Anna Francese Gass (http://www.annasheirloomkitchen.com/) is the author of Heirloom Kitchen: Heritage Recipes and Family Stories from the Tables of Immigrant Women (https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062844224) . Anna’s mother, an immigrant from Italy, is a phenomenal scratch cook. And although Anna trained at the French Culinary Institute and immersed herself in the world of food and recipe testing, she was embarrassed to admit that she didn’t know how to make her mother’s meatballs. Heirloom Kitchen documents Anna’s effort to capture and master her mother’s unwritten recipes, as well as the treasured recipes of women from all over the world who resettled in America. It was a delicious and uplifting experience. Also this hour, a conversation with the women of Sanctuary Kitchen (https://www.sanctuarykitchen.org/) in New Haven. We’ll talk to Co-founder Sumiya Khan, Culinary Coordinator Carol Byer-Alcorace, and Sanctuary Kitchen Chef Rawaa Ghazi.
Join the conversation on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ctpublic/) , Twitter (https://twitter.com/wnpr) , Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/ctpublic/) , and email (mailto:seasoned@ctpublic.org) at seasoned@ctpublic.org (mailto:seasoned@ctpublic.org) .
Robyn Doyon-Aitken and Catie Talarski produced this show.
Guests:
Anna Francese Gass – Author of Heirloom Kitchen: Heritage Recipes and Family Stories from the Tables of Immigrant Women (https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062844224)
Sumiya Khan – Co-founder of Sanctuary Kitchen (https://www.sanctuarykitchen.org/) in New Haven, Conn.
Rawaa Ghazi – Chef at Sanctuary Kitchen in New Haven, Conn.
Carol Byer-Alcorace – Culinary coordinator at Sanctuary Kitchen in New Haven, Conn.
Features Recipes:
Gina’s Brodo di Mama e Polpette (Meatballs with Tomato Sauce) (https://ctpublic.org/recipes/ginas-brodo-di-mama-e-polpette-meatballs-with-tomato-sauce/)
Safoi’s Chicken Tagine (https://ctpublic.org/recipes/safois-chicken-tagine/)
Maria’s Sancocho (Meat Stew) (https://ctpublic.org/recipes/marias-sancocho-meat-stew/)
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[Music] welcome to seasoned I’m Maris Soul Castro and I’m Chef Plum we’re kicking off women’s History Month by spending some time with several local women we really want you to know about coming up unseasoned you’ll hear from three women that work at Sanctuary Kitchen in New Haven now Sanctuary kitchen is not a traditional restaurant but its community of cooks are doing a Brisk curbside and delivery business and continue to offer their Multicultural dishes at city seed Farmers Market Market we’ll catch up with a Founder a culinary manager and one of their chefs later in the show but first Our Guest Anna Francis GS is a Connecticut chef and recipe tester she’s the author of The cookbook heirloom kitchen what started as a project to document the unwritten recipes of her mother principally her meatball recipe turned into a cookbook preserving the heirloom recipes of 40 immigrant women from all over the world Anna Francis Gus thank you so much for joining us on Seasons it is such a pleasure to meet you same here I’m so excited to be here today thank you so much for having me we love a great story that begins with a meatball don’t all great stories start with a meatball it should right basically what happened is I would say at this point now about five years ago I came to a very Stark realization that I did not know how to make any of my mom’s dishes so a little bit about me I am a plastically trained uh Chef I went to the French Culinary Institute in New York City I became a recipe tester I worked uh for Martha Stewart Living Whole Foods uh food 52 and I’m also you know just a recipe developer and recipe tester so when you don’t know how to make your mom’s recipes and that’s your occupation it’s a little bit embarrassing so I said to my mom you know we really need to get these recipes written down because these really are family heirlooms and also you know my children had got gotten older and I realized how much they really valued my mom’s food so it was like I needed these recipes for the future Generations it was kind of like a Sunday project we’d get into you know her kitchen when she was making dinner she’d yell she’d direct with a wooden spoon and I was like furiously writing everything down and then we kind of got it done like we got all the family favorites written in a book and then I kind of realized this is a service that I could provide all of my friends are first gen they all have you know parents that come from someplace other than the United States so why not offer this as a service I get to meet amazing immigrant women learn how to make these Homeland dishes and my friends are going to get a typed up perfect you know recipe so I sent out an email thinking okay you know four or five people will respond everyone responded to start I had 10 interviews set up so I was like okay this is going to be fun so I actually was like this is going to be a Blog I’m going to blog it up like everybody’s blogging it up and it’s going to be a lot of fun but what happened was after I got through my first 10 friends it was like I was like kitchen hopping because then everybody was recommending their friend and you know one woman’s like oh you gotta you got to cook with my friend Sher and then Sher would say you got to cook with my friend Dina so I just kept jumping from Kitchen to Kitchen as a recipe tester I do take a lot of work with cookbooks and a friend of mine was like Anna you recipe test so many cookbooks like why aren’t you writing your own cookbook this would be the perfect cookbook yeah and it you know it became um a real