My America: Authentic Recipes from a Young Black Chef | Soul Food & Southern Cuisine Cookbook for Home Cooking & Entertaining

A bright, bold exploration of American food that leaves popular cliches behind.

Kwame Onwuachi's American heritage is composed of manifold influences: Jamaican, Nigerian, Trinidadian, Louisianan, Texan, and all that the Bronx enfolds. Entwined with that is a formal culinary education at the CIA, and the chef's own relentless curiosity about not only these cuisines but their interaction with the rest of the world.

In chapters focusing on ingredients such as rice, greens and vegetables, legumes and tubers, and seafood and shellfish, Onwuachi, who is also the author of the insightful memoir  explains the context for his recipes. Some are traditional in Africa, others are the result of interactions in the New World, and yet others are his own creations.

Dishes can be as simple as Carolina Gold rice with roasted garlic and bay leaves or as refined as a sweet potato veloute with crab salad. Onwuachi's pantry recipes turn out to be particularly useful as spice blends, flavor pastes, and sauces and are employed throughout the book.

Intriguing, thoughtful, and expansive.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.