From East Africa to New Jersey, third culture cooking is fusion food with more intention

The last time Good Food spoke to Zaynab Issa, she was telling us what's on her table at iftar (kalimati and Afghan mantu). Now, she has a cookbook — Third Culture Cooking: Classic Recipes for a New Generation. It focuses on the culinary interplay of her East African and South Asian roots filtered through an American suburban upbringing. 

Evan Kleiman: Let's start with the title of your book.  How do you define "third culture cooking"? 

Zaynab Issa: I think of third culture cooking as cooking that doesn't have a specific influence that you can pin down to just one place.

I feel like all of us. 

Yeah, it is the way most people cook these days but I think it has a little bit more context behind it. It's fusion food but a little bit more intentional.

Store-bought tortellini can be swapped out for frozen gyoza in this quick weeknight dinner made with chicken bouillon and punchy preserved lemon. Photo by Graydon Herriott. 

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background, especially in the culinary sense, to bring us to a place of greater understanding of what your third culture cooking is.

I am the child of East African immigrants and my parents' culture was greatly reflected in my home. I was eating mostly Khoja classics. So Khojas are an ethnic group that belong to South Asian origin but then there's a migration pattern that can be tracked through East Africa as well. So even my parents' culture is kind of like a third culture in and of itself. That was very present in my home life. And then I lived in New Jersey. 

Throughout my schooling, in elementary school, middle school, high school, I really was exposed to what it means to live a suburban American life. On TV, through the Food Network, I would learn about American food and the way that I was seeing it played out in school, and learning about it through TV shows.

The Khoja community was based in Queens. Queens is a very multicultural place in and of itself but I was also learning about my parents' culture at the mosque, through the community center, and eating that food, both at home and in the community center. So both of those influences really shaped my understanding of food. 

My grandmother lived with us and both my grandmother and my mother are fantastic cooks. There was upwards of eight people in my house at any given point. So the kitchen was always that meeting point. Someone was always in the kitchen, cooking, and food really brought us all together so regularly. 

Some of my earliest childhood memories are actually cooking and eating. I've loved it always. I didn't realize that people didn't love cooking and food. It just seemed like it would be a part of everyone's life. 

I know. I feel the same way. When I was a kid, one of the reasons I used to love to play at friends' houses after school was I was so intrigued by how each house had its own aroma. If I were to ask you, "What was the aroma of your childhood home?" what would some of those smells be?

I would say garlic, ginger, and onion. But then, because that scent is so strong and savory, my mom would always burn bucha or oud, which are infused wood chips, kind of like incense. That smell is what I would describe my childhood home as, because once you burn then and that smoke moves through the whole house, it really settles in and it masks any smell of cooking.

Tahini and an olive oil-based dough give these date and chocolate chip cookies a crisp edge and a chewy center. Photo by Graydon Herriott.

I love that. What an unexpected answer. When were you consciously aware that you were finding ways to combine all of these different parts of yourself in a dish?

I think it was around the same time that I started being aware that I couldn't pin my identity down to one thing. When I was trying to think about who I am, I realized that the concept of third culture and being a third culture kid really resonated with me as someone who has roots everywhere and nowhere. 

When I thought about the kinds of foods that I enjoyed eating, they also had that throughline where it was like, this food is meaningful because of someone's experiences with different cultures and their travels and where life has taken them. That's how I view my own cooking, and that's the best way I can make sense of what I eat and how I cook. It's influenced by very different things but also things that I can pinpoint to specific moments, as well. I'm very driven by nostalgia so I think that my mom and my grandmother's food shows up often but in different ways that are more authentic to the way I live my life.

Do you tend to show this multiplicity of points of view by having several different dishes on a table? Or is it more about techniques and the interplay of different flavors and spices? 

I would say it is the latter — the techniques, the different interplays, and even just the applications of certain flavors. I put cardamom in cakes, which vanilla extract is maybe what you would expect in a yellow cake but Cardamom is there for me. It provides that similar, sweet, floral flavor that you want from a vanilla cake. When I think about sweet, I think cardamom.

