
By Danielle Nierenberg and Natalie Quathamer
For a delicious end to 2018, Food Tank is highlighting 18 cookbooks that embrace a diverse global food industry. The list features chefs of color and authors that identify as LGBTQ+ working to feed a food revolution that breaks the barriers of race, gender, and sexuality. These books examine everything from building Puerto Rican flavors, conquering the art of transforming leftovers into masterpieces, and grasping what merging queer culture and international cuisine looks—and tastes—like. Whether you cook seasonally, are on a budget, or eat plant-based, there's something here to inspire every reader to diversify their diet!
1. A Simple Feast: A Year of Stories and Recipes to Savor and Share by Diana Yen
Armed with the scrumptious arsenal of local farmers markets, maple farms and apple orchards, chef Diana Yen takes a year-long journey through food in this cookbook. Each recipe is fresh and uncomplicated, celebrating contemporary American cooking by showcasing and elevating seasonal bounty.
2. A Taste of Serendib by Mary Anne Mohanraj
Serendib, more commonly known as Sri Lanka, is an island nation with a wealth of culinary influences and plenty of fresh produce, fish and spices. Mary Anne Mohanraj uses her years of multidisciplinary writing experience to tempt our minds and taste buds with a recipe collection full of surprises.
3. Between Harlem and Heaven: Afro-Asian-American Cooking for Big Nights, Weeknights, and Every Day by Alexander Smalls and JJ Johnson, with Veronica Chambers
This book invites the African diaspora to its rightful place at the table, with more than 100 recipes reflecting the continent's massive influence on international flavors and gastronomic traditions. Johnson and Smalls cook and converse with chefs of color on a culinary journey that starts on the shores of West Africa and spans to China, Brazil and the Caribbean.
4. Black Girl Baking: Wholesome Recipes Inspired by a Soulful Upbringing by Jerrelle Guy
Good food shapes our relationships with others, the world, and ourselves, and this cookbook helps readers build those connections over a fresh batch of Grandma's honey buns. From the hollow knock of perfectly baked bread to the aroma of fruit ideally ripe for a tart, each recipe invites us to indulge our senses in every sweet moment of the baking experience
5. Coconuts and Collards: Recipes and Stories from Puerto Rico to the Deep South by Von Diaz
After a three-year exploration of her Puerto Rican roots, Diaz fuses her native dishes with the food she grew up eating in Atlanta in this recipe-packed memoir. From grits cooked in coconut milk, guava-spiked BBQ sauce and shepherd's pie with sweet plantain, each recipe expresses the comfort of a Southern kitchen infused with the island's warm tropical embrace.
6. Cooking on a Bootstrap: Over 100 Simple, Budget Recipes by Jack Monroe
Cooking with limited income doesn't have to mean limp canned vegetables and massive pots of boring stew. This recipe collection makes simplicity tasty while remaining authentic and accessible for every budget and dietary need.
7. Flavour: Eat What You Love by Ruby Tandoh
Fall back in love with food with this approachable and creative cookbook from Guardian food columnist Ruby Tandoh. Each recipe is a lesson in self-care and the pleasures of eating, inspiring readers to listen to their intuition and cook what will truly satisfy their needs.
8. Kristen Kish Cooking: Recipes and Techniques by Kristen Kish, with Meredith Erickson
With determination and a deep love of food, Kish celebrates her Korean heritage and American upbringing in her inaugural cookbook. The recipes reinvigorate classic ingredients and techniques with inspiring results, from searing avocado to slow baking honey chicken into crisp and caramelized submission.
9. My Two Souths: Blending the Flavors of India into a Southern Kitchen by Asha Gomez, with Martha Hall Foose
This cookbook celebrates the merging of the two Souths in Gomez's life, from her roots in Kerala, India to her home in Atlanta, Georgia. A firm understanding of American Southern cooking is emboldened by a well-yielded box of spices and ingredients from her childhood home.
10. Now & Again: Go-To Recipes, Inspired Menus + Endless Ideas for Reinventing Leftovers by Julia Turshen
Turshen is back inspiring home chefs to gather friends and family around the table and escape their cooking rut. Creative recipes like Italian Flag Baked Pasta are not only achievable for cooks of all skill levels but feature waste-reducing tips on how to repurpose the leftovers into an entirely new dish.
11. Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice by Raj Patel and the Community Alliance for Global Justice
This cookbook is a delicious entry into the food justice movement. Packed with interviews from forward-thinking farmers, recipes for local and global tastes, and food growing and preservation guides, this collection will serve the conscious eater in the kitchen and the community.
12. Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food by Nik Sharma
Armed with the bold flavors of India, the familiarity of the American South, and the freshness of California, Nik Sharma warmly invites all eaters to the table in his new cookbook. Each of the 100 included recipes combines the familiar with the unexpected, surprising the home chef without being intimidating.
13. Solo: A Modern Cookbook for a Party of One by Anita Lo
Being a Michelin Star winning chef means long hours and odd meal-times, but Anita Lo reinvigorates the empowerment of cooking for one in her latest cookbook. Every single serving recipe draws inspiration from years of cooking abroad and Lo's own personal repertoire, encouraging the reader on a journey of self-love through food.
14. The Art of Gay Cooking: A Culinary Memoir by Daniel Isengart
To this writer, chef, and cabaret artist, the kitchen is the stage, the eaters are the audience, and the ingredients are the props. Pulling gastronomic inspiration from Germany, France, and Brooklyn, Isengart puts his creative and candid culinary journey on center stage with more than 250 recipes that capture the beauty and art of food.
