When I cook for myself, the only real guideline I follow is the pursuit of taste – everything else is a suggestion. And sometimes, especially with a cuisine I’m not too familiar with, that means following a recipe literally. But more often than not, fun is the goal, which means steamed cabbage and carrots sprinkled with shichimi togarashi; or Red Stripe-marinated chicken, battered in potato starch, fried and slathered with misomayo; or, among friends, a whole baked snapper served alongside basil, fried shallots, sa tế and lettuce, for wrapping. Usually during this quest for taste, I realize what most reassures me at a given moment.
Recipe: Melon-and-Cho-Cho Salad
So it’s nice when a cookbook takes fun seriously, especially when its pursuit serves as the book’s compass, as is the case with chef and musician Denai Moore’s brilliant Jamaican cookbook, “Plentiful.” “Jamaican food is often misrepresented,” she writes, “stripped of its complexity and reduced to a meat-heavy cuisine.” Focusing exclusively on vegan dishes, she explores the groove lines and implicit connections between Jamaican cuisine and neighboring flavours. A column describing what reminds her of Jamaica reads like poetry, as she describes, among other things: “Callaloo with lots of garlic and onions. A freshly baked flaky patty (or two). Nutmeg-scented polenta (cornmeal) porridge. Captain’s hard dough bread. A very good festival on the beach.”
That complexity is also present in Moore’s recipes: scallion and cheddar biscuits with kimchi-tofu scramble and greens, ackee carbonara, brown stew noodle soup, rice-and-pea arancini, passion fruit-glazed donuts, jerk “pork” gyoza, a ginger-and-marzipan bread. They’re the kind of dishes that could seep in if you gave yourself the permission and authority to know yourself—rather than who you’re told to be.The expanse and space Moore gives us , is pretty exciting: I flipped through the pages and got dizzy.These meals felt new and familiar at the same time, in keeping with Moore’s edict: “Eat well, try new things, and be present with the food in front of you.”
It’s an act of grace to give diners a foundation for their culinary journey.
Jamaican cuisine is hardly unfamiliar with plant-based cooking, but that is rarely the centerpiece of the commonly exported wares. When I asked Moore why she chose to focus on vegan food, she said going vegan “hasn’t affected my relationship with Jamaican food at all. At least it made it stronger and deeper. I think veganism pushed me to get more creative in the kitchen, and recreating the dishes from my culture became a necessity.”
The challenge of introducing a cuisine to different cultures is not unique, although non-Eurocentric cuisines in the United States certainly bear the brunt. It can take the form of a strong emphasis on the fast-casual or a reluctance to view a culture’s broader culinary offerings in favor of what is considered less challenging. But there is a wealth of nuances in Jamaican food: this can also be seen in the Jamaican cookbooks that have hit shelves in recent years and in cookbooks from other cuisines that incorporate flavors and ingredients from the island. As a culture’s comfort with a kitchen increases, the ability to tolerate play may follow. But it’s worth asking which kitchens get this benefit of the doubt with little interference and why the hurdles presented to others are as high as they are.
It’s an act of grace to give diners a base to begin their journey, a map and an infinite number of directions to take – and each of us can join that game in our own way every time we step to the stove . Regardless of the kitchen we navigate, we bring our experiences with us. Describing in The New Yorker how the fusing of kitchens has crept into his own cooking, food and sports writer Danny Chau puts it right: “Honoring your appetite sometimes calls for unexpected moves.” And there’s a certain sanctity in honoring your desires: putting tastes, memories, and experiences together to find whatever it is in a meal that comforts you, and then work to share that with someone else or just enjoy it alone. to enjoy. We are truly experts in our pleasure.
Consequently, Moore’s melon-and-cho-cho salad is an exercise in navigating textures and flavors: Chayote, mint, sliced shallot, and almonds layer together to form a flavor that’s both instantly recognizable and unexpected. It reminds us that a home can truly be found wherever we want to make it, if we want to make it, and that we can bring what we find special in our kitchens, adapting and shifting and mixing and sharing as we go.
On the other hand, no matter our best efforts, taste often finds us when we least expect it: A while back, my friend and I walked into Mazesoba Shichi, a noodle shop in Tokyo, a stone’s throw from Shibuya Station. After we sat down, the flavors remembered dishes oceans away. And the restaurant’s soundtrack — a lilting reggae — sent me stunned into gulping silence. But maybe that shouldn’t have been too surprising: it just underlined the many different connections between us, which we may not be aware of, and reminded me of Moore’s comment at the beginning of “Plentiful”: “I’m a proud novice who wants to explore.”
