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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A chocolate mousse for every mood: This classic, easy-to-make French dessert is yours to customize

The first time I had chocolate mousse was when I was five or six years old and my dad took me out to lunch — just the two of us — at a fancy French restaurant. I don’t know what the restaurant was called, but it was on the same plot of land in Los Angeles where Eataly now stands, in Century City. The restaurant was cozy, dark, and — to my five-year-old mind — terribly elegant. I wore white gloves.

I don’t remember most of what we ate, only that I couldn’t wait for dessert. We were going to have a chocolate moose, my dad told me. How fantastic — a chocolate moose! An edible Bullwinkle!

And then it landed, and it was something much better than a moose: It was a Champagne coupe filled with something chocolate, crowned with a dollop of whipped cream and topped with a candied violet.

A sugar-coated tiny purple flower you could eat! This was the best thing ever. And that mousse! In that Champagne glass! I still remember the sensation, the flavor, the mouthfeel: It was like eating a rich, chocolate cloud. Heaven.

Recently, my extreme bouts of culinary adventurism have been punctuated with longings for nostalgic French foods. Onion soup. Quiche. Chocolate mousse.

Anyone can make chocolate mousse, but you do need the right recipe. I like a classic one, which is basically melted chocolate with egg yolks mixed in, folded gently into egg whites. Chill it for three hours, and dessert is yours.

The nice thing is you can dress it up or dress it down for any mood. Spoon it into Champagne coupes if you’re feeling fancy, or jelly jars if the vibe you want is chill. Some people like to leave it in a big bowl and serve it from that, or just give everyone a spoon. You could use pretty tea cups, or ramekins or custard cups — whatever you have.

Make the mousse as sweet or dark chocolatey as you like. We’ve based our recipe on two 3.5 ounce bars of chocolate; choose the one you most love to eat. If you’re a 70 or 72% cacao person, use that. If you like sweeter (60%) or darker, adjust accordingly. My chocolate of choice is 85%. That might be a little un-desserty for dessert, so I use one 72% bar and one 85% bar: That’s perfect for me.

You can really get creative in that melting bowl of chocolate. I like to add orange liqueur, such as Grand Marnier. David Lebovitz, whose chocolate mousse proportions informed our recipe, favors Chartreuse. Julia Child called for strong brewed coffee as well as orange liqueur (which she whipped into the egg whites). Cognac could be nice, or Turkish coffee kissed with cardamom. You can use vanilla or almond extract, or even peppermint (just a touch).

Serve it naked for the full-on, chocolate-forward mousse experience, or top it with whipped cream, lightly sweetened or not, depending on how sweet you went with the mousse.

And then the (totally optional) final flourish, geared to your audience or expressive of your mood. Multi-colored or chocolate sprinkles! Slivered candied orange peel or cacao nibs! Dried rose petals! A candied violet!

If you love this recipe as much as I do, you’ll want to keep a couple of extra chocolate bars on hand for whenever you might want to conjure something special with very little effort. As long as you have four eggs, you’ll be good to go.

RECIPE: Your Favorite Chocolate Mousse

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A stellar Quiche Lorraine (custardy, bacony, buttery-crusted!) is much easier to make than you might think

For many cooks, making a quiche is a big deal. That’s not the way it’s seen in France, where it’s considered a simple, everyday dish. Really!

“Nothing fancy; I’m just making a quiche,” is the way a friend will issue a casual dinner or lunch invite. Often there will be more than one kind. The friend never seems to have broken a sweat.

That’s why when we set out to develop a recipe for quintessential quiche Lorraine, we wanted to keep things quick and simple as possible.

And we did! Our Quintessential Quiche Lorraine can be accomplished with less than an hour of active work — and that includes prep, making the crust, and cleaning up, which I’m able to nearly finish just as the filled quiche is going into the oven. While the quiche bakes (35 to 45 minutes) and rests 10 minutes or so, you can make a simple green salad, and voilà — a fabulous dinner or brunch.

How simple did I want to go? Not as simple as what I did a hundred years ago when I was learning to cook: Buy a pre-made crust and fill it with scrambled eggs and grated jack and cheddar and call it a day. But it had to be decidedly simpler than the majestic, lofty, ethereal version Thomas Keller offered in his 2004 Bouchon cookbook.

Here’s the way Keller described the ideal quiche:

“A great quiche has a rich, flaky crust and a custard about two inches deep. When it is sliced, the edges should be clean, and the exposed custard should have a smooth, almost liquid sheen. When it arrives hot, it should tremble as if were on the verge of collapse. It maintains its form—just—but you can see what’s going to happen when you take a bite. It collapses on the plate, molten, spreading out luxuriously.”

So what was quiche Lorraine originally supposed to be like, back when it was invented? Unlike moussaka, or butter chicken, there is no charming origin story attached to quiche Lorraine. Or at least I was unable to turn one up. In fact, I was able to find little reliable information about its history.

Larousse Gastronomique, generally accepted to be the authoritative encyclopedia of French cuisine, says that quiches in general originated in Lorraine in the 16th century, and it defines quiche as “an open tart filled with a mixture of beaten eggs, crème fraîche and pieces of bacon, served hot as a first course or hors d’oeuvre.” It points out that the word quiche derives from the German Küchen, meaning “cake.” In Nancy, the former capital of the Lorraine region, its local name is “féouse.” Originally it had a bread-dough crust.

So if once upon a time a quiche Lorraine’s filling was just eggs, crème fraîche and bacon, what is it today? It can be a few things. At its most essential, it is still just that: eggs, cream and bacon. More often there are also onions, which happen to go beautifully with the bacon. And also quite often, there is cheese.

Where did the onions come from? The entry for Quiche lorraine on Wikipedia France has a helpful clue, citing Guy Cabourdin, author of Everyday Life in Lorraine in the 17th and 18th Centuries (Éditions Hachette, 1984). Cabourdin, according to the entry, points to a kinship between the original quiche and tarte flambée — the famous onion-and-bacon tart of Alsace, Lorraine’s neighbor. So perhaps we don’t have to wonder too hard where those onions came from.

When I started developing this recipe, I naïvely assumed there was supposed to be cheese in a quiche Lorraine. Keller put both onions and cheese (Comté or Emmenthaler) in the Quiche Lorraine recipe in Bouchon. But once I dove into the history a bit — and saw that Julia Child did not use cheese, I thought I’d try it without. (Julia also does without onions.)

You know what? It’s good both ways — with cheese and without.

Paradoxically, leaving out the cheese allowed me to get the texture I was after — Keller’s “smooth, almost liquid sheen.” That’s why it is the cheese-less version that I prefer: It’s wonderfully custardy, a bit lighter and loftier.

The photo below gives a sense of its custardy texture (see the sheen on the top half of the custard?), while the photo at the top of the story shows the cheese-ful one. I think they give a sense of the difference.

Quintessential Quiche Lorraine, made with bacon, onions, eggs and cream — hold the cheese. Our recipe also offers a variation that includes Gruyère, Comté or Emmentaler.

Again, both are legit. Our recipe for Quintessential Quiche Lorraine is cheese-free, but a variation at the end tells you how to easily add some Gruyère (or Comté or Emmenthaller, or whatever you want.)

Our crust, inspired by one my friend Danièle Delpeuch taught me years ago, is a pâte brisée (short crust) that comes together in a snap in the food processor. Because it’s made so quickly and handled so little, glutens don’t have time to develop, and it stays tender, even if you don’t chill it before and after rolling it out. It’s really a wham-bam-thank-you-madame kind of crust.

That crust is a pleasure to work with it. It’s easy to handle, it stays together and it’s generous enough to easily fit a deep-dish pie pan without having to roll it out too thin. If you do get a tear or hole once you fit it into the pan, don’t worry — you can patch it with the trimmings.

And the crust is good — super buttery and pretty flaky. Is it as fabulous as the one that takes an entire giant page, a heavy-duty stand mixer with a paddle attachment, several trips of the dough in and out of the refrigerator to chill and 50 to 65 minutes of blind-baking before it is filled? Um, no. But it’s so easy to throw together that it puts us in the mood to make a quiche every couple of weeks. With a little practice, you can have it in the oven in 20 minutes.