15. The Corners of Their Mouth: A Queer Food Zine by L.M. Zoller and Robin Elan
Birthed from the queer food blog I'll Make It Myself, this zine uses the medium of food to explore LGBTQ+ culture. More than just a cookbook, L.M. Zoller and Robin Elan invite readers into their kitchen, sharing recipes, comics, and quirky anecdotes for self-love through cooking and eating.
16. The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods by Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz
Revolutionizing an emotional cuisine like Ashkenazi while maintaining respect for tradition is tricky, but this cookbook does so seamlessly. Recipes like marble-rye challah bread and kimchi-stuffed cabbage bring the freshness of a new generation to Bubbe's kitchen with profoundly delicious results.
17. The Juhu Beach Club Cookbook: Indian Spice, Oakland Soul by Preeti Mistry, with Sarah Henry
This up-and-coming chef celebrates her immigrant background with irresistible combinations of bold flavors influenced by Indian, African and American culinary traditions. With recipes organized by feeling rather than course, the reader will find everything from restaurant best-sellers to street food in Mistry's debut cookbook.
18. The Up South Cookbook: Chasing Dixie in a Brooklyn Kitchen by Nicole Taylor
A purveyor of unheard food stories, Nicole Taylor gets deeply personal in her new cookbook, exploring the reclamation of culinary heritage. The recipes within bridge the past and future, updating and reinventing Southern classics with new ingredients and cultural influences.
The growing Texas solar industry is offering a safe harbor to unemployed oil and gas professionals amidst the latest oil and gas industry bust, this one brought on by the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Houston Chronicle reports.
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
This month, a new era began in the fight against plastic pollution.
- Historic Agreement on Plastic Pollution Reached by 180+ Countries ... ›
- U.S. Leads the World in Plastic Waste, New Study Finds - EcoWatch ›
- EU Bans Exporting Unsorted Plastic Waste to Poorer Countries ... ›
Trending
Sweden's reindeer have a problem. In winter, they feed on lichens buried beneath the snow. But the climate crisis is making this difficult. Warmer temperatures mean moisture sometimes falls as rain instead of snow. When the air refreezes, a layer of ice forms between the reindeer and their meal, forcing them to wander further in search of ideal conditions. And sometimes, this means crossing busy roads.
- San Antonio, Texas Unveils Largest Highway Crossing for Wildlife in ... ›
- Wildlife Crossings a Huge Success - EcoWatch ›
Heatwaves are not just distinct to the land. A recent study found lakes are susceptible to temperature rise too, causing "lake heatwaves," The Independent reported.
- Climate Change Will Be Sudden and Cataclysmic Unless We Act Now ›
- There's a Heatwave at the Arctic 'Doomsday Vault' - EcoWatch ›
- Marine Heatwaves Destroy Ocean Ecosystems Like Wildfires ... ›
By Aaron W Hunter
A chance discovery of a beautifully preserved fossil in the desert landscape of Morocco has solved one of the great mysteries of biology and paleontology: how starfish evolved their arms.
The Pompeii of palaeontology. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<h2></h2><p>Although starfish might appear very robust animals, they are typically made up of lots of hard parts attached by ligaments and soft tissue which, upon death, quickly degrade. This means we rely on places like the Fezouata formations to provide snapshots of their evolution.</p><p>The starfish fossil record is patchy, especially at the critical time when many of these animal groups first appeared. Sorting out how each of the various types of ancient starfish relate to each other is like putting a puzzle together when many of the parts are missing.</p><h2>The Oldest Starfish</h2><p><em><a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/216101v1.full.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cantabrigiaster</a></em> is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. It was discovered in 2003, but it has taken over 17 years to work out its true significance.</p><p>What makes <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> unique is that it lacks almost all the characteristics we find in brittle stars and starfish.</p><p>Starfish and brittle stars belong to the family Asterozoa. Their ancestors, the Somasteroids were especially fragile - before <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> we only had a handful of specimens. The celebrated Moroccan paleontologist Mohamed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.06.041" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ben Moula</a> and his local team was instrumental in discovering <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018216302334?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">these amazing fossils</a> near the town of Zagora, in Morocco.</p><h2>The Breakthrough</h2><p>Our breakthrough moment came when I compared the arms of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> with those of modern sea lilles, filter feeders with long feathery arms that tend to be attached to the sea floor by a stem or stalk.</p><p>The striking similarity between these modern filter feeders and the ancient starfish led our team from the University of Cambridge and Harvard University to create a new analysis. We applied a biological model to the features of all the current early Asterozoa fossils in existence, along with a sample of their closest relatives.</p>Cantabrigiaster is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<p>Our results demonstrate <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> is the most primitive of all the Asterozoa, and most likely evolved from ancient animals called crinoids that lived 250 million years before dinosaurs. The five arms of starfish are a relic left over from these ancestors. In the case of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em>, and its starfish descendants, it evolved by flipping upside-down so its arms are face down on the sediment to feed.</p><p>Although we sampled a relatively small numbers of those ancestors, one of the unexpected outcomes was it provided an idea of how they could be related to each other. Paleontologists studying echinoderms are often lost in detail as all the different groups are so radically different from each other, so it is hard to tell which evolved first.</p>