Diversity in mind as recipes updated - Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

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Diversity in mind as recipes updated - Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Diversity in mind as recipes updated - Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Posted: 25 Dec 2020 12:08 AM PST

NEW YORK -- With a new Black editor-in-chief and ambitious promises to do better, a little corner of the Conde Nast universe is taking on racial-injustice one recipe at a time.

Since July, the small staff at Epicurious, a resource site for home cooks, has been scouring 55 years' worth of recipes from a variety of Conde Nast magazines in search of objectionable titles, ingredient lists and stories told through a white American lens.

"It came after Black Lives Matter, after a lot of consciousness-raising among the editors and staff," said David Tamarkin, the white digital director for Epicurious. "It came out of conversations that we had about how we can do better, where are we failing and where have our predecessors failed?"

Called the Archive Repair Project, the work is also an outgrowth of complaints and controversies at Conde Nast. But it's just one effort on a full plate of initiatives, said Sonia Chopra, who's been executive editor of Bon Appetit and Epicurious for about four months, working under the new editor-in-chief, Dawn Davis.

In all, the 25-year-old site (with a staff of 10) is a repository of 35,000 recipes from Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Self, House & Garden and Epicurious itself. They stretch back to 1965.

"The language that we use to talk about food has evolved so much from, sure, the 1960s but also the 1990s, and I think it is our duty as journalists, as people who work in food media, to make sure that we are reflecting that appropriately," Chopra said.

Epicurious and Bon Appetit have been at the center of accusations that also plague others in the food world: undervaluing minority-group staff members, perpetuating systemic racism, racial and gender discrimination, and more. Some of those issues led several Bon Appetit employees to leave earlier this year after Editor-in-Chief Adam Rapoport resigned over a 2004 Halloween "brownface" photo and over allegations of racial discrimination.

While Conde Nast studies pay equity, and has issued apologies and pledges to do such things as expand unconscious-bias education and create inclusion and diversity plans, the Archive Repair Project rolls on.

The bulk of Epicurious site traffic goes to the archive, mostly recipes but also articles and other editorial work, Tamarkin and Chopra said.

"Being such an old site, we're full of a lot of ideas about American cooking that really go through a white lens," Tamarkin said. "We know that American cooking is Mexican American cooking and Indian American cooking and Nigerian American cooking, that that's the kind of cooking that's really happening in this country every day."

One of the first issues "repaired," he said, was use of the word "exotic."

"I can't think of any situation where that word would be appropriate, and yet it's all over the site," Tamarkin said. "That's painful for me and I'm sure others."

Another word requiring removal was a lime reference that included a racial slur directed at Black Africans, particularly in South Africa.

Other terms, such as "authentic" and "ethnic," are also among the changes.

The work, Chopra said, is "certainly something that I think not just Conde Nast brands but all over food media and media in general are really thinking about."

NOT JUST A WORD

Since July, when Tamarkin outlined the project on Epicurious, he and his staff have changed about 200 recipes and other work. Some changes are more complicated than removing a single word, such as an entire story about the "ethnic" aisle at the grocery store.

"We have published recipes with headnotes that fail to properly credit the inspirations for the dish, or degrade the cuisine the dish belongs to. We have purported to make a recipe 'better' by making it faster, or swapping in ingredients that were assumed to be more familiar to American palates, or easier to find. We have inferred (and in some cases outright labeled) ingredients and techniques to be 'surprising' or 'weird.' And we have published terminology that was widely accepted in food writing at the time, and that we now recognize has always been racist," Tamarkin wrote.

He noted: "Certainly there will be times when our edits do not go far enough; some of our repairs will need repairs."

For Bon Appetit, that's exactly what happened when an outcry among readers led it to make changes including the headnote and references to Haiti on a pumpkin soup recipe put forth by chef Marcus Samuelsson, a guest editor. The magazine referred to it as soup joumou, a beloved Haitian staple that symbolizes the country's bloody liberation from its French colonizers.

It was not soup joumou, but was intended by Samuelsson as an homage. The magazine adapted an entry from one of his cookbooks, "The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food." Both Bon Appetit and Samuelsson, who is Black, apologized after calls of erasure and cultural appropriation.

ASSESSING, REASSESSING

Chopra said broader plans are in motion.

"We're committed to building teams that are inclusive and thoughtful, and that means always assessing and reassessing our policies and processes. As we transition into 2021 with new leadership, we are examining these across the board, from hiring best practices to making sure we are communicating and working collaboratively and holistically across teams and platforms," Chopra said.

In the meantime, Tamarkin and his crew are slowly pressing on with their archive changes at Epicurious, where "Asian" is no longer the name of a cold rice noodle salad, and a vadouvan spice blend has lost its mention as "exotic."

"A lot of these problems happened because there was a lack of thoughtfulness," Tamarkin said, "so the solutions require that we be thoughtful now."

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This image shows the logo for Epicurious, a resource site for home cooks. Since July, Epicurious has been scouring 55 years' worth of recipes from a variety of Conde Nast magazines. They're looking for objectionable titles, ingredient lists and stories told through a white American lens. The so-called Archive Repair Project at the resource site for home cooks is just a tiny effort on a full plate of promised initiatives. (Epicurious via AP)

The Things We Cooked: Recipes We Loved This Year - Houstonia Magazine

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 04:02 AM PST

Two years ago, Houstonia staff members wrote about their favorite restaurant meals. This year? Suffice it to say we spent more time than usual in the kitchen in 2020. 

