#somali-cuisine

#somali-cuisine

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.

Though they were only serving in town for one night, the chefs and staff behind the Mexico City supernova Masala y Maíz managed to cause what felt like a temporary ripple in L.A. dining during their pop-up last week. It reminded this diner that despite the era's current dedication to culinary and cultural boundaries - you should only cook what you know, write what you know - a spirit of mixture and melding can actually lead to something extraordinary, and not cringey, in practice.

The capital of my home country, and the location of my new restaurant, Marcus Addis Restaurant & Sky Bar, is both the center of Ethiopia and a core component of our nation's culture. Restaurants and artistic institutions go hand and hand in Addis. Here, galleries, museums, and markets come together to create a steady, electric rhythm that comes alive in the city's restaurants and kitchens.

At the center of the physical space - a fomer Café Cerés location near Minnehaha Falls - stands a gold-tiled structural pillar that the owners want to turn into a literal pillar of the community. Customers snap Polaroids, tack them to the pillar and add handwritten notes about where they're from or their hopes for the future. The goal is to eventually cover the entire surface.

A small splash can brighten the sweetness of corn and add a subtle herbal lift. It should enhance - not dominate. Think of it as a squeeze of lime, ever so popular in Mexican food, in spirit form.

I made a pastry cream with saffron, and bloomed it in the milk for the pastry cream - no vanilla, because we really want the saffron to shine brightly. I decided to make white chocolate tempered with saffron, which I blended and dipped the pastry into, which creates that nice little crunch. It's very saffron-forward, but the white chocolate helps break it up.

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.

Here's a healthy dinner idea that's so hearty and satisfying, it will please everyone around the table: this Moroccan Chickpea Stew! It's ultra flavorful: the sweet potatoes get tender and creamy, the chickpeas soak up all those gorgeous spices, and everything comes together in one pot. I love serving this stew with quinoa for a tasty plant based dinner that's also gluten free. If you like, a dollop of Greek yogurt: and most definitely a squeeze of lemon to brighten the flavors!

The spicy lamb grinder is a variation on Bar Gernika's lamb grinder, which combines some of the best aspects of a gyro, French dip, and cheesesteak into one flavor-packed sandwich. Served on crusty and fluffy French bread, the lamb is tender and thinly shaved, reminiscent of shaved meat from a gyro. The meat is topped with cheese, grilled onions, and peppers, and the whole thing comes served with a side of au jus for that French dip experience.

There is an art to a proper meat pie, according to the Seattle chef and butcher Kevin Smith. The American pot pie frustrates him because it lets the pot do the heavy lifting. "The real way of doing it, for me, is to make a freestanding pie," Smith says. The pastry should hold itself up, a technique cooks in England have honed over centuries. "That is so much more theatrical."

India is a country with countless regional specialties, each with its own history, culture, and unique use of spices. I wanted our guests to experience that variety and feel as though they were traveling across India one meal at a time.

In this cursed timeline of one alarming headline after another, I dream-on a daily basis-of shutting my laptop, plugging in some earphones, and diving headfirst into a steaming container of rotisserie chicken. (I have a whole rotisserie routine of arranging various sauce cups around the bird, which usually includes honey mustard, buffalo sauce, and ahem, Jezebel sauce.) But, alas, a new report by the Wall Street Journal has killed my high.