The New York Times Food Section Predicts

A new year means new predictions. The  New York Times food section has theirs today for the year ahead. Will they be right? Do they have a thumb on the pulse of what America and New Yorkers want to eat?

My predictions yesterday were off compared to the ones Food section regular contributor , Kim Severson , had. She predicts that Japanese food will be the hot cuisine of choice. This is due to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and a rise in travel to Japan. Japanese toast is already , made from pan de mie,becoming popular. India also will be on the culinary radar too, namely the spicy Keralan cuisine from southwest India. This is a cuisine heavy on the spices along with being rich with coconut, rice and fish. West Africa, Laos and Vietnam will also be popular too. I thought for sure it would be more Middle Eastern, but maybe that's been played out already. However Ms. Severson also predicts generational cooking where young chefs will be influenced by their immigrant parents and grandparents. New dishes and family recipes, which may include some Middle Eastern recipes and spices.

There is even a predicted color of the year : blue and its' deeper variation indigo.Butterfly pea powder, which could be the new matcha is showing up in moon milk, a sleep remedy based on Ayurvedic recipes.Ube, a purple root vegetable and orach, mountain spinach , a purply cabbage like veggie will also be the stars of this year's tables.. Ms. Severson and I do agree on sustainability. She predicts that restaurants and food producers are and will be doubling down on earth friendly ingredients and practices. Vegan dishes and meat alternatives will show up on more menus. It's what I wrote yesterday about more home chefs will be offering their families Beyond Burgers and other plant based "meats". Also I think more fast food chains such as Wendy's Taco Bell and possibly Chipotle may switch over to Beyond Beef. Ms. Severson also foretells that finer dining places will also offer faux bouef. There will also be a rise in regenerative plants such as chickpeas and buckwheat which farmers use to regain soil between harvests. Also look for more biodegradable utensils from fast food places.

These are just some of the predictions for the upcoming year. There may be something new that arises that wasn't on the culinary radar. Guaranteed this year will be  a year full of interesting tastes .

African American Cooking Reimagined

African American cooking is not just soul food. It's much more, taken from the two hundred year old disapora that ripped Africans from their countries and roots.Native foods came with them, forever altering American tastes and dishes. Now there is a movement to bring those flavors to  current dining trends.

Regular contributor to the Wednesday Times Food section, Jeff Gordonier wrote an extensive piece on this. There is a new generation of African American chefs that are fusing history and imagination to create dishes that go beyond the typical soul food marriages of cornbread and barbecue or collard greens with ribs.There might be collard greens but they're reimagined  cooked Japanese style with a coating of sesame dressing. This is what Nicole A Taylor did to them in her new cookbook " The Up South Cookbook. There is also more embracing of original vegetables such as eggplant and peanuts, along with spicing, reminiscent of West African spice markets..African cooking is not taught or just ignored in the Euro centric cooking schools.Many chefs have to take their own trips to countries such as Ghana or Nigeria to acquire recipes or base theirs on older ones.

What about soul food? It's there and many chefs will cook it. It's origins are from the farm, with the mantra  "If it grows, together then it goes together."However it does get a fine tuning. Creole Shrimp and grits get a California zing with sweated vegetables at Brown Sugar Kitchen in Oakland,CA.Chef Tanya Holland keeps the richness but adds some baby spinach and cumin for a healthy kick. Some newer soul food restaurants will smoke pork belly on site as well as having shrimp that comes from Baja California as opposed to the Gulf of Mexico. Many chefs make regular visits to their local farmer's markets for the same freshness that 19th and earlier 20th Century  home chefs incorporated in their dishes. For years these dishes were either dismissed or lost  because they were deemed unimportant yet real soul food is healthy and flavorful,It's also a link to the West African countries that served as their basis.

African American cooking and West African foods have contributed so much to American culinary scene, It is finally being celebrated in many delicious ways. It's about time