deal book in April 2019 kitchen was born congratulations I mean what a great story just to come from that I want to ask you too it’s kind of a little bit woven in there as as someone who is professionally trained you know going to culinary school and and learning I guess I don’t say the proper way but you know we would consider classically French this is the way you do things how different was working with these immigrant women and these grandmothers and these mothers about you know the recipes the the Techni techniques was it different from being classically trained yeah it was like the polar opposite it’s like going from you know measuring two grams to you know oh let me throw this jar of whatever in throw you know some salt from over my shoulder yeah it was totally opposite but my training I wouldn’t even so much say culinary school but just as a recipe developer and tester is what really set me up for Success because it was like okay we can do this and one thing I realized really early on is where as your mother’s recipes might seem like complete chaos there is a method to their Madness right so it might look like they’re just throwing in something into the pot and they are but they’re throwing in that same pinch that same handful every single time which is why it tastes the same every and you know like this is my mom’s you know goulash you know what it tastes like because she does make it the same every time so all I really needed to do was get them to slow down and then of course when they were pinching I was like no no no we’re GNA do a teaspoon is that enough H you know a handful is that a cup and just really getting and they were in I mean these women were so honored and humbled to be included yeah and and this is even before they knew it was going to be a cookbook I was just some crazy girl you know over at their house wanting to learn how to make tamali you know it wasn’t like they really even thought like oh you know this is going to be my you know my big break it was just like let me have fun with this girl that wants to learn my food so they slow down they let me videotape they let me call them many times afterwards if I had questions when I was retesting but no it it really worked out well and another question I get all the time is were the women secretive and and they were not open armed um wanting me to get catch everything wanting it to be perfect wanting it to taste just like theirs I got a really good group of ladies did any of them test you were they like okay now you make it the way I just showed you no no I would go home and then you know my recipe tester hat would immediately go on I would remake the recipe U make sure it tasted like theirs if it was someone local sometimes I’d actually bring them some say did I get it is this right yeah um so that was fun for the women that you know I didn’t you know when I went out to San Francisco I didn’t have that option but for the Connecticut people I if I could drive to their house and have them taste whatever I had made I did perfect I love it since you’re talking about recipes can you tell us about some of them um there’s one from Italy Gina’s bro diama yeah so that’s my mom meeples with tomato sauce and those are the meatballs those are the meatballs that you know really started it all so and we joke because my mom’s hands are actually on the cover so we call her the cover girl she has the most recipes in the book and you know I’m not going to lie she might have a little bit of an ego about it we’re gonna have to we’re gonna have to dig into that I don’t know um no my mom is actually an incredibly humble person person always you know a cheerleader of mine which is wonderful very proud of the book though that’s an incredibly important Family Recipe uh my mom has a certain method which is in Calabria where my mother’s from the meatballs aren’t fried or baked they’re poached in the sauce so it’s just the way my grandmother made them her grandmother made them and it’s just important to me in the sense that when you or your family comes from another part of the world what you’re eating at your at your family table is really a important demonstration of where you came from you know growing up I I wasn’t FaceTiming with my grandparents every day I wasn’t you know really having that day-to-day interaction so how was I learning who they were it was through their food and culture that my parents were mimicking here in most cultures you know a lot of things are tied to Holiday and you eat in certain things on holidays so it was it was meaningful that we were calling Italy let’s say on Christmas Eve and we had the same things on our table that they had there and that thread is what really kept us tethered in in in a meaningful way even though we really couldn’t see or talk to each other on a daily basis we’re talking to Anna Frances gos Connecticut chef and author of heirloom kitchen Heritage recipes and family stories from the tables of immigrant women in the food world there’s often a focus on the authenticity and appropriation of recipes and cuisine uh the recipes in this book are authentic to their contributors as they remember them but as Anna says your mother may have made it differently and that’s okay I asked her to talk about authenticity yeah I kind of think the word authenticity is like a curse word it’s a very loaded term and I think you know especially right now what going on in society um at least in you know in the food media world where people are very passionate about their Homeland dishes and who’s making them and why and how um and are they doing it correctly and with respect so I think the first thing is whenever you’re making something for the world I mean what you