We owe women of color for the foods we love to eat

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Chefs Von Diaz, Mayukh Sen, Reem Assil and Priya Krishna. NPR hide caption

Chefs Von Diaz, Mayukh Sen, Reem Assil and Priya Krishna.

For this week's episode, we talked to a food historian and three cookbook authors about the influence cooks who are people of color — especially women— have on what and how we eat today.

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Mayukh Sen and his book Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women who Revolutionized Food in America W. W. Norton hide caption

Mayukh Sen and his book Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women who Revolutionized Food in America

Mayukh Sen is the author of Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America. His book profiles women whose work has gifted us with a more global palate. They banged on doors that had been firmly shut to women and immigrant cooks, and managed to pull them open so others might follow. Love stir-fries? Thank Chao Yang Buwei. Think spaghetti is the be-all and end-all? Marcella Hazan has news for you. These women are not household names for many Americans, Mayukh, a James Beard Award winner, told us. "They had to come to this country and navigate a very heavily gate-kept American Food establishment just to have their voices heard, just to publish their own cookbooks, just to open their own restaurants. And those sorts of challenges are part of the story of American food."

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Priya Krishna and her book Indian-Ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hide caption

Priya Krishna and her book Indian-Ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family

New York Times food writer Priya Krishna grew up in Dallas with a mom who watched Julia Child to learn the basics of French cooking after she moved to the United States. When she married and became a mother, Ritu Krishna understood the duality of the pull. "On the one hand, you're being brought up as Indian kids," Priya's mother shared in a NPR video. On the other, Priya and her sisters grew up in America, running around with American schoolmates, with their culture and values. So, like so many families like theirs, the Krishnas embodied a hybrid culture.

Indian-ish

Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family

by Priya Krishna

Hardcover, 241 pages |

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