are simply two more ways for the chef to continue teaching essential skills that can bring his students a lifetime of joy in the kitchen. And yet, as much as he cooks in his day-to-day work, he still loves preparing food as much as ever.

“I basically am a glutton, and I am hungry every day, and that’s why I cook,” Pépin says with a twinkle in his eye. “But there is something soothing, also, in the cooking process—of cooking with friends, eventually sitting down and sharing the food. You know, that is an extraordinary thing.” And with Essential Pépin, there are more than 700 recipes to inspire that daily practice—a lifetime of apprenticeship under the simple guise of putting dinner on the table, one recipe at a time. Extraordinary indeed.

Braised Green Peas with Egg Yolks

Get the recipe >

The post Jacques Pépin Is the Teacher and His Ultimate Apprentice is America appeared first on Saveur.

In her new book, On The Himalayan Trail: Recipes and Stories from Kashmir to Ladakh, British Indian chef Romy Gill shares the earthy and extraordinary dishes she encountered as part of her journey to the famously remote region in 2021. Merging a travelogue with a cookbook, Gill—who has appeared on the BBC’s “Ready Steady Cook” and was honored by Queen Elizabeth II with an MBE award—brings the backstory of each dish to life by spotlighting snippets of conversation and portraits of the people she met along the way.

When I was a child in India, growing up in West Bengal, we were the first family on our street to get a television—an enormous black-and-white affair. Occasionally, we would invite neighbors and friends round to watch Bollywood movies. These were mostly filmed in Kashmir, the valley that was once the summer capital of the Mughal—which straddles the Himalayas, bordered by Pakistan to the north and west, and China to the east. With its stunningly beautiful lakes, snow-capped mountains, and rolling meadows, the landscape looked like paradise. It was partly these movies that were responsible for my fascination with the remote state, one of the many, varied parts—each with their own distinct culture—that define the “real India.” Kashmir felt like a foreign country to me, and I longed to visit.

It wasn’t just the lofty mountains and rolling valleys that captured my imagination: the people and the food also had a huge part to play. My father, Santokh Singh Sandhu, worked in a steel plant with colleagues from across India, including several families from Kashmir, with whom we shared numerous meals and celebrations. It meant that I learned a huge amount about their culture, their religion, their food, their language, and their values. Every year, just before winter came, Kashmiri traders would also visit our township with shawls, carpets, dried fruits, and apples to sell. I have fond memories of my mother stocking up on purchases.

Now, as a professional chef, Kashmir intrigues me for even more reasons: the various ways of living, speaking, and feasting, and the different rituals ingrained into everyday life. Unlike other places in India, Kashmir is largely untouched by foreign and domestic tourists, primarily because of its political situation. In 1947, with the partition of India, both India and Pakistan tried to lay claim to Kashmir. Since then, fighting over the region has continued, and in 1990, the introduction of new powers for the military led to great government mistrust. As a result, over 70,000 Kashmiri Pandits fled, and continued to do so for the next decade. With so much political uncertainty in the region, its cuisine and culture is increasingly difficult to access—but I strongly believe that it’s a cuisine and culture the world should know more about. It was important to travel the parts unknown. 

In recent years I’ve learned more and more about my home country through my travels to places like Leh, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Himachal. I’ve enjoyed the chance to eat, cook, and learn about food in the company of local people and see the region through their eyes. So, when I finally decided to travel to Kashmir to work on the book, it would be no different.

I knew it wouldn’t be an easy trip to plan. It was April 2021, and the COVID-19 pandemic had the world in its grip: every country had its own travel restrictions and its own regulations once you got there. Returning to India at a time when the country’s ever-increasing case rates and deaths were making global headlines was certainly a risk—but still, I was desperate to make the journey.

Anthony Bourdain once said, “If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. […] Walk in someone else’s shoes, or at least eat their food—it’s a plus for everybody.” Great things never come from staying in your comfort zone. So, I took the plunge, spurred on by Bourdain’s words and my vision. As a chef, the trip was an education. The scenery, the people, the traditions, the love—and, of course, the food—all came together to create a truly incredible experience.

I was in Srinagar—a large city on the banks of the Jhelum River—when I met Amit, a man who my chef friend Thomas had introduced me to. Formerly a doctor, Amit left medicine and now runs a communications agency, and Thomas knew he had connections and knowledge that would serve me well in getting to know the region, its people, its food, and its culture.

When I finally got the opportunity to visit Amit’s house for lunch and meet him and his family for the first time, I was showered with a proper Kashmiri Pandit vegetarian feast: hearty dum aloo (baby potatoes in a thick, yogurt-based gravy with plenty of fennel), Kashmiri haakh (simple greens, which retain a little bite and feature just a hint of chili), katte baigan (a tamarind-infused aubergine dish), paneer kyalia (curd cheese with aromatic spices), and nadru yakhni (lotus stems in an aromatic yogurt gravy), all served with mooli chutney and rice.

