Taiwanese and Taiwanese American culinary traditions shine in three exciting cookbooks

Taiwanese beef noodle soup prepared from a recipe in‘First Generation: Recipes from My Taiwanese-American Home’ by Frankie Gaw

By Leslie Brenner

A Taiwanese American identity movement is gathering strength in the United States. For those of us who love to cook and want to learn about Taiwan’s culinary culture — and for Taiwanese Americans keen to celebrate and cook the dishes of their beloved island nation — three recent cookbooks provide a delicious way in.

Each is appealing in its own way. Each also brings something uniquely valuable to the table. One is the perfect primer if you’re looking for Taiwanese culinary history and cultural context. Another is filled with great recipes and soulful personal takes on the Taiwanese American experience. The third shows you how to make beloved dishes from a cult-favorite Brooklyn restaurant and bakery.

‘Made in Taiwan’: Thoughtful overview, wide-ranging recipes

Many non-Taiwanese Americans’ knowledge of Taiwanese cooking is fuzzy at best. We might know that Din Tai Fung, the global chain of soup dumpling restaurants, began in Taiwan. Or that boba tea (also known as bubble tea) is iconically Taiwanese. We might even know — for instance, if we’ve ventured into a Taiwanese restaurant here and there — that beef noodle soup and scallion pancakes are Taiwanese favorites. Maybe we’ve heard of stinky tofu: Yes, that’s Taiwanese, too.

If you’re looking for a thoughtful overview that provides excellent context, background and history of Taiwanese culinary culture and all it has to offer, Made in Taiwan is the book for you. “I hope the world can see Taiwan as more than just a geopolitical chess piece or a controversial island near China with great night markets,” writes author Clarissa Wei in her introduction. She’s an accomplished Taiwanese American journalist who was born and raised in Los Angeles, and is now based in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei. She adds:

“Our cuisine is a hodgepodge of cultures, colored by our indigenous tribes, influenced by Japanese colonists, inspired by American military aid and shaped by all the various waves of Chinese immigrants and refugees who have arrived and made this island their home.”

We learn in an excellent chapter on the culinary history of the island that 95% of Taiwan’s population is Han Chinese, which Wei points out is but a “vague umbrella term for people who have ancestry in China.” In the 17th century the first wave of Chinese immigrants, from Fujian in south China, brought “the love of seafood, rice and pork.” Taiwanese cooking is similar to Chinese, with food that is “fried or braised in large woks, or softened in hot and steamy bamboo baskets stacked on top of one another.” Taiwan and Fujian share a common love for “lightly seasoned food, occasionally heightened with a minimalistic trinity of ginger, garlic and scallions.” Sweet potatoes — which thrive on the island’s subtropical climate — is the dominant carb, along with rice. Because the mountainous terrain lacks wide grazing lands, pork, not beef, is the de facto protein; seafood is also important.

In 1949, when the communists (under Mao Zedong) took power in China over the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang fled to Taiwan, establishing the Republic of China (R.O.C.), Taiwan’s official name. The R.O.C. and the U.S. became close allies and the U.S. pumped extensive military aid and exports to the island — including wheat. As a result, Taiwan fell in love with American food culture. America’s fried chicken inspired Taiwanese popcorn chicken; refugees from North China turned the wheat into dumplings and noodles.

The Recipes

Wei enlisted the help of Ivy Chen, a Taiwanese cooking instructor with deep knowledge of the island’s countryside culinary traditions that Wei says is lacking among “younger city folk.” The two traveled widely around the R.O.C. to gather inspiration from far-flung cooks.

Pickled Mustard and Pork Noodle Soup (Zhà Cài Ròu Sī Miàn)

This comforting noodle soup features preserved mustard stems, which you can make yourself (there’s a recipe in the book) or pick up at a well stocked Asian supermarket; there you can also look for fresh (or fresh frozen) Taiwanese wheat noodles, or use dried. Homemade pork broth makes the difference between a good soup and a great one in this case; I tried it both ways and vote for the homemade broth over purchased chicken broth.

RECIPE: Pickled Mustard and Pork Noodle Soup (Zha Cai Rou Si Mian)

I also enjoyed making Braised Napa Cabbage with shiitake, wood-ear mushrooms and carrots; with steamed or brown rice, it makes a lovely plant-forward dinner; and I’m eager to make Sweet Potato Leaves Stir-Fry, once I can get my hands on sweet potato leaves. A Quick Seafood Congee looks wonderful, and so does Smoked Betel Leaf Pork Sausage — though I don’t know if I’m up to wrangling hog casings. Made in Taiwan’s recipe for Three-Cup Chicken was satisfying, but the sauce didn’t work properly; it wouldn’t reduced to the “treacly, sticky glaze” the recipe promises and the famous dish is known for.

Pickled Mustard Greens, on the other hand worked great. Once I sun-dry them and age them, I can use them next time I make the Pickled Mustard and Pork Noodle Soup.

Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories from the Island Nation by Clarissa Wei with Ivy Chen, Simon Element, $40.

BUY Made in Taiwan at Amazon

‘First Generation’: Storytelling with a giant heart, and recipes that work

If you want to gain a sense of what it’s like growing up in a Taiwanese American family, Frankie Gaw’s debut book (published in late 2022) has your name on it. You’ll eat super well along the way.

I fell hard for Gaw, the cook behind the delightful Little Fat Boy blog; His headnotes are some of the most engaging I’ve ever read. Here’s how he introduces his Grandma’s Pearl Meatballs:

“This was one of the very first recipes my grandma taught me when I started learning to cook fro her. I had never even seen it before she taught me. I remember following her lead as she combined a familiar mixture of pork, ginger and scallions into a meatball, then rolled it in grains of sweet glutinous rice that looked like pearls. After an 18-minute steam, lifting the steamer lid revealed glistening sticky rice balls, every grain soaked with pork juice and the aroma of bamboo. I can trace this recipe back to the Hubei province of China; it’s one of the dishes that makes me proud to be Asian.”

Who could resist?!

RECIPE: Frankie Gaw’s Grandma’s Pearl Meatballs

Gaw’s recipes are a pure pleasure to make — they’re as much about having fun with the process as they are with the end result. Excellent step-by-step visuals (expertly illustrated and photographed by Gaw himself) show how to pull noodles, wrap wontons, make braided bao wrappers and more.

Dan Bing

When Gaw writes that the egg crepes known as Dan Bing are a traditional Taiwanese breakfast dish his grandma used to make for him — and the simplest dish in the entire book — of course I had to make that, too. I loved them.

RECIPE: Dan Bing

And here’s his recipe for his Uncle Jerry’s Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup, shown at the top of this review:

RECIPE: Frankie Gaw’s Uncle Jerry’s Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

Meanwhile, smack in the middle of the book, Gaw includes a full-page coming-out letter to his dad. It’s adorable, funny, poignant and brave — and followed by a recipe for Scallion Pancakes, whose headnote literally made me cry. Don’t ask why; just buy the book and read it all.

FIRST GENERATION; RECIPES FROM MY TAIWANESE-AMERICAN HOME BY FRANKIE GAW, TEN SPEED PRESS, 2022 $32.50.

BUY First Generation at Amazon

‘Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook’: Razzle-dazzle from a Brooklyn hot spot

This book from Josh Ku and Trigg Brown, the founders of Brooklyn’s Win Son and Win Son Bakery, (with an assist from writer Cathy Erway) is pure, exuberant fun — the kind of fun that one imagines makes the restaurant and bakery such hot tickets.

What sets it apart from First Generation and Made in Taiwan is that the recipes explode with creativity, and they don’t shy away from embracing wild fusions.

Lamb Wontons

Case in point: a platter of gingery, garlicky lamb wontons set on a schmear of labneh (yes, labneh!), dusted with cumin seeds, then sprinkled with a special “lamb spice mix,” drizzled with sweet soy dipping sauce and chile oil and showered with cilantro leaves. Weird-sounding? Maybe. Over the top? Definitely. Delicious? Absolutely.

RECIPE: Win Son’s Lamb Wontons

Win Son’s recipes are very cheffy, and not always in a user-friendly way. There are lots of sub-recipes, and in amounts that don’t make sense for a home cook. (What are you going to do with 2/3 cup of leftover lamb spice mix? Our adapted recipe adjusts so you only make enough for the wontons.) Yields are sometimes off. (The wonton recipe says it makes about 35; we had enough filling for 65.)

And sometimes the recipes just don’t behave. When I made Sun Cookies — a bakery signature — I took the authors’ suggested shortcut, using purchased frozen puff pastry instead of spending hours making a rough-puff pastry. Coming out of the oven, the cookies seemed to be complete flops, with lots of (very expensive!) pine nuts and caramelly filling spilling out of them as they baked. They looked nothing like the photo in the book. I nearly threw them away.

A sheet pan of Sun Cookies, their filling half-leaked out and looking strange, next to a photo of the cookie from the book

But once they cooled, I flipped them over, and hey! — they looked much like the ones in the book. That filling was almost painfully sweet, but the cookies were kind of evilly good — though I’m guessing the ones from the bakery starring freshly made rough puff are a thousand times better.

The Sun Cookies, once I flipped them over

These are the kinds of problems that are typical for chef books — which is why it’s so important the recipes are thoroughly tested before publication, along with careful editing and copy editing. Alas, these important steps are falling more and more by the wayside.

That said, Win Son Presents has an awful lot of charm, especially for fans of the restaurant and bakery. If you’re going to buy the book and attempt the recipes, best if you’re a more experienced cook, so you can spot any potential problems before getting too far into them. (Fear not — our adapted recipes fix all such rough spots.) If you are a confident chef who can adapt when things don’t go as anticipated, there’s plenty of worthwhile inspiration in Win Son Presents’ pages.

