Cultures meet and meld deliciously in 3 new cookbooks

Have you ever chosen a travel destination for its cuisine, perhaps New Orleans for beignets, Tokyo for sushi, or Milan for risotto? Food tourism has motivated scores of global travelers to push out into the unknown to experience “authentic” culture and history through local dishes. Cookbook authors have long targeted readers eager to re-create recipes from their travels. 

But cuisines don’t have firm lines around them the way geopolitics does. Each new wave of arrivals to a place adds layers to a culture’s food. Flavors are adapted and blended. New cultural identities emerge as part of a messy, joyful process. 

In the world of cookbooks, this trend is reflected in recent titles that sometimes tack on -ish to signal a collection of recipes that deftly tiptoes between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange. The -ish trend has been building from a simmer, emerging just before the pandemic with “Indian-ish: Recipes and Antics From a Modern American Family” by Priya Krishna in 2019. The author, in collaboration with her mother, developed new recipes to tempt her children’s multicultural palates. 

More recently, in 2022, Michael Twitty authored “Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew,” which explores the culinary intersections of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. 

Mix in 30-second cooking videos that proliferate across social media, and the trend has come to a roiling boil.

“More and more people are disavowing [authenticity] ... hence the ‘ish,’” says Anya von Bremzen, author of “National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home.” “It announces that this is not going to be the authentic grandmotherly cookbook.”

That doesn’t mean these cookbooks don’t offer homey and nourishing recipes. It means recipe creators are transforming “authentic” recipes into something new based on their experiences and preferences as a way to acknowledge the changing culture around them. 

“There are so many other identities that are coming across through food,” says von Bremzen of the trend. And cookbook authors are saying, “‘We all know that authenticity is a marketing tool, and that’s all it is.’” 

Expanding Latin flavors

Marisel Salazar understands what it means to exist in between. As a self-described “third-culture kid,” she wrote her cookbook “Latin-ish: More Than 100 Recipes Celebrating American Latino Cuisines” for people who are ni aquí ni allá, neither here nor there, who struggle to be Latin enough or American enough. It’s also for people who simply love the spicy, sweet, salty, and crunchy foods of Latin American gastronomy. Each recipe includes a short history lesson to reveal roots in pre-European Indigenous foods. And yet, “Latin-ish” also offers a cultural snapshot of our time. Salazar expands the Southwest-focused culinary map beyond nachos piled with shredded cheddar to include “new” regions like Floribbean (Florida’s intermingling of Caribbean, Hispanic, Italian, and Chinese immigrants), Nuyorican (New York’s Puerto Rican neighborhoods exchanging with other Caribbean communities), and Latino Midwestern (shaped by Mexicans and other Latinos migrating to work in agriculture), to name a few.

Now that the burrito has escaped from Taco Bell and into mainstream American kitchens, so many of Salazar’s recipes have a familiar ring: San Diego fish tacos, tamal pie, New Mexico breakfast burritos, Philly cheesesteak quesadillas. Others communicate a new space between cultures: plantain upside-down cake, collard greens empanadas, and guava cream cheese doughnuts. Think Fritos corn chips aren’t “authentic” enough? Tell that to the scores of New Mexicans who have loved Fritados pie since the mid-20th century (bonus if you serve it in a sliced-open, single-serving bag of Fritos as a walking taco).

Riffing on Greek cuisine 

It’s clear Georgina Hayden loves her yiayia, her Greek grandma, but she goes her own way in “Greekish: Everyday Recipes With Greek Roots.” She’s a native North Londoner who grew up above her grandparents’ Greek Cypriot taverna. The food stylist, cook, and writer is a veteran of the British food scene. She’s also a multicultural mom cooking for her “Greekish” daughters and British husband. This is her third cookbook – following two earlier cookbooks more grounded in preserving “authentic” Greek recipes – and the one that she found the most difficult to write.

“When you write about tradition or authenticity, you can in some degree hide behind tradition,” she told CBS Morning’s “The Dish” in June. “If you’ve got a problem with my moussaka, go and talk to my yiayia because she taught me how to make it. Whereas when you are writing recipes that are 100% yours, there is nowhere to hide.”

And yet, Hayden writes in her introduction that it was liberating to craft recipes for dishes she simply wanted to eat without “the crushing weight of responsibility” for accurately representing her ancestral culture. Thus, her tantalizing, Greek-infused recipes for novelties such as feta, cherry, and white chocolate chip cookies. For busy weekday family life, there is one-pot chicken thighs and rice with piquant flavorings of Greek yogurt and salty kefalotyri cheese, or the fancy-casual psari plaki (baked fish with tomatoes and olives). “Greekish” is also a visual delight. Hayden writes in such a warm, cheerful voice that you’ll be craving dishes with fennel, hummus, and phyllo, and want to grill “things on sticks” while squirting everything with fresh lemon juice. Suddenly, you are Greekish, too.

Updating Polish cooking

Michal Korkosz published “Polish’d: Modern Vegetarian Cooking From Global Poland” in 2023, but it deserves a mention in this roundup. Korkosz strives to release traditional Polish cooking from its meat-and-potatoes-heavy stereotype to forge a cuisine that is as fresh as it is Polish. This is Korkosz’s second vegetarian cookbook. His first drew heavily on his childhood memories and on the kitchen skills honed by watching his grandma cook and then deconstructing her recipes. At the time, he writes, he sought to stay within what he understood to be historical Polish dishes. 

As he pursued a graduate degree in international relations and sociology, his theses focused on culinary diplomacy and politically-shaped patterns of eating. He interviewed Polish members of parliament and had them articulate what they consider to be a “distinguishing” feature of Polish cuisine. (A traditional grated salad with fresh vegetables, apples, carrots, and cabbage was one quick reply.) But he also realized that casting backward to define Polish cuisine and analyze national identity ignored the present cooking and eating practices of his friends. 

“Polish cooking has always been multicultural,” Korkosz writes, a patchwork of regional recipes influenced by Eastern, Turkish, Ruthenian, German, French, Italian, and Jewish traditions. His cookbook aims to capture 21st-century Polish cuisine as it shifts into vegetable-forward dishes seasoned with spice blends like the warm and nutty dukkah or earthy za’atar. Yes, there are pierogies stuffed with goat cheese, honey, and marjoram. But there are also abundant dishes with tofu as the protein and the “new Sunday roast” – a head of cauliflower roasted and seasoned with chanterelle sauce, rye croutons, and chives. This is a cookbook that captures the appetites and hunger of young Europeans who love a good Parisian brunch café, reflected in a recipe for a gooey, open-faced croque madame that swaps out ham for eggplant, but also retreats into the familiarity of pickles and dill, cornerstones of Polish cuisine.

So what is truly “authentic” food? Is it simply a culinary moment in time captured in a specific place? Von Bremzen says while her cultural food explorations poked holes in the creation stories around some dishes, she emerged with a greater respect for cherished culinary beliefs. 

“Things are what we believe them to be, especially around food. Because there is no [food] truth,” she says. “So who knows what awaits us and what food trends will come out of that.”