Books for Cooks: American cuisine a 'state of mind'
Chef's recipes draw from his own immigrant background
America is a land of immigrants — and nowhere is that more apparent than in the way we eat, whether in our homes, on the streets or in restaurants.
Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s latest book, New American Table (Wiley Hardcover, $40) celebrates the vast and delicious diversity — and the immigrant presence that helped spawn it — found in kitchens and cultures across the United States. That makes “American cuisine” especially hard to define.
“It’s a state of mind, which is diverse, open-minded, extremely friendly, regional and very curious,” says Samuelsson, who last year opened the acclaimed C-House Fish and Chops restaurant in the Affinia Chicago Hotel.
The New York-based chef, who has lived in the States since 1991, was in town last week for a book-signing event.
“When I was doing my cooking in Europe,” he says, “I wanted to live in a diverse nation, somewhere there’s a diverse dialogue happening. I’m many things — I’m African, I’m Swedish, I’m American — but I’m also an immigrant. It takes extremely open-minded people to celebrate that diversity. I don’t know any country in the world” that does it, from a culinary perspective, like the United States.
“That’s why I went to Oakland and Kansas, and the back side of Las Vegas” to do research for the book, which took him four years and countless trips to complete.
While Samuelsson believes this culinary movement is uniquely American, “it is happening all over the world, and Europe is probably next.” Witness, he says, the Turkish influence in Germany, tastes from the former Yugoslavia in Sweden — and of course Indian cuisine, which has become nearly native in the United Kingdom.
With 300-plus recipes, New American Table features everything from Sesame-Fried Tilapia with Scallion Sauce to Chorizo-Style Meatballs with Tomatillo-Avocado Salsa, from Beer-Braised Short Ribs to Wild Mushroom Grits.
The dishes incorporate traditional American ingredients, but then spin off into tastes inspired by somewhere else. It’s the “somewhere else” that fascinates this chef.
Samuelsson tackled the cuisine of his homeland Sweden (where the native Ethiopian was raised by adoptive parents) in an earlier book, Aquavit and the New Scandinavian Cuisine (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $45). In 2006, he returned to his ancestral roots with The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa (Wiley, $40).
His latest book, with its mouth-watering photos and street scene images that look as if they could have been shot in Mexico or China, is as much travelogue as it is cookbook. And that’s what makes these stories — which include everyone from seasonal food icon Alice Waters to everyday local cooks such as an Argentine soccer-playing friend of Samuelsson’s — so rich with flavor.
Heading into Thanksgiving, one of the most American of holidays, even “traditional” tastes get an ethnic spin thanks to the country’s increasingly diverse palate.
Samuelsson says in his own home, “There is always a turkey on the table, but there’s also ‘Jansson’s Temptation’ (a classic Swedish scalloped potato casserole). And there will also be Ethiopian doro wat, which is a chicken stew.”
This mixed-heritage way of celebrating also will be evident in his annual visit to the Brooklyn home of his friends Frans Johansson (half African-American and Swedish) and wife Sweet Joy Hachuela (a Filipina).
Today, “all kinds of people feel spoken to,” says Samuelsson, still chef and co-owner of Manhattan’s Scandinavian-themed Aquavit. “Once you start talking about food, people are so willing [to share].”
And, he says, cuisine — even those that come from often-painful pasts, such as soul food’s roots in slavery — can prompt conversations that bridge ethnic and historical differences.
“We come from a rough past, all of us,” he says. “But we’re here [in America] now, so let’s all enjoy each other’s food.”
Maureen Jenkins is a Chicago-based freelance writer who blogs at urbantravelgirl.com.