I hope you like it as much as we do at our house. In normal times, with all that cream, it might seem like a ridiculous indulgence. These days, it has been one of those special treats that make the current state of the world just a little more tolerable. I’d say that you could just have a thin slice and focus on the salad, but that would be dishonest.

I’m pretty sure you’ll want a second piece.

RECIPE: Quintessential Quiche Lorraine

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Around the world in chicken soup: Flavors of the Yucatán shine in Jenn Louis' Sopa de Lima

This is the fourth story in our series “Around the World in Chicken Soup.”

I really miss traveling, and especially traveling to Mexico — which in the last five years had become almost an addiction for my husband and me. Our last two trips were to the Yucatán Peninsula, where we mostly explored the beautiful towns and cities inland — Valladolid and Mérida — and coastal towns like Sisal and Campeche and Champotón. And of course the archeological sites: Chichen Itza, and Uxmal and Ek Balam.

The peninsula’s bright and sunny flavors came back to us deliciously in the form of a recipe I found in Jenn Louis’ delightful new book, The Chicken Soup Manifesto: Sopa de Lima — the region’s tangy, limey chicken soup.

As Louis writes at the start of the book, it’s always great to use homemade chicken stock in soups “because the end result is worth the time, and your home will smell amazing.” So true.

But there’s not always time to make stock. And when you jazz up a chicken soup with assertive flavors, like the exhilarating spices that went into the Tibetan Thukpa we wrote about in December, the convenience of using store-bought broth or stock as a base becomes much more attractive.

That’s definitely the case with Louis’ Sopa de Lima. The original version in her book calls for starting with either home-made chicken stock or water, but because the chicken pieces cook in the liquid less than 20 minutes, I chose store-brought broth instead of water.

In the Yucatán, the lime they use for this soup is the region’s native lima ágria. Because we can’t get it here, Louis brilliantly swaps a combination of regular (Persian) lime and grapefruit juice, and that works great. Spices and herbs — cinnamon stick, black peppercorns, cloves, garlic, oregano and bay leaves — add some depth of flavor and balance the brightness; a big handful of chopped cilantro and hot, crisp tortilla strips are the finishing touch.

You could certainly swap the tortilla strips for store-bought tortilla chips if you don’t feel like frying the strips, but just-fried, they do add a lovely flourish. (And it’s a great way to use corn tortillas that have seen better days.)

OK, now I’m craving that soup, and that crunch. Hope you like it as much as I do.

RECIPE: Jenn Louis’ Sopa de Lima
Read: “Around the world in chicken soup: First stop, Rio de Janeiro, for a comforting bowl of canja de galinha”

Read: “Jenn Louis’ new ‘Chicken Soup Manifesto’ celebrates the feel-better elixir as expressed in 64 countries”

Read: “Around the world in chicken soup: Next stop Tibet, for a fresh and fiery bowl of thukpa”

Beef bourguignon? Deviled duck legs? Dazzling halibut? There's still time to pull together a festive NYE dinner

We couldn’t be happier to say goodbye to 2020. Why not ring in the new year with something delicious?

Don’t worry — even you’re not thinking about it till this afternoon, there’s still time to pull together a great dinner. Small gathering? If you’re two or three or four, a delicious braised dish like beef bourguignon will fill your living space with wonderful, warm aromas, and even probably leave you with fabulous leftovers.

Though it’s luxurious, the ingredients are not terribly expensive (chuck roast, mushrooms, pearl onions, bacon). If you’re a meat-lover, it’s one of the most glorious dishes you can make.

RECIPE: Beef Bourguignon

Prefer something super-easy? Deviled Duck Legs Provençal is another French dish that will delight.

Of course it depends whether you can get duck legs; they did have them at my local Whole Foods yesterday). Once you have them in your hot little kitchen, the rest is easy. All that’s required to prep them is a dusting of herbs, a smear of Dijon mustard and a coat of panko bread crumbs — shove them in the oven, and 90 minutes to an hour 45 minutes later, you’ve got these beauties.

Deviled Duck Legs Provençal with braised lentils

RECIPE: Deviled Duck Legs Provençal

In our photo, the duck leg is served with saucy braised French green lentils. To make the lentils, chop half an onion (or a shallot or two), a carrot and two stalks of celery, cook them in olive oil or duck fat until tender (about 7 minutes), add a pound of French green lentils and enough water or red wine to cover by an inch or so, plus maybe a bay leaf and/or a branch of thyme and simmer until the lentils are tender, about 20 or 25 minutes. Add more liquid if necessary to keep them very saucy.

Like the Beef Bourguignon, the duck and the lentils are also excellent the next day.

Seared halibut on ginger vinaigrette: a 10-minute dazzler!

Finally, here’s a light, quick and easy ginger vinaigrette that turns any piece of fish — or shrimp, or a grilled or sautéed chicken breast — into a 10-minute dazzler.

Here’s the vinaigrette recipe, sized for two portions (you can double or triple it for more servings):

RECIPE: Ginger Vinaigrette

And here’s the recipe including instructions for halibut:

RECIPE: Seared Halibut in Ginger Vinaigrette

Wishing you and yours a wonderful New Year’s Eve, and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2021! May we all enjoy better times ahead!

The insanely healthy lentil-vegetable soup that’s delicious enough to save us all

It’s about this time every year that I start needing to have a big pot of delicious lentil and vegetable soup in my life.

OK, maybe my soup won’t save us all. But it does save me every year, in so many ways.

It’s a mood-changer as it simmers on the stove, the aromas of warm spices, cumin and coriander seed and garlic and onion and herbs swirling seductively through the kitchen.

It’s dinner for the family the night I make it. This soup is much quicker to make than most hearty legume-based soups. It doesn’t involve an Instant Pot, so it’s also therapeutic in its old-school simplicity. If you enjoy cooking at all, it’s soothing to make. You chop things up — an onion, carrot, celery, sweat it slowly in olive oil, add spices, then lentils, tomatoes and water. Add any veg, fresh or cooked, taking up valuable real estate in your fridge. Just before eating, add tender leafy greens, like the end of that bag of arugula or baby kale, or the gnarly spinach that came in your CSA box last week.

It uses up all the vegetables that are on their way out in the fridge, so it’s zero-waste-friendly.

It’s filled with ingredients — vegetables and spices — widely recognized by science as being extremely good for health. (You know, superfoods.) It’s chock full of antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, phytochemicals and flavonoids. (Read more about its benefits, and building its flavors, here.)

Warming Lentil Super Detox Soup II, with ginger and arugula

It’s lunch for as many days during the week as you feel like eating it. Like Reid Branson, the Seattle nurse-manager whose daily lentil-and-vegetable-soup went viral in a Washington Post story by Joe Yonan last year, I could eat this soup every day (and sometimes do!). Like Branson’s soup, which came from Crescent Dragonwagon’s 1992 cookbook, Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread, ours is vegan and gluten-free, but unlike his, ours does not include any vegetables that are high on the glycemic scale (his has potatoes), so ours is good for those who want to stay slim, take off weight or stave off diabetes.

And ours has another huge benefit: We have two versions of it — that use different types of lentils, different greens, different herbs — as well as a master recipe that lets you spin and riff and improvise to your heart’s content and your fridge’s contents. So if unlike Branson, you don’t want to eat the same thing for lunch every day, you can have various fabulous lentil soups from week to week with different spice and herb flavors to layer in.

Interested in sumac, turmeric or za’atar? Any would be excellent as part of the base. Are you a fan of harissa or chile crisp? Either are fabulous stirred in at the table — and so is sriracha, Cholula hot sauce or just about any salsa you want to conjure.

If you’re working at home, you can start it during your coffee break at 11, and it’ll be ready by lunchtime. Got lentils, a can of tomatoes and an onion? Then chances are you have everything you need to make it today.

MASTER RECIPE: Sunday Souper Soup

RECIPE: Green Lentil and Baby Kale Super-Warming Detox soup

RECIPE: Warming Lentil Super Detox Soup II

This quick, easy cardamom-pumpkin spice bread is just the thing for lazy holiday or weekend mornings

I’m neither a big breakfast eater nor a frequent baker, but on lazy holidays (and regular lazy weekends) I do love to nibble on a cakey bread with my morning coffee.