do in your home kitchen I’m not gonna I’m not going to come in your house and wag my finger at you but for someone in the public eye or someone that’s you know either creating a cookbook or a magazine you need to be incredibly conscious of how you’re presenting the dish from somewhere else especially if it’s not your your culture because you know at the end of the day you can read about something in a book but if you didn’t grow up eating it by the people that created that dish you’re not going to have that Touchstone you know you’re going to have to figure it out so the reason I wrote that kind of disclaimer at the beginning of the book is I didn’t want anyone getting upset that you know my recipe for you know canaf uh you know which is a you know a Lebanese dish with cheese and and shredded Pho and it’s this delicious dessert you know Irene who came from Lebanon when she got here she couldn’t get the the right cheese so she kind of played with the recipe and she realized that shredded mozzarella kind of did the trick but I don’t want you reading it and saying ah blasphemy you know how dare you because yes is that authentic no you know in Lebanon they they do have you know certain cheeses that they use for that but we couldn’t get it here especially 50 years ago so our parents had to kind of accommodate that’s okay that’s what should happen we should make things our own we just have acknowledge that fact that we customized we changed it around the reason I said what I said is make irin try it it might be it might be similar to your mother’s and then Tinker with it and get it as close to Mom’s as possible either way hopefully it bring elicits memory it brings back um and at the end of the day hopefully just tastes really good what is the best canned canned tomato brand that you use because I will make a sauce with one brand of canned tomato and it comes out one way I don’t alter the recipe except I buy suddenly buy a different brand and now the sauce tastes like garbage you know tomatoes are a vegetable or actually I think technically they are fruit but they are you know they they grow in soil you know just like wine right they’re affected by the soil that they’re grown in you know the temperature how long they were shipped you know in a truck obviously who is creating that sauce or crushed or whatever it is that you’re buying I do like Mir Glenn organic I just really it’s m UI r g l n I really like their product I just think it tastes like tomato um close second I would say is pomy I just like a tomato sauce that tastes like tomato sauce I think it’s so funny because people go really crazy about Sun Marzano and that’s also not all created equal and you know due to environmental issues going on in parts of Italy you’re not always getting the best product even though you’re paying the highest price yeah so my suggestion is find one that you really like and then stick to it Chef what is your favorite I kind of like the pomet ones those are great ones as well you know anything for me it’s San marsiano that’s kind of the direction I’m going to go in just me personally cuz it’s nothing but tomatoes and a little bit of salt supposedly the best tomatoes in the world and if I’m going to make something I want to use the best stuff I possibly can can we go back to meatballs now let’s do it talk to me about your favorite you’ve you’ve tasted a lot of meatballs in your day I would assume so this is my theory about meatballs and I say this all the time I think it’s actually in the header of the recipe is every Italian girl is going to tell you that her mom’s meatballs are the best like or else we’re going to be disowned right I do see the very high Merit of my mom’s meatballs because I think that there are certain tricks that she’s used in her meatballs that make them extra delicious the fact that there is some tomato sauce in the actual meatball mix really brings out moisture the fact that they’re poached you know you don’t have a crust or you know you don’t have to add a lot of breadcrumb to get it to stay in the pan it’s po it can have very little binder so you’re really tasting that meatball and you know this is kind of my tagline whenever I sign a book and people laugh but I always write that food is love because I absolutely do think that food translates so the reason I love my mom’s meatballs the best is because they’re made by my mom period end of story your mom make make terrible meatballs but you’re going to like them better than my mom’s because your mom made them my mom was an awful cook and would make meatballs with like grape jam and it was like a Swedish it was a mess the whole thing was a okay so maybe not your mom’s meatballs thank you there we go so when it comes to making meatballs are you you know an 80 20 ground beef do we want to use a little ground beef ground pork are we adding a little sausage to it what is our protein mixture going into these meatballs so my joke with my mom’s meatball is it’s the Holy Trinity of meats it’s Beef Pork and ve and equal of each because they each bring a little thing to they each bring their own character to the party right so you know one’s bringing the fat one’s bringing the tenderness one’s bringing the flavor yeah they just kind of get all in there and and and have fun yeah I I agree I think mixing it up is definitely the way to go I’m a pork and meat guy I’ve never done a lot of ve in it but maybe I should try I’ll mix that in it tenderizes it it’s it’s like what I tell people is you know you made my mom’s meatball right if you like kind of dig into it with a fork and it just kind of splits in half you know if I’m eating a meatball and it’s and it’s like all I’m tasting is bread and it’s like