Win Son’s Soybean, Tofu Skin and Pea Shoot Salad

Fortunately I had my guard up when I made the Green Soybean, Tofu Skin and Pea Shoot Salad: The recipe called for 4 ounces, or 115 grams, of roasted seaweed snacks, which you’re supposed to crush and toss with the salad. I figured it was a mistake — seaweed snacks usually come in 4-gram or 10-gram packs. One hundred fifteen grams is a comical amount, a giant bowlful that would have completely overwhelmed the salad. I used 10 grams, which was more than enough, and adjusted our adapted recipe accordingly. The salad was a winner — fresh, fun and different. (And vegan!)

RECIPE: Win Son’s Soybean, Tofu Skin and Pea Shoot Salad

Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook, by Josh Ku and Trigg Brown with Cathy Erway, abrams, 2023, $40.

BUY Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook at Amazon

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The dreamiest moussaka, perfect for thrilling a crowd

By Leslie Brenner

If you’re in a certain Mediterranean mood, there’s nothing more marvelous than a great moussaka. With its layers of potato, eggplant, tomatoey lamb sauce and silky béchamel, Greece’s most famous dish has irresistible appeal.

In fact, when it’s carefully made, moussaka is one of the best dishes in the world. It’s perfect for this time of year, when eggplants are still in peak season and it’s cool enough to finally turn on the oven.

Yet somehow, moussaka has gotten left behind in the universe’s decades-long love affair with Mediterranean food. You don’t find it on restaurant menus much, nor is the internet bursting with outstanding moussaka recipes.

In an attempt to right that wrong, three years ago I set about to explore the origins of the dish and create the best version I could conjure — and came up with what a friend who tasted it called “Moussaka for the Ages.” Fragrant with allspice and cinnamon, it’s at once saucy, bright and rich; the way its creamy crown of béchamel plays with the lamby, saucy layers makes it eminently craveable.

READ: “Moussaka, a spectacular dish with a curious history, gets a magnificent makeover”

It’s great for feeding a crowd. Begin the fun with a big green salad (to keep it simple), or a cold mezze (appetizer spread) if you want to live large (weekend party!). You can build the moussaka ahead of time, stopping at the point where you add the béchamel topping. After that, the final half-hour or so of baking is pretty much hands-off, and it needs to rest 15 minutes after that, so the dish settles and the flavors bloom.

My version is less messy and easier than traditional version, which started with frying potatoes then eggplant. For the eggplant, I go a sheet-pan route, seasoning and drizzling olive oil on thick slices, and roasting them to melty tenderness. This results in a lighter moussaka with a more lovely caramelized eggplant flavor. Slices of potato, which form the base, get parboiled.

The béchamel-and-cheese topping on my moussaka is a little different than traditional versions as well. Lightened with yogurt, it’s brighter and fluffier; grated cheese gives it depth.

Try it this weekend — if you’re not feeding a crew, you can enjoy it reheated for a weeknight dinner or two.

RECIPE: Moussaka for the Ages

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Author Andrea Nguyen brings unforgettable Vietnamese flavor into every home cook's wheelhouse

‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’ by Andrea Nguyen

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month (and maybe even into April!) — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

Over the past year, I’ve been working on developing a few Vietnamese-inspired recipes with the invaluable help and guidance of my dear friend An-My Lê — Cooks Without Borders’ Vietnamese cooking advisor. I want to get them just right, so I’ve been moving slower than I meant to on them; they will be coming sooner than later, I hope!

A brilliant photographer by profession, An-My happens to be one of the best cooks I know — in many idioms, including French (as well as Vietnamese). When I asked her some months ago to recommend the best Vietnamese cookbooks for home cooks, she didn’t hesitate. Andrea Nguyen’s books, she said, along with Charles Phan’s Vietnamese Home Cooking.

Author Andrea Nguyen / Photograph by Aubrey Pick

An-My is not alone in her opinion, obviously; Nguyen’s work has been honored with many prestigious awards, including a James Beard Cookbook Award for The Pho Cookbook and an IACP Cookbook Award for Unforgettable: The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life, which she edited.

Nguyen, who lives in Northern California and describes herself as “a bank examiner gone astray,” has published five other books as well, including Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, Asian Dumplings, Asian Tofu and The Banh Mi Handbook, as well as her most recent, Vietnamese Food Any Day, with which I’m currently obsessed. One of the dishes in that last title — a rice-noodle salad number — was a dream-bowl for us last summer.

Happily for her fans (me included), she also has a fabulous blog — Viet World Kitchen — where you can find a wealth of delicious stories, videos and recipes.

[Watch our Video Q & A with Andrea Nguyen and An-My Lê.]

I’d recommend Vietnamese Food Any Day for anyone wanting to dive into Vietnamese cooking, whether you’re a newbie or have lots of experience. The book is wonderful for teaching us how to bring the Vietnamese spirit and style of cooking and eating into our American home kitchens, starting with what to keep on hand — including brands: Red Boat or Three Crabs fish sauce! Three Ladies rice paper and jasmine rice!. But Nguyen has a great palate and delightful creative flair, with plenty to offer even someone like An-My (who can make spectacular bánh xèo with her eyes closed).

Nguyen’s parchment parcels of fish baked with ginger, garlic, baby bok choy and scallions is a great example — a quick and easy dish that’s as appropriate for a weeknight dinner as it is for a special evening (post-vaccine reunion?!) with friends when you want to really celebrate.

Halibut and baby bok choy with ginger, garlic and scallions roasted in parchment, from Andrea Nguyen’s ‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’

It’s just the thing to keep in mind to as we come into halibut season. It’s so damn easy to overcook or otherwise ruin halibut (which is expensive!), and this foolproof method gives you an impressive, fabulous slam-dunk. Let your guests or family tear open the parcels at the table, and they’ll find fish that’s gorgeously silky throughout, absolutely elegant, bathed in umami-rich and gingery-bright sauce that melds marvelously with the bok choy. I can’t recommend the recipe highly enough. It’s a great example of why you need this book.

Want something fancy to start that’s also easier than it might seem?

Mushroom pâté puffs from Andrea Nguyen’s ‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’

I’m a sucker for puff pastry, especially the all-butter frozen, buy-it-at-the-supermarket variety, and Nguyen’s Mushroom Pâté Puffs take full advantage. Their filling is a simple yet perfect mix of rehydrated dried shiitakes, white button mushrooms, shallots, butter and thyme. Nguyen’s recipe, which yields about 30, is meant to serve 8 to 10, but unless you are far more restrained, reasonable and mature than the four of us still-sequestered together (though not for long!), you will devour them like some insane, puff-pastry-starved maniacs. I shouldn’t be admitting this, but just want you to know how good they are.

On tap, for the very near future, I have bookmarked recipes for Baked Shrimp and Celery Toasts; Grilled Trout Rice Paper Rolls; Shaking Tofu; and Grilled Lemongrass Pork Chops.

All of which is to say many thanks, Andrea Nguyen, for improving the quality of our lives.

Looking for a new cookbook to make your spring and summer light, elegant and delicious? Look no further.

RECIPE: Andrea Nguyen’s Ginger Halibut Parcels

RECIPE: Andrea Nguyen’s Mushroom Pâté Puffs

Take a moment to honor 98 year-old Diana Kennedy, the "Queen of Mexican regional cooking"

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

International Women’s Day feels like exactly the right part of Women’s History Month to celebrate Diana Kennedy. The trailblazing cookbook author — who turned 98 last week — has devoted no less than six decades of her life to studying and documenting the richness, tradition and techniques of the regional cuisines of Mexico.

If you haven’t seen Elizabeth Carroll’s 2019 documentary about her, “Nothing Fancy,” do treat yourself. The 1 hour, 8 minute film does a wonderful job at explaining why British-born Kennedy is widely regarded — even in Mexico — as the world’s foremost expert in traditional Mexican cuisine.

“I think she’s a legend,” says Gabriela Cámara, chef and owner of Contramar in Mexico City and Cala in San Francisco, in the film. “Many Mexicans are against admitting that Diana knows more than they do about their food.”

“I think Mexico as a country will be eternally indebted to her efforts,” was celebrity TV chef Pati Jinich’s take.

The author of eight books on Mexican cooking, including the seminal 1972 book The Cuisines of Mexico, Kennedy was the pioneer who evangelized to the English-speaking world about the depth, breadth and fabulousness of traditional Mexican cooking, the way it is done in cities and villages throughout Mexico. That book is out of print, but it is collected — along with The Tortilla Book and Mexican Regional Cooking — in The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. It is a must-have for anyone interested in Mexican cooking.

It was The Cuisines of Mexico that prompted me to buy an aluminum molcajete and a tortilla press 36 years ago, when I was in my 20s. I still have both, though I’ve graduated to a giant wooden tortilla press.

I’ve learned so much from Kennedy’s books over the years, starting with the proper way to make guacamole, grinding white onion, serrano chiles, cilantro and salt in the molcajete — and no garlic, as Kennedy emphatically exclaims in the documentary. Her books are always the first place I go whenever I have any question about any Mexican dish.

I had the amazing opportunity, back in the early 1990’s, not just to meet Kennedy, but to spend a long weekend cooking with her at my friend Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch’s house in Dordogne, France. As you’ll see if you watch the documentary, Kennedy is famously crotchety, which was my experience as well. But I’ll always treasure the time, which I wrote about a few years ago, in a story about making tortillas.