The sight of an unused post-Thanksgiving can of pumpkin purée in our pantry and a recipe in Karen DeMasco’s 2009 book The Craft of Baking inspired this one, which we’ve been enjoying since Christmas morning. (Damn — it’s almost gone!)

DeMasco, in case you don’t know her, was the opening pastry chef at Tom Colicchio’s Craft in New York, as well as at Craftbar and ’wichcraft; she won the James Beard Award in 2005 for Outstanding Pastry Chef. “It is great toasted and spread with a thick pat of nice salty butter,” she wrote in the headnote. We didn’t get that far at our house: Each slice has gotten quickly gobbled.

Our version is slightly different than DeMasco’s original. I’m always looking for ways to use more whole grains, so I thought I’d try subbing out half the white flour in her recipe for whole-wheat flour. (It worked!) I also cut the white sugar by half, from 1/2 cup to 1/4 cup, suspecting that with the 1/2 cup of brown sugar also called for, it would be sweet enough. (It was!) And finally, I added freshly ground cardamom into DeMasco’s pumpkin spice mix — probably because cardamom always seems so alluring this time of year. (And anytime, really!) Success again — it added something aromatically delightful.

The result is lush, moist, warmly spicy and delicious. The whole wheat flour adds a wee bit of wholesomeness without turning the bread cardboardy or punitive; and even with the reduced sugar, it was definitely sweet enough for Thierry (who has been been successfully taming his sweet tooth), and of course sweet enough for me. A touch of turbinado or demerara sugar sprinkled on top before baking gave it a light sugary crunch (I cut that by a third as well). Best of all, it’s a snap to make.

We’ve enjoyed this cakey bread so much, I’ll be keeping cans of pumpkin purée in the pantry well into the winter. Hope you like it too!

RECIPE: Cardamom-Pumpkin Spice Bread

Need a perfect, easy holiday side dish? Try my family's longtime favorite roasted potatoes

If you’re anything like me, you’re likely to forget something as you plan your special holiday meals, or leave one thing to the last minute to strategize.

If for you that means spuds (during this weirdest-ever pre-holiday moment!), we’ve got just the thing: my family’s roasted potatoes.

The dish couldn’t be simpler, really, and it’s not much of a recipe. Think of it as a method. I usually use Yukon Golds or similar potatoes, but I’ve also used red ones. Most often I use medium-size Yukon Golds.

Here’s what you do: Peel and quarter the the potatoes lengthwise, drop them in a baking dish with a yellow onion peeled and cut into eighths. Drizzle with a couple of glugs of olive oil, liberate the leaves from four or five thyme branches, sprinkle liberally with salt and freshly ground pepper. Pop the dish in a hot oven, stirring once or twice with a wooded spoon to make sure they don’t stick, and roast for 45 to 55 minutes, until they’re crispy-edged and golden brown. Swap in other herbs, such as rosemary or oregano, if you don’t feel like thyme, add garlic cloves if you like, or swap the onions for shallots.

That’s it. I usually keep a big jar of grey sea salt from France in the pantry; I love using it with potatoes done this way. (But any salt will do.)

The potatoes are great with all kinds of rich holiday foods — prime rib, tenderloin and other roast beefs, turkey, ham, duck, goose and so on.

Best of all, they’re easy.

Oh, if you’re wondering about the platter they’re sitting on, it was an early work by my friend the ceramist Christopher Russell. He has since become a big deal artist who shows in galleries and whose work is highly sought-after. (I’m a huger fan than ever; check out his website.)

Back to those potatoes. They’re not just handy for holidays; they’re also brilliant with roast chicken or leg of lamb. Here you go:

RECIPE: The Brenner Family’s Roasted Potatoes

Happy holidays from Cooks Without Borders to you and yours!

Around the world in chicken soup: Next stop Tibet, for a fresh and fiery bowl of thukpa

Think chicken soup is bland or boring? You’ll sing a different tune after one taste of Thukpa, the fiery chicken-noodle soup of Tibet.

We found this one in Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets and Railways of India.

“The first time I tasted thukpa was after I arrived on a train in Guwahati on a cold winter’s day,” writes James Beard Award-winning chef Maneet Chauhan in the headnote. (Chauhan, who has several restaurants in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote the book with Jody Eddy.) “Seeking warmth, I followed the aroma of chicken soup to a vendor spooning golden thukpa into dented metal bowls. In that single bowl of soup I found all the reassurance that the long journey had been worth it.”

It became a favorite comfort food for her and her husband when they spent chilly winters in New York City. 

Guwahati, in case you’re a bit rusty on your Indian geography, is in the northeastern part of the subcontinent, next to Bhutan, about 200 miles from the Tibet border.

Chock full of shredded cabbage, carrot, bell peppers, green beans, chicken and rice noodles, scented with ginger and cumin, fired up with serrano chile, garnished with scallions and bean sprouts, it’s a nourishing meal in a bowl. 

And because it’s based on store-bought chicken broth, it comes together quickly (cooking time is about 30 to 35 minutes, once you’ve got everything prepped). It’s simple, too: blitz together tomatoes, ginger, garlic, chiles and cumin with a little oil, cook the paste briefly with cut-up boneless chicken thighs, add broth and vegetables and simmer till the chicken’s cooked through. Add rice noodles and a splash of lemon juice, dress up with scallions and bean sprouts and dinner is served.

I’m thinking that whether or not anyone in your crew is under the weather, it’s just the thing for an easy, light holiday-week or between-the-holidays dinner — lively, bright and spicy and filled with fresh veg. The rice noodles keep it squarely in the comfort food zone.

RECIPE: Maneet Chauhan’s Thukpa

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a cooking project sure to enthrall kids over the holidays, consider making paneer — fresh Indian cheese — also from Chauhan’s book.

Our 25 favorite recipes of 2020, from Veracruz to Morocco to Vietnam (Part 2)

Rice Noodle Salad Bowl with scallop sashimi and crab

Yep, cooking really saved us in 2020, the worst year ever. We lost ourselves — and found our sanity and our joy — in the kitchen.

So many delicious dishes came out of it that we know we’ll be cooking for years to come. Here’s the story we we ran down the first 12. And now, onto the festivities!

13. Mely Martínez’s Pollo a la Veracruzana

Because cookbook author and blogger Mely Martínez spent good chunks of her childhood learning to cook with her grandmother in Veracruz, Mexico, her Pollo a la Veracruzana was the first dish we cooked from her new cookbook, The Mexican Home Kitchen. We reviewed the book in September.

Why we love to cook it: With olives, capers, raisins and marjoram, this dish may sound a bit odd — but its flavors dance together beautifully. It’s quick and easy enough for a weeknight dinner, yet impressive enough for a special dinner for friends (if we can ever do that again!)

Fun factor: 3

14. Moroccan Chicken Tagine with Olives and Preserved Lemons

This delicious tagine came from Anissa Helou’s marvelous and monumental book Feast: Food of the Islamic World. Partly because Cornish hens were nowhere to be found when I reviewed the book in early pandemic, I adapted it for chicken.

Why we love cooking it: It teaches us so much about tagine technique, in which you only brown the meat at the end, after the meat has cooked and most of the braising liquid has evaporated. Thanks to a lot of finely grated onion and spices that melt over the course of the cooking time, it becomes a savory, silky blanket of a sauce. The dish’s high fun factor is because of the delightfulness of the technique and the beautiful aromas that result from the spices.

Fun factor: 7

15. Moussaka for the Ages

Our recipe for Greece’s most famous dish was my family’s unanimous favorite out of maybe nine jillion dishes that came out of our kitchen this year. (For my husband Thierry, it was tied with a dish that appears near the end of this list.) It was also a reader favorite: Though we only published it a week ago, it’s already among the most clicked-on of the year.

Why we love cooking it: It’s fun the first time, making the layers (potatoes, then eggplant, then lamb sauce). And the lamb sauce, spiced with cinnamon, allspice and more, fills the kitchen with a beautiful aroma. And then the “wow” moment when you see that incredible thick layer of yogurt-béchamel baked to puffy, toasty golden-brown: It’s breathtaking. Another plus: Once you make it a two or three times, it becomes second nature, because each step is quite easy. Did we mention that unlike convention versions, this one doesn’t require frying?