Throughout the meal, I chatted with Amit about Kashmir’s food, people, and beauty. He told me about his family’s history: his grandfather was Hridai Nath Wanchoo, who was known as the most important human rights activist in Kashmir, and worked tirelessly to improve workers’ rights, healthcare provision, and more. On Dec. 5, 1992, the day before activists attacked and demolished the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, Wanchoo was assassinated. In the three days following his death, Kashmir all but closed down as people gathered to pay their respects. Even after what happened to Amit’s family, they stood their ground and remained in Kashmir, unlike many others who fled the region in the 1990s.

After our glorious—and thought-provoking—lunch, Amit took us to meet a team of wazas (specially trained chefs), who were cooking for a party. Preparation for a wazwan is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and care must be taken to get everything just right. Each waza had their own part to play in creating the feast, much like a group of musicians coming together to play a piece of orchestral music. I was overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells of all the big pots cooking. It whetted my appetite, despite the fact I had just eaten—so, of course, I sampled most of the dishes. 

As we all know, no matter how full we feel after a big meal, there is always room for a little more. 

Reprinted from On the Himalayan Trail: Recipes and Stories from Kashmir to Ladakh by Romy Gill with permission by Hardie Grant, 2022.

Recipes

Halwa (Semolina Pudding with Nuts)

Get the recipe >

Ruangan Chaman (Kashmiri-Style Paneer in Tomato Gravy)

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The post For Chef Romy Gill, the Allure of Kashmir’s Cuisine Was Worth the Epic Journey appeared first on Saveur.

Nestled between two major tourist destinations, Edisto—a small island off the South Carolina coast about an hour south of Charleston and two hours north of Hilton Head Island—is a reminder of days long past. Winding roads, some paved and others not, are shrouded by overhanging Spanish moss; a salty breeze, just barely there, gently counters the humidity. It’s a place where the earth and the Atlantic Ocean’s tributaries meet, surrounded by lush thickets that have acted as a natural barrier for centuries, allowing the local people and their culture to thrive.

Gullah Geechee folkways and heritage permeate Edisto. And the matriarch of the storied island is widely considered to be Emily Meggett, 89, a bearer of the culture all along the Gullah Geechee Corridor, which traces the coastlines of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. 

In her new cookbook Gullah Geechee Home Cooking, Meggett shares her remarkable life story and how she has honored her Gullah Geechee, African, and Southern roots through food. She also traces her family’s history, from her ancestors’ enslavement in the Lowcountry to her own upbringing in Edisto. (Meggett’s great-great-grandfather was one of the “kings of Edisto Island,” a community patriarch who, after enslavement, was able to settle on the island.)

As a child, Meggett spent her days out in nature, searching for massive conches on the beaches and enjoying the bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables. She especially relished in the days before a possible big storm, when the community would cook all kinds of delicious food in case bad weather impacted their supply. Meggett also met the love of her life on the island. She and her husband built a home there and raised 10 children, while maintaining strong ties to the local community and culture. Meggett was, and still is, very active in her local church and spent 46 years working at the Dodge House (a Sea Island cotton plantation home built in 1810, now a museum, where freed slaves once found refuge). In both places, she honed her culinary chops and became well known for her generous, loving spirit—and for taking care of others through food. 

To learn the intricacies of Gullah Geechee cuisine is to unlearn all of the stereotypical narratives about Southern food. Southern and Soul food are usually used interchangeably, despite the terms having different meanings, and mainstream media often implies that both cuisines are fatty and over-salted, born out of necessity rather than trained expertise. Gullah food shows that Southern and Soul food are none of these things, and people have been cooking and eating these dishes since before colonization and the transatlantic slave trade. The use of fresh, local ingredients, as well as techniques like one-pot cooking and barbequing, reveal that whipping up both cuisines requires much more skill and innovation than the chefs and cooks receive credit for.

The first recipe featured in Meggett’s book teaches readers how to prepare deviled crab, a dish that requires immense skill—from cleaning and cooking the fresh-caught crab, to removing the tender meat, seasoning it, and spooning it back into the shells. In the Lowcountry, blue crabs are best in spring and summer, when the crustaceans’ bodies are full of sweet, plump flesh and—if you’re lucky enough to have a female crab—creamy roe. Locals know how to catch them by hand with a trap or with a single piece of string tied around a piece of raw chicken (and how to order them at the local seafood market or from a local fisherman). Unless you’re from or have visited the region, Meggett’s recipe is a revelation, and it’s no surprise that her deviled crab is famous throughout the region. The result is moist and subtly sweet, rich and bright without being heavy. Though the term “farm to table” is rarely used in the context of African American cookery, dishes like Meggett’s deviled crab embody the very concept. 