I have to say, one of the best banana breads I've ever made in my life had cardamom. You write, "I'm busy, hungry, intentional, nostalgic, lazy, and a little fancy." Can you pick a recipe to talk about that epitomizes this aesthetic?

There are several but one of my favorites is the spice short ribs and potatoes. That dish is based off of my mom's meat curry that she would make on a Tuesday night. It's made with stew beef. It happened in a pressure cooker. It was a very quick and budget-friendly option. I turned it into something that is inspired by classic red wine, braised short ribs, but it feels like something that is cozy and warming and comforting. 

It's nostalgic for me but at the same time, I often turn to that recipe when I'm trying to host and I want to put something on the table that's going to be a crowd pleaser, and people are going to be like, "Oh, my God. How did you make that?" Because it has that kind of fancy appeal with the slow cook. But because it's a slow cook, you just set it and forget it.

"I think of third culture cooking as cooking that doesn't have a specific influence that you can pin down to just one place," says Zaynab Issa. Photo by Graydon Herriott.

What spices are in there? 

There is cumin, coriander, turmeric, chili powder, and then there's garlic and ginger.

Could you share one of your recipes with us that uses preserved lemons? I have lemon trees in my backyard so I make them but then I never use them. 

There's six to eight recipes in here. 

I would say a preserved lemon recipe that you think is unusual and that we’ll love.

Okay, there's a tortellini in preserved lemon dough, and that is so fast because you just take some good chicken bone broth, you add garlic, preserved lemon, and brown butter to it. Then, you boil tortellini — the store-bought cheese-stuffed or even meat-stuffed tortellini — in that broth. It's so delicious. It's citrusy and it gets finished with parm. So it's very cheesy and easy. Comforting but bright. It's a great springtime dish. 

I'm also intrigued by the batata vada, also known as kachori in Zanzibari tradition. Can you tell me about these? They're gluten-free potato fritters. I think anytime you fry a potato is a good time.

Exactly, I would agree. Those are very nostalgic for me. I grew up with them, and my dad, who comes from Zanzibar, calls them kochori, and my mom calls them potato or, which is their more like well known name. They are a South Asian potato fritter. Kachori, I think, came about from a misunderstanding of South Asian cuisine that was happening in East Africa, where there was this blending of culture. I think it ended up being referenced as something that it wasn't, which happens often when you're sharing culture.

I always think about that dish as super interesting, because South Asians came to East Africa, brought their food. It got made there, enjoyed there, like anything delicious does when it gets transferred, and it started to be understood as something entirely different. Both are true because they're both accurate. To a Zanzibari, this potato fritter is called kachori. And in the south in India and in Pakistan, you think of these as potatoes. Both are correct.

"Third Culture Cooking: Classic Recipes for a New Generation" focuses on the culinary interplay of Zaynab Issa's East African and South Asian roots filtered through her American suburban upbringing. Photo courtesy of Abrams.

Describe them. Are they a mashed potato fritter? 

Yeah. Basically it's a mashed potato that then gets seasoned with a spiced oil that has turmeric, mustard seeds, lemon juice, and salt. They're super delicious. Then you combine all that together and the batter is a chickpea flour batter. That's why they're gluten-free.

Let's move on to something sweet. You have these date and dark chocolate cookies where you're using nine medjool dates. Presumably, that allows you to use less white and brown sugar than you otherwise would. What do the dates do to the texture of the cookie? 

When I think about a chocolate chip cookie, I think about a very deep, caramelly buttery flavor. I find that dates are the caramel of the fruit world. So that was my immediate thought. Instead of doing a butter cookie dough, I did a tahini and olive oil cookie dough. So it has a bit of a savory background that the dates pair really well with. 

The dates also offer for me, which is paramount, that fudgy texture in a cookie. When you bite into the cookie, if you bite into a chunk of date, it's fudgy like a brownie would be. I find that so lovely. And then that, with the pools of melty dark chocolate, is so delicious. 

It sounds so wonderful.