Fun factor: 7

16. Olivia Lopez’s Aguachile, Colima-Style

In a story in May, we featured a glorious aguachile — raw shrimp bathed briefly in chile-spiked citrus and then sauced — from Dallas chef Olivia Lopez. We made it many times in the summer, and will make it again next time we’re overcome with longing for a Mexican beach getaway.

Why we love cooking it: It’s quick, easy and transporting.

Fun factor: 3.

17. Ottolenghi’s Puy Lentils and Eggplant

I had a hard time deciding whether to include this recipe or Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipe for Stuffed Zucchini with Pine Nut Salsa. Both are included in Ottolenghi Simple, for which we are long-overdue on a review. I’ve cooked the zucchini many times — and no doubt will many more. But I can’t stop thinking about the lentils, a glorious, delicious mess of a dish. Think I’ll make it this coming Meatless Monday.

Why we love cooking it: The method is easy and soothing, and the result wholesome and delicious.

Fun factor: 4

18. Papa Ed’s Shrimp and Grits

The shrimp and grits recipe in chef Marcus Samuelsson’s new cookbook The Rise makes the best version of the dish I’ve ever had. Yes, literally. The recipe honors Ed Brumfield, executive chef of Red Rooster, Samuelsson’s restaurant in Harlem. It’s so good I won’t wait for okra season to make it again; I’ll buy frozen okra.

Why we love to cook it: In less than an hour you can have it on the table. There’s a zen-like quiet loveliness in small-dicing all the veg, and the okra are beautiful cut that way.

Fun factor: 2. The fun is in eating this one, which would be a fun factor 10!

19. Rice Noodle Salad Bowls with XYZ Skewers

A Rice Noodle Salad Bowl with grilled pork skewers adapted from Andrea Nguyen’s ‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’

Mostly over the summer, we riffed on this fabulous recipe, adapted from Andrea Nguyen’s Vietnamese Food Any Day, maybe seven or eight times. Our adapted recipe mentions “XYZ” skewers because the skewers could be just about anything — grilled chicken, grilled shrimp, grilled pork (as shown here), or even not-skewers, like the sashimi shown in our story’s lede photo.

Why we love cooking it: Because it’s infinitely riffable, super-fun to assemble and thanks to the nuoc cham, insanely delicious.

Fun factor: 9

20. Sonoko Sakai’s Okonomiyaki

After years of searching for a great okonomiyaki recipe, I finally hit the jackpot in Sonoko Sakai’s Japanese Home Cooking, which we reviewed in June. Okonomiyaki, in case you’re unfamiliar, is a savory pancake (this one is filled with cabbage and shrimp) brushed with tonkatsu sauce and topped with bonito flakes.

Why we love cooking it: “Okonomiyaki” means “as you like it,” and it’s infinitely riffable once you know the technique. Forming the pancakes and cooking them is satisfying, and it’s meant to be shared right away. We enjoyed taking turns making the pancakes (the recipe makes 4 fat ones).

Fun factor: 10

21. Salaryman Potato Salad

In the summer, potato salad became our drug of choice, and Japanese versions felt especially captivating. In a July story (remember picnic season?!), we featured one we love from Dallas Japanese ramen house Salaryman, where chef Justin Holt topped it with ajitama eggs, ramen-style. Holt has since closed the restaurant because he has been battling an aggressive form of leukemia (here is a GoFundMe to help with his mounting expenses).

Why we love cooking it: The ajitama egg, such a brilliant flourish, feels magical to make.

22. Shrimp, Sausage and Okra Gumbo

In the scanty-offerings-on-grocery-shelves days of 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. It’s also great to riff on according to what you have on hand. Okra season is finished, but you can skip it or use frozen.

Why we love cooking it: The power of transformation is intoxicating — shrimp shells into fabulous broth, flour and oil into a mocha-colored roux, and then the two combining into a saucy broth.

23. Tom Kha Kai

I can’t think of a better way to enjoy the sunny flavors of Thailand on a cold winter day than diving into a bowl of Tom Kha Kai, coconut-galangal chicken soup. This one is from Leela Punyaratabandu’s excellent primer, Simple Thai Food (a must-have for anyone new to Thai cooking who wants to explore).

Why we love cooking it: The aromas are absolutely transporting, it’s super easy to make (once you collect the ingredients) and the result is thrilling in its Thai-ness. Cutting fresh makrut lime leaves into strips is maximum kitchen fun — what a perfume!

Fun factor: 8

24. World Butter Chicken

To commemorate the first-ever World Butter Chicken Day, marking the 100th anniversary in October of the restaurant in India where butter chicken (murgh makhani) was invented, we developed a new, streamlined version of earth’s most popular Indian dish. Our first version was adapted from one by Monish Gujral — grandson of the chef who invented the dish. This version takes a couple hours of marination time out of the equation, with equally delicious results. Until Moussaka for the Ages came along, it was my husband Thierry’s favorite thing we’ve cooked during The Great Confinement, and he requests it again and again. (Now it is tied with Moussaka for his favorite.)

Why we love cooking it: I love the tandoori hack for the chicken, and the sauce is soothing to make, with fabulous aromatics.

Fun factor: 6

25. Yangzhou Fried Rice

If I weren’t on a serious mission to eat whole grains rather than white ones, I’d make the Yangzhou Fried Rice from Fuchsia Dunlop’s splendid book Every Grain of Rice every week or two — it’s that good.

Why we love cooking it: Making it the first time is a delicious lesson in Chinese fried rice technique, and Dunlop provides guidance on how to improve according to the ingredients in your fridge.

Fun factor: 7

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If you liked this, you may like:

READ: ‘Ottolenghi Simple’ is one of the most inspired — and inspiring — cookbooks in a decade (with recipes!)

Our 25 favorite recipes from the year we cooked our asses off (Part 1)

Papa Ed’s Shrimp and Grits from Marcus Samuelsson’s ‘The Rise’

Let’s skip the pleasantries and cut to the chase: Here are the dishes that have thrilled us the most over the last year. They’re the recipes we were excited to share with you first time around, and jazzed to round up for you now. They’re the recipes we’ll be returning to again and again we’ve fallen permanently in love with them. They’ve changed our lives for the better.

Most are new, whether developed this year in our test kitchen or adapted from cookbooks published this year.

Because it feels so important to find joy in the kitchen these days, we’re assigning each of them a “Fun Factor” — how much fun they are to cook. Our scale is 1 to 10, 10 being the most fun.

They’re listed in alphabetical order.

1. Anjali Pathak’s Charred Baby Eggplants

These melty-soft baby eggplants with a coconutty, spicy filling come from Anjali Pathak’s 2015 book, The Indian Family Kitchen: Classic Dishes for a New Generation. Sizzled fresh curry leaves make it really special. We spotlighted this dish — finished with dabs of yogurt — in an an August story about eggplants.

Why we love cooking them: The topping is really fun to make, beginning with cooking the mustard seeds in oil till they jump out of the pan, and using the curry leaves (which freeze really well, so if you get your hands on some, buy extra). Definitely fun to plate.

Fun factor: 10

2. Baba Ganoush

We took a deep dive into our favorite eggplant dip beginning just as the year started — chasing optimal smokiness, perfect balance and the creamiest texture we could conjure. We wrote about it in late February. Please help yourself to our Baba Ganoush recipe.

Why we love cooking it: Because you get to burn the hell out of the eggplant in the bottom of a charcoal grill (or in the oven), and then pull it apart with your hands; it’s very primal. Whisking tahini and lemon juice to fluffiness has its charms as well. And then, of course, it is meltingly, classically delicious.

Fun factor: 8

3. Camille Fourmont’s Rose, Cumin and Apricot Sablés

Crushed rosebuds and cumin bring a beautifully fragrant and savory aspect to Camille Fourmont’s spin on the classic French sablé cookie; dried apricots add a delightful chewy high note. Though Fourmont credits pastry superstar Pierre Hermé with having dreamt up the flavor combo, it is she who put them together in a sablé. Super buttery and tender, they are exquisite. We reviewed the book they’re from, La Buvette: Recipes and Wine Notes from Paris, in August.

Why we love making them: Playing with dried flower buds is a treat, and it’s always fun to slice and bake dough that’s been chilling in a log in the fridge.