softball consist see then you’ve lost me what is the ideal circumference of a meatball because I’ve seen some meatballs that are almost the size of my head I’ve seen meatballs that are like little Swedish meatballs and everything in between I would like and I always say like a little bit bigger than a golf ball I think Italian-American restaurants that really just tried to like amp it up and like you know go big or go home that will come to your table and present you with like with this huge meatball with like four pounds of Parmesan cheese like first of all that’s not how Italians eat secondly at that point I really feel like you’re giving me meatloaf you’re not even giving me a meatball um and you know if we’re gonna if we’re going to throw around the word authentic um that’s definitely not authentic to me sometimes my mom will make little we call them like ppei which is little meatballs and she’ll put those like in a soup like if you ever had Italian wedding soup there’s those little butini inside and those are really good too and you can see these recipes on our website cpu. org seasoned Anna you also talk about some handmade pasta your grandmother’s as a matter of fact any tips for making pasta yes there is a very important memory for me because when I went to Il to visit my grandmother I did see her make those talat tell and if you don’t know what talat tell are it’s it’s a handmade pasta that you’re rolling out into a very very thin dough it’s all done by hand and then you kind of roll it on itself with a rolling pin and then tal in Italian is cut you’re cutting them to make your strips so no no machinery requ ire just you know your two hands and a rolling pen my grandmother did it so fast you know you couldn’t believe that she still had all five fingers when she was done and I just remember watching her do that in her kitchen and being like this is like magic yeah like this woman took three ingredients water flour and eggs and she just created this beautiful ribbon pasta it was like she kind of like Snapped her fingers and it was there so I mean I I I can actually get emotional look at the cover of my book because it’s just it’s like I feel like it’s my lineage almost like my family crest and it’s incredibly important and it was funny I just did a I’ve been doing a lot of cooking demos on Zoom uh our new reality this woman um made Aros Grandes which is a a Puerto Rican dish rice with pigeon peas yeah I’m Puerto Rican that’s like our staple dish exactly and they eat it on Christmas Eve and she had lost her family recipe for it and she found mine in my book and she said you know what I made it I even was able to get the bagato which is on the bottom of the pot big yeah yeah very very crispy rice that everybody fights over I guess at the end of the night yes we do we’ve launched Wars over who gets the big ow I always win that to me is like the ultimate for me like I Feel Complete career satisfaction that this book really did what it could do when this woman is like you know what I did it it tastes so close to my grandmother’s and I already know what I’m doing this Christmas Eve my book did that for her and Haiti the woman that I met in uh Hoboken that taught me how to make it her recipe is now living on in her family and also in another Puerto Rican Family who had lost the recipe so it’s like mission accomplished we’re talking with Connecticut chef and recipe developer Anna Frances gas she’s the author of heirloom kitchen later in the hour our conversation with the women of sanctuary Kitchen in New Haven I’m Maris Castro and I’m Chef Plum coming up after the break we’ll learn more about the Immigrant women who open their kitchens to Anna and if you’ve ever wanted to make a Moroccan tajine don’t go anywhere you know we’re so like into our hot pot insta pot air fry it’s like these people had us be you’re listening to seasoned we’ll be right [Music] back welcome back to seasoned I’m Mar Sol Castro and I’m Chef Plum after creating a project to replicate her mother’s meatballs and other treasured but Unwritten recipes she grew up eating our guest Anna Frances Gus used her skill as a chef and recipe tester to document the recipes of immigrant women those recipes became the cookbook heirloom kitchen can we talk about some of your other recipes we’ve covered Italy we’ve covered Puerto Rico let’s go to Morocco Morocco oh the world of Tajin I loved my visit to Morocco via Michigan um the woman safwa is a college professor you know incredibly bright accomplished woman but also again came here from Morocco brought all of her tein with her I mean her kitchen is filled with them different sizes different types of clay different decorations on them I did a lot of research just to learn about Tajin and what exactly they do and it’s fast fting I mean this is a an earth and wear Clay Pot basically that they’ve been using I would say at this point now 300 years and what is so cool is because of the Dome top so if you don’t know what tajine is it’s basically like I would say a rounded dish with a domed top and you put your ingredients on the bottom in a traditionally Morocco chicken or beef preserved lemon olives all on the bottom with carrots and onion and then you put it on the stove with obviously a liquid and what happens is the liquid evaporates but because of the dome’s top it gets caught in the top and then it comes back down it comes raining back down on the food what happens is you end up with an incredibly tender piece of meat so why is that important well number one they weren’t getting boneless skinless chicken breast at the grocery store they were eating the animals and that’s not always the most tender cut of meat so this pot was creating a tender