If it’s interesting or vexing to contemplate the idea of honoring a British-born woman as the “queen of Mexican regional cooking,” as a Los Angeles Times story by Daniel Hernandez did last year, consider the comments in the documentary of Abigail Mendoza. The chef and owner of Tlamanalli, a restaurant in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, had been friends for 35 years at the time the documentary was filmed. “Ella está una hija adaptiva en México — She’s an adoptive daughter of Mexico,” she said.

“She’s very Mexican in her soul and heart. I believe Diana is a Mexican, who does not have to have been born in Mexico. But she is in Mexico and lives in Mexico, is working in Mexico and is a Mexican.”

Happy International Women’s Day. I’m off now to make a batch of guacamole.

In celebration of gumbo z'herbes, a gloriously green, soul-nourishing Louisiana Lenten tradition

Chloé Landrieu-Murphy’s vegan gumbo z’herbes / Photograph by Chloé Landrieu-Murphy

By Chloé Landrieu-Murphy

Unless you’re from Southern Louisiana, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of gumbo z’herbes — an essential dish across the region, particularly for those who abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent. 

Often referred to as “the queen of all gumbos,” its name is a Creole dialect contraction for gumbo aux herbes, meaning “gumbo of greens.” (It’s also known as “green gumbo.”) Earthy, delicious and comforting, it is built like other gumbos, but it also includes an entire garden’s worth of leafy greens. 

Though traditional Lenten preparations of the dish don’t include meat, part of the appeal of gumbo z’herbes is the flexibility with which it is prepared, using any combination of greens, and optional meats. Meat versions may include ham hock, chaurice (a spicy Creole pork sausage), smoked andouille sausage, chicken, brisket and/or veal.

While the combinations of greens and meats that can be used are endless, tradition says that the number of greens included in your gumbo represents the number of friends you’ll make in that year, and that an odd number of greens should be used for good luck. Theories surrounding the symbolism of the greens vary, with some suggesting that nine varieties should be used as a representation of the nine churches visited by Catholics in New Orleans on Good Friday in remembrance of Jesus and his walk to crucifixion. 

A bowl of New Orleans’ most famous and sought-after version — the one served at legendary Dooky Chase’s Restaurant — earns the person eating it nine new friends, the late great chef Leah Chase told Southern Living magazine in 2016. “And I always hope that one of them’s rich,” she added. Chase died in 2019 at the age of 96.

Since 1941, the establishment — founded by Emily and Dooky Chase, Sr. (chef Leah Chase’s mother-in-law and father-in-law), and now run by Leah’s grandson chef Edgar “Dooky” Chase IV and her daughter Stella Chase Reese —  has served the city as a gathering place not only for Creole classics like gumbo, fried chicken and red beans and rice, but also as a vital space for everything from the arts to community organizing. Dooky Chase’s was a place where civil rights leaders, both black and white, came together for strategy sessions with luminaries including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the upstairs dining room.

Dooky Chase’s Gumbo des Herbes, prepared from a recipe in ‘The Dooky Chase Cookbook’ / Photograph by Leslie Brenner

Only once a year, on Holy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter, which falls on April 1 this year), does Dooky Chase’s serve its famous gumbo z’herbes. Featuring roughly equal parts meat (smoked andouille sausage, hot sausage, ham hock, chicken, brisket and veal brisket stew) and greens (collards, mustard greens, turnip greens, beet tops, cabbage, lettuce, watercress, spinach and carrot tops), it reflects the culinary traditions of the city’s Creoles of color.  

To achieve gumbo z’herbes greatness, chef Edgar boils the greens, then purées them. He then steams the meats, covers them with a quick roux, combines that with the puréed greens and their potlikker and simmers it all together before stirring in filé powder and serving it over rice. He generously shared the recipe with us; you can also find it Leah Chase’s The Dooky Chase Cookbook. 

Still, if you make it at home, there will be something missing. 

“You can put pretty much anything in it, if it’s green,” says Poppy Tooker, a New Orleans culinary ambassador and close friend of the late chef.  “But Leah had a secret ingredient, something you couldn’t buy in the store. Here in New Orleans, there’s a weed that grows wild in the levees and the medians called peppergrass. That was one of Leah’s secret ingredients, and there were some gentlemen who would walk the levees to gather the peppergrass for Leah to put in her gumbo every year.” 

While gumbo z’herbes is most certainly a gumbo, thanks to all those greens, it differs greatly in look and taste from more familiar gumbos. In her book Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at The New Orleans Table, Sara Roahen notes its uniqueness: 

“The only ways in which gumbo z’herbes resemble more common meat and seafood gumbos are that it’s eaten with a spoon, often crammed with sausage, and thickened with a roux —  and the latter only sometimes. In preparation, gumbo z’herbes is a multiplicity of smothered greens united in a communal pot likker. Its flavor and its origins are more mysterious: no two bites, or theories are the same.” 

So what makes gumbo z’herbes a gumbo? “You’ve still got a stock, you’ve still got a roux, you still have filé and you’re still adding all your meats and all that, so all that is the same base as a gumbo,” says chef Edgar. 

As with so many dishes in Louisiana’s culinary canon, the dish is reflective of a deep and complicated history with both West African and European influences. “All of this can be traced to the West African way with greens and to West Indian callaloo,” Toni Tipton-Martin explains in her 2019 cookbook Jubilee: Recipes From Two Centuries of African American Cooking, which also includes a wonderful version.

Toni Tipton-Martin’s gumbo z’herbes, from ‘Jubilee’ / Photograph by Leslie Brenner

In The Welcome Table: African American Heritage Cooking, culinary historian Jessica B. Harris speculates that the dish could be a cousin of the West African stew Sauce Feuille. There could be some German influence as well; in his Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cooking, author John Folse postulates that the dish came to Louisiana in the 1700’s with German Catholic settlers who traditionally ate a German seven-herb soup on Holy Thursday.

Today, while the Creoles of color in New Orleans generally reserve their meat-filled gumbo z’herbes for Holy Thursday festivities, few New Orleans restaurants besides Dooky Chase’s serve it, so it’s typically made at home. 

That said, you only have to look at two Holy Thursdays for a sense of how important the Dooky Chase’s gumbo z’herbes tradition is in the Crescent City: April 13, 2006 and April 9, 2020.  

Following the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding and closure of Dooky Chase’s, the tradition was put at risk. Restaurateur Rick Gratia opened the doors of his own establishment, Muriel’s, to chef Leah and her team, according to Tooker, who was by her friend’s side throughout. “He turned his beautiful restaurant on Jackson Square over to Leah so that the city of New Orleans wouldn’t be deprived of their Holy Thursday tradition.” 

In many ways, Holy Thursday of 2020 was even harder, Tooker explained to me. “It was the first year without Leah,” she says. On top of that, a week before Holy Thursday, Stella Chase Reese’s husband of 50 years died suddenly of Covid-19.  “But the Chase family still did Holy Thursday, and they did it as a drive-by pickup. There were police, there was traffic for a mile, and there were people lined up. It was a really big deal.”

While gumbo z’herbes is a direct reflection of the Catholic identity and traditions that are so deeply ingrained within Louisiana culture, it’s also a delicious, body- and soul-nourishing dish that can and should be enjoyed by all — which was my thought in developing my own recipe for a Vegan Gumbo Z’herbes.

“When you maintain traditions like gumbo z’herbes, it gives people a sense of hope, a sense of community and a sense of normalcy,” says chef Edgar. 

So if you can’t make it to Dooky Chase’s this year for Holy Thursday, why not bring the tradition into your own home?

🌿

Chloe Landrieu-Murphy is a recent graduate of New York University’s Masters in Food Studies program and a lover of all things food and culture related. This is her first story for Cooks Without Borders.

RECIPE: Dooky Chase’s Gumbo des Herbes

RECIPE: ‘Jubilee’ Gumbo Z’herbes

RECIPE: Chloé’s Vegan Gumbo Z’herbes

Chinese-American culinary culture finds delicious, multi-generational expression at The Woks of Life

By Leslie Brenner

[Updated Dec. 27, 2022.]

I was shopping at our local 99 Ranch Market last week with my son’s girlfriend, Nathalie, and somewhere in the giant freezer case, arrayed attractively next to the frozen fish balls, Nathalie spotted frozen tofu.

“Frozen tofu?” she wondered.

Not something I was familiar with! Frozen tofu? Why would tofu be sold frozen? Was frozen tofu a thing? Item no. 4,727 of things to look into!

The answer to the question floated — unbidden — into my email inbox on Tuesday. Subject line: “How to Make Frozen Tofu (and Why You Should!).”

Sender: The Woks of Life.

In case you’re not familiar with the 8-year-old website run by the delightful Leung family, it is a wealth of rich information, culinary inspiration, first-rate recipes and wonderful stories about Chinese and Chinese-American cooking and culture. Want to know how to buy a wok, season it, wash it or easily prevent food from sticking to it? Dive into its Complete Wok Guide. Wondering about the difference between light soy sauce and dark? Check its guide to Chinese Sauces, Wines, Vinegars and Oils. Need to know the difference between gai lan and choy sum? Check its compendium of Chinese vegetables.

All four members of the New Jersey-based family — Bill (father/husband), Judy (mother/wife), Sarah (elder daughter) and Kaitlin (younger daughter) — contribute recipes and stories. Sarah, a 30-year-old Vassar graduate, founded the site in 2013, with the support of her parents and sister.