Fun factor: 6

4. ‘Falastin’ Chicken Musakhan

The national dish of Palestine dish is our favorite (so far!) in Sami Tamimi’s Falastin, which we reviewed in July. To make it, toss a whole quartered bird with plenty of cumin and sumac and other spices, then roast it and layer it on crisped pieces of torn pita with a lot of long-cooked, sumac-and-cumin-loaded sliced red onions, fried pine nuts and parsley. Spoon over with the roasting juices from the chicken, drizzle on more olive oil, dust with more sumac, and invite everyone to tear in.

Why we love cooking it: All those spices! Three tablespoons sumac! A tablespoon of cumin! You eat it with your hands! And it’s super-easy to make.

Fun factor: 7

5. Fried Chicken LudoBird Style

During early pandemic, we had a blast watching Ludo Lefebvre make his famous Fried Chicken LudoBird Style on his IGTV live channel. We pieced together a recipe, conquered our fear of deep-frying and triumphed.

Why we love cooking it: Because with our trusty Thermaworks instant-read thermometer to keep us in the right zone, we found we could fry with the best of ‘em.

Fun factor: 5

6. The Greenest Gazpacho

Vegan and gluten-free, this is the green gazpacho of our dreams. Here’s to hoping that either our ancient Waring blender holds out through the spring, or Santa brings us a Vitamix.

Why we love making it: It’s so easy — throw everything in the blender and give it a whirl — and so very green.

Fun factor: 2

7. Half-Whole Wheat Pita Bread

We love whole grain breads, but the whole wheat pitas we were finding — even at our favorite Lebanese bakery — were kind of like eating cardboard. So we took matters into our own hands and developed a recipe using half whole-wheat flour and half white flour: perfect!

Why we baking them: They may take a little practice, but when you nail it, they’re super-fun to roll out, squish and bake. Watch them puff up in the oven!

Fun factor: 8

8. José Andrés’ Dancing Eggplant

Whip up this Japanese-inspired sauce, slather it on microwaved eggplant, top with katsuobushi — bonito flakes — that “dance” on top, and you’ve got a quick and entertaining appetizer that’s great with beer or sake. We found the recipe in José Andrés’ Vegetables Unleashed , but skipped Andrés’s instruction to wrap the eggplant in plastic film before zapping. (We don’t believe in cooking plastic into food.) It works fine when the eggplant is naked. We keep meaning to grill the eggplant instead of zapping, but it’s just so damn great to have a fabulous app you can pull together so quickly — and just another reason to keep bonito flakes on hand at all times.

Why we love cooking it: Instant gratification, with a beat.

Fun Factor: 8

9. Josef Centeno’s Carne Guisada with his Tía Carmen’s Flour Tortillas

Making this dish, a favorite of L.A. chef Josef Centeno from his childhood in San Antonio, Texas, made us feel like we were part of his family. (We reviewed his latest cookbook, Amá, in September.) The Carne Guisada — long-braised beef — is wrapped in the warm tortillas and eaten tacos. My French husband Thierry proclaimed it “better than beef bourguignon.” Hard to say — but it’s up there, and you don’t get to eat home-made tortillas with the French dish.

Why we love cooking it: The slow braise makes the house smell great, and there’s primal joy in forming and griddling the flour tortillas.

Fun factor: 6

10. ‘Jubilee’ Pickled Shrimp

This was the first dish that caught our eye in Toni Tipton-Martin’s fabulous cookbook, Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking. We made it in and previewed it in early May, then reviewed the book in June, just as it won a James Beard Award. It went on to win two International Association of Culinary Professionals awards, including Book of the Year. We’ve made the dish — which makes a great gift, by the way, as you can deliver a jar — four or five times since.

Why we love cooking it: It feels like a cool science project and art project in one, as you pack the shrimp in a jar with all the gorgeous herbs and aromatics.

Fun factor: 5

11. Leela Punyaratabandhu's Green Papaya Salad

We were delighted to learn that mere mortals can make excellent som tam — Thailand’s famous green papaya salad. Leela Punyaratabandhu’s splendid recipe makes it seem like a miracle every time. We love that

Why we love cooking it: It’s rare to get permission to pound vegetables and fruit together, and in this case the resulting flavors are insanely vivid and transporting.

Fun factor: 7

12. Miso-Butter Sweet Potatoes

A friend told me a few years ago about a sweet potato filled with miso-butter he had swooned over at our mutually favorite Japanese restaurant in Dallas. I don’t know who invented the idea, but I knew I had to try it at home; it blew me away. (Then again, I can be blown away by a simple, plain sweet potato roasted to caramelly sweetness.) This year, I had the idea to add scallions, furikake and togarashi, and wow — it’s spectacular. Insanely good. I’ll be making some this weekend.

Why we love cooking it: It’s more like dressing something up than cooking it. You just roast that sucker whole, split it open and go to town. Mushing the miso together with softened butter is pure pleasure, and makes for better utensil-licking than even cookie dough.

Fun factor: 8

Here is Part 2, Recipes No. 13 to 25.

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. 

Gifts to delight every cook: Our guide helps you bring the world into their kitchens

The Great Confinement sometimes feels like the Great Conversion: It has turned so many eaters into intrepid, adventuresome cooks.

That upside provides a delicious opportunity this holiday season: There’s a whole world’s worth of inspiring gifts all those cooks on your list — from eager fledgling to seasoned pro – will love.

We’ve already rounded up our favorite cookbooks published this season and last.

And you’ll find lots of great gifts in Cooks Without Borders Holiday Pop-Up Gift Shop. We’ll be adding more gifts up till New Year’s Eve, so keep checking back!

Here is a wide range of everything else that will delight your favorite cooks: essential tools we recommend that are great for beginners; beautiful, lasting cookware that every seasoned cook will cherish; hard-to-find fabulous ingredients.

See something you’d like to send yourself? Go right ahead — you deserve it.

For the Mexican cooking explorer

Molcajete

Anyone who’s serious about Mexican cooking needs one of these: a molcajete made of volcanic stone. There’s nothing like it for grinding onions, chiles and cilantro for guacamole. Great for serving the guac, as well.

Buy now - $40

Olé Rico Arbol, Ancho and Guajillo Dried Chiles

Ancho, guajillo and arbol chiles — the “holy trinity” of dried chiles — give flavor and body to all kinds of Mexican salsas and stews. Imported from Mexico, these are nicer quality than what you find in most supermarkets stateside; they’re fresher, more flexible, not brittle.

Buy Now - $23

For the Indian food lover

Masala Dabba — Indian Spice Box

What’s more stressful than being in the middle of a recipe and trying to root through your messy spice cabinet to find the coriander seeds? A masala dabba — spice box — solves that problem with panache.
Buy now – $34

For the generalist

Fletchers’ Mill Pepper Grinder

My handcrafted, wooden 8-inch Fletcher’s Mill “Federal” model, which first cracks the peppercorns, then grinds them, is the best peppermill I’ve ever owned, bar none. It comes with a lifetime guarantee. Any cook who’s not in love with their peppermill needs this.

Buy now - $49

Vitamix 5200 Blender

A few years ago, I was close to throwing out my ancient Waring blender, thinking I only needed a stick blender, but then I started cooking a lot of Indian and Mexican dishes, and found myself using the Waring constantly.

Vitamix is pretty much recognized as the best blender out there, and Wirecutter — whose reviews we trust — prefers the 5200 model above all this year. It’s what I’m going to buy when that old Waring decides to quit, which could be any minute. 🙃

Buy now - $370

Classic Superfast Therma-pen Instant-Read Thermometer

This instant-read thermometer from Thermaworks is super-speedy and accurate. It registers anything from the inside of a turkey thigh to a decanted Bordeaux to oil for deep-frying with instant precision. No more fear of frying — go ahead and make LudoBird-style fried chicken! The Classic Super-Fast is specially sale-priced for the holidays.

Buy now - $79

Le Creuset 4 1/2-Quart Round Dutch Oven

Thierry and Wylie gave me this honey-yellow Le Creuset Round Dutch Oven for my birthday this fall, and it’s the one I reach more more often than any other. The size is perfect for dishes for 4 to 6 (it’s larger than it probably looks). I like pieces like this (braisers and such) with straight rather than angled sides to maximize surface area on the bottom for browning. Looks gorgeous on the table, too! The price on this seems to vary by color and changes week by week; this price (which is the lowest I’ve seen for this size) is for a blue one this week.

