Latest news with #cookbook
South China Morning Post
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
How a Cantonese-American chef in New York uses MSG to celebrate his culture
On his left upper arm, Cantonese-American chef Calvin Eng has a tattoo that pays tribute to his upbringing and his identity as a chef. It is a heart with a banner bearing the letters MSG – the abbreviation of flavour enhancer monosodium glutamate – and it shows just how dedicated he is to the ingredient that has drawn controversy for decades. Now, Eng has gone one step further in declaring his love for MSG by including it in the name of his debut cookbook, Salt Sugar MSG: Recipes and Stories from a Cantonese American Home, which he wrote with his fiancée Phoebe Melnick. The book's title is a nod to what Eng considers to be the trinity of seasonings in Cantonese food ingredients, which are part of what he believes makes the cuisine special. Roasted mushroom lo mai fan (sticky rice) is one of the recipes in Salt Sugar MSG. Photo: Alex Lau While the book, published in March, can be regarded as an extension of his restaurant Bonnie's – a Cantonese-American establishment in New York's Brooklyn borough – it stands on its own as a collection of recipes meant to be made easily at home. It also reflects how the couple wrote it while raising their young son, Levi. The idea for the book dates back to December 2021, when Bonnie's had just opened. While the restaurant was able to feed up to around 200 people a night, Eng wanted to extend the reach of Cantonese-American food further, to people outside New York. Writing a book was his way of doing this.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Demi Lovato mocked after sharing basic avocado toast tutorial to promote her first cookbook
Demi Lovato has drawn a mixed reaction from fans after announcing her first cookbook, One Plate At a Time. To promote the book, the pop star, 32, shared a tutorial to Instagram of a simple recipe for making egg and avocado toast. In the demonstration, Lovato called it one of her 'favorite staple recipes' before drenching a piece of bread in oil and throwing it on the frying pan. After struggling to mash an avocado, the Skyscraper singer sprinkled salt on her toast before explaining how to fry an egg. 'It's so easy, even I can do it,' she confessed. 'I'm not a professional yet, but it's all about progress, not perfection,' she insisted. Fans had a strong reaction to the video, with one writing, 'Girlie is making an avocado toast with a fried egg in the announcement video... please, this is giving Brooklyn Beckham cosplaying as a chef for 2 days.' 'She's making avocado toast in the promo vid. Does she think we plebes can't figure out how to put avocado on bread? I'm tired dawg,' wrote another. A third stated, 'She's been cooking for only THREE YEARS and we're supposed to think she wrote her own recipes?' Other naysayers also couldn't help but bring up Lovato's infamous frozen yogurt scandal. In 2021, Lovato publicly attacked a popular frozen yogurt shop for offering 'sugar free cookies and diet foods', because she found it 'triggering' due to her past eating disorder. She later apologized for the comments after fans accused her of targeting a small business. Responding to the news of her cookbook this week, one fan snarkily asked, 'Is there a frozen yogurt recipe?' Announcing One Plate At a Time on Wednesday, Lovato wrote, 'Stepping into the kitchen and learning how to cook has been such an important part of my recovery and healing my relationship with food.' She continued, 'This book is filled with simple, comforting recipes that have allowed me to reconnect with myself and find both freedom and joy in my kitchen – feelings I never thought I could experience. 'It has allowed me to see cooking as an act of love and kindness to myself and those in my life, and I hope this book can bring that same feeling into your home too.' Despite some of the negative feedback, most fans were overjoyed at the prospect of Lovato's cookbook. 'Her having a cookbook is HUGE. forget the album. this is amazing for her eating disorder recovery. so proud of you,' one gushed. 'Seeing you struggling with an eating disorder for years to now having a cookbook makes me so happy,' wrote another. 'I've loved demi since early Disney channel and my heart is SO FULL seeing her making a fing COOKBOOK! I'm so freaking proud of you Demi,' a third exclaimed. One Plate At A Time will be released on March 31, 2026. Late last month in May, Demi and musician Jordan 'Jutes' Lutes tied the knot during a romantic ceremony in Santa Barbara at Bellosguardo Estate. Lovato was a breathtaking bride as she walked down the aisle in a Vivienne Westwood gown - just one day after they both participated in a practice run with the rest of their wedding party. According to Vogue, the lovebirds said 'I do' in the late afternoon around 4pm in front of guests. She wore a dress from Vivienne Westwood for both the main ceremony as well as the lighthearted reception, per photos obtained by the outlet. The gown the beauty wore just moments before saying her vows was made of a fitted corset bodice as well as a silk satin material. A sheer white veil was placed at the back of her head and flowed down into an elegant train behind her. When it came to her wedding gown, the singer gushed to Vogue that she has 'been a fan of Vivienne Westwood's designs for a long time.' The star further expressed, 'When I was thinking about [what dress style I wanted] I often found myself coming back to Vivienne's designs - specifically how the silhouettes really compliment the curves in your body, and her use of corsets.'