The Leung family behind The Woks of Life (from left): Bill, Judy, Kaitlin and Sarah / Photo by Sarah Yeoman, courtesy of The Woks of Life

“We began to get the idea for The Woks of Life, when my family — once together every night for dinner while we were growing up — found ourselves living across two time zones,” Sarah says. That was in 2011, when her father Bill (born and raised in upstate New York to immigrant Cantonese parents) and mother Judy (a native of Shanghai who immigrated to the U.S. when she was 16), were relocated to Beijing for work. (They have since moved back to New Jersey.)

“We realized that though we, the younger generation, loved to cook, we didn’t know how to make many of the traditional Chinese dishes my parents had made for us growing up,” Sarah explains.

Two years later, when Kaitlin was in college at the University of Pennsylvania and Sarah, who had recently graduated from Vassar in Media Studies, was dividing her time between New Jersey and Beijing, the site was launched. Says Sarah: “The blog became the place to record those recipes for ourselves, and — as it turns out — many others who also didn’t know how to make their childhood favorites.”

Part of The Woks of Life’s charm is that it’s so personal. Bill, who cooked in his youth at his family’s Chinese restaurant where his father was chef, recently shared a photo of his 101-year-old grandmother putting up preserves in a story about making pickled mustard greens (haam choy). Kaitlin might write about making home-made chili oil, the hot condiment of the moment. Sarah not only writes stories and recipes, but handles the business side and makes the beautiful photos. Judy, who’s fluent in three Chinese dialects, in addition to English, might send an email, seemingly out of the blue, about frozen tofu — linking to a story from which you’ll learn that freezing changes its texture, making it hold up better in soups and hot pots.

I’ve cooked quite a few of the recipes on the site, always with very good results. Some are Cantonese or Sichuanese as might be cooked in China, while others are Chinese-American, reflective of the rich and Chinese-American restaurant culture Bill grew up in. I love that there’s a section of “Chinese Take-Out” recipes.

Egg Drop Soup is a good example. It’s something you can whip up on short notice with few ingredients on hand. I tried the version in The Woks of Life Top 25 Recipes e-cookbook you get when you sign up for their newsletter; I skipped the optional yellow food coloring — a nod to Chinese-American popular restaurant culture. The version on the website calls instead for turmeric, which sounds like a better idea. Both teach a useful mini-lesson: Decent (or better, home-made) chicken broth, a pinch of white pepper and a splash of sesame oil equals a legit-tasting Chinese soup base.

My favorite recipe so far is The Woks of Life’s Turnip Cake — Lo Bak Go. The steamed-then-usually-pan-fried treat, a dim-sum favorite, is made not with turnip, but with lo bak — which Bill, though unsure, believes is the same as daikon. (All the other recipes I’ve seen call for daikon.) I’d looked far and wide for a workable recipe, and even tried (in despearation!) developing my own, before finding this one, which is superb. We have adapted it with very slight changes, most notably cooking the filling ingredients a bit less than the original calls for.

Bill writes that most Chinese restaurants “skimp on the filling ingredients,” namely shiitakes, Chinese sausage and dried shrimp, as well as the lo bak. “Most of what you get is rice flour and starch.” He’s right. We love the fact that you can now make one at home that’s even better than what we get in our favorite local dim-sum place.

The dish is traditional for Lunar New Year, as the word for daikon is a homophone for "good fortune" in the Hokkien language spoken in Fujian province — so keep it in mind for the holiday next month.

I also tried The Woks of Life’s Basic Stir-Fried Bok Choy Recipe, which turned out very well. I skipped the optional MSG; next time I’ll add a little more salt and stir-fry a minute or two longer. It’s definitely super-useful as a basic blueprint for stir-frying bok choy and similar greens.

I love the fact that Bill first encountered char siu — Chinese barbecue pork — at the Catskills Holiday Inn where his father was chef when he was a kid. His recipe is one of the best I’ve found — mostly because the marinade (Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, hoisin, molasses and spices) is so good. Also because Bill has you roast the marinated pork shoulder slabs on a rack in a roasting pan with water under the rack, to make clean-up easier. (That marinade would otherwise drip down and burn, as I can attest having tried other recipes that don’t suggest the water trick.) Min char siu (pictured above) doesn’t look as rosy-red as what you find in most American Chinese restaurants, because I skipped the red food coloring.

Juliet, our Cooks Without Borders designer and partner, has cooked The Woks of Life Stir-Fried Mustard Greens and Pork Larb, and loved both. (Yes, there are also recipes from other Asian countries besides China on the site.)

Juliet and I have both bookmarked The Woks of Life, and plan to continue visiting it — and cooking from it — often.

In the meantime, we’re excited to announce that in preparation for Lunar New Year, which will usher in The Year of the Ox beginning February 12, we’ll be featuring Sarah Leung in a live video Q&A on Thursday, January 28 from 5 to 6 p.m. Central Time. Registration for the event is available to Cooks Without Borders Premium Members.

We’ll also be spotlighting Chinese cooking this month. If that sounds enticing, bookmark Cooks Without Borders Latest Stories and sign up for our free newsletter (if you haven’t already, to receive our stories and recipes directly to your inbox). And watch this space!

RECIPE: The Woks of Life Turnip Cake

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Moussaka, a spectacular dish with a curious history, gets a magnificent (and long overdue!) makeover

A great Greek moussaka — the layered gratin of eggplant, potato, lamb-tomato sauce and cheesy béchamel — is about as delicious as Mediterranean-inflected comfort food gets.

“Moussaka is the urban cosmopolitan showpiece of lamb-and-eggplant combinations, a pairing as fundamental to Middle and Near Eastern cuisines as pasta and tomatoes are to Italy and potatoes and cream to the French,” wrote Anya von Bremzen in her 2004 book The Greatest Dishes: Around the World in 80 Recipes.

Yet Greece’s most famous dish has gotten weirdly short shrift in our love affair with Eastern Mediterranean cooking. It’s not easy to find great versions (stateside, anyway), whether in restaurants or as recipes.

I’m extremely excited about the makeover we’ve given the dish (here’s the recipe, in case you can’t wait.) It’s my son Wylie’s favorite recipe among everything we’ve worked on this year in the Cooks Without Borders test kitchen. “I could eat it twice a week,” he says. “When can we make it again?”

The dish has a curious history. Like butter chicken, its origin can actually be traced with some certainty, which is unusual.

First, for context, let’s take a step back and look at moussakas in general — for they’re not only Greek. The great food historian Charles Perry (my former colleague at The Los Angles Times), neatly elucidated the category in The Oxford Companion to Food. He described moussaka (or musaka, or musakka) as “a meat and vegetable stew, originally made from sliced aubergine [eggplant], meat and tomatoes, and preferably cooked in an oven.” That, he adds, is the version currently favored by Turks and Arabs.

“In the Balkans, more elaborate versions are found. The Greeks cover the stew with a layer of beaten egg or béchamel sauce. Elsewhere in the Balkans musakka has become a much more various oven-baked casserole, admitting many more vegetables than aubergines or courgette [zucchini], often dropping tomatoes and even meat. Bulgarian and Yugoslav versions emphasize eggs, and a given recipe may consist of eggs, cheese, potatoes, and spinach, or eggs, cheese, sauerkraut, and rice. In Romania, which considers musaca a national dish, the vegetables may be potatoes, celery, cabbage or cauliflower — or may be replaced by noodles.”

So there are, in fact, a whole panoply of moussakas, covering numerous cultures in several regions. It seems worth adding that the word moussaka derives from the Arabic word musaqqâ, which means “moistened,” apparently referring to the tomato juices.

But we are concerned, at the moment, with Greek moussaka — which long baffled food historians because of its béchamel topping. How did such a quintessentially French sauce — made with flour, butter and milk — make its way onto the top of a Greek dish?

Von Bremzen, in researching Greek moussaka’s origins for her 2004 book, turned to her friend, the renowned Greek food writer Aglaia Kremezi, for intelligence. Kremezi had long believed — as did a number of Turkish food writers — that moussaka was probably created toward the end of the Ottoman empire by a Francophile chef working at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. But upon digging deeper, Kremezi concluded that the Greek dish we know as moussaka is in fact much younger: It was created in the 1920 by Nikolaos Tselementes, author of a legendary 500-page Greek cookbook.

Kremezi went on to write about the dish’s origin at some length in an excellent story for The Atlantic 10 years ago, “‘Classic’ Greek Cuisine: Not So Classic." The story is a must-read that not only elucidates moussaka’s origin-story, but also helps us understand why Greek cuisine tends to be less attention-grabbing this century than that of its Levantine neighbors Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Syria and Palestine.

Tselementes, who was hugely influential early last century — not just on home cooks, but on restaurant chefs and therefore on the Athens dining landscape — aimed to Westernize Greek cooking by returning it to what he believed were its roots. Curious as it would seem, he believed French cooking had its roots in ancient Greek cooking. Under Turkish rule, he believed, Greek cooking had become unacceptably eastern, and his goal was to re-Europeanize it, emphasize cream and butter. (Béchamel!) The rising Athenian middle and upper classes of the 1920s ate it up.

Kremezi didn’t. In the Atlantic story, she wrote, of Tselementes’ influence:

“He revised — and in my opinion, destroyed — many Greek recipes….The exclusion of spices and even herbs from the spicy and fragrant traditional foods resulted in the almost insipid dishes many Greek restaurants still serve. Tselementes went as far as to omit thyme and bay leaves from Escoffier's recipe for sauce Espagnole, in his Greek translation. He also despised garlic, which he very seldom uses in his recipes!”