Buy now - $325

Oxo Mixing Bowl Set

These are my favorite, counter-gripping mixing bowls. The 3-bowl set includes the sizes your favorite cook will appreciate.

Buy now - $60

Suisin Chef Knife

This 8.3-inch Western-style Inox knife is my favorite chef’s knife — I’ve owned it (and used it almost daily) for more than 20 years.

You might consider a larger one for a larger person. I love my smaller Suisin utility knife ($69) just as much. Be sure to get a penny back in exchange for good luck!

Buy it - $128

For Spice Cadets

Custom Spice Gift Box from Penzeys

Marble Mortar & Pestle

Any serious cook would thrill over a marble mortar and pestle (I own three in different sizes) and a custom gift box from Penzeys.

Toasting and grinding whole spices results in the most aromatic dishes with great depth of flavor. Penzeys spices are top-quality, and it’s a super cool company with a great culture. Choose one of three sizes of gift boxes and select the spices to fill it.

Not sure what spices to select? Coriander, cumin seed, Tellicherry peppercorns, fennel seed and saffron are great for grinding. Pre-ground favorites are Ceylon cinnamon, Aleppo pepper, sumac berries, cayenne, Punjabi-style garam masala and turmeric. Herbes de Provence and dried spearmint are great staples as well.

For cookbook lovers

Here are our picks for the best cookbooks published this season and last.

And here is the Cooks Without Borders Shop at Bookshop, filled with our perennial favorites — Cookbooks We Love. (Please bookmark it, if you’d like to support independent bookstores and Cooks Without Borders whenever you buy books online.)

For cooks who love geeking out on special ingredients

Makrut Limes, Curry Leaves, Galangal

Makrut limes from Angkor Cambodian Food

Anyone who makes their own Thai curry pastes (or wants to learn how) will rejoice at the sight of fresh makrut limes. Peel and freeze the rind for later use. They’re available through Angkor Cambodian Food, an excellent ecommerce site that also sells fresh curry leaves, fresh galangal and more. (Fresh curry leaves can also be frozen, and so can galangal — peel and slice thin first, and wrap in paper towels.)

Katsuobushi - bonito flakes

Katsuobushi — Shaved Dried Bonito

Dashi — seafood broth — is the cornerstone of Japanese cooking and katsuobushi (shaved dried bonito) is an essential ingredient. Two 100 g bags makes 5 - 6 batches.

Buy now - 2 100g bags $14

Dried Rice Koji

Dried Rice Koji

The fermenting crazy is huge, and there are a grillion uses for koji salt, like this wonderful koji-marinated salmon, and all kinds of Japanese pickles. Sonoko Sakai’s cookbook Japapanese Home Cooking is a great gift that will show them how to make that and dashi.

Buy now - $7

You can find more gifts in our Cooks Without Borders Holiday Pop-Up Gift Shop. We’ll be adding more gifts up till New Year’s Eve, so keep checking back!

All the harvest-box greens: How to make the most of kale, chard, collards and the like

Harvest boxes of greens and herbs from La Bajada POP Farm, part of Promise of Peace Gardens, a Dallas-based nonprofit.

Whether it’s from your own garden, the community garden where you’ve been working a plot, the farmers market — or you’ve picked up or ordered a harvest box from a local farm — you suddenly find yourself with armfuls of greens.

I love greens any way I can get them; this time of year and through the winter, I actively crave them. I especially love mustard greens, for their wonderful spiciness, but kale, chard, collards and spinach are wonderful too — and I love to mix them up.

What to do with them?

Sure, you can drop the leaves in a salad. For that, the youngest leaves are best — especially spinach and tangy beet greens. For tougher customers, like kale, a little pre-salad-bowl massage does wonders for mature leaves. Stack them, roll up and slice into chiffonade, then give those ribbons a squeeze before you dress them.

This time of year, soup is front-of-mind. You could make an earthy, vegan, soul-sustaining, feed-you-all-week soup based on lentils, onions, carrot and celery, punctuated by spices and rounded out by all those greens — thrown in at the last minute for maximum flavor and texture.

Here’s a master recipe.

And then there is saag paneer. Did you think the Indian braised greens-and-cheese dish was meant only to include spinach? Actually, in India saag refers to any kinds of greens, as Maneet Chauhan explains in her new cookbook, Chaat. (Read our story about it.) Her version of the classic dish includes kale and arugula along with spinach, but in her headnote she urges inclusion of any greens you’ve got.

Or you could shine a bright spotlight on the greens themselves, making a simple sauté that puts them center stage and celebrates their individual flavors.

During The Great Confinement, Wylie has fashioned himself into the greens specialist of our household. As long as chard (his favorite) is involved, it’s his mission to preside over them and add whatever else looks great. The stems, he feels, are all important. “You’re wasting if you don’t use them,” he says. “That’s not cool. They add texture and emphasize the character of each green. Especially chard.” He slices them into what looks like a small dice, and advocates sautéeing those stems with “some kind of allium,” which for him always includes shallots.

The sautéed stems also give the finished dish a confetti-on-top kind of beauty.

Last week, we purchased a harvest box from a wonderful nonprofit educational farm where we live in Dallas – Promise of Peace Gardens — and we found ourselves in possession of a wealth of gorgeous organic greens: two kinds of kale, rainbow chard and daikon greens.

Kale from our POP Gardens harvest box, with more greens in the background

I convinced Wylie to slow down enough to show me exactly how he achieves his greens greatness.

It starts with sweating shallots in olive oil, then adding garlic, then the toughest sliced stems, then the more tender stems, and then the greens — beginning with the sturdiest (kale and collards, for instance). You add them, and cook till wilted enough to make room for the next batch. Then come the more tender — chard, mustard and/or turnip. And finally the most tender – young arugula, spinach and whatnot. After that, he adds a little chicken broth (vegetable broth or water work fine, too, and keep it vegan), to loosen up the the mix and let it breathe. Finally, off-heat, a dash of vinegar.

They’re super delicious on those evenings when a pot of beans and some brown rice or roasted sweet potatoes feel like healthy luxuries. For omnivores, they’re the perfect minerally counterpoint to something like saucy pork chops, or any kind of roasted or braised meat or poultry. (Duck!)

There you go. If you’ve been hesitating to subscribe to a local farm-box program for fear you’d be awash in stuff you couldn’t use, you have your braising orders.

RECIPE: Sunday Souper Soup

RECIPE: Maneet Chauhan’s Saag Paneer

RECIPE: Wylie’s Greens

Our favorite thing in Maneet Chauhan's new cookbook, 'Chaat': out-of-this-world saag paneer

Chaat, as anyone who knows anything about Indian food knows, is the subcontinent’s vibrant, colorful, tasty culture of snacks. Here’s the way Maneet Chauhan and Jody Eddy put it in the intro to their new Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets, and Railways of India:

“Chaat are typically snacks or small meals that are tangy and sweet, fiery and crunchy, savory and sour all in one topsy, turvy bite. Some iconic chaat include Bhel Puri, Puchkas, and Aloo Chat.”

As well as being a star of Food Network’s ‘Chopped,’ Chauhan is executive chef of a group of well-known restaurants in Nashville including one specializing in those very street snacks — Chaatable. So I was most excited to dive in and start cooking and snacking, living the chaat life.

Six recipes into my exploration, you may be surprised to learn, my hands-down favorite has not been a chaat like the Mumbai-style Bhel Puri — which was topsy turvy to the extreme, and quite a lot of work once you make the two chutneys involved.

Instead, I went wild for the Saag Paneer — braised greens with farmer cheese. It’s a dish that strikes me not so much as a snack, but more of an unplugged, slow-food, sit-down-to-a-real-meal kind of affair. Especially because Chauhan’s features paneer (that’s the farmer cheese) that you make in your very own kitchen.

In fact, among the myriad pandemic cooking projects I’ve thrown myself into, making that paneer has been one of the most fun and rewarding.

It’s surprisingly easy. Scald milk. Stir in lemon juice. Cover and let it sit 10 minutes. Now it’s curds and whey: ladle them into a cheesecloth-lined sieve set over a bowl.

Curds of paneer in a cheesecloth-lined sieve

Gather up the curds in the cheesecloth and compress. You’ve got cheese. The bowl’s got whey.