Meggett’s book and her life are a testament to how being from the Lowcountry means being connected to everything and everyone around you. In this community, there exists an unparalleled symbiosis between the people and nature, with families tending to the same land—and to each other—generation after generation. Throughout her book, Meggett interweaves the stories of the people—Black women in particular—who helped shape her into a nurturer and inspire her recipes. She spotlights the mothers, aunties, 

friends, church folk, and elders who first taught her to make a pot of creamy grits as a child, and mentors like Julia Brown, a Gullah woman who showed Meggett the ins and outs of professional cooking later in her career. Brown taught her, “You do it right or you do it over,” the age-old adage professional cooks and chefs are often told in fine dining, and one that echoes what many Black mothers and aunties teach their children at home.

The role Meggett plays in her community is one countless Black women share but are rarely celebrated for. Her story and recipes should easily be heralded alongside those of some of history’s greatest culinarians, like Edna Lewis, Leah Chase, and Julia Child. Meggett’s food isn’t fussy—it invites home cooks from all backgrounds into the kitchen to learn how to cook fresh and flavorful dishes without the stress of perfection we often see presented on social media and television. Her love for food and her community is an essential ingredient that makes her cooking, and Gullah food as a whole, so special. Gullah meals are made to be shared with others, and Meggett makes that clear in the portion sizes and headnotes throughout her cookbook. For instance, in her fried shrimp recipe, Meggett calls for people to make “enough for family, guests, and anybody who ‘just happens’ to stop by.”

Gullah Geechee food, culture, and people are often described as being on the brink of some sort of extinction, which can lead outsiders to misuse and appropriate their cultural heritage like music, art, and food, rather than appreciating it. But Gullah people have survived for so long, and they will continue to do so through future generations of culture bearers and griots. Today, Meggett continues to feed her community in Edisto, regularly delivering food to banks, doctors’ offices, and hospitals throughout the greater Charleston area. Her legacy goes beyond the meals—it’s her kindness and joy that authentically spreads to those around her. To sit at Meggett’s table (or to recreate one of her belly-warming dishes at home) is to feel and taste the love and soul put into the food.

Recipe

Deviled Crab

Get the recipe >

The post This Matriarch of Gullah Geechee Food Has Been Cooking Farm-To-Table For Decades appeared first on Saveur.

This story is brought to you by SAVEUR Cookbook Club, our passionate community of food-loving readers from around the globe celebrating our favorite authors and recipes. Join us as we cook through a new book every two months, and share your food pics and vids on social media with the hashtags #SAVEURCookbookClub and #EatTheWorld.

Growing up in Cleveland, Kristina Cho spent all year looking forward to the rare and special occasions when her family would pile into the car to make the drive to cities like Chicago and Toronto. The highlight of every trip was getting to visit a Chinese bakeshop, its glass cases housing all shapes and flavors of buns, breads, and cakes—foods that were indulgent for Cho and nostalgic for her grandparents, who moved to Cleveland from Hong Kong in the 1960s. These visits inspired in her a lifelong love for North America’s Chinese bakeries and cafés and the treats those shops offered. 

In Mooncakes & Milk Bread, this month’s selection for the SAVEUR Cookbook Club, Cho teaches readers how to recreate treats like pineapple buns and almond cookies, introducing U.S. audiences to the flavors and techniques of Chinese-style baking. Across more than 80 recipes (which she also photographed), the self-taught baker behind the blog Eat Cho Food explains how to expertly pleat dumplings, shape mooncakes without a mold, and infuse cream fillings with tea, so readers can channel the joys of Chinese bakeshops in their home kitchens.

Though Cho’s collection has plenty of oven-baked goodies, not every dish requires an appliance—the book also pays homage to steamed buns, stovetop jianbing, and tea drinks. Many of the recipes also weave in American flavors, creating inventive mash-ups like Thanksgiving-leftover gua bao, everything-bagel bao, and bacon and kale potstickers.

Throughout Mooncakes & Milk Bread, Cho also shines a light on the inspiration behind her book, immigrant-run Chinese bakeshops such as Eastern Bakery in San Francisco and Ray’s Cafe & Tea House in Philadelphia, and shares the histories of how they became neighborhood fixtures. “Chinese bakeries are not something to be ‘discovered,'” writes Cho. “They are not something new and trendy, but a beautiful facet of Chinese American life. Chinese bakeries have been around for a long time and deserve time in the spotlight.” I spoke with Cho about what these cherished spots mean to the Chinese American community, how her family’s tastes influence her in the kitchen, and why Chinese-style baking is more approachable than many may think.