So, we opted this time around to talk about our favorite recipes to follow. May 2021 include many more great kitchen accomplishments! (Though let's also beat this virus and eat in restaurants again, okay??)

Spiced Meatloaf Joins the Rotation

I'm not too big on recipes in my day-to-day cooking, but I do have a few I've memorized over the years and crank out as needed. Pableaux Johnson's red beans recipe, Mark Bittman's sardine pasta, and Martha Stewart's Mediterranean chicken (Love you, Martha! Granted, I usually cook thighs, not boneless chicken breast). The Moosewood Cookbook's Hungarian mushroom soup and the Run Fast Eat Slow spicy black beans (I use chicken stock instead of water; and, sorry, it doesn't appear to be online) are typically on rotation in cooler months, too. 

The best recipe I successfully made this year—granted, pre-pandemic—was Nik Sharma's insanely good spiced meatloaf. — Gwendolyn Knapp, managing editor

Amatriciana Becomes a Staple

As we've rolled into the end of this strange, chaotic year, I've found myself obsessed with Amatriciana, an Italian dish my Italian fiancé introduced to me when we first met. I've enjoyed making it this year because it's both delicious and so, so easy to pull off, a key factor if you're not exactly a confident kitchen wizard.

You start by boiling your pasta (traditionally bucatini, though cellentani or really anything else works) and putting about a quarter pound of diced pancetta (or guanciale if you can get it) in a pan with one chopped habanero pepper, letting the pork brown while the grease absorbs the heat of the pepper. Then add a pound of cherry tomatoes and let the concoction simmer for about 10 minutes, or until all of the tomatoes are clearly cooked. 

Once the pasta is cooked, stir it into the sauce, grate pecorino or pecorino Calabrese over it and serve. I've made this so much this year, I think I could make it in my sleep.

And, if you're wanting to feel a little festive, you can top off the meal with a glass of vin brulé, a Northern Italian take on mulled wine that is almost ridiculously easy to make. You just throw a bottle of red wine, a peeled orange, a peeled lemon, two sticks of cinnamon, eight cloves, and about a half a cup of sugar into a pot, bring the mixture to a boil, and serve. — Dianna Wray, editor-in-chief

Conquering My Paella Mountain

Arguably my greatest accomplishment of 2020 was making paella from scratch by myself. As a relatively unexperienced cook, I was terrified of making it—what if I burned the rice, what if I accidentally set my apartment on fire, what if it tasted bad? It was my Everest.

But since 2020 was such a dumpster fire of a year, I wanted to relive better days, namely my college study abroad trip to Barcelona. So, after a $30 trip to Kroger for ingredients, I began to climb, so to speak. And for a moment, when I threw the saffron into the pan, I was back by the sea in Spain, sharing pitchers of sangria and massive pans of paella with friends. — Catherine Wendlandt, digital editor

I Can See for Myles

I love to cook and entertain, so having more time in the house in 2020 was something of a blessing in disguise, as it allowed me to work on my kitchen skills. Every opportunity I had to cook a big meal, I went right for the throat. On top of that, my wife bought me a grill for our new house, which meant late-summer evenings were spent firing up some steaks and burgers for the family.

I consulted many sources for recipes this year, including Toni Tipton-Martin's fabulous Southern cookbook Jubilee; 2020's The Phoenicia Diner Cookbook, celebrating the food of a hipster hotspot in the Catskills of New York; and 2011's The Art of Living According to Joe Beef (from a Montreal restaurant that was the setting for one of my most favorite meals ever). My favorite recipe to cook this year, though? It came from the freakin' Joy of Cooking.

Miles Standish stuffing is a bready wonder that includes a bunch of meaty things (pepperoni, breakfast sausage, turkey heart, and gizzard), some fresh spices, celery, and loads of butter. It's named for the military advisor for Plymouth Colony, Myles Standish, who was on the Mayflower. Standish was also honored with the name of a hotel in Boston. That hotel later became Myles Standish Hall, a dormitory at Boston University where I lived and worked for nearly four years as a top student cook and manager.

So, Myles Standish Hall is where I learned to love cooking. That small personal connection was enough for me to dive right in.

You'll have to read the Joy of Cooking to get the actual recipe, but celebrity chef Alex Guarnaschelli has a pretty good one available online. I made mine for a post-Thanksgiving holiday meal (with leg of lamb), and everyone raved about it. The secret: Naturally, more butter. — Timothy Malcolm, dining editor

These 6 Christmas breakfast recipes are a gift everyone will love - The Washington Post

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 07:00 AM PST

Whether you open your presents Christmas Eve or Day, you're going to want a nice, festive breakfast on Christmas morning.

For some, that means a sweet treat, while others may choose something hearty and savory. Never fear, we've got options for both! Check out our recommendations for a delicious Christmas morning breakfast, and if these aren't for you, head to our Recipe Finder for more options.


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