dish of meat no matter what part of the animal they happen to be cooking that day and then the other thing that I thought was incredibly fascinating was yeah so back then there wasn’t a ton of Clean Water you really had to reserve how much water you were using when you cooked because you needed it to take a bath and you needed it to drink so the fact that you put in water once and that water literally is recycling itself back onto that food while it’s cooking and you don’t have to add more water well that’s a win-win and I was just like you know we’re so like into our poot pot insta pot air fry it’s like these people had us beat because we’re dealing with Surplus they were dealing with how do we get food on the table in the easiest less waste possible so I have a cheffy question for you I was wondering if like we know that water turns to Vapor at 212° that’s when you see the and it hits the top of the pan of of the tajen and then comes back down into it does you think that affects the temperature does it not get as hot inside that pot they would cook this over an open fire so even when you know they were probably like moving it around to make sure it was staying you know in the book and even when I’m demoing it for people you know you don’t want to blast the heat on this thing you do want to keep it at a low even temperature but the fact that it’s cooking for so long everything at the end ends up incredibly moist juicy and cooked through it’s interesting how it preserves heat and also allows for everything that needs to happen to happen yeah you know when I bought the hot I’m like there’s got to be a reason it’s got this shape and I have to know why now I hope sefo gave you one of her T jeans when it was all done no no she didn’t and it’s funny each one of them also has like you know their heirlooms you know someone gave it to them a wedding gift so they they’re incredibly um sentimental I know one of the things about the book is um some of the meals they make are for celebrations like Christmas Eve or Chinese New Year and that becomes the gateway to just learning how make this Cuisine regardless of the holiday and I wonder if you could talk to us about that and how that influenced what went into the book it’s funny how I chose recipes for the book I originally went at this with my friends not their parents like okay we’re gonna get those recipes written down it was the same thing as with the meatballs it’s like what do you want me to teach you what do you want to know which one of the recipes you know not the not the one that she made once it’s always those recipes so the way I used to frame it to people was when you were away at college and you would call call home and say I’m coming home this weekend what was the recipe you asked your mom to make because if you remember when you’re in college and you get homesick I would call home and my mom be like what do you want and i’ be like okay Ma Saturday night we’re gonna have this and then we’re gonna eat this and then I want you to make this and she’s like all right all right and I figured other people were like that too and they were so it was those recipes it was the recipes that you can’t live without and yes a lot of them are tied to Holiday what’s also really lovely you know when I was making the dumplings with Tina from China it’s interesting because you know the Chinese food has not only um significance for a day but there’s numbers attached there’s significance to each food so for example and this is a lot of Asian cultures they eat noodles on their birthday because noodles are long and you want a long life and noodles represent a long life so one of the recipes in the book is for this very interesting sticky rice cake but you have to make this cake you have to put a certain number of they call them candied plums on top because you know there’s always a number that represents what you need for the next year everything is is thought out nothing is by accident and you know we did make the dumplings and I call them you know Chinese New Year dumplings because they do they eat dumplings for New Year um the Lunar New Year not you know when the the year changes they there’s a different but it that’s very important to them you know because of the fact that all the women would get together it’s it’s a huge Community event she said you roll dumplings and gossip all day and I just loved that you know I loved the fact that all these women were just kind of like you know wagging their chins and and making these dumplings and you know talking about that woman that didn’t show up or that woman that you know was late I just love that when you were talking about um noodles in the Asian culture it reminds me that they’re also noodles in the Italian culture so when you were creating this book what sort of commonalities did you see between all the different cultures that were represented in the Cuisines that you were you were making yeah that’s a great question and it definitely um was amazing to see and what I think food should really teach us is that borders are arbitrary we’re all the same we’re all eating the same food just a different version and another big thing I learned is every country has a dumpling we all take some sort of dough stuff it with something else fry it boil it steam it we all do it my ravioli is your dumpling is your Empanada is your so I don’t know that might be booked too everybody’s got a dumpling good point I remember when I I took my mother to the Lower East Side and we went to this Dumpling House and in Spanish she’s like what is this I said it’s like an empanada mommy just eat it and she took a couple of B she’s like oh yeah you’re not you’re not wrong yeah exactly so yeah um