The Guardian
4 days ago
- The Guardian
Not just rice and peas: lifting the lid on the radical roots of Caribbean cuisine
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, I dived into Caribe, a remarkable Caribbean cookbook that is simultaneously history, memoir and visual masterpiece. I spoke to the author, Keshia Sakarah, about how she came to write such a special book. Caribe is not only a recipe book of Caribbean dishes, it is also a homage to family as well as an account of history and migration. That history is both short and long: it charts Sakarah's Caribbean community in her home city of Leicester, England, and of each individual country in which the recipes originated. And there is another layer of history: that of the dishes and ingredients – how they came about and how far they travelled on the tides of colonialism and immigration. This was the most edifying part for me, as it revealed the expanse of cuisine around the world and its commonalities. For instance, I had no idea that kibbeh, a meatball rolled in bulgur – that I only understood as a niche Levantine dish – exists in the Dominican Republic as kipes or quipes. It was brought to the Caribbean by immigrants from the Middle East in the late 19th century. Who knew? Sakarah did. She discovered that fact during a multiyear research odyssey across the islands. Sakarah's love for cooking, and the culture behind it, comes from early exposure. She is an only child of Barbudan and Montserratian descent and spent much of her childhood with her retired grandparents, who were 'enjoying life, cooking and eating. I would go to the allotment and the market with them. That planted that seed.' The result was a fascination with Caribbean food that flourished in adulthood, when Sakarah decided to be a chef and an archiver of Caribbean cuisine. On her travels, she found her passion mirrored by those she engaged with. 'I would just have conversations with people about food,' she says. 'People wanted to tell stories and were excited that I was interested.' The process of on-the-ground research was 'covert and natural' because locals sensed her curiosity wasn't 'extractive'. Crops, colonisers and resistance 'The linking of the history was quite surprising to a lot of people,' Sakarah says, 'because they had never considered it. Especially in our community, we have no idea why we eat what we eat.' In one particularly enlightening section of the book, Sakarah details how sweet potatoes, cassavas and maize were unfamiliar to Spanish colonisers in the Dominican Republic in the late 1400s. When they established their first settlement, these colonisers relied on the farming capabilities of the Indigenous Taíno people, who were skilled in crop generation. In an act of resistance, the Taíno refused to plant the crops, leading to the starvation of the Spanish. However, they returned in subsequent settlements better prepared. The Spanish brought crops and livestock familiar to them in a mass movement of species known as the Columbian exchange, which Sakarah says 'changed the face of flora and fauna across the globe'. Caribe is full of such eye-opening vignettes on how the region's food carries a historical legacy. Two things struck me as I read the book: I had never seen a single written recipe growing up, and I had not a single idea about where the food I grew up eating came from. Even the recipes handed down to me are not quantifiable by measurements – they are a pinch of this and a dash of that. Everything is assimilated but never recorded. Sakarah wanted to make that record because 'when an elder passes, they go with all their knowledge, so it's important to archive things for the purposes of preservation'. She wanted the work to feel like an intimate passing on of information, using language, imagery and references that were not that of the outsider looking in. The pictures that accompany the recipes were almost painfully resonant, ones of Black hands casually drawn in a pinching action after scooping up a morsel. One recipe for dal shows an implement that I had only ever seen in Sudan, a wooden rod with a bifurcated bottom, spun in the pot to loosen the grain. Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion A culinary reminder of home I say to Sakarah that the longer I am removed from home, the more food plays a complex rooting role in my life, where I hold on to random meals or ingredients from childhood: fava beans, okra, salty goat's cheese. Food plays a similar role for her, in ways that she didn't even realise. Because she grew up with her first-generation grandparents, Sakarah says she feels more Caribbean than British, which shows up in very confusing ways. Researching the book has enabled her 'to come to terms with that, because I see the layers in it, and also the beauty of the diaspora'. One of the main motivations of this book, which represents the various islands in separate chapters, was to show the shared yet diverse expanse of Caribbean food that is often wrongly collapsed as only 'Jamaican'. Nor was Sakarah interested in presenting regional dishes as a victim of imperialism, but rather a product of overlapping histories. By doing so, she removed shame and did not attempt to assert identity through cuisine. Sakarah has pulled off a remarkable feat – the book is quietly radical in its presentation of food as something that is not political, but a product of politics. It is simply what everyone eats. 'Food isn't always celebratory and fun and joyful,' she says. Nor is it always an act of cultural resistance: 'It just is.' Caribe by Keshia Sakarah is published by Penguin Books. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply. To receive the complete version of The Long Wave in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
Associated Press
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Historic Sweep for Jordanian-Canadian Author at Gourmand Awards: Thuraya Earns Four 'Best in the World' Honours