The following has been condensed and edited for clarity.

When did you fall in love with baking?

In middle school, I was very much into watching Food Network and getting cookbooks out of the library, and teaching myself how to make cheesecakes or chocolate chip cookies. Those were things that my family didn’t necessarily know how to make on their own. It was the only time I ever found peace and quiet in the kitchen—because if I was like, “Oh, I’m going to make dumplings,” I would have three opinions in there, telling me I should do this or do that. But with a cheesecake, I was just by myself, forming my own opinions and techniques based on what I was reading. That’s kind of how I cultivated my own personal love of baking—because it was my own thing.

What do you remember about going to Chinese bakeshops and cafés as a child?

We had a very teeny tiny Chinatown in Cleveland, but we didn’t have a Chinese bakery for a long time. As a kid, when we would road-trip to Toronto, which had a much larger Chinatown, our trips were always book-ended by going to a Chinese bakery. It was such a strong craving. And there’s that nostalgia factor for me now—I think a lot of people have these really warm, pure memories of going to these places as children and picking a bun.

What was your go-to selection?

Everyone in my family had their favorite bun, whether it was a pineapple bun or a cocktail bun or an egg tart. My favorite growing up was always the hot dog buns. As a kid, you’re just like, “Yeah, if I can pick anything I want, I’m going to pick the one with a hot dog in it.” 

Are the Chinese bakeries in America similar to ones found in China?

The Chinese bakeries that are in America are definitely modeled after the Hong Kong-style bakeshop, which my dad always describes as a Western-style bakery because it has so many influences from British culture. There’s this blending of different cultures and techniques, which are then infused with elements of the Chinese palate—things not being too sweet, different fruits and custards and stuff. That same approach is happening in America, where the offerings are constantly evolving to include different international Asian flavors. They’re definitely on the pulse of flavor trends, incorporating things like ube and matcha and experimenting with croissant dough. Obviously, America is so big, and there’s also so many different communities of Asian-Americans that these bakeries cater to. I wish I could visit some in, like, Texas, to see how maybe that Southern culture influences Chinese baking.

Why did you want to teach home bakers to recreate these bakeshop items at home?

Baking in America has been quite Eurocentric, and I wanted to allow for another facet of baking to be in the spotlight. Actually, Chinese baking isn’t necessarily so different—there are so many commonalities. One of my biggest goals was to demystify Chinese baking for the overall baking community and show people that there are a ton of similar techniques. For a lot of the classic recipes, like the pineapple buns, you do not need a single ingredient that you can’t find at a conventional grocery store in America. I think people will be surprised by how approachable it is.

Also, my hometown of Cleveland only got a single, stand-alone Chinese bakery a few years ago. Whenever I traveled home for an extended period of time, I would spend hours, if not days, dedicated to recreating my family’s favorite Chinese baked goods. I realized that this is the case for a lot of people—not everyone lives within a few blocks of an excellent bakery with fresh buns, so I wanted to teach everyone how to make their favorites at home.

Would you say baking is relatively less common in Chinese kitchens?

Home baking is not a super strong tradition yet in Chinese culture; for a long time, most households didn’t have ovens. There’s a very strong culture of cooking obviously—like, you always hear about families making dumplings when they’re all together. But baked goods were usually reserved for trips to the bakery, to get something that you can’t necessarily make yourself, and that kind of holds a special place in people’s memories. But I think now, with a lot of people dabbling in making their favorite baked goods at home, that culture will kind of change, and I think it will only strengthen people’s appreciation for these Chinese bakeries. They will understand how much labor and craft actually goes into making their favorite buns.

You mention in Mooncakes & Milk Bread that the Chinese palate tends to prefer desserts that are not cloyingly sweet. How did this influence your recipe development?

When my family would taste my baking experiments, the biggest compliment was, like, “Oh, it’s not too sweet.” In Chinese baking, sweetness often comes from natural flavors. With whipped-cream-and-fruit cakes, you rely a lot on in-season, ripe mangoes and berries, and the sweet but complex flavors of honey. I see a lot of focus on nuts and seeds, too—sesame seeds, of course, and almonds and walnuts. I think that nutty, earthy flavor complements the subtle sweetness in buns and cakes.

Your family owned a Chinese restaurant. How did they inspire the recipes in your book?

There’s always some connection to my family in almost every recipe. The curry chicken puffs, for example, are pretty typical of Chinese bakeries, but the filling in my recipe is inspired by one of my favorite weeknight dinners that my mom makes, which is a curry chicken that’s a little sweet and has coconut milk in it. I wanted to encapsulate those flavors in the filling of this curry chicken puff. With the char siu bao, which is iconic, I tried to mimic the flavors that my grandpa put into his barbecue roast pork. I have a lot of memories of dinners I’ve had growing up, and I tried to subtly put them into the recipes in the book.

