The spices are merely a vessel for culture, community, storytelling, and politics. The recipes were so fresh, simple, and seasonal. That's not the version of South Asian food that most people know.
Every spring, Jews all over the world gather together to celebrate Passover, which celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. They read the Haggadah, the story of the Jews' escape, and eat a variety of traditional foods that make up the Seder meal.
Mamak stalls in Malaysia are where everything comes together - after work, after football, where the night ends or carries on. When I look at Morley's in London, I see that same energy and sense of community, which makes this feel bigger than just a collaboration.
Walking through the narrow bylanes of Mylapore neighbourhood at dusk is like watching a sepia-tinted postcard of Madras coming to life and gently reasserting itself over the Chennai of today. The 7th-century Kapaleeshwarar Temple, the fulcrum of commerce and culture, draws the devout into its timeless force field, and on nearby Pitchu Pillai Lane, a small crowd gathers around the Raghul Kuzhi Paniyaram street stall to buy kuzhi paniyarams: spongy orbs of pan-fried batter speckled with mustard seeds.
Med Salleh, which has has one Malaysian restaurant in Bayswater and two Vietnamese ones in Westbourne Grove and Earl's Court, has just added a fourth branch in Kentish Town. The newest site is Malaysian-focused, like the original, serving a menu of street food inspired by Med's upbringing in Malaysia, including dishes from his hometown of Kampar as well as flavours from Ipoh and Penang.
Irish desserts are, in one word, resourceful. They have to be; in a nation that grappled for centuries with conflict, famine, and outright war, luxurious ingredients were not accessible to most people. Instead, the Irish turned to local ingredients like sea moss, apples, and an impressive array of dairy products to satisfy their cravings for something sweet.
Kolamba showcases Sri Lankan home cooking as it's eaten across the island. Bold spices, deeply layered curries, fragrant rice and freshly made roti, all designed to be shared. Hoppers (also known as appa/appam) are a Sri Lankan staple: thin and lacy at the edges, soft and slightly spongy in the middle, and just as good at breakfast as they are at dinner.
Soaked and blended, cashews become a stand-in for heavy cream, keeping stuffed shells, soups, pasta sauces, and desserts luxuriously dairy-free. Toasted and roughly chopped, they add crunch to salads, curries, stir-fries, and more. There are so many reasons to love cooking with these seeds-that's right, "cashew nut" is technically a misnomer, since they grow outside the fruit rather than inside a hard shell like true nuts.
A true one-pot meal, this Indian-spiced rice is made with store-bought spicy simmer sauce, paired with tofu and cauliflower. It's hearty, filling and you can load it up with a range of herbs or crunchy nuts as toppings. We are staying in a little loft in San Francisco right now, trying to find our next place to live. The kitchen is tiny: two electric burners, a microwave, roughly 2 feet of counter space.
Even though there was an intense religious ceremony happening right outside their car, Bourdain apparently wanted to feed his crew after a long day of filming. With not much more than "a few handfuls of cooked rice available" during the shoot, he knew they were "hot, hungry, and very far from home." And Woolever said that meant they were ready to eat "some resolutely Western fast food chicken and biscuits."
Lunar New Year, also known as Chinese Lunar New Year and Spring Festival, is one of the world's biggest holidays. The 15-day celebration is not only observed in China, Singapore, Malaysia, and other Asian countries but by 2 billion people worldwide. That said, there are other Asian countries with their own, distinct Lunar New Year traditions, and like China's, they've been around for thousands of years.
Variations of coconut fish curry abound up and down the Swahili Coast, so much so that the dish is often broadly referred to as East African fish curry. This version of coconut fish curry leans heavily on xawaash, a spice blend that is at the heart of Somali cuisine. This Is my malaay qumbe, coconut fish curry. Variations of coconut fish curry can be found all throughout East Africa.
Christmas is lovely, but my kids think Chinese new year is by far the best holiday. I might be biased, but, unusually, I am inclined to agree with them. As my eldest puts it, New clothes, cash, booze and food what's not to love? There's the added bonus that cash is absolutely more than acceptable in fact, it's de rigueur, so there's no shopping for mundane socks and smelly candles. Chinese new year is full of rituals and, just as at Christmas, every family has its own, but they are all variations on a theme. Symbolism looms large in Chinese culture, and at new year it centres around messages of prosperity, luck and family.
