Pati Jinich’s Double-Stacked Shrimp and Cheese Tacos (Tacos Bravos de Toño) from TREASURES OF THE MEXICAN TABLE: Classic Recipes, Local Secrets (Mariner, 2021) Tacos bravos is very much in the Sonoran tradition of super-dressed, super-sauced, and super-cheesy shellfish dishes. It’s one of the specialties of Toño Contreras, the owner of Mariscos El Rey in Hermosillo. […]
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THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY: Amor Towles’s Fettucine Mio Amore Recipe
THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY: Amor Towles’s Fettucine Mio Amore One of my best friends growing up was an Italian American named Claudio, who lived in Milan. When we were boys in the 1970s and Claudio would come to New England for the summer, he would be horrified by the American insistence upon drowning all pasta in […]

THE SECRET KEEPER OF JAIPUR: Alka Joshi’s Aloo Gobi Matar Subji (Curried Vegetable)
THE SECRET KEEPER OF JAIPUR: Alka Joshi’s Aloo Gobi Matar Subji (Curried Vegetable) Growing up, whenever my mother wondered what to make for dinner, my brothers and I clamored for her Aloo Gobi Matar Subji or Potato-Cauliflower-Pea Curried Vegetable. I want you to taste my mother’s version of this delicious comfort food because it […]

Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s Falafel Recipe
Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s Falafel Recipe In You Are Not Alone, Cassandra and Jane follow Shay, learning more and more about her life, her likes, and her dislikes… she works out frequently, and loves the Greek restaurant close to her apartment. They even learn her favorite dishes. It’s there where Shay begins to doubt […]

Leesa Cross-Smith’s Pasta alla Norma Recipe
Leesa Cross-Smith’s Pasta alla Norma In This Close To Okay, my character Tallie encounters a man named Emmett on a bridge in the rain. He’s considering suicide and Tallie is a therapist but doesn’t tell him that. Instead, she plays him some music and talks to him, listens to him, shares her heart with him. […]

Stephanie Thornton Plymale’s Herb-Roasted Cornish Game Hens
Stephanie Thornton Plymale’s Herb-Roasted Cornish Game Hens I grew up homeless and was in the foster care system for much of my youth, so it’s hard to overstate how much my family, and the home we have created, mean to me. Designing beautiful spaces and sharing time in them with my loved ones is something […]

Ellen Feldman’s “Paris Never Leaves You” French Omelette
Ellen Feldman’s Paris Never Leaves You French Omelette Food plays a unique role in my novel, Paris Never Leaves You, not only for its intrinsic appeal but as an expression of Vivi’s search for her identity and the conflict between Charlotte’s past in Paris and their current life in New York. At one point, Vivi […]

Gail Tsukiyama’s “The Color of Air” Macanese-Style Portuguese Chicken
Gail Tsukiyama’s The Color of Air Macanese-Style Portuguese Chicken The Color of Air takes place in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawai’i in 1935, brimming with the influx of workers who had immigrated to the islands from China, Japan, the Philippines, and Portugal to work on the sugar and pineapple plantations. In my Japanese […]

Kelly McWilliams’s Homemade Mac and Cheese and Cauliflower Mac and Cheese
Kelly McWilliams’s Homemade Mac and Cheese and Cauliflower Mac and Cheese Agnes at the End of the World is a story about the power of hope and faith to help us surmount impossible odds. Agnes begins her journey as the victim of a fundamentalist cult based in northern Arizona, where medicine and contact with […]

Ruta Sepetys’s Traditional Red Sangria and Tortilla de Patatas
Ruta Sepetys’s A Taste of Spain: Traditional Red Sangria and Tortilla de Patatas Spain is a feast of sights, sounds, and smells. As you read The Fountains of Silence, I hope you can feel Madrid in 1957. The sunshine. The passion. The fear. The silence. Spain is also a culinary capital of the world. While working […]