Why was it important to you to spotlight actual bakeshops and cafés in the book?

I wanted to add a level of humanity to my book in a way, because I think I had the unique challenge of writing the first book about Chinese baking. I knew there was going to be a large audience out there that had probably never set foot into a Chinese bakery before. I wanted them to still get a sense of the culture and the amount of effort it takes to operate these establishments. In Los Angeles, Phoenix Bakery has been there since, like, the inception of Chinatown. At Fay Da in New York City, the founder’s children have stepped up to help continue the business. It was really important to me to tell the stories of how these immigrant families chose baking as a career path and dedicated their lives to making really delicious baked goods that make people happy.

What is a recipe you’ll be making this Lunar New Year?

Cooking for Lunar New Year is all about symbolism and wishes of good fortune for the year ahead. My grandma makes fa gao, or prosperity cakes, every year because they blossom as they steam. The taller they bloom and burst, the more prosperity you will have!

Recipes

Fa Gao (Steamed Cupcakes)

Get the recipe >

Fried Sesame Balls With Sweet Red Bean Filling

Get the recipe >

The post Mooncakes & Milk Bread Author Kristina Cho Celebrates Chinese-Style Baking appeared first on Saveur.

Wild game is having a renaissance in home kitchens and restaurants across the United States. Enjoying wild-caught meat can open up home cooks to a much more diverse world of flavors, including mallard, pheasant, venison, and crab. 

Game cookbooks are a great jumping off point to learning how to prepare these less commonly eaten meats, and there’s a wide range available today. Older classics written by woodsmen often provide historical background, idiosyncratic anecdotes, and small-town sensibilities. Some are collectibles now, no longer in print. Newer additions, however, emphasize respect for nature, seasonal eating, and the joy of cooking. These books, many of which are self-published, focus on accessible recipes anyone can recreate in their kitchens. Below are some of the best volumes, both old and new, that teach us how to cook and enjoy wild game at home.

Old Classics:

The L.L. Bean Game and Fish Cookbook (1983) by Angus Cameron and Judith Jones is a terrific single source—475 pages featuring more than 800 recipes from a company known for practical hunting apparel. This volume guides readers from field to feast, accompanied by warm and often hilarious anecdotes from the hunting world. You’ll learn techniques for preparing wild-caught meats in camp or in your home kitchen, and you’ll discover hearty and comforting recipes like stewed fricassee of pheasant and leg of venison with chocolate sauce.

Outdoor Life’s Complete Fish & Game Cookbook (1989) by A.D. Livingston is a wide-ranging recipe collection befitting a legacy outdoor magazine brand. The prolific author particularly shines in the wittiness of his game food lore, with intriguing stories accompanying the delicious recipes. You’ll learn how to make the most of nature’s bounty through culinary creations like crockpot goat with beer, venison coffee roast, and even a crow hash.

The Encyclopedia of Fish Cookery (1977) by A.J. McClane, the former fishing editor of Field & Stream and a widely recognized authority on seafood, is a comprehensive guide that could serve as the first and last word on the subject. You’ll learn all about the unique characteristics of different varieties of fish and shellfish and how they’re caught. The book also offers a boatload of recipes (many of which come straight from the world’s most renowned seafood chefs), as well as techniques and best practices for preparation, preservation, and serving.

A Taste of the Wild: A Compendium of Modern American Game Cookery (1991), also by A.J. McClane, is a volume I like to think of as a companion book to the above, with a focus on game meat. The book offers lots of practical tips, including guidance in how to properly age and freeze game. You’ll learn how to prepare a wide variety of game meats, from partridge and quail to boar, buffalo, and snipe.

Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices (1960) by George Leonard Herter and Bertha E. Herter brings readers along on a worldwide romp through famous eateries and food curiosities, accompanied by vintage photography, side stories, and unconventional recipes. You’ll also learn quite a few skills; the book takes readers through the art of knife sharpening, the keys to making good wine and beer, and even guidelines for making French soap.

New Classics:

The Hog Book: A Chef’s Guide to Hunting, Preparing, and Cooking Wild Pigs (2021), also by Jesse Griffiths, is a single-species cookbook in which the chef teaches readers how to hunt, butcher, and cook wild hogs. Across 420 pages, this massive self-published volume covers everything from butchering techniques—complete with helpful diagrams—to practical safety tips, all served alongside fascinating anecdotes from the field. More than 100 corresponding recipes teach readers how to cure meat, make sausage, and whip up sauces.