I I think you know it’s it’s just so funny because I think even just today we just spend so much time thinking about how different we all are and you know everyone is very focused on differences and I think the reality is that we’re actually incredibly similar you can pick someone from literally the opposite side of the world and I promise if you spend a day with them you will realize that your values are the same you’re eating the same food everyone loves their mother uh you know and uh I just think that that book really brought that home to me and you know no matter who I was cooking next to they were yelling at me swatting my it was like I was with my mom you know but 10 minutes in I was already getting yelled at so you just realize that you know we all really are um quite similar we should really focus on that food brings people together that’s for sure and that’s uh it’s one of the most powerful things about it so and one of the final recipes on our site is comes from the Dominican Republic Maria Cruzes s coo talk about that dish because there’s never a bad time for a big pot of stew in my opinion again this is such a funny experience because when she she actually cooked at my house um I forget what was going on in her kitchen but she she actually drove here from East New York to Connecticut to cook this dish with me and she said I need a big pot so I got like you know my standard she’s like oh no no no no I need a big pot like one that you could put a small human in exactly I was like this is the biggest pot I got she’s like okay we’ll quarter the recipe I’m like we’re going to quarter the recipe she’s like you don’t realize Dominicans we cook for 4 I’m like you I can’t put serves 40 at the top of the recipe but it’s really um it’s a kitchen sink stew it’s got everything in it it’s got pork it’s got chicken it’s got It’s got ears of corn you know it’s got everything in it and it’s just about family it really is because they make a huge pot of this thing like I I I got to see this pot someday that she uses to make it and it’s got ribs it’s got chicken and then they put it on the table and everybody takes what they want somebody wants the ribs somebody wants chicken wing somebody wants you know the piece of corn somebody wants the piece of sweet potato whatever you want it’s in there and um yeah I guess one pot to clean right that’s exactly right sounds delicious well this has been lovely and before we wrap up I just want to give you the opportunity to just if there’s one or a couple of the recipes and the people that you met that really stood out with you that you and I mean you’ve already mentioned a couple but if there were any others that really resonated with you and that sometimes you’re just walking down the street you’re like oh yeah I remember ex person I I do have a funny story it’s actually the last recipe in the book it was given to me by a woman that is at this point I think she’s like 85 years young FTI from Palestine um Amazing Story definitely read her story because I was in tears having her tell it to me worked in the night crew the cleaning crew of The United Nations for her entire career has a plaque in her house from the United Nations that she was given and and just an amazing woman raised nine kids but when I called to like the pre-interview like we’re going to meet and like you know your daughter set this up she’s like I’m gonna teach you upside down I’m like I don’t think we’re cooking up like we’re not going to be standing on the floor she’s like oh no no no no no honey the dish it’s upside down it’s mauba and I googled it while I’m on the phone there and it’s like maguba means upside down and basically it’s a rice dish that you make in a huge pot and then by some Crazy Kitchen Magic you flip this thing over and you have a cake how about that and it’s amazing and I love her she’s an amazing woman obviously grew up Muslim has a Jewish son-in-law Catholic daughter-in-law loves them all went to her house she had a Christmas tree a Bora it was like the United Nations in her apartment and again just a test test to how we can really all just coexist even in fet’s kitchen so it’s a cool recipe it does work it’s delicious very very very classic Palestinian dish and um yeah you make it upside down make it upside down and you can spend time Googling it but you don’t have to because Anna’s already figured out what it means well Anna we appreciate your time so much here joining us and sharing these stories with us and talking about these amazing recipes I can’t wait to try some on my own oh this is wonderful thank you so much I really appreciate the opportunity bye now that was Anna Frances gas she’s the author of heirloom kitchen Heritage recipes and family stories from the tables of imigrant women write those recipes down everyone I’m OU Castro on the other side of the break you’ll meet three women from Sanctuary Kitchen in New Haven where 40 chefs from 11 different countries have continued to cook foods from their homelands for customers throughout the pandemic the chefs each have their own story that they share through the food that they make anybody who comes through our doors who tastes our food can really get that I’m Chef Plum this is seasoned we’ll be back after the [Music] break welcome back to seasoned I’m Mar solic Castro and I’m Chef Plum if you live in the New Haven area you might already know about Sanctuary kitchen maybe you’ve seen their packaged items at the city seed Farmers Market on Saturdays Sanctuary kitchen is not a restaurant since 2017 the kitchen has hosted cooking classes supper clubs and catered events they built a reputation for making some of the best Iraqi Afghan and Syrian food in the state yeah