So Tselementes created the modern iteration of the dish, which was based on layered lamb-and-eggplant, moistened with tomato, and topped with béchamel. Did he leave out spices and garlic? I have not yet been unable to turn up Tselementes’ original recipe, though I am still working on it, and have reached out to Kremezi for further clarification.

If we can get our hands on that original recipe — and I’m optimistic we will — perhaps that will shed light on why there are not better recipes for Greek moussaka out there in the world. Perhaps the recipe, as Kremezi seems to suggest, was just not as great as it might have been had he not extracted all the spices and garlic from it.

Meanwhile, I remain convinced that made thoughtfully, it is one of the world’s greatest dishes. (And Von Bremzen, an immensely well traveled food writer with a great palate, did include it among her 80 greatest in the world!)

Kremezi’s recipe for moussaka, which is loosely based on her mother’s recipe, includes green bell peppers and optional sausage or bacon. My platonic ideal for the dish is purely lamb, and I wanted to come up with a recipe that was as elemental and simple to execute as possible, while still delivering maximum impact and fabulous flavor.

I loved Kremezi’s idea of adding yogurt to the béchamel for lightness and tang when I first came upon her moussaka in von Bremzen’s book, and it was that recipe I used as a jumping off point.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but feel that frying the slices of eggplant and potato wasn’t necessarily the worth the trouble and heaviness. My “aha!” moment came as I remembered one of my favorite dishes in Sami Tamimi’s recently published cookbook, Falastin — Baked Kofta with Eggplant and Tomato. The Palestinian chef-author peeled eggplants, zebra-like, leaving half the peel on (which adds nice texture), sliced them, tossed with salt, pepper and olive oil and roasted the slices to meltingly tender, before building them into delicious layered towers of tomato, and lamb-beef kofta patties and baking.

The aha! was roasting the eggplant that way.

Cinnamon, which also appears in Tamimi’s dish, sounded like a great idea as well; I love the way it plays with allspice, garlic and Aleppo pepper.

I liked the idea of parboiling potatoes rather than frying them, which I came across in a 2018 recipe by Sydney Oland on Serious Eats. However, parboiling whole, peeled russets and then slicing them resulted in potato slices that were still crunchy once baked, even when I tripled the boiling time from 5 to 15 minutes.

Wylie (who at 23 years old has developed into a confident and terrifically talented cook during the Great Confinement) unwittingly solved the potato problem for me a couple nights ago. As he was improvising a dish of crusty sautéed potatoes, he sliced the potatoes, then blanched them for 5 minutes before putting them in the hot pan with duck fat.

Aha! Slice first, and then blanche. I had considered that, but worried the slices would fall apart, or wind up too mushy in the moussaka. It worked perfectly. Moussaka makeover achieved!

Here’s how you build the dish. Brush a square, deep baking dish with a little olive oil. Cover the bottom with a layer of blanched russet potato slices; season gently with salt and pepper. Next add a layer of roasted eggplant slices. Because they’re so nicely tender, you can squish them in a bit so there’s an even layer off eggplant covering the potatoes, without big gaps between them.

Next comes a layer of lamb and tomato sauce, with all those lovely spices. And finally, on top, a thick layer of béchamel with yogurt and grated cheddar cheese stirred in. Into the oven it goes, and when it comes out, it is gratinéed a gorgeous golden-brown.

The temptation is to dive into it right away, it’s so beautiful. Nathalie — my son’s girlfriend, a moussaka fanatic who’s Lebanese and knows about such things as layered lamb and eggplant — put up her hand and said, “Wait. Let it rest a few minutes.”

She was right: It wants to settle, come together. It’s still plenty hot when you slice into it 15 minutes later.

Yes, it’s as delicious as it looks. One piece of advice about ingredients: Put your hands on the best ground lamb you can manage. I once made it with lamb I ground at home from boneless shoulder — it was insanely, out-of-the-world wonderful, the best result I’ve had. Other times I have made it with pre-packaged supermarket ground lamb. Very good, but there’s definitely a difference. Tonight I’m making it using ground local lamb from the counter of a halal butcher in a Lebanese bakery and market. I will update the story with the results, so you might want to check back tomorrow.

Want to enjoy a delicious moussaka at your own table? Help yourself to the recipe. And please let us know how you like it.

RECIPE: Moussaka for the Ages

Dana Cowin teams up with talented food entrepreneurs to bring a world of flavor to her table and yours

Dana Cowin, founder of Giving Broadly and Speaking Broadly | photo courtesy of Dana Cowin

Strange as it may seem, Dana Cowin — who led Food & Wine magazine for 21 years as editor in chief, and who has been one of the most influential people in food in America this century — does not count her skills in the kitchen among her strengths.

“I’ll be honest,” she famously wrote in the introduction to her 2014 cookbook Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen, “I am not a great cook.”

So how does someone who has long been devoted to eating well manage to put excellent food on the table every night for her family during a pandemic? She collaborates with interesting chefs and food makers to put the flavors she craves in bottles and boxes — cooking shortcuts, if you will. 

That’s part of the idea behind the project Cowin has just launched: Giving Broadly. It’s a guide that curates and spotlights amazing products from women-owned artisan brands. The Giving Broadly website functions as a shop for those ingredients and other edibles as well as a place where the remarkable women behind them share their stories. Some of those entrepreneurs have been helped by Hot Bread Kitchen, an organization that helps immigrant women incubate food businesses; Cowin sits on Hot Bread Kitchen’s board.

We caught up with Cowin on the phone for a Q & A to hear more about the project. She, her husband and their two children (one home from boarding school, the other home from college) had spent most of the pandemic at their home in Upstate, New York. When we spoke, Cowin was back in New York City. 

Cooks Without Borders: Tell me about Giving Broadly — where did it come from? How did you get the idea?

Dana Cowin: For the first time in my entire life, I found myself at the stove mostly every night. I found that in order to make it great and interesting to me and to everyone around me, I really needed some help. 

There are cookbooks, yes, and actually I love cookbooks. But I also like shortcuts because as someone who’s not an amazing cook, I really need the shortcuts to flavor. So this first great discovery during Covid was Omsom. Omsom was started by two sisters — Kim and Vanessa Pham — who have put the flavors of Southeast Asia essentially into packets. I would be craving larb, and there would be the packets, and I would follow the instructions, use the little flavor packets, and put it on the table and be like oh, my goodness — I actually feel like I’m at a restaurant! I, Dana Cowin, made a restaurant-tasting meal, which has often been somewhat beyond my reach. 

Omsom founders Vanessa Pham (left) and Kim Pham | Photo courtesy Giving Broadly

So my not being a cook definitely led me to finding shortcuts, and then my desire to spotlight women entrepreneurs and learn their stories led me in a very particular direction, as I was trying to find great condiments or great products to make cooking in the last nine months more interesting and more exciting. 

CWB: Very cool.

DC: The larb was so well received that I actually went online and bought a second starter kit, just so I wouldn’t run out. What I found — and I think this is what most real cooks do —  is that the first time I followed the directions. But the second time I just took the notion of the flavors that were inside those packets and used it on something else. Like instead of doing it with ground pork, I added the flavor to potatoes, or something that was not something they had recommended, which gave me a lot of freedom. 

Fauzia Abdur-Rahman, founder of Fauzia’s Heavenly Delights | Photo courtesy of Giving Broadly

I sort of rationed my Omsom, and I wanted to try different things, so I ordered Fauzia’s Jerk Seasoning. Fauzia Abdur-Rahman is a street vendor in NYC who has Fauzia’s Heavenly Delights; she has been on the street making her food for 25 years, which is quite extraordinary. She partnered with Hot Bread Kitchens and bottled her jerk seasoning. 

To me part of the idea behind Giving Broadly and my own quest for change in the kitchen was to bring back memories of travel, or bring back memories of restaurants. That was what I was in search of. Having this really great jerk seasoning brought me right back to the beaches of Jamaica, which I love —  the idea of smoke and the outdoors and the music and the heat and just that whole vibe. I love a condiment that can do that to you.

CWB: That’s amazing that you can get all that in a condiment.

DC: The thing about jerk is that it’s not hard to do, but it involves all these things that I don’t know if I have in pantry, and if I do, they are aging. I like the fact that all things in Fauzia’s are fresh. She has a great story about how when she first got in the business, she was buying her spices from a big wholesaler, and her mother tasted the spices and was like, “this is awful. We are never buying from them again. This does not taste like home.” And so her spices are definitely fresher than mine.

Diaspora Co. founder Sana Javeri Kadri | Photo courtesy Giving Broadly

CWB: You also have someone doing single-origin spices — Sana Javeri Kadri. Tell me about her.

DC: Amazing. What’s so remarkable about Diaspora Co. and Sana is how devoted she is to finding exactly the right farmer. She says it can take her anywhere from two months to two years to find the right person for the right spice. I’m in love with her pepper — it has so much flavor. Again, it makes you realize how long the pepper you generally have in your spice grinder has been sitting on the shelf before it got to your house, and how flavor does degrade over time. 

Sana often does a pre-order, so I’ll pre-order the pepper because she pays attention and respects the season — because pepper has a season, it has a picking time and I imagine it has a curing time; it has a time during which she can import it. She’s not getting old pepper, and that’s part of the respect for the ingredient.  

She’s also investing in the community, and if there are farmers she feels need more time, she can work with them in order to get them ready to produce and to ship to her. So she’s very, very, very thoughtful about who she’s pairing up with. 

CWB: I love that you’re helping small businesses bring what they’re doing to a much wider audience than they’d otherwise have just in their own geographic communities. 