The MeatEater Fish and Game Cookbook (2018) by Steven Rinella, host of the podcast and Netflix original series MeatEater, is one of the best-known recent additions to the world of game cookbookery. This read is an exhaustive guide to game cooking, offering techniques and strategies for everything from butchering big game to cleaning freshwater fish. You’ll learn how to cook crayfish, snapping turtles, sea cucumbers, and mallards—with full-page photography to guide you through the steps.

Afield: A Chef’s Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish (2012) by Jesse Griffiths is a masterpiece from the co-owner of Dai Due Butcher Shop and Supper Club and New School of Traditional Cookery in Austin. Through Griffiths’s stories and lessons from his own hunting experiences, the book preaches the principles of living on the land, with a strong emphasis on the importance of sustainable food practices and seasonal eating. Jody Horton’s vivid photography further elevates the recipes, imbuing them with a strong sense of place.

Duck, Duck, Goose (2013), Buck, Buck, Moose (2016), and Pheasant, Quail, Cottontail (2018) is a trio of cookbooks by Hank Shaw, an award-winning food writer and host of the podcast Hunt, Gather, Talk. His books are as informative as they are stunning to behold, and the recipes make wild game cooking very accessible for the average home cook. Shaw also frequently emphasizes use of the whole animal; for example, he teaches readers to prepare tartare puttanesca from duck heart, incorporates gizzards and livers into other recipes, and adds duck fat to his hollandaise sauce and pie crust.

The post These 11 Wild Game Cookbooks Will Teach You How To Prep Venison, Boar, and More appeared first on Saveur.

There is not much improving on a tomato sandwich. No matter what your local fancy-casual restaurant may be trying to tell you with their house-made aioli and brioche toast, the best tomato sandwich is usually the one made with regular old mayonnaise and soft, not-crusty bread. My personal preference is beefsteak tomatoes, firm and fire-engine red all over, but heirlooms of course work well too. The thing should be salted and peppered and soft. (Want crunch? Make a BLT.)

But I found a worthy contender while testing recipes for the Estela cookbook. The Manhattan restaurant, helmed by chef Ignacio Mattos, serves a tomato toast for brunch in the summer that is slimmer and funkier than the standard mayo-smeared sandwich. It’s just a little extravagant, but extremely easy to make at home, and doesn’t allow any one ingredient to yell louder than the tomatoes that shine up at you from the plate.

At the restaurant, the toast-harvesting process is particularly cheffy: they take one of those dense, rectangular breads that are chock-full of seeds and grains, and cut thin slices the long way, so that your piece of toast is as long as the loaf they cut it from. Then they griddle it in a tiny drizzle of olive oil until its edges are crispy and it has veered into toast territory. On goes a smear of Fromager d’Affinois cheese, a cousin of Brie, which is applied evenly and to the edges like they’re icing a cake. The whole thing is topped with slices of technicolor heirloom tomatoes cut thin enough to resemble stained glass and gilded with a bit of olive oil and crunchy salt. The slices drape lazily over the edge of the toast, hiding everything below it such that an uninformed viewer with mediocre eyesight may see the composed dish as a pile of sliced tomatoes.

It is, as you can imagine, a thing of beauty, but it’s also stupidly delicious. The little bits of toothsome seeds in the bread stabilize the almost-gooey cheese, which itself is a buffer for weepingly juicy tomatoes. (A benefit of the edge-to-edge coverage is that the toasts can sit for a second without turning soggy, and therefore are a perfect thing to make for company.) The cheese adds funk but doesn’t steal the show: you’re still at a tomato party, just one with a few carefully chosen bells and whistles. At the restaurant it presents itself as a fork-and-knife endeavor, but it’s just as delicious eaten by hand, either as a fancy snack or in multiples, as lunch.

This is, of course, a far cheffier way to eat tomatoes on bread than buying a loaf of white bread and making use of the Costco-sized jar of Hellman’s in your fridge. But it’s much more accessible to the home cook than it first appears. Fromager d’Affinois might not be stocked at your neighborhood grocer, but is available at many better cheese shops and online. (Of course, you can and should swap in Brie if that makes more sense for you; you’ll still find yourself wondering when else you can swap out mayonnaise for a bloomy-rind cheese.) It tastes just as good if you slice the toast into, uh, normal slices instead of wrangling foot-long planks, some of which will inevitably be too thin or too thick. Past those two bits, all you need are some very good late-summer tomatoes, a bit of good olive oil, and a pinch of flaky salt. It’ll take you 15 minutes to make. It’ll be even quicker when you inevitably decide to make a few more. As always, it is a good idea to buy more cheese than you think you need.

The post The Best Tomato Sandwich Isn’t a Sandwich at All appeared first on Saveur.

Open Please to the Table to a random page, and you might land on a recipe for chicken Kiev, Armenian lamb dumplings, Uzbek cilantro buns, or Latvian cornmeal mush. Such dishes may appear to have nothing in common, but as this seminal cookbook on the cuisines of the Soviet Union reminds us, they once belonged to a rich culinary patchwork quilt that stretched 8.6 million square miles, from the Baltic Sea to Central Asia. 

