Items15The creator’s order
  1. 1Edna LewisEdna LewisBorn Apr 13, 1916In The Taste of Country Cooking, Lewis remembers gathering blackberries around Freetown, Virginia. People ate them warm or with cream in summer and put up wine, jelly, and jars for winter. Follow the berries through both seasons to see how much the taste of one meal depended on work done months…0
  2. 2Soleil HoSoleil HoIn “Let’s Call It Assimilation Food,” Ho remembers the long trips their grandparents made to Chicago for ingredients like rice noodles, Maggi seasoning, and fish sauce. One of those purchases could make an ordinary slice of Wonder Bread taste a little more like home. The essay gives family…0
  3. 3Krishnendu RayKrishnendu RayIn The Migrant’s Table, Bengali American households tell Ray about breakfasts of dry cereal or toast and workday lunches of pizza or a sandwich. Rice still matters at dinner. His interviews make you notice how much the hour and place of a meal can affect which traditions a household keeps.0
  4. 4Rachel RoddyRachel RoddyRoddy’s essay on pasta e ceci places the chickpea soup on Rome’s informal Tuesday and Friday menu. On those days, she can look for it on a trattoria board or smell chickpeas cooking as she walks through Testaccio. It is a good place to see how a neighborhood keeps a shared calendar through lunch.0
  5. 5Vertamae Smart-GrosvenorVertamae Smart-GrosvenorIn Vibration Cooking, Smart-Grosvenor’s Uptight Ragout uses leftover meat, chicken legs, rice, and whatever fresh vegetables are on hand. She writes that she never weighs or measures the ingredients for her dishes. Start here for an example of how her Geechee food writing carries knowledge in the…0
  6. 6Priya KrishnaPriya KrishnaKrishna’s essay about dahi toast starts at her family’s Saturday breakfast table. Her mother Ritu put a yogurt filling between slices of sourdough after discovering the bread on a California trip. The ketchup-versus-cilantro-chutney dispute is half the fun and a reminder that even one family has…0
  7. 7Gustavo ArellanoGustavo ArellanoBorn Feb 3, 1979Taco USA opens by asking what is so special about a burrito and describes two astronauts making breakfast burritos in orbit. Arellano uses the wrapped meal to follow Mexican food across American towns. Read him for the people and places you can miss when the dish becomes a standard order.0
  8. 8Madhur JaffreyMadhur JaffreyBorn Aug 13, 1933Jaffrey’s Climbing the Mango Trees follows the lunches her school friends brought from home in Delhi. Opening their tiffin carriers together gave her tastes of dishes from Muslim households as well as the ones she already knew. The school lunch break becomes a way to read about differences that…0
  9. 9Jill DamatacJill DamatacIn Dirty Kitchen, Damatac starts with the ordinary second kitchen where households in the Philippines can do the frying or pluck a chicken. Its position out of sight gives her a way to write about the parts of her family’s life they kept private while living undocumented in the United States. Start…0
  10. 10M. F. K. FisherM. F. K. FisherBorn Jul 3, 1908In the wartime book How to Cook a Wolf, Fisher makes a breakfast of generously buttered toast with jam or honey. That meal lets her question the expectation that a household has to put several prepared dishes on the table at every sitting. The chapter is as interested in the cook’s morning as it is…0