This creamy Spinach Lentil Curry is comforting, richly spiced without being heavy and made with just a few pantry staple ingredients in about 30 minutes. Prep Time: 10 minutes. Cook Time: 20 minutes. Servings: Makes 4 servings of approximately 1.5 cups each. Nutrition: 269 calories with 17g protein + 19g fibre. Dietary Info: Vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free. Difficulty: Easy! One-pan recipe with minimal ingredients and prep needed.
When it comes to traybakes, chicken is the undisputed hero, because it's endlessly adaptable and perfect for carrying bold, global flavours. First up, some eastern Mediterranean chicken meatballs, flecked with feta and black olives for a sharp, savoury punch. Then a Persian-style saffron chicken and rice; the rice cooks with the chicken, absorbing all the flavours of the sunshine-yellow saffron and crisping up at the edges.
Tanya Holland, especially among Bay Area foodies, needs no introduction. She's the award-winning celebrity chef behind Oakland's Brown Sugar Kitchen, B-Side BBQ and Town Fare, and the author of multiple cookbooks. She competed on Top Chef, hosted Tanya's Kitchen Table on the Oprah Winfrey Network and today serves on the James Beard Foundation's Awards Committee. For the Super Bowl this year, she'll be at a cousin's 80th birthday party.
I have yet to see anyone eating mulligatawny in an Indian restaurant perhaps unsurprisingly, given that it's a product of the British occupation, and the very name has an off-putting Victorian feel, which is a shame, because it's aged a lot better than imperialism. Based, historians think, on the Madrassi broth molo tunny, it's a lovely, gently spiced winter soup that's well worth rediscovering. Prep 15 min Cook 50 min Serves 4-6
My better half was quite used to me waking up on a Sunday morning and saying, "I think we'll go to Cork today, or London." Indeed, on one occasion it was France, as the BBC weather forecast informed me that it was "calm down around the Lizard", and so would be a perfectly calm sailing from Rosslare to Cherbourg. Ringing Irish Ferries to make a booking, the somewhat startled chap had said "Do you realise, missus, it's now 11am and the boat sails at 4pm?"
Two key elements at the heart of Portuguese eating culture are couvert and pastry. A couvert, comprising bread, butter, pickled or garlic carrots, cheese and fish pate (often sardine), comes as standard at every Portuguese restaurant and family dinner table alike, as it does at our restaurant Luso, where our fish paste is an ode to this way of dining.
Because my mom mainly learned to cook from my grandma Tina, I grew up eating renditions of Tina's recipes quite frequently. A Tina classic that always made the weekly rotation at our house was cauliflower and rice. It was a very simple soupy, porridge-y mix of cauliflower and rice cooked down in chicken stock. There wasn't much to it, but it always provided a homey sense of comfort.
Filipino food is the kind of thing everyone should try at least once, but it's such a varied cuisine that it bears coming back often. Often bold, bright, and playful, Filipino food is full of life. And, unless you know a very ambitious home cook, there's nowhere better to have your first Filipino food experience than at your local Filipino restaurant.
The star of the show, the meatballs, get seasoned with a mix of crumbled feta, smoked paprika, and cumin, resulting in a tender, flavorful meatball that tastes far more complex than its trim ingredient list might suggest. The rice underneath is just as fun. Speckled with salty pistachios and plump golden raisins, and perfumed by a cardamom pod and a stray cinnamon stick, it strikes the ideal ratio of salty to sweet, contrasting with the savory meatballs.
Entering Korai Kitchen in Jersey City for its weekly Dawat dinner series feels like entering owner and chef Nur-E Gulshan Rahman and daughter Nur-E Farhana Rahman's home. "Dawat" is the Bengali word for "invitation," and people are invited to partake in the family's only dine-in service, a three-hour BYOB meal full of homestyle, halal, Bangladeshi food by way of Dhaka for $95. "This is my mom's interpretation of Bangladeshi food," Nur-E Farhana explains during the meal.
