Ancestry Through Food—Five Cookbooks To Add To Your Shelves Today

The five women celebrated here for their literary achievements have not only produced stunning cookbooks that would whet anyone’s appetite, they’ve done so by digging up the roots of their family history. They’ve held up a mirror to themselves and glimpsed the reflection of their mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers harvesting in the garden, kneading dough, or endlessly stirring at a hot stove. Undoubtedly, many reading these books will see themselves and their families too. These women and their families come from all sides of the globe, which make the cookbooks they’ve created all the more thrilling in their uniqueness, and simultaneously, more universal. Just replace a few of the ingredients and names and those dishes and stories could be your own.

Delicious food and stories of ancestry around our collective tables are found in each of these books:

Italian Snacking: Sweet and Savory Recipes for Every Hour of the Day by Anna Francese Gass —Released TODAY, March 19, 2024

Her first book, Heirloom Kitchen ,was an instant success as it brought women from the world together to share recipes from their cultures, and opened with her own roots in Italy. This time, however, in Italian Snacking, “this is all Italy, and this is all me,” Anna Francese Gass says. She traveled extensively, all over the country—beyond where her family is from in Calabria—to trek to every region and delve into their snacking rituals and favorite treats. There are numerous books out there about Italian dishes that have mesmerized us all, but the snacking culture is relatively untouched. And let’s face it, we live for snacks. As we learn in Gass’s book, timing your snacks and using them as little holdovers until the next meal and to stave off overeating, is the way to get the best of both worlds, and is a signature of Italian eating.

Gass says every recipe was tested multiple times, and, as her many fans on Tiktok and Instagram know well, she is very transparent about process, ingredients, timing, and taste. With three kids at home, Gass is also very aware of time and how to make the best with what you have. Ensuring her readers, and her viewers, that these recipes can be recreated easily at home, is just one of the things that makes her latest endeavor so exciting. The book is set up from the beginning of the day to the end, and full of vibrant photos of the food and street scenes from Gass’s travels. From explaining the Italian name behind each snack to teaching us how to stock our pantries and serve each treat, she removes the intimidation factor in every way. Italian Snacking feels as if we can just close our eyes and be transported to the bars and cafés of Italy, and order a tasty spuntini like an Italian does everyday. As a special treat (or snack) for readers, Gass lets us into some of the many personal experiences and connections she’s had related to the snacks and recipes included in the book, like one revolving around a “smuggled” budino di riso in her sister’s suitcase as she traveled back to the U.S. from Florence.

Plentiful: Vegan Jamaican Recipes to Repeat by Denai Moore—Released April 2023

As more and more people make the leap or even dip a toe into plant-based cooking, books like these make that move so much more inviting and, frankly, exciting. The recipes and stories in Plentiful by Denai Moore are as vibrant and enthralling as its cover; and, to be honest, the author behind it all. Moore, who was raised in Jamaica until she was ten years old before her family moved to London, has been known for her eclectic music for nearly a decade. Around the time of her first album Elsewhere debuted (2015), she took the leap and became vegan (2016), and soon after, began a supper club, pop-up restaurant, and YouTube channel under the name of Dee’s Table (2017).

With chapter titles like “Food That I Dream About Before Going To Bed,” or “Salads That Aren’t Lame,” and “Dessert As A Lifestyle,” and every page bathed in bright colors, the book feels more like a party you’ve been invited to rather than a foray into something you are nervous to try. Moore jumps right in and tells us about the land and mango trees she recalls or the spices that enveloped her and the kitchens of her childhood. And, even though it was music that first thrust her into the public eye, it is through food, she prefers to introduce herself. “It’s my favourite way to say hello to 35+ new people,” she says. “I thrive on toeing that line between my comfort zone and what’s beyond.”

Although many of the recipes are rooted in Moore’s memories from Jamaica, she has recreated them with twists from the global flavors she craves. So, readers will see influences, for example, from East and Southeast Asian cuisines, foods that she believes are undervalued in terms of worldwide culinary impact.