NEW YORK, June 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Thuraya: Recipes from Our Family's Kitchen in Jordan, authored and independently published by Jordanian-Canadian writer Nadeem Mansour, has earned four Best in the World honors at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards — winning the #1 global prize for Best Mediterranean Book and Best Video Presentation, and placing #2 in the world for Best Family Book and the prestigious Best Cookbook in the World category. As the first English-language Jordanian cookbook to receive such recognition on the global stage, Thuraya is a testament to the power of storytelling through food — and to the universal journey of preserving heritage, memory, and family connection. Blending personal memoir with over 120 Levantine recipes, Thuraya invites readers into the warmth of a Jordanian family kitchen, where Levantine recipes and memories come together. It explores the way food brings people together, across generations and borders — a theme that resonates strongly with diverse American audiences seeking authentic, meaningful culinary experiences. 'This book began as a way to preserve the dishes my mother lovingly prepared, but it has become something much larger,' said author Nadeem Mansour. 'These recipes, passed down through generations, carry with them the memory of where we come from. It is a tribute not only to my mother and family, but to immigrant families across the globe who keep their roots alive through food — and to mothers everywhere, whose love and care are the soul of every home-cooked meal.' Named after the author's mother, Thuraya is a celebration of love, legacy, and culture. From vibrant mezze and slow-simmered stews to fragrant rice dishes and delicate desserts, the book reflects the warmth and generosity of Middle Eastern hospitality. Though first launched in Amman, Jordan, Thuraya is quickly gaining international acclaim. A recent feature event at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto explored the book's themes of identity, tradition, and diaspora — opening a global conversation about the role food plays in passing down and preserving family recipes. The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, often referred to as the 'Oscars of cookbooks,' were announced this weekend in Lisbon, Portugal. Thuraya now proudly carries the Best in the World logo, joining the ranks of the most distinguished culinary works globally. For American readers, Thuraya offers more than just recipes — it offers a deeply human story, filled with flavor, emotion, and the quiet power of home-cooked meals to connect us all. To learn more or purchase a copy, visit where you can also view the award-winning short film that captures the soul of the book and the beauty of Levantine cuisine. Photo - Photo - Photo - View original content: SOURCE Thuraya by Nadeem Mansour
Globe and Mail
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Historic Sweep for Jordanian-Canadian Author at Gourmand Awards: Thuraya Earns Four 'Best in the World' Honours
TORONTO , /CNW/ -- Thuraya: Recipes from Our Family's Kitchen in Jordan, authored and self-published in Canada by Jordanian-Canadian writer Nadeem Mansour, has earned four Best in the World honours at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards – winning the #1 global prize for Best Mediterranean Book and Best Video Presentation, and placing #2 in the world for Best Family Book and the prestigious Best Cookbook in the World category. Thuraya's inclusion on the shortlist already made history as the first English-language Jordanian cookbook to be nominated and shortlisted in three prestigious categories. This landmark achievement is a profound reflection of the immigrant journey, the preservation of cultural memory, and the richness of Canada's multicultural story . This achievement highlights Thuraya's role as a culinary memoir and personal narrative of immigration, identity and belonging – one that resonates with the diverse Canadian experience. Inspired by the tastes and traditions of his mother's kitchen, the book features over 120 Levantine recipes, bringing the vibrant flavors of Jordan and the Levant to a global audience. "This book began as a way to preserve the dishes my mother lovingly prepared, but it has become something much larger," said author Nadeem Mansour . "These recipes, passed down through generations, carry with them the memory of where we come from. To see them honoured on such a prestigious international stage is moving. It is a tribute not only to my mother and family, and to the countless families across Canada who keep their cultures alive through food – but also to mothers everywhere, whose love and care are the soul of every home-cooked meal." Named after the author's mother, Thuraya is a story of love, heritage, and the power of food to bridge distances—across countries, cultures, and communities. The beautifully photographed recipes, from vibrant mezze and hearty stews to exquisite desserts, embody the warmth and generosity of Middle Eastern hospitality. For Thuraya, the author's mother, the recognition is especially meaningful. "Our family recipes carry the essence of who we are. Food has a unique ability to bring people together and connect us all—no matter where we come from." Following its launch in Amman, Thuraya was introduced to a Canadian audience at the Royal Ontario Museum on February 23 , 2025. Part of the ROM Talks series, the event explored the book's story and the rich cultural and culinary traditions of the Middle East — brought to life through select heritage objects from the museum's Widad Kawar Collection of Arab Dress and Heritage. This event reflected ROM's commitment to celebrating Canada's diverse communities and preserving the cultural stories that newcomers bring to its shared table. Winners of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards were announced in Lisbon, Portugal, this weekend. Thuraya has already made history, bearing the Gourmand Best in the World logo and standing proudly as a work that speaks to cultural preservation, family legacy, and the remarkable ways Canada provides space for both to thrive. For more information on Thuraya or to purchase a copy, please visit where you can also view the stunning Gourmand-award winning video that captures the heart of its story and offers a glimpse into the rich culinary treasures within.
