Hello Friends,

You may have noticed that immigrants are at the core of storytelling here at Good Food. That's because everything alive moves. Not just people, but food too. I don't even know how to describe what American food would be without the migration of seeds and plants along with their people or conquerors. Onions came from Western Asia and Northern Africa, potatoes from Peru, corn from Mexico and Central America, and eggplant from India. I could go on and on. Seeds are a foundational part of the patrimony of a people's culture. 

This week, Israeli forces destroyed the Seed Multiplication Unit of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)’s Seed Bank, located in the southern West Bank city of Hebron. Wiping out a people's seed heritage is a very particular type of targeted violence.

People work with what they have at hand to sustain themselves, which creates culinary cultures. I recently interviewed a historian focused on Chicana and Chicano studies who used the word "rasquachismo."  It's a theory developed by Chicano scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto to characterize making the most from the least, combining inventiveness with a survivalist attitude. He was focused on Latinx art and culture, but I think it works beautifully with food culture as well. Rasquachismo is a quality many immigrants have in common, and why, in my opinion, what they create is greater than the sum of their stellar parts. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

This week, two segments focus on authors who have written about how political conflict and other circumstances cause people to move and how they maintain home through the kitchens they create and the food they make. 

Feel the anger, then find solace. Making food is a good place.

The Week's Dining Highlights from the GF Team

From Evan: Host of Good Food.
After you do an interview about the Persian stew Ghorme Sabzi (coming soon), you need to eat Ghorme Sabzi. The iconic stew is made with an extravagant mix of herbs, kidney beans, and dried lime, which lends it its characteristic sourness. This version from Kabob by Faraj on Pico Blvd. was made with beef shank.

From Gillian: Supervising Producer of Good Food and voice of the market report.
I’m back in town, which means I’m back at RVR, where there’s a new Aji Sando on the menu. The Spanish mackerel is breaded and fried, and brightened up with chopped-up pieces of salted Eureka lemons. It’s in between two pieces of Japanese white bread with the crusts cut off, just like mom did when you were a kid. 

From Laryl: Senior Director of Good Food.  
I went to the Hotel Bel Air to shoot a video of Chef Joe Garcia's Heirloom Tomato Cucumber Salad with Tomato Coulis, olive oil, Thai basil, fennel pollen, and salt. Then I ate it. It's summer perfection. As a bonus, we have the recipe for the tomato coulis.

From Elina: Digital Producer of Good Food. 
I went to a communal dinner at Granor Farm in Southwest Michigan, where Abra Berens (who we’ve interviewed) is the overseeing chef. This course was delicious. The Eggplant Caponata sat atop baked Gnocchi alla Romana, which we don't see enough of.

 In The Last Sweet Bite, Michael Shaikh looks to those who are preserving their food and culinary traditions in the aftermath of displacement and global violence. The introduction of his book is one of the most powerful statements about what is lost when people leave home that I've ever read. "A groundbreaking combination of travel writing, memoir, and cookbook, [the book] uncovers how humanity’s appetite for violence shapes what’s on our plate."

How hope survives in a single recipe. "Food has never been more important in creating a peaceful world," says Lee Svitak Dean. She and her sister Linda Svitak work in Minnesota and have collaborated on Kitchens of Hope: Immigrants Share Stories of Resilience and Recipes from Home. The book started as a cookbook and evolved to include personal narratives, giving voice to people who come from widely different circumstances but are all using food as a way to hold onto what was left behind. 

Toni Tipton-Martin has either written or shepherded some of the most important culinary works of this century. Her mission has been to celebrate African American cookbook history and the people whose stories haven’t been told. With the publication of The Jemima Code, Toni's annotated bibliography of her extensive African American cookbook collection, she reshaped the landscape of known sources for historians, chefs, and home cooks. Toni now is the editor-in-chief of the ATK publication Cook's Country. With access to the extensive recipe files of ATK, she and Morgan Bolling, executive editor of Cook's Country, collaborated on When Southern Women Cook: History, Lore, and 300 Recipes with Contributions from 70 Women Writers. Please make the Pat in the Pan Biscuits above. 

Mark Kurlansky doesn't only write deep dive single-subject monographs like Cod or onions. He writes fiction too, and his latest, Cheesecake, looks at one block in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, starting in the 1970s, chronicling gentrification seen through the lens of cheesecake. Mark says, "I wanted to write a novel about gentrification on the Upper West Side. And completely apart from that, I've long been fascinated by the odd fact that the first known printed recipe, 160 BCE, is a recipe for cheesecake, and that this recipe is totally incomprehensible." What an idea for a novel!

Tomatoes are at their peak of quality and quantity at our farmers markets. Chef Joe Garcia culinary director of the @hotelbelair says, "The tomatoes, as the seasons change and they taste more like what a tomato should taste like, that defines what I do with them. Where they are right now, which I think is the peak, I try to serve them in their more natural state." Gillian also checks in with Phil Rhodes whose family has been farming in Ivanhoe neal Visalia since the 1940s. Their farm is Country Rhodes Family Farm and the variety Chef Joe featured is Magic Mountain.