When you think of the flavors that encapsulate America, foods like French fries and hamburgers probably come to mind. But for chef Kwame Onwuachi, his America is a melting pot of Afro-Caribbean flavors that colored his upbringing.
Onwuachi说：“我想创建一本反映我的旅程的书，还展示了我在美国长大的食物版本。”“我想创建一本书，人们可以去这些菜肴，这些菜肴对我来说是舒适的食物。”
Onwuachi的首张食谱，我的美国：年轻黑厨师的食谱（与约书亚·戴维·斯坦（Joshua David Stein）共同撰写）是一封信给声音和风味的情书，这是洛杉矶厨师职业生涯的基础。There are recipes inspired from his life in the Bronx where he was born (“Creole Hashbrowns”), recipes from living with his grandfather in Nigeria (“Suya”), and others across the diaspora that not only speak to Onwuachi’s extensive palate, but to how important it’s been for him to intertwine food and family, an intersection that serves as the base of his inspiration.
Onwuachi谈到他从与家人观看和烹饪中所获得的东西时说：“我学会了整个所有东西。”这是一种互相展示我们彼此相爱的方式。这是一种服务行为。”
While this cookbook has been on his list of many things to achieve, Onwuachi hasn’t sat still over the past couple of years.
A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Onwuachi has worked in restaurants including Per Se and Eleven Madison Park. In 2016, after competing onTop Chef, he went on to helm his own D.C.-based restaurant Shaw Bijou, which shut down less than three months after openingdue to high operating costs. That experience served as the inspiration for his acclaimed 2019 memoir,年轻厨师的笔记, which A24 is adapting into a film starring Lakeith Stanfield as Onwuachi.
“I always make sure that I’m intentional and impactful with the things that I’m doing,” Onwuachi says.
这就是他带来的能量我的美国。To Onwuachi, this cookbook is more than a collection of recipes—it’s lessons and learnings on family, food, and community.
总是回到你的根
“My journey of being a chef started with my mom in her catering kitchen—and this wasn’t a commercial kitchen it was our apartment. [I had] to help out and keep the lights on. This chore turned into a hobby, then into a passion, and that passion turned into a career. And within that career I wanted to learn from the best. The ‘best’ was people cooking French-inspired modern American cuisine. And I want to preface the best in quotation marks—like not that I think that’s the best, that’s just what was said at the time. There weren’t many Black chefs cooking from the ethnicities that I am, so I didn’t have that to learn. So after that, I thought back to the food that would make my family proud, the food I crave and grew up on. How can I pay homage to that? How can I honor that?”
Learning from the “best” and appreciating your own
“There are the lessons of technique, attention to detail, different cooking practices—learning how to be a good leader, running a kitchen and working at a high level. All of those things contributed to where I am today. I think they’re beautiful in their essence. And it was quite fascinating to me that then I started to see the beauty in my own cuisine and the beauty in my own people’s food. I was able to expand on that because of the lessons I learned from other kitchens.”
Advice for those on the come-up
“Make sure you’re working at the hardest restaurant in your neighborhood. I think it’s important that you absorb everything when you’re trying to perfect a craft. You don’t know what it’s going to apply to what you’re trying to do. If you’re an actor, you should look into comedy and romance and drama. Because all those things are just going to help your craft at the end of the day. So you can absorb that information and then don’t lose sight of who are. Apply that to what you want.”
My America: Recipes From a Young Black Chef5月17日发布。