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· In Linger, you return to salad—but now from a different vantage point. Years ago, you were delivering salads to your community through Arthur Street Kitchen. Now, you're inviting friends into your home. What did that shift—from delivering to host—reveal to you about the emotional space food occupies in your life? Going from delivering salads to my community, to hosting friends around a table full of them, felt like a seamless and completely natural transition. To me, they are not that different. In both acts, there is a sense of nurturing another person, in connecting with them beyond the hustle of everyday life, in sharing a conversation that may have a lasting impact. For me, sharing food has always been about finding commonality with others. · You offer such a liberating view of salad—'Salads are the perfect prep-ahead food’, ‘they don’t always need leaves,’ and ‘anything can be a salad.’ What, for you, defines a salad now? It has really been a long time goal to recalibrate how people think about salad -basically as a leafy dish, with a vinaigrette. There is SO MUCH MORE to salad. I don’t think there is one definition of what a salad is but there are indicators - being served at room temperature (ideal for most) or cold (only for specific salads like soba noodles or silken tofu), the presence of a dressing or sauce, and the coming together of several different ingredients that combine to become one story. A salad has layers of flavor, texture and story. · The trick is always on balancing the salad, which you do so effortlessly. Tell us how. Well by now, I’ve had a lot of experience haha! But I approach salad making like a formula. It starts with the dressing or sauce which is like the engine of the salad. As such, it needs to offer complexity - so I’m aiming for savoriness along with sharp tartness that is rounded out by a hint of sweetness. Then there is body of the salad - the vegetables, legumes, grains, carb - which are enlivened by a lighter element like a leafy green, completed by the brightness of herbs and a textural toppings such as nuts or seeds. It’s definitely a balancing act but it is so fun to play around with all these elements. · You call salad ‘the ultimate comfort food,’ which turns the usual narrative on its head. What comfort do you personally draw from the process of building a salad—layering flavors, textures, memories? To me, salads are everything! First of all, they bring me a lot of happiness. I love eating this way, packing in so many vegetables, along with a bold sauce, and weaving in lots of textures. Personally I find this a very satisfying way to eat. But also, salads are a way for me to tell stories. From the beginning of my food career, it is the dish that has shown me the true power of food to create community. In a way, my salads are conversation starters. Sometimes the conversation is with myself. In a salad, I can tell a story of immigration, of identity, of belonging, of yearning, of friendship. Salads have been so good to me. · I always feel the photography in your books, but this one really feels immediate and unfussy in the best way. Did you photograph each meal in real time while guests were gathered around your table? If so, what does it feel like to blur the line between documenting and living the moment? Thank you! Yes, the dishes were photographed in real time! I wanted to capture the moment - whether that be the light, the mood, the energy - of the table, on any particular day. The light changes throughout the book, based upon the seasons, and I love how that imparts movement to the book. Photographing in real time was an important part of this project because it establishes a strong sense of place, it invites the reader into my home, it makes the reader part of the journey. I really wanted to create that sense of intimacy through the photos. The book should feel a bit like a documentary. This is my real life and it was photographed in my home. But I was very disciplined about HOW I documented. I photographed most of the dishes BEFORE my guests arrived because I didn’t want the lunch to be about photography. There are very few photographs of my guests eating around my table - that was a conscious decision because I wanted the lunches to feel private and free. This also allowed me to be completely present at every gathering. In a way, it’s amazing that these meals were a part of a book project, because it didn’t feel that way in the making. The gatherings were incredibly calm and informal, so I hope that sense of serenity is conveyed in the photography. · There are 12 menus, 12 essays, and 12 playlists in Linger. How did the storytelling (and music) shape the food—or did the food shape the storytelling? How do you see that relationship between recipe and memory? Honestly I don’t think about these things very much anymore because in my work, food and story are so inextricably linked. You can’t really separate them. The essays, for example, are basically streams of consciousness. They were also written in real time, and capture a moment, a feeling. I like to describe them as the in-between thoughts. Some of the essays are heavily food based while others are more esoteric. I wanted the essays to feel neither here nor there, with a sense of rootlessness. I wanted them to be an interrogation of the topics that underpin most of my food writing - identity, survival, self-expression, immigration, motherhood, family, friendship and community. The playlists were a different type of storytelling. The lists were created by my daughter Scout. She created them without reading the essays, but purely based upon themes and keywords which I gave her. She tells me that each playlist is a sequential story but only she really knows the beginning, the middle and the end. Maybe one day she will tell the story of each playlist, but musicians are often cagey about their process. Until then, it is open to all of us to interpret them in our own way. She is an incredible storyteller in her own right but music is her medium of expression. · All your books feel like love letters to friendship and family. Was there a dish in Linger that emerged directly from a moment of friendship or community that stayed with you? The Little Christmas Cakes in the final chapter is a recipe that emerged from a ritual I have at Christmas time. During the festive season, I always make several Christmas cakes to share with my friend Yewande. Christmas cake is not that popular here in America but Yewande grew up in Nigeria, a country also colonized by Great Britain, so, unexpectedly, we share a lot of the same food nostalgia. Over the years, I have expanded my Christmas cake ritual to include other friends who grew up in countries colonized by Great Britain. We are quite a group now ;) · I hardly ever have to do adjustments to your desserts because most of the time you write them to be gluten free (and often times dairy free). There’s such an elegance in your simpler sweets—peaches and cream with chili crisp (what a surprising combination!), but also your twists like the black sesame Basque cheesecake. What draws you to that intersection between everyday simplicity and surprising delight? And is the gluten-free approach intentional? Honestly, this is how I like to eat. I eat vegan and gluten free most of the time but not strictly. So my recipes are reflective of that. They are mostly, but not entirely. Also, I want my food to be open and welcoming to as many people and as many palates as possible, so making them vegan and/or gluten free achieves that goal. In terms of my often surprising flavor combos, I really think it’s because of my free approach to food and ingredients. Like you, I grew up somewhere else, so I carry a lot of flavor baggage! There’s the diverse influences from my cultural heritage, from the country where I was born, and from the countries where I’ve lived, so I kinda manifest all of this in my recipes. My flavors and ingredient pairings are not linear, because I’m not. · What do you hope lingers most for your readers—beyond the recipes, beyond the gatherings? What kind of imprint do you hope this book leaves on the way people feed and connect with one another? I hope Linger does what it did for me and my guests. I hope it encourages people to engage over the simple act of sharing food - to talk, to listen, to contemplate, and to find humanity in one another. I think in our virtual world, people are lonely. They might not realize it, but I think most of us are craving for real, uncensored human connection, away from the algorithm. I hope Linger gives people the motivation and the mechanism to do that.
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