Tiffy Cooks: 88 Easy Asian Recipes From My Family to Yours by Tiffy Chen —released February 27, 2024

There’s no way around it; with 3.2 million followers on TikTok and 1.8 on Instagram, Tiffy Chen has struck a nerve and has carved out a lane for herself in the industry. Trepidatious at first, since she left her life in the corporate world to cook, she has proven that passion and persistence pay off. And, what’s even more intriguing is how she has inspired A LOT of people to get in the kitchen and cook, many who might not otherwise.

Woven in and around the drool-worthy recipes (and stunning photography by Vanessa Wong), Chen has included personal stories from her childhood to today —from Taiwan to Canada—and demonstrates how essential it is for her family to take a moment and toast each other before every meal they spend together.

Additionally, in Tiffy Cooks, she helps us build a pantry of staples and demystifies the names of many ingredients. The names of each ingredient and recipe are written in Taiwanese Mandarin, and in English, many of which are illustrated in her father’s beautiful calligraphy, a particularly poignant feature, as he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in 2019; it was important to Chen that he be ever present in the pages of her book.

Making Braised Pork Chops, Honey Orange Shrimp, Scallion Pancakes, Dumplings and Buns and more—88 recipes in total, in fact—are now at our fingertips, and not by way of GrubHub or UberEats. Step by step, through Tiffy Cooks, home cooks are shepherded through what may have once been a maze of complexity and now can be a full-fledge delicious achievement. The number 8 has long been known as lucky in Chinese and other Asian cultures, which makes Chen’s book an extra lucky, extra tasty find.

Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson

Praisesong is the type of book where you sort of feel like you’ve won the cultural lottery. Not only are you welcomed, so intimately, into Wilkinson’s family, but you are given a seat at the table as a witness to the flavors of her families’ past. It is history, it is memoir, it is cookbook; it is a literary feast that takes days to digest.

There should be no surprise that readers will become hypnotized by Wilkinson’s voice. As Kentucky’s poet laureate from 2021-2023, she infuses poetry, prose, and dialogue in and around photos of her family and recipes. Truly creating a whole new genre, Wilkinson’s Praisesong is an invitation to everyone to not just cook, but to dig a little deeper than ever before into family roots and the stories that tie us to each other.

Each story is reflected in a delicious recipe. Just as she did with her fictional collection, Blackberries Blackberries, readers are drawn into characters—this time her family—and the many ways these delicious morsels created a backdrop to her youth. We are also brought up to speed with her life today and how the stories and recipes of her past are replayed, repurposed, and reflected in present time. Wilkinson even includes recipes that were popular at the Wild Fig Books and Coffee Shop she and her husband once ran in Lexington before it closed in 2018: Pimento Cheese with a Kick and Classic Benedictine cucumber spread can now be our own little taste of Kentucky.

Maydan by Rose Previte with Marah Stets

Undoubtedly, one of the things that might first come to mind when looking at a table of Lebanese food is COLOR. It is as if a rainbow exploded then trickled its way into numerous, decorative small bowls and plates. Mezze or small plates have pushed the boundaries of the Middle East and have entered the way in which many of us prefer to eat today. Having small bites of many things not only diversifies the flavors taking stock in our mouths during a meal, but looks beautiful along a family table. Somehow the table always looks festive.

Maydān, meaning “gathering place” is another term that has slowly but surely taking form for those of us beyond the borders of its origin. The Maydān cookbook is the culmination of Rose Previte’s travels along the spice-trade routes, and recipes passed down—but not written down, she reminds us— and pieced together from her Lebanese family, which also feature prominently today in her Michelin-starred restaurant of the same name in Washington, D.C. That said, her travels crossed into areas of Georgia and beyond, and even when she beckons the flavors of her youth, she doesn’t profess to be exact.

“The food is specific, but I have strived to also make it accessible,” she says. “...I want you to feel inspired to discover a part of the world that may be unfamiliar to you...and invite you to visit with your eyes, your nose, and taste buds what you perhaps have not yet experienced in person.” Get started with her mom’s Bhaba Ganoush, the Dango, garlic chickpeas, or what for many has become the holy grail of rice making, the Tahdig.