Gather up the cheesecloth around the curds, compress, and this is what you’ve got.

Incredible, right?! Now mold it into a rectangle, compress a few minutes, and you’ve got paneer.

The finished paneer

Here’s the Paneer recipe.

You could stop there, that cheese is so lovely. I certainly would have been happy just to eat it as is.

But a handmade paneer really deserves a saag. But wait, what does “saag” even mean?

Whether you’ve made it at home or eaten it a hundred times in Indian restaurants, if you’re not Indian, chances are you think saag means “spinach.” That’s what I had always thought.

Not exactly, Chauhan explains. In India, “saag means any dish made with leafy greens, not just spinach.”

Her exuberantly spiced recipe takes delicious advantage of a full spectrum of greens. As she writes in the headnote to her Saag Paneer recipe:

“In Jharkhand saag dishes often include a variety of leafy greens that are indigenous to the region. In Nashville, I like to whip up this easy recipe on days when I need a reboot, packing it with a variety of greens I consume not only for their flavor but for their nutritional benefits. . . . Feel free to stick to the more common saag paneer recipe, swapping in spinach for the arugula and kale, but if you’re feeling adventurous, pack this recipe with healthful virtue by adding in as many greens as you can get your hands on.”

She suggests collards, carrot tops, beet greens, chard or bok choy leaves. “The possibilities are endless.”

I made it exactly as written in the recipe, melting ghee in a pan, adding spices, ginger-garlic paste and minced serrano chiles, then giant handfuls of arugula, baby kale and baby spinach. You cook those until they’re wilted, let it simmer a minute, blitz it all in a food processor, add lemon juice, put it back in the pan, then reheat and gently stir in cubes of paneer.

To serve, Chauhan has you drizzle the Saag Paneer with more melted ghee, garnish it with cilantro, serve it with basmati rice and chapatis. (I skipped the chapatis, and no one was the wiser.)

It’s absolutely wonderful: earthy from all those greens, aromatic with deeply layered spices (cardamom, cumin, mustard seeds) and luxuriously rich with the ghee and delicately melting, tender and marvelous paneer. That paneer is nothing like that rubbery stuff you usually find even in pretty good Indian restaurants and Indian groceries.

What else did I love in the book? So far, a quick and easy Tibetan chicken-noodle soup, Thukpa, which Chauhan recalls first tasting in a train station in Guwahati on a cold winter’s day. We’ll be featuring it soon in our series “Around the World in Chicken Soup.” (Here’s Part I, starring Brazilian canja de galinha; here’s Part II, in which Jenn Louis’ Chicken Soup Manifesto treats us to Ethiopian Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba.)

I’ll be continuing to explore the chaat in Chauhan and Eddy’s book, many of which are pretty involved. In the meantime, I highly recommend the engaging volume, which is a great, fun, illuminating read, filled with invaluable cultural intelligence from all over delicious India.

RECIPE: Paneer (Fresh Indian Cheese)

RECIPE: Maneet Chauhan’s Saag Paneer

Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets, and Railways of India, by Maneet Chauhan and Jody Eddy, CLARKSON Potter, $32.50.

Cookbook gifts that will thrill all the cooks on your list *and* support independent bookstores

The most impactful, exciting holiday gift of 2020 might just be . . . the cookbook!

Fledgling cooks on your list will thrill over classics to kickstart their libraries and cool new titles to stoke their excitement. Experienced, passionate cooks will love the season’s great deep dives, and important evergreen volumes to fill out their collections.

Expanding cultural understanding is important to all kinds of folks this year, and there’s no more delicious way to do that than sautéing, stir-frying or baking your way through a new cookbook.

Meanwhile, Bookshop — the online bookseller that supports independent bookstores — is offering free shipping through Monday, Nov. 30. Purchasing through it is a great way to support small businesses.

Here, listed alphabetically, are 17 recently published titles that are tops for giving this season, for every kind of cook on your list:

Amá: A Modern Tex-Mex Kitchen

L.A. superstar chef Josef Centeno takes us to his hometown, San Antonio, liberating Tex-Mex on the way. Co-written with his partner, Betty Hallock, former deputy Food editor at the Los Angeles Times.

Read our review of Amà.

Buy ‘Ama’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Ama’ at Amazon.

American Sfoglino: A Master Class in Handmade Pasta

Those who want to roll up their sleeves and totally geek out on making pasta by hand — and then settling in to simmer a 7-hour ragù bolognese — will love Los Angeles superstar chef Evan Funke’s manifesto. So will lovers of coffee-table aspirational cookbooks: Eric Wolfinger's gorgeous images won the book an IACP award this year for food photography.

Buy ‘American Sfoglino’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘American Sfloglino’ at Amazon.

Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchen, Markets, and Railways of India
Besides India's famous street snacks, Maneet Chauhan and Jody Eddy's book also has an amazing recipe for homemade paneer (Indian cheese), a splendid-looking chicken biryani that’s high on our list of dishes to try, and lots more.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of Chaat.

Buy ‘Chaat’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Chaat’ at Amazon.

The Chicken Soup Manifesto: Recipes from Around the World

Portland chef Jenn Louis satisfies wanderlust and comfort craving deliciously in her new book, just published in September.

Read our recent story about The Chicken Soup Manifesto. Read about The Chicken Soup Manifesto in the Dallas Morning News.

Buy ‘The Chicken Soup Manifesto’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘The Chicken Soup Manifesto’ at Amazon.

Don’t Count the Tortillas: The Art of the Texas Mexican Cooking

Chef Adán Medrano, whom we wrote about in August, brings the foodways of the indigenous people who created the true Texas Mexican cuisine to life in his second book.

Buy ‘Don’t Count the Tortillas’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Don’t Count the Tortillas’ at Amazon.

Falastin

Exuberantly delicious recipes that work brilliantly fill the pages of Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley's book, while illuminating the culture of Palestine. It’s on of our all-time favorite cookbooks.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of Falastin.

Buy ‘Falastin’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Falastin’ at Amazon.

Feast: Food of the Islamic World

Anissa Helou's magnificent volume is a treasure trove of cultural deliciousness. Its recipes are geared toward more advanced cooks, who will find it to be a prized source of everlasting inspiration.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of Feast.

Buy ‘Feast’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Feast’ at Amazon.

The Food of Sichuan

An updated version of Fuchsia Dunlop's seminal title. We have yet to cook from it, but her recipes always work, her taste is impeccable and her authority undisputed.

Buy ‘The Food of Sichuan’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘The Food of Sichuan’ at Amazon.

Japanese Home Cooking: Simple Meals, Authentic Flavors

Sonoko Sakai's book is another one of our favorite cookbooks ever — absolutely perfect for anyone (beginner or experienced cook) wanting to dive into Japanese cooking.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of Japanese Home Cooking.

Buy ‘Japanese Home Cooking’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Japanese Home Cooking’ at Amazon.

Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking

Toni Tipton-Martin's incredible work is a must for everyone who knows that Black Food Matters. Recipes are very approachable. Named Book of the Year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of Jubilee.

Buy ‘Jubilee’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Jubilee’ at Amazon.

La Buvette: Recipes & Wine Notes from Paris
A charming little volume, Camille Fourmont's book, co-written by Kate Leahy, brings the life of wine in Paris to life. Her recipe for Rose and Cumin Sablés is one of our favorite cookie recipes ever.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of La Buvette.

Buy ‘La Buvette’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘La Buvette’ at Amazon.

The Mexican Home Kitchen: Traditional Home-Style Recipes that Capture the Flavors and Memories of Mexico

Popular blogger Mely Martínez's first book is filled with super-approachable recipes that reflect the way home cooks really cook all over Mexico. Excellent for beginners, as well as more advanced cooks and chefs seeking context for Mexican dishes.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of The Mexican Home Kitchen.

Buy ‘The Mexican Home Kitchen’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘The Mexican Home Kitchen’ at Amazon.

My Korea: Traditional Flavors, Modern Recipes

We've only had the chance to test-drive one recipe from Michelin-starred chef Hooni Kim's inviting new book — marinated spicy cucumbers, and it was wonderful. We are eager to dive in soon, as it appears to be the authoritative Korean book we've long been waiting for.

Buy ‘My Korea’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘My Korea’ at Amazon.