That quilt came unstitched three decades ago with the collapse of the USSR, but the 400-some recipes in Please to the Table—the SAVEUR Cookbook Club pick for April and May—read as current as ever with dishes like rye cookies, tahdig, Georgian khachapuri, and foraged bitter-green salads in the mix. 

Georgian Cheese Bread (Adjaruli Khachapuri)

Shepherding us through the complex, variegated territories of the former Soviet Union is Anya von Bremzen, who was born in Moscow in 1963, and John Welchman, her coauthor. If von Bremzen’s name rings a bell, that’s because her byline has appeared in all the major food and travel magazines, as well as on award-winning books including The New Spanish Table and Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, her memoir. 

Almost as enticing as the recipes in Please to the Table are the essays and anecdotes peppered throughout, which offer colorful glimpses into topics ranging from geography and religion to the etymology of kasha (it originally meant “feast”) and the proper way to serve Uzbek pilaf (rice buried under the meat in serving bowls; tea and pickles on the side). Literature buffs will be pleased to find a bevy of food-related excerpts from greats like Pushkin, Dumas, and Chekhov interspersed among the recipes.  

Von Bremzen is a cookbook writer with an emphasis on the writer. Her prose is snappy and evocative, especially when she’s on a jag about gastro-cultural curiosities. In the chapter on Russian cuisine, for instance, she recounts the cross-cultural horror story of a Russian friend who was invited to an American’s apartment, only to be offered a bowl of ice cream. “It sometimes takes years for Soviet emigrés in the United States to understand that a casual invitation to someone’s home doesn’t necessarily mean a full-scale meal,” she writes. Later, in an explainer on Armenian cuisine (the book is organized by main ingredient with explainers interspersed throughout), she paints such a vivid picture of her first breakfast in Yerevan that you can almost smell it through the page: “We were greeted with eggs scrambled with ripe tomatoes and green peppers, local sheep’s cheese (chanakh), a delicious spicy sausage called sudjuk, and generous cupfuls of strong black coffee. And there were freshly prepared stuffed vegetables (dolma) awaiting us for later.” 

Even the sample menus in the margins manage to be transportive. You can keep your Pinterest moodboards and Instagram recipe reels—I’ll be getting my cooking inspo on page 452 with “A Rustic Luncheon for Eight,” which reads: “herring in sour cream sauce, my mother’s marinated mushrooms, beet caviar with walnuts and prunes, pumpernickel bread, vodka, schi, meat-filled pirog, Russian cranberry mousse.” 

Last week I had the privilege of chatting with von Bremzen about what it took to produce this 659-page behemoth and how the cuisines explored in the book have changed since its first print run.  

BK: You’ve lived a fascinating and rather peripatetic life. Tell me about it. 

AvB: I was born in Moscow in 1963 during the Brezhnev years. It was a time of Iron Curtain stagnation. Like every Soviet kid, I wanted jeans and foreign commodities and was obsessed with the idea of being abroad, being a foreigner. My mom and I immigrated to the U.S. in 1974 because she hated the regime and was Jewish. She felt trapped. Being Jewish in the USSR then, you weren’t persecuted but you were discriminated against.

We wound up in Philadelphia, but weirdly I wanted to be perceived as a foreigner still. This early fantasy of not belonging was very powerful to me, and immigration was hard. I felt homesick because our past was so complicated. We were cooped up in the Soviet Union under a terrible, repressive regime, and when we emigrated, it was without the right to return. We were traitors of the homeland. To our friends and family, it was like dying with a right to correspondence. 

BK: In Please to the Table, there are recipes for a staggering variety of dishes from across the former Soviet Union. Give me the lay of the land. 

AvB: When I was growing up, the mindset was, you can’t see Paris or Rome, so why don’t you have a holiday in Odessa or Uzbekistan or Georgia? For us, these were exotic destinations. As a child, you could call me a propagandist because I was obsessed with this idea of the Soviet Union and fascinated by its diversity. At the market in Moscow, you’d see Georgians with mustaches in hats and Uzbek ladies in braids that sold very expensive produce that could cost a month’s salary. 

BK: Were you always a cook? 

AvB: God, no! I trained to be a concert pianist and went to Juliard. It was rigorous. But I got a hand injury in my 20s that forced me to look for another career. I spoke Italian from spending some time in Italy, and I wound up translating a cookbook from Italian to English. It made me think—shit, maybe I should write my own cookbook. My boyfriend was a British travel writer and a sort of academic type, and he and I wrote the proposal together in 1988. It got a James Beard Award the year they had started giving them, and the book [was] one of Amazon’s top 100 cookbooks. 

