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Thursday, January 14, 2021
GO! magazine — A&E in Northeast Oregon
BEYOND BANANA BREAD ~
2020 cookbook collection
Bill Addison
Los Angeles Times
(TNS) — Cookbooks are always about connection — written to share the love of a cuisine or celebrate ancestry, or sometimes to eulogize broken bonds and safeguard history.
If you’ve run out of ideas or motivation for preparing your next meal, if you’re longing to be somewhere far away or want to explore fresh approaches to comfort food at home, or if you’re
thinking about the broader context of food in our troubled culture, take heart and inspiration from these standout books of the season.
In Bibi’s
Kitchen
Hawa Hassan
— a native of So-
malia who mod-
eled in New York
before found-
ing the bottled
sauce company
Basbaas — has
assembled a proj-
ect that is equal
parts vital docu-
mentary, compel-
ling scholarship
and cookbook.
With food
writer Julia
Turshen, she collects stories and recipes from bibis (grand-
mothers) who represent eight countries in East Africa: Er-
itrea, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa
and the islands of Madagascar and Comoros.
Dishes as varied as stewed plantains, denningvleis (lamb
braised in tamarind), cornmeal porridges, spaghetti with
spiced beef, chicken biryani and steak sandwiches doused
with piri piri shed light on history, colonization, cultural
connections and the daily lives of these women and their
families. Try one of Hassan’s favorite comforts: digaag qumbe,
a spiced chicken stew with potatoes and carrots in a yogurt
and coconut sauce (served over rice or, as Hassan prefers,
over a bed of spinach) with banana alongside as traditional
accompaniment.
Milk, Spice &
Curry Leaves
Ruwanmali
Samarakoon-
Amunugama
grew up in Can-
ada; her parents
immigrated to
Toronto from Sri
Lanka, and her
mother prepared
family recipes
from the island’s
lush, central
hill country to
keep her chil-
dren connected
to their heritage. As a teenager, Samarakoon-Amunugama
began taking detailed notes on her mother’s cooking and on
dishes she tasted during trips to Sri Lanka. After decades of
observing a lack of Sri Lankan cookbooks on Canadian store
shelves, she decided to help fill the void with her own collec-
tion of recipes.
Samarakoon-Amunugama sets the scene (“My late grand-
mother’s home in Peradeniya sits on a property that you
wish only to walk barefoot upon”) and lays out the foundation
of the cuisine: Coconut is a bearing wall for flavors; onions,
garlic, ginger, chiles, curry leaves and spice blends become
frequent building blocks.
She makes it clear where substitutions might be accept-
able (frozen and even dried coconut can stand in for fresh)
and where they are not (store-bought curry powder is no
replacement for roasting and grinding your own). Her careful
instructions and adaptations for North American cooks cul-
minate rewardingly in the recipes such as peppered beef with
coconut milk and black mustard seeds, its clinging sauce by
turns rich and
spicy and sharp.
Parwana
I’ve been
longing to visit
Parwana Afghan
Kitchen in Ad-
elaide, Australia,
since ex-L.A.
Weekly restau-
rant critic Besha
Rodell wrote
about it for her
Australian Fare
column in the
New York Times
in March 2018.
The restau-
rant’s cookbook — written by Durkhanai Ayubi, who runs
the restaurant with her mother, Farida Ayubi, father, Zelmai
Ayubi, and four sisters — conveys far more than escapist
fantasies during a pandemic. Narratives between recipes
and evocative photos detail centuries of Afghan customs and,
more urgently, the modern political crises that led the Ayubi
family to flee Afghanistan to Pakistan and ultimately to
migrate to Australia. Farida
Ayubi’s recipes for jeweled rice dishes, herbed kabobs,
mantu (dumplings bathed in yogurt and tomato sauces)
and gently spiced sweets exist as remembrances and acts of
preservation.
“Parwana [the word is Farsi for ‘butterfly’] is underpinned
by my mother’s vision — her belief that through her knowl-
edge of the art of Afghan food, gifted to her from her mother
and her foremothers, she had been entrusted with a treasure
of old, a symbol of Afghanistan’s monumental and culturally
interwoven past.”
The Rise
The most
important cook-
book published
this year begins
with a manifes-
to: “Black food
is not monolith-
ic. It’s complex,
diverse and
delicious —
stemming from
shared experi-
ences as well as
incredible indi-
vidual creativ-
ity. Black food
is American
food, and it’s long past time that the artistry and ingenuity of
Black cooks were properly recognized.”
Megawatt chef Marcus Samuelsson teams with James
Beard Award-winning writer Osayi Endolyn to frame the sto-
ries and cultural contributions of more than 50 Black chefs,
journalists and activists.
Accompanying Endolyn’s perceptive, unflinching essays on
many of the featured talents are recipes Samuelsson devel-
oped with Yewande Komolafe and Tamie Cook that honor the
individuals.
There’s a gumbo inspired by Leah Chase; a saucy, okra-
embellished shrimp and grits as tribute to Ed Brumfield,
the executive chef at Samuelsson’s Red Rooster Harlem; and
spice-rubbed spare ribs with kimchi-style pickled greens as a
nod to Los Angeles chef Nyesha Arrington.
“The Rise” is as useful in the kitchen as it is meaningful on
your reading table. To spur further immersion, an invalu-
able resources section highlighting other chefs and media is
provided at the back of the book: It’s a conclusion and also a
beginning.
editor ’ s note :
The first part of this article was published
in last week’s GO! magazine. Look for
more in next week’s edition.