Krissy Scommegna, founder of Boonville Barn Collective | Photo by Gilbert Bages

DC: Every single person whom I spoke with, I asked “what is the biggest challenge you’ve encountered in your entire time as an entrepreneur?” And almost to the last person, they said COVID has presented enormous challenges, because of disruption. And in every case it isn’t because they don’t have an audience.Their supply chains are disrupted, their ability to produce sometimes is disrupted, and they’ve had to pivot, and so there are women in this guide who were mostly selling to restaurants, and of course those accounts dried up and so they had to pivot. 

I’m thinking of Boonville Barn Collective’s Krissy Scommegna, with her Piment d’Ville — which is sort of a pun on piment d’Espelette. Her dried ground peppers were mostly going to restaurants. And she had to pivot; she had to find a new audience.

I think in each case these women feel they’re stronger for it, but it’s been a tremendous challenge. So going into this project, I really wanted to find people who would benefit from the exposure. To be fair, there are some who have had tremendous exposure, but the bulk of the people on the site don’t have as much PR or visibility and helping them through COVID and sharing their stories during this time I feel is very important. 

Fly By Jing founder Jing Gao | photo by Sarah Ellefson

There are many parts of the story. Many of them are really fighting for recognition for their culture. Jing Gao, who has Fly By Jing, which is an extraordinary company, is creating a Sichuan Chili Crisp that is I actually eat standing up at the fridge, I can’t even get to put it on top of something, it’s so addictive. But the journey for her was really about how people perceive Chinese ingredients and their value. And how that in turn made her value herself. Through this project, Fly By Jing, she changed her name back to her birth name from Jenny, which she had adopted living in Europe. Now this condiment is sort of everything to her because it’s made with beautiful ingredients from Sichuan, and it’s brought so much pride to her culture. 

So there are many ways in which I was looking at people I wanted to highlight. 

Of course the food has to be great, but I also wanted it to stand for something that was important — both to the individual but also in the conversation around food today. 

CWB: Dana, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and tell us about these incredible artisans and their fabulous products! 

A number of them are available at the Cooks Without Borders Holiday Pop-Up Gift Shop. You can find them all (along with many others) at Giving Broadly, and you can listen to Dana Cowin’s extraordinary interviews with brilliant, remarkable women in the food world at her podcast, Speaking Broadly. 

Jenn Louis' new 'Chicken Soup Manifesto' celebrates the feel-better elixir as expressed in 64 countries

No sooner had we embarked on an epic voyage around the world in a bowl of chicken soup, when the startling revelation that we were not the first to do so splashed into our soupy consciousness.

Of course to travel well, one must be open to diversions, and this one is so fortuitous: Renowned Portland, Oregon chef Jenn Louis has just published a new book, The Chicken Soup Manifesto: Recipes from Around the World.

Next-day delivery put the book in our hot little hands. It spoke to me right from the intro:

“Looking at the world through the lens of a simple bowl of chicken soup reveals volumes about a society and its people: the ingredients within their reach, the techniques that mark their style of cooking, and, often, a folkloric or family history, too.”

Almost all cultures have chicken in common, Louis continued; her manifesto is an account of “the diversity of a commonality.”

After taking a spin through its delightful pages, I picked up the phone and called the author, who was happy to talk about why and how she wrote it.

Traveling home several winters ago from a charity event, she had come down with a bad cold — so bad she couldn’t even imagine how she’d survive a two-hour plane flight. She texted her sister, who surprised her by leaving a giant pot of chicken soup on her doorstep to greet her on her arrival home.

“I ate three bowls, really fast,” Louis recalled. “Though I was still sick, I felt so much better. And I just kept thinking: This is a thing. This is magic!”

The experience led her to think about how chicken soup is a culinary connection that is shared by cultures around the world, while expressing different flavors and sporting different garnishes from land to land. To explore them, she launched her into a soupful odyssey, as she collected, developed and researched chicken soup recipes from all over — many crowd-sourced from her friends and followers around the world. A Palestinian woman she sat next to on another plane trip told her unbidden about her mother’s (Hanan’s Mom’s Palestinian Chicken Soup, page 176). Some of the soups came to her through Facebook posts.

The result is deliciously diverse — filled with bowls both familiar (Greek Avgolemono, Mexican Pozole Verde, Thai Tom Kha Gai) and new to me. There’s Kubbeh Hamusta from Iraq: a turmeric-tinged chicken and chick pea soup with zucchini and semolina dumplings filled with minced chicken, onion, parsley and spices. Dak Kalguksu from Korea — a rich broth with shredded chicken and hand-cut noodles (kalguksu means “knife noodles”), garnished with scallions and a chile-soy-sesame sauce.

Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba, prepared from a recipe in ‘The Chicken Soup Manifesto,” by Jenn Louis

I’d been looking for one from Ethiopia for this “Around the World in Chicken Soup” series of stories, and I found it on page 34: Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba, a peanut-chicken soup.

I gathered ingredients – chicken broth, chicken breasts, peanut butter, a plump sweet potato, onions and carrots. I toasted whole spices (green cardamom, cloves, fenugreek seeds, coriander) and ground them up to make a Berbere spice mix. I got out my soup pot; it didn’t take too long to put together.

Thick, warm, comforting, garnished with chopped roasted peanuts and an extra sprinkling of Berbere spice, it hit the spot.

I’ll be dipping back into the book once or twice for this series, with a review in mind as well.

In the meantime, it goes without saying that the book’s timing is impeccable. Heading into what’s likely to be a brutal winter, so many of us will be needing chicken soup.

So please: Help yourself to a bowl of Ye Ocholoni Ina Dora Shorba.

RECIPE: Ye Ocholoni Ina Dora Shorba (Ethiopian Peanut-Chicken Soup)

And yes, this book will make a marvelous holiday gift.

👉🏾 Visit the COOKS WITHOUT BORDERS SHOP at Bookshop 👈🏾

Okra, now at peak season, may be the most meaningful and expressive vegetable for this singular American moment

Last September, Leah Penniman, a food sovereignty activist and author of Farming While Black, gave a talk at Harvard Divinity School on “African Diasporic Wisdom for Farming and Food Justice.” In it, she reportedly told the story of her great, great grandmother. About to be kidnapped from her home in West Africa, she made a “really audacious and courageous decision” to gather the seeds of okra and other crops and braid them into her hair.

“They knew that wherever they were going,” Penniman explained, “they believed there would be a future of tilling and reaping on the soil, and there would be some seed we all needed to inherit. That’s what our grandmothers did for us.”

In so many ways, okra is the vegetable for the moment.

A person’s reaction to it — and relationship to it — speaks volumes about their identity.

“Okra is the food of my ancestors, who were pulled from their homes in Africa,” writes Kayla Stewart in an essay recently published on Medium. “It was grown by those enslaved along the Carolinas, and devoured by them in Louisiana. Okra is a constant in my familial story — one that includes deep memories and gaping holes of history.”

Ask a white person about okra, and you’ll likely get something a good deal less deep — maybe “I like it, as long as it’s not slimy.”

Because it is so important in Black American cooking, and also shows up in cuisines from around the world, it’s hard to think of an ingredient that’s more ideally suited as a place for Americans of all cultures to meet — especially anyone who strives for deeper understanding of Black foodways.

“People tend either to love or hate okra, which originated in Africa and spread to Arabia, Europe, the Caribbean, Brazil, India, and the United States,” wrote chef Marcus Samuelsson in his 2007 cookbook Discovery of a Continent: Foods, Flavors, and Inspirations from Africa. “I happen to love it and think it adds great texture and color to meals, but I do remember being a little put off by its slimy texture the first time I had it. Once you get over that, it’s easy to like.”

With that, he offers a simple and delicious recipe for a quick Spicy Okra sauté, with tomatoes, red onions, chiles, garlic and peanuts.

Marcus Samuelsson’s Spicy Okra, from his 2007 cookbook ‘Discovery of a Continent: Foods, Flavors, and Inspirations from Africa’

As its peak season is late summer and early fall, it’s a great time of year to celebrate okra — which continues growing until the first frost. (In case you’re wondering, Texas is the top okra-producing state in the U.S., followed by Georgia, California and Florida.)

This time of year I love to char it on the stovetop grill, toss it in something spicy and serve it as a nibble with cocktails. You don’t really need a recipe for that — just cut each okra in half lengthways, toss them in a little olive oil and salt, and grill them, cut-side down first, till they’re a little charred. Add something spicy — maybe sambal oelek, the Indonesian chile paste, or lightly spicy Aleppo pepper — toss, and serve. Sumac would be great, too.

Okra dishes, of course, are found throughout Africa. “The mucilaginous pod is the continent’s culinary totem,” wrote Jessica B. Harris in her seminal 1998 book, The Africa Cookbook:Tastes of a Continent. “From the bamia of Egypt to the soupikandia of Senegal, passing by the various sauces gombos and more, this pod is used in virtual continent-wide totality. It is native to Africa, and its origins are trumpeted by its names in a number of languages throughout the world. The American okra comes from the twi of Ghana, while the French opt for gombo, which harks back to the Bantu languages of the southern segment of the continent.”

Shrimp gumbo with smoked andouille sausage and okra, served with rice

So yes — it also gives gumbo, Louisiana’s iconic dish — its name.

In Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking, Toni Tipton-Martin points out that “Ochra” Gumbo was Recipe Number 44 in What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, published in 1881 by Abby Fisher. “Her formula,” writes Tipton-Martin, “which involved boiling a beef shank to create a savory and alluring broth, survived through the ages, the recipe variously being called okra stew, okra soup and okra gumbo.” She reproduces Mrs. Fisher’s recipe, which is short and sweet:

“Get a beef shank, have it cracked and put to boil in one gallon of water. Boil to half a gallon, then strain and put back on fire. Cut ochra in small pieces and put in soup; don’t put in any ends of ochra. Season with salt and pepper while cooking. Stir it occasionally to keep it from burning. To be sent to the table with dry boiled rice.”

During the first part of okra’s long season, in early pandemic, I found okra, shrimp and andouille sausage at the supermarket all at the same time, and happened to have a package of dried shrimp in my larder, so I improvised a gumbo. It was deliciously soothing — both to make and to eat. I made it again, and again, tweaking until it was just where I wanted it.

Try our recipe as is, or tweak away: Gumbo is ideally suited to improvisation.

Many gumbos get their body from okra; others from roux or filé powder (Native American sassafras powder). This one gets its body from a roux cooked long and slow to a beautiful coffee-with-a-touch-of-milk color, and the okra — which I roast first, to pull out the stickiness — gets added at the end. I serve filé, along with Louisiana hot sauce, at the table.

And finally, one of our favorite ways to celebrate okra is pickling it. We usually find okra pickles a bit sweet for our taste, but a recipe in Sweet Home Cafe Cookbook, the 2018 volume featuring recipes from the restaurant at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. is perfectly marvelous.

The okra pods stay crunchy and snappy, and the pickles — brined with turmeric, garlic, coriander and Thai chiles — are delightfully spicy and bright.

RECIPE: Marcus Samuelsson’s Spicy Okra

RECIPE: Charred Okra with a Little Spice

RECIPE: Shrimp, Andouille Sausage and Okra Gumbo

RECIPE: Sweet Home Café’s Spicy Pickled Okra

Food-lit revival: Cookbooks are suddenly the coolest, most relevant things in the universe

A few of our favorite cookbooks, old and new, with the Cooks Without Borders kitchen wall of cookbooks in the background

[EDITOR’S NOTE: A slightly different version of this story was originally published at The Brenner Report.]

Six months ago, if you had asked me to assess how important cookbooks are in our culture, I would have slotted them somewhere between skee-ball and beetle fighting. I had been lamenting the fact that millennials and gen-Zers are more likely to click on a Food Wishes video in order to learn chicken-roasting skills or hummus technique than they are to reach for Judy Rodgers or Sami Tamimi. Cookbooks just seemed hopelessly old fart, boringly low-tech, increasingly irrelevant — never mind that many of the best recipes and techniques have always lived in them, and continue to be expressed in their pages.

Complicating things was the fact that what with all those free recipes on the internet and all, publishers were under pressure more than ever before to publish titles they felt sure would take off — and that wasn’t always great for quality. About five years ago I was told by my agent (of twenty years) that all the cookbook deals were going to cute young bloggers with powerful Instagram followings, so the odds of my publishing anything new were slim (even though I had six published books under my belt). I bought a few of the popular bloggy books and tried to cook from them. Generally speaking, the recipes didn’t work and the food sucked. Also young people tend to gravitate toward chefs, and chef recipes are often ridiculous in terms of what they demand of the cook. No wonder young people didn’t take cookbooks seriously.

A noodle salad from Andrea Nguyen’s excellent Vietnamese Food Any Day. Its publisher, Ten Speed Press, consistently publishes worthwhile books from the best authors.

Still, there continued to be a few excellent editors publishing great titles filled with cookable, inspired recipes — by authors like Toni Tipton-Martin and Samin Nosrat and Andrea Nguyen and Yotam Ottolenghi (and many more). In the best cases, the authors take recipe testing seriously and their recipes work. Or at least the dishes are exciting and recipe errors are fixable.

Shining a light on those exceptional cookbooks (and fixing those booboos for our cooking readers) is something we spend a lot of time doing at Cooks Without Borders. But because it is so hard to get young people interested in cookbooks (again, for reasons that are easy to understand), it has felt like a somewhat weird and probably futile pursuit, and one worried about the future of cookbooks.

COVID-19 has changed all that. Now, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, it feels like cookbooks are everything, and everywhere. After a drawn-out, near-death experience, they are suddenly the coolest, most relevant things in the universe.

Of course it is because we all now have to cook; restaurant culture has been sucked out of our lives with the force that an airline meal gets pulled off the tray table and disappears into the wild blue when a there’s a puncture in the plane. Now, after decades of gleefully forgetting how to scramble an egg, cooking is the thing that saves us from hunger. But as those of us who have been practicing the craft for any length of time know, it can do so much more. And it is that so much more that cookbooks invite us to enjoy. Which is why the cookbook — or more properly cookbook appreciation — is enjoying a renaissance.

Two weeks ago Vittles — a cool and forward-looking cooperative food newsletter out of England via Substack — published a beautiful essay, “The live-changing magic of cookbooks,” by Gemma Croffie. In her debut as a food writer, the “writer, mum and foodie based in Kent” ties together the terror of living as a Black person during the time of Covid with losing herself — and finding herself — through cooking and cookbooks.

One of the books Croffie admires immensely is Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking by Toni Tipton-Martin (which we reviewed in June 2020):

I am in awe of Ms Tipton-Martin’s scholarship; I learn something new on almost every page. Recipes shouting my name range from gingerbread waffles and cream to salmon croquettes to curried meat pies. There is such promise in cookbooks yet to be used, a palpable excitement to see if they live up to expectation. 

Wrapping things up, Croffie answering the question of why she loves cookbooks so much.

Anti-blackness is all too real in this time and fighting racism is life-draining. Very little sparks joy in my life, but some cookbooks ignite such a big spark that they practically light a bonfire. Black joy is fleeting; I’ll take mine where I can.

Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee, discussed in Gemma Croffie’s essay, was reviewed on Cooks Without Borders in June 2020.

At the opposite end of the nuance spectrum, cookbook worship is splashed across the pages of “People” magazine. “I am a cookbook fanatic and collector!” proclaimed Drew Barrymore yesterday. “Chefs are my heroes. I must read 3 cookbooks a week...cover to cover!"

There’s a Substack newsletter, Stained Page News, devoted to cookbooks. Its author, Paula Forbes — a cookbook critic who has reviewed for Eater, Food 52 and Epicurious and Lucky Peach — is turning out missives on warp speed at the moment, as we are heading into the fall cookbook publishing season. To paying subscribers she has been sending every weekday (it’ll last two weeks) covering every upcoming books genre by genre. (Forbes offers a free weekly version as well.)

What enticing titles do publishers have in store for us this autumn — besides four witch-related cookbooks, five books with “flavor” in the title (Flavorbomb, The Flavor Equation, Chasing Flavor, Flavor for All, and — of course — Ottolenghi Flavor) and eight pie books?

Mely Martinez’s The Mexican Home Kitchen is one of the fall season’s highly anticipated new titles.

It’s actually an exciting crop. I’m keen to cook from, eat from and read (among others):

• Marcus Samuelsson’s The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food

• Alex Guarnaschelli’s Cook With Me: 150 Recipes for the Home Cook

• Maneet Chauhan and Jody Eddy’s Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets and Railways of India

• Mely Martinez’s The Mexican Home Kitchen (I love Martinez’ blog, Mexico in My Kitchen. Her recipes reflect the way people cook at home in Mexico.)

• Nuit Regular’s Kiin: Recipes and Stories from Northern Thailand

• Jason Wang’s Xi’an Famous Foods: The Cuisine of Western China, from New York’s Favorite Noodle Shop

• Nancy Silverton’s Chi Spacca: A New Approach to American Cooking

• Donna Lennard’s Il Bucco: Stories and Recipes

• Wilson Tang’s The Nom Wah Cookbook: Recipes from 100 Years at New York City’s Iconic Dim Sum Restaurant (because dumplings!)

• Hawa Hassan’s In Bibi’s Kitchen: The Recipes and Stories of Grandmothers from the Eight African Countries that Touch the Indian Ocean

• Jonathan Waxman’s The Barbuto Cookbook: California-Italian Cooking from the Beloved West Village Restaurant

We’ll be reviewing as many of them as we can manage here at Cooks Without Borders — where by the way, and not unrelated, we just launched a new column of mini-reviews: “Cookbooks We Love.” (Here are the first three installments.)

Find our collected cookbook reviews here.

🐞

For 'Top Chef' judge Nilou Motamed, the Iranian herb platter sabzi khordan is a way of life

Ever since the pandemic cooped us up back in March, beautiful, generous flurries of fresh, soft, fragrant herbs have felt like an antidote to everything awful. My kitchen windowsill has become a garden; next to the pots, lemongrass sprouts and flourishes in a vase. When I can make it to my favorite Middle Eastern grocery, I come back with armfuls of dill and tarragon; at the Asian supermarket, I bring back ridiculous volumes of shiso, Thai basil, mint. Because I’ve developed an acute fear of running out, I just installed an LED-powered hydroponic AeroGarden outfitted with dill, spearmint, thyme, parsley and two kinds of basil. 

Toss a handful of fresh herbs on the plainest dish — potato salad, hummus, grilled zucchini — and it instantly becomes gorgeous, alluring, uplifting and even life-affirming. 

Nilou Motamed on the stoop of her brownstone in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn | photo by Peter Jon Lindberg

So why not just eat herbs? That’s the idea behind sabzi khordan, the platter of herbs and accouterments that anchors every Iranian table. “It’s essential to any meal we have, always” says Nilou Motamed. Like just about everyone I know who cooks, the former editor-in-chief of Food & Wine, current “Top Chef” judge, global food and travel guru and co-founder of Story Collective has been planting herbs profusely. 