BK: 1988 was right when the Soviet Union started to disintegrate. 

AvB: Yes, and everyone was saying, right, a book about bread lines and shortages and herring? But I wanted to explore the whole diversity of Soviet cuisine. There were these Cold War stereotypes of gray clothing and people starving. Many Americans imagined the whole Soviet Union as a gulag, but the truth was, some of the food there was actually amazing. I think I was one of the first people to write about Georgian or Uzbek cuisine in such detail. In the end, Workman Publishing, which had just come out with The Silver Palate, bought the proposal. 

BK: What surprised you most in researching the book? 

AvB: Driving through Ukraine on Christmas, our car broke down. We wound up sleeping in a kind stranger’s hut, and there was this amazing salad of white beets, cracklings, and wild mushrooms. 

It was a long time ago now, but I remember other little things as well, like how in Uzbekistan they made pilaf with yellow carrots and quince and steamed cilantro buns that tasted almost Chinese. Other discoveries were Tatar wedding pie and an Azerbaijani pilaf with a chestnut and pumpkin crust. 

BK: A little birdie told me you’re working on a book about food and national identity.  

AvB: Yes, but I don’t have a name for it yet. It will look at how national identity is a social construct. We assume cuisines are primordial like languages, but we forget that nation states basically didn’t exist before the 19th century. The idea of cultural appropriation in food assumes an essentialist vision of a national cuisine, which is in fact a hybrid construction that is fluid. Take the current gastro-nationalist fight about borscht, for example, between Russia and Ukraine—it says a lot more about the state of geopolitics than the provenance of a dish that has been eaten in a wide geographical region. Dishes often existed long before current national borders did. So arguments about “whose hummus” or “whose baklava” are really about other issues. 

BK: So, food played—and continues to play—a role in post-Soviet nation-building?

AvB: Yes, but even today, there’s a pan-Soviet cuisine enjoyed across the region: Everyone makes salade olivier and vinegret [pickled vegetable salad] and kotlety [beef and buckwheat patties]. In Uzbekistan, the old Soviet dishes—herring, etc.—are still prestigious.  

BK: How has the way people eat in the region changed since you wrote the book? 

AvB: There are more ingredients available now. Some old breeds of goats and cows and vegetables are being revived. That’s different from the Soviet way, which favored monoculture—Uzbekistan made cotton, Moldova made wine. It’s a long conversation. 

And there is a new national consciousness around food that is not dictated by Moscow. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, food became more proprietary and gastro-nationalistic. Suddenly there were arguments in Samarkand over whose pilaf was better—the Uzbeks’ or the Tajiks’. Georgians were going on about Abkhazians having no cuisine and no culture. In Armenia, there’s an NGO that goes into the mountains to find 19th-century recipes; ditto for Azerbaijan, where they’re writing books about how Armenians plagiarized their cuisine. The thing is, cuisines don’t stand still—well, maybe except for in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, where the food is still very 70s.   

BK: What Please to the Table recipes do you keep coming back to?

AvB: My mom’s borscht, of course, which is super quick and delicious. It’s the version she is teaching people to make in her new League of Kitchens online class. I also love the rice pilaf with almonds and orange zest—it’s my go-to side dish for everything. I make the Uzbek lamb and rice plov often. It’s a classic. Then there’s the beef stroganoff recipe, which is so good because it calls for filet mignon. 

BK: What are some popular springtime dishes or traditions? 

AvB: Winter was always so long, and the taste of the first dill or cucumber was always so special. People make cold borscht and soups this time of year. Maslenitsa, the blini and butter festival, just passed. There’s a whole section on Easter cooking in the book—we do a cheese mold that’s eaten with kulich coffee cake, but you can sub panettone. People love it. 

BK: For American food lovers planning post-pandemic travel, what country in the region should be at the top of the list? 

AvB: I was in Azerbaijan four years ago, and it has mind-boggling food. It’s sort of Persian with some Soviet influences. They have a million types of pilaf, some with tahdig. Many dishes are bright green with herbs—green stews and green meatballs and green omelets with green sauces. It all tastes so fresh. And because Azerbaijan has oil money, there’s a restaurant culture, and you can walk along the Caspian Sea and stop into tea houses where they serve teas with jams made from yellow cherries and figs.  

BK: Can I pick a bone? The title of the book is Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook. That seems a bit narrow, right? 

AvB: It’s true: The book goes from Lithuania to Central Asia and gives you the full scope of the former empire. When I published it, I thought, I can’t call it a Soviet cookbook, so this was the next-best thing. But then I got angry letters from Ukranians and Armenians. Who knows, maybe you could put “USSR” in a cookbook title now and it would be a retro cool thing. 

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