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Los Angeles Times
20-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Spring forward with 5 recipes from the season's best cookbooks
Fall gets all of the hype, but spring has always been my favorite season. Especially here in Los Angeles. As ripe lemons fall to the ground, clusters of kumquats take their place in neighborhood trees. Star jasmine blossoms into little white pinwheels, their sweet, floral scent hanging in the air. Papery bougainvillea weave their way through fences like fuschia-colored ivy and thorny bushes bloom with roses for a few brief weeks. Spring is also when a wave of cookbooks reaches our bookstore shelves, encouraging us to take advantage of the season. This year, there are plenty of L.A. chefs and food figures offering recipes that celebrate our unique local bounty, like Kogi BBQ chef Roy Choi's ode to vegetables in 'Choi of Cooking,' or Fishwife founder Becca Millstein's approachable, picnic-perfect ideas in 'The Fishwife Cookbook.' Of course, the temperate and malleable nature of our region also makes it easy to experiment with cuisines and cooking styles that might not be as familiar. Chef Eric Adjepong's 'Ghana to the World' cookbook encouraged me to visit my neighborhood's African markets for the first time, to source ingredients like egusi seeds for a Ghanaian take on granola. In Caroline Pardilla's 'Margarita Time' cookbook with over 60 takes on the classic tequila cocktail, bartender Shannon Mustipher shares a version with hibiscus in homage to her hometown of Charleston, S.C. Though the port city is on the opposite coast, it blooms with hibiscus flowers this time of year, just as it does here in L.A. Just like sunlight and strawberries, culinary inspiration is abundant in the spring. Especially when armed with the Food team's annual roundup of our favorite new cookbook releases, with many this year focused on streamlining recipes and doing more with less. Our food writers (and some of our favorite local chefs) also mined our shelves for the cookbooks we can't live without, including vintage titles, out-of-print pamphlets and memoirs from the industry's most looming figures. To get you started, here are five recipes pulled from this year's crop, including a pineapple-ginger drink and egusi granola that makes its way into a peppery arugula salad. Eating out this week? Sign up for Tasting Notes to get our restaurant experts' insights and off-the-cuff takes on where they're dining right now. Don't be intimidated by the cook time for this simple cocktail. Most of it is spent preparing the hibiscus syrup, which yields a large batch that can be also be used in seltzer water or water with a splash of lemon. Once the syrup has cooled, it's just a matter of rimming a chilled glass with salt and shaking up the ingredients with the recipe. Cook time: 90 minutes. Chef and 'Ghana to the World' author Eric Adjepong grew up drinking tea his mother would brew with leftover ginger and pineapple peels and dried fruit and herbs. In his cookbook, he offers a refreshing version that's served chilled and topped off with Club the recipe. Cook time: 5 minutes I've long been a fan of egusi soup, a West African dish that calls for grinding the protein-rich melon seeds. In 'Ghana to the World,' Adjepong adds them to an everyday granola recipe that also features virgin coconut oil and coconut nectar. Buy the seeds whole or pre-ground from an African market or online — Adjepong recommends Jeb the recipe. Cook time: 2 hour 30 minutes. Makes about 3.5 cups. Adjepong's egusi granola can be eaten on its own or used as a topping on your favorite salad or dessert. It adds a rich nuttiness to this arugula salad, also from his 'Ghana to the World' cookbook. The greens are further enhanced with tangy sorghum syrup in the sherry vinaigrette, crumbled goat cheese and pickled red the recipe. Cook time: 40 minutes. Serves 2 to 4. Ari Kolender, the chef and co-owner of Found Oyster and Queen St. Raw Bar & Grill, is behind some of my favorite seafood dishes in the city. It's not exaggerating to say that I dream about the scallop tostada at Found, and the way it perfectly tightropes between crunchy and meaty textures, with fatty, citrus, tart, herby flavors. Now, when I'm too lazy to drive from my Mid-City home to the East Hollywood seafood shack, I can make it at home in under 30 the recipe. Cook time: 20 minutes.
New York Times
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Chef's Favorite Dessert Is Also the Easiest to Make
Eating malva pudding for the first time feels like meeting a soul mate, its swirl of butter and sugar instantly familiar to the deep heart's core, its softness, somehow simultaneously fluffy and dense, thrilling and intimate. With each bite of the cream-soaked cake, there's a sense of wonder: I already know you so well, have we met before? And maybe you have — lucky you! In which case, each reunion must be pure joy. Or maybe malva pudding reminds you of the tacky chew of sticky toffee pudding or the milky sponge of tres leches. But why spend time trying to track down connections when those minutes are better spent getting this easy, fast dessert into the oven and eating it warm from the pan. Recipe: Malva Pudding Malva pudding originated in South Africa and is beloved there and throughout its diaspora, but its creation remains a mystery. The lack of concrete facts about its history seems less important than the dessert's strong foundation: tender cake seasoned with apricot jam and drenched in buttery sweetened cream. Those fundamentals remain intact as cooks around the world make and remake it. The chef Eric Adjepong initially tasted malva pudding at Madiba in Harlem, during its incarnation as a South African restaurant, and it instantly became his favorite dessert of all time. 'It just blew my mind,' he said. 'It is divine.' He composed a version for his restaurant, Elmina in Washington, D.C., and for his new cookbook, 'Ghana to the World: Recipes and Stories That Look Forward While Honoring the Past,' written with Korsha Wilson, who contributes to The New York Times. Even as Mr. Adjepong has gained national recognition through his appearances on 'Top Chef' and his hosting of Food Network shows, he continues to perfect recipes in the kitchen. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Washington Post
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
At the enticing new Elmina, Eric Adjepong brings Ghana into focus
We're just a few bites into a second course at the sleek new Elmina in Washington when our server acknowledges our smiles with a grin and a cry. 'Slap your momma, right?' he fairly shouts, using playful slang to describe a dish so delicious, it bests your mother's cooking. For sure. Dorothy Sietsema wouldn't recognize the fufu resting on a bar of braised goat in a bowl of peanut soup, but I suspect she'd polish off the combination, one of multiple sweet spots on the tasting menu created by former 'Top Chef' contestant and cookbook author Eric Adjepong at Elmina on 14th Street NW.
Washington Post
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Eric Adjepong's lamb burgers with onion jam channel West African flavors
Eric Adjepong sees his personal story in sankofa, a Ghanaian word and concept symbolized by a backward-facing bird flying forward. In practice, it speaks to the need to understand history to move into the future. It's a hallmark of the Ghanaian American chef's food and cooking, and it's what his debut cookbook, 'Ghana to the World,' is all about. That translates to a combination of both traditional and modern, updated West African recipes, such as waakye stew, jollof rice and Seared Grouper With Peanut Salsa.
Washington Post
05-03-2025
- General
- Washington Post
A spicy, herby peanut salsa adds punch and crunch to seared grouper
One of the most nourishing things about food is often overlooked in the conversation about health: The human connections it fosters. In his debut cookbook, 'Ghana to the World,' written with Korsha Wilson, Ghanaian American chef Eric Adjepong taps into the power of food to connect us with past generations, who we are today and to others.