“Our entire fire escape is an herb garden,” she says, “something we’ve never done before.” 

Nilou also shows up early to line up for herbs from Lani’s Farm at her local farmer’s market in Brooklyn; she describes them as phenomenal. “Our farmers market has gotten really competitive, and she has cilantro I’m trying to sprout, with incredible, deep, almost anise flavor. It has a purple stem.” 

Nilou, who was born in Iran, grew up eating Persian food at home even after she moved with her family to New York when she was 13. Because of that, fresh herbs have always played an outsized, aromatic role in her life. (I’m calling her Nilou because I’ve known her more than 25 years, and referring to her by her last name just feels too weird.)

Herbs from Nilou Motamed’s fire-escape garden | photo by Nilou Motamed

She fondly remembers spending time back in Iran at her father’s family house in an orchard (“bagh” in Farsi) in the town of Hamedan, amid groves of sour cherry, apricot, plum, almond and walnut trees. They’d lay down a Persian carpet outside under a big shade tree and picnic on kababs made from a just-slaughtered lamb. 

“Coming from the mountains, there were these qanat that run through all the countryside — mini mini mini streams — and all these herbs, the mints and watercresses would grow there,” says Nilou. “We’d pick the herbs and put our bottles of Coca-Cola in the ice cold water and drink it with the kabab. There’s something about herbs that makes you feel like you’re connected to your environment.” 

Maybe that’s why herbs are speaking to us so sweetly just now — we need them to connect to the natural world. 

They’re celebrated lushly on the sabzi khordan platter, which generally includes tarragon, dill, parsley, mint, cilantro and reyhan (a family of basils that includes Thai basil), along with scallions, radishes and/or Persian cucumbers, feta cheese, and sometimes walnuts, is there to nibble on throughout any Iranian meal — including kabab, of course.

“On Friday, every family does kabab,” says Nilou. “It’s very basic; we don’t use a ton of spices. It’s beautiful grilled meat, very plain rice, the meat basted in butter and saffron, a great cut char-grilled on aromatic wood, and then with the sabzhi khordan, you can do whatever you want to create the flavors.”

But serve it with freshly baked nan-e barbari (Persian flatbread), and sabzi khordan can also be a meal in itself. 

I know what you’re thinking: Where are we going to get nan-e barbari, especially during a pandemic? 

“I cheat and make it with pizza dough,” says Nilou. “If you use a pizza stone, it’s amazing, and it’s so easy to make.” Five minutes to pull and stretch the dough onto the pizza stone or baking sheet, press in some grooves, brush with a yogurt wash and sprinkle on nigella and/or sesame seeds, then 20 to 25 minutes in the oven and you’ve got barbari.

We tested her recipe using a couple different brands, including Trader Joe’s, and it turned out stunningly well. 

Nan-e Barbari made from store-bought pizza dough. Really!

Once you’re at the table — with your splendid sabzi khordan and your golden, crisp barbari bread — the idea is to create the perfect bite for yourself or a tablemate. There’s even a word for that bite: loghme. “You put some feta cheese in the bread, and then whatever your perfect complement of herbs is — whether you’re a dill or a tarragon person, or you like both, maybe the little tail of a scallion.”

Treat yourself to one sabzi khordan fest, and you may find yourself hooked. The herb habit is truly addictive; if you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself scattering herbs over all kinds of dishes with abandon. Untreated, you may even turn into someone like Nilou, who will “literally buy bushels of herbs, and spend way too much time stemming and freezing. If you dry everything really well, and freeze them in Tupperware containers, they stay fresh. I’m like my own Jolly Green Giant.”

Go ahead. Treat yourself. Live a little. I’m pretty sure that even if the fix is fleeting, it’ll make you feel better.

Would you like a window on Nilou’s Persian cooking adventures? Follow her on Instagram @niloumotamed.

RECIPE: Sabzi Khordan (Persian Herb Platter)

RECIPE: Nan-e Barbari (Persian Flatbread)

Forget the queso: Time to move beyond Tex-Mex and explore the joys of Texas Mexican comida casera

Nostalgia, as a story last week in The New York Times explained, can serve as “a kind of emotional pacifier, helping us to become accustomed to a new reality that is jarring, stressful and traumatic.” And so it’s not surprising that, during these incredibly disturbing times, we reach for the kinds of nostalgic foods that soothe us — mac and cheese, pasta with ragù bolognese, spaghetti and meatballs, cheese enchiladas.

But children outgrow their transitional objects, the blankies and bunnies that soothed them as babies. And so I would submit that maybe, just maybe, it’s time for people to give up queso — the gooey comfort dip that, let’s face it, folks, is made from Velveeta.

An attempt to chase down the history of a dish I grew up eating, Rosa de la Garza’s Texas Chicken, led me last week to a very interesting writer, chef and filmmaker, Adán Medrano. Medrano has written and spoken extensively about the roots of Mexican cooking in Texas, which, to be sure, did not involve process cheese (the actual industry term).

Adán Medrano at a cooking demo in Moscow in 2019 | photo courtesy of Adán Medrano

In 2014, Medrano, a San Antonio native who was the founder of the San Antonio CineFestival (the first and longest-running Latinx film festival in the U.S.) and now lives in Houston, dove into those roots in a book called Truly Texas Mexican: A Native Culinary Heritage in Recipes (Texas Tech University Press).

“‘Texas Mexican’ is the cuisine that has evolved over centuries in the region immediately north and south of the lower Rio Grande,” he wrote in the introduction. “It is deeply rooted in the indigenous cultures of what are now northeastern Mexico and central and south Texas, the region where my extended family and all my Mexican American friends live.”

What it is not is Tex-Mex.

Although I’ve long been aware that much of what passes as Mexican cooking in the United States bears little relation to what you eat if you travel in Mexico, I suppose I’d always assumed that Tex-Mex was also the result of some kind of evolution — that early on it must have looked and tasted more like what Mexican-Americans might cook at home, what Medrano refers to as “comida casera.”

In fact, as Medrano wrote, the first Tex-Mex restaurant — named, in a remarkable display of hubris, The Original Mexican Restaurant — was created by an Anglo for Anglos. Specifically, the owner was Otis M. Farnsworth, an entrepreneur visiting San Antonio from Chicago. Furthermore, to make way for the rise of Anglo-driven Tex-Mex, the businesses of a “celebrated group of Mexican, Texas Indian businesswomen” were systematically destroyed, as Medrano tells it, and the women were harassed. Though today we know the name of the man who opened that first Tex-Mex dining room, the names of the women who fed the community before him, cooking out of open-air diners in the downtown market square, have been forgotten. We only know them as “The Chili Queens.” How easy to dismiss and even ridicule.

As Rachel Wharton pointed out in an excellent New York Times profile of Medrano last year: “Today Farnsworth’s restaurant might be called out for cultural appropriation, or what Mr. Medrano calls ‘cultural poaching.’ And Mr. Medrano does get angry at the lack of respect for his culture, the many ways in which Mexican-Americans have been wronged throughout history.”

At the time Wharton interviewed Medrano, in advance of the in advance of the publication of his second book, Don’t Count the Tortillas: The Art of Texas Mexican Cooking, Medrano expressed the view that Tex-Mex is a cuisine that should be respected and celebrated. “It’s just that Tex-Mex standards like queso and combo fajitas piled high with chicken and shrimp don’t speak of home to those whose Texas roots go back some 12,000 years,” she paraphrased him as saying.

So much has happened in the last year that I couldn’t help but wonder whether Medrano still holds that same hospitable view of Tex-Mex.

Though he’s busy in post-production of a 90-minute documentary, “Truly Texas Mexican,” that follows up on his first book, he was happy to illuminate his views on the phone with a Q + A. (scroll halfway down the story linked to find it). The documentary’s log line: “Texas chefs, artists and activists dig up the 15,000-year-old indigenous roots of today’s Texas Mexican food. A delicious combination plate of archaeology, politics and feminism, it definitely ain’t tex-mex!” He’s hoping to have it finished by the end of this month.

In any case it should, I think, be of concern to the proponents of Tex-Mex that the genre was born of a cultural sin.

How to atone? We can start by paying attention to comida casera. Often it’s what indigenous Mexican people are, as the name describes, cooking at home. But sometimes it’s also on the menu at your local mom and pop’s, if you skip down past the queso and combo plates and explore the guisados and the caldos.

And find a way to see Medrano’s documentary when it’s released. (It’ll definitely be announced in the Brenner Report.)

Last night I cooked a delicious dish, Camarón con Fideos de Calabacita — Shrimp and Squash Noodles, from Medrano’s newest book.

The basic ingredients, as the chef writes in the headnote, "are all native to the Texas Mexican region: tomato, tatuma squash, onion, chie, salt and Texas Gulf Shrimp.” He suggests substituting zucchini for the tatuma; the two are very similar.

Oh, one more thing — about that chicken dish that led me to chef Medrano. I spent my whole life calling it The Chicken that Killed Grandpa. Going forward, I’ll be referring to it as it was called when my mom found the recipe for it in the New York Times Magazine circa 1970: Rosa de la Garza’s Texas Chicken. My family’s re-naming of it dishonors not only Grandpa, but also he dish’s author, Ms. de la Garza — whoever she was.

One day, I hope to find out. Until then, here is her chicken — which seems, according to everything I’ve read, to be a pretty clear example of Texas Mexican comida casera.

Rosa de la Garza’s Texas Chicken

RECIPE: Camarón con Fideos de Calabacita

RECIPE: Rosa de la Garza’s Texas Chicken