Ottolenghi Flavor

Just when you thought Yotam Ottolenghi must be fresh out of great ideas, he's, um, not. The recipes are vividly delicious.

We’re in process of testing recipes for an upcoming review, coming soon.

Buy ‘Ottolenghi Flavor’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Ottolenghi Flavor’ at Amazon.

The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food

Chef Marcus Samuelsson is always awesome, and this book — honoring Black chefs and their contributions to American cooking — is fabulous. Another Black Food Matters must-have — and the flavors are out-of-this-world.

We are in process of testing recipes for a review of The Rise, which will be coming soon. In the meantime, here is a story about The Rise’s smashing recipe for shrimp and grits.

Buy ‘The Rise’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘The Rise’ at Amazon.

Vegetables Unleashed: A Cookbook

Superhero chef José Andrés unleashes his powers on the vegetable kingdom, and the results are delectable. This one's great for experienced cooks, who will appreciate Andrés' technique-driven approach and should be able to spot the recipes that might need a tweak or two.

Buy ‘Vegetables Unleashed’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Vegetables Unleashed’ at Amazon.

Vietnamese Food Any Day: Simple Recipes for True Fresh Flavors

Andrea Nguyen is the undisputed queen of Vietnamese home cooking in America, from experienced cooks who grew up in Vietnam to those just diving in. Her latest book is filled with dishes that can be made from ingredients you can get in any good supermarket. Highly recommend.

Read a story about a rice noodle salad bowl we love from Vietnamese Food Every Day.

Buy ‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’ from Bookshop.

Buy ‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’ from Amazon.

Would you like more suggestions? Visit our Holiday Pop-Up Bookshop or our Cookbooks We Love Shop at Bookshop.

Mini-Thanksgiving for a maxi-weird year: Keeping it small, delicious and stress-free

Who says a Thanksgiving turkey has to be ginormous? This roasted beauty is less than 8 pounds.

Think small.

This year’s Thanksgiving mantra often leads to suggestions of roasting just a turkey breast, or skipping turkey in favor of a jazzy autumn vegan centerpiece, or ordering a complete Thanksgiving menu from a local restaurant.

All wonderful ideas! But if you can’t help but feel that Thanksgiving isn’t Thanksgiving without a turkey, and that leftovers are the best part of the holiday, consider this: You can roast a small turkey. How small? I found a flock at Whole Foods a couple weeks ago that were around 8 pounds, and less. A 10-pound bird may be considerably smaller than what you’re used to; you should be able to find that size pretty easily. You can make just one of two sides. You can skip the cranberry sauce, if you think it clashes with the wine.

Roasting a whole small (or smallish) turkey gives you the luxurious freedom to contemplate that monumental white-meat-vs.-dark-meat decision. (Have both!) You can gnaw on that wing bone, with all that fabulous crispy skin. You can wake up the next morning and eat leftover turkey for breakfast. You deserve it, as this epic annus horribilis crawls to a close.

Another thing you and your family or small party of pod-mates deserve: All the dark-meat-lovers at the table can treat themselves to an entire thigh or drumstick. When has that ever happened?

Then, in the days that follow, you can all enjoy turkey tetrazzini, or turkey soup — or use leftover turkey meat to make turkey enchiladas verdes (swap the turkey for chicken in this recipe). Or do all three, or a combination of endless other possibilities.

As long as there will be eat least two or three people eating that bird, it’s a fabulous (and even thrifty) way of keeping you all fed for a week.

About that crispy skin: I read somewhere this year that no one wants the skin, and that it’s never crispy. Perhaps they’ve never invited a dry-brined bird to the table!

Go ahead — help yourself to a drumstick! You deserve it.

Using the dry-brine method — rubbing it with salt two or three days in advance of roasting — leads to juicy, delicious meat and beautiful crisp skin.

[Hey, are you thinking of dry-brining for the first time? We just created a free mini-course to help you. ]

Another way to think small: You can make just one or two sides. Maybe one fancy, and one super-simple. Skip the made-from-scratch Parker House rolls and buy some frozen ones. Frozen peas are legit. Order a pie from a local bakery that’s struggling, or a pastry chef that’s launched pandemic pie pop-up.

This year, I made some tweaks to a savory sweet potato gratin I’ve been enjoying every Thanksgiving for ages, and I love it even better. The original version was layered sweet potato slices baked in lots of thyme-infused cream; I pulled back the cream a bit, set the slices on their side, rather than laying them flat – for more interesting texture and visual appeal – and added sage butter to the equation. It’s a pretty fabulous indulgence, one that’s just as spectacular the next day. And the next.

Of course we have other recipes for you. Here is a chestnut-porcini stuffing that you can customize as you like.

Here’s my favorite recipe for Brussels Sprout Leaves with Mirepoix and Pancetta, adapted from a Paul Bertolli recipe in Chez Panisse Cooking. This year, I tried slicing the Brussels sprouts thin instead of separating every leaf — way less time-consuming, and almost as good.

Here is our recipe for dry-brined turkey, for which you can use a small bird (or large).

And here’s a recipe for dry-brined turkey that includes a really good Cognac sauce.

Happy Thanksgiving. Stay healthy and safe.

And remember that holiday is a time for reflection and redress; the story about Native Americans celebrating joyfully with friendly pilgrims is a myth and a lie, as Brett Anderson’s excellent New York Times story explains.

Head over to our Cooks Without Borders Community Forum with any questions about Thanksgiving cooking; we’ll be happy to answer them.

RECIPE: Chestnut-Porcini Stuffing

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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.

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Shrimp and grits from Marcus Samuelsson's new 'The Rise' is the best we've ever eaten. Ever.

I’ve eaten my share of shrimp and grits in my time. OK, maybe more than my share. As a longtime newspaper food editor, then a restaurant critic for 8 years, I’ve eaten more than my share of everything.

Among all those shrimp and all those many grits, the best rendition I’ve ever eaten — by far — was one I prepared in my own kitchen just last week. The credit goes to Marcus Samuelsson, in whose new cookbook — The Rise — I found the awesome recipe.

I’m in process of cooking my way through the book in order to write a review, but I wanted to share the dish with you while okra is still in season (it will likely end very soon). The recipe — which Samuelsson calls “Papa Ed’s Shrimp and Grits” — was inspired by, and serves as an homage to, Ed Brumfield, executive chef of Red Rooster, Samuelsson’s restaurant in Harlem.

Most of the shrimp and grits I’ve eaten have been a basic low-country style, the shrimp poached in a rich gravy and spooned over cheesy grits. Toni Tipton-Martin sheds valuable light on the history of the dish and its styles in her much lauded (and wonderful) book Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking:

“Shrimp and grits are everywhere on restaurant menus, but harder to find in African American cookbooks unless you know what you’re looking for: The historian Arturo Schomburg called it ‘breakfast shrimp with hominy.’ In Gullah-Geechee parlance, it’s gone by names like shrimp gravy or smuttered shrimp. Casual Louisiana Creoles might call it breakfast shrimp with tomatoes.”

It is the more tomatoey, Creole direction Samuelsson takes for the dish in The Rise; it includes a small dice of okra, as well. The lively sauce, smoky with paprika and spicy with cayenne, is bright and piquant enough to beautifully balance those cheesy, rich grits. (Are you hungry yet?) It’s much like a quick shrimp gumbo served on grits.

My favorite shrimp and grits ever is not difficult to make. It calls for fish stock (we used shrimp stock, a substitution that’s acknowledged in our adaptation of the recipe). Because we’re in the habit of buying shrimp in the shell and freezing the shells for the purpose, we were able to whip up a quick shell stock before making it; you’ll find the method toward the end of our shrimp, andouille sausage and gumbo recipe. I suspect purchased low-sodium chicken broth would also work, as would clam juice diluted in with water and chicken broth in a 2:1:1 proportion.

Though I used fresh okra, as the recipe specifies, if you can’t find fresh, I also suspect frozen would work fine. (I like to buy an extra pound of beautiful okra during the season, which I trim and freeze in a zipper bag, just to have for such moments. It freezes beautifully, so if you do see it, consider grabbing some extra.) Just let it thaw before you dice it.

If you make this dish, I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. I could even imagine, if okra is still around then, making it the centerpiece of a Black Food MattersThanksgiving dinner.

RECIPE: Papa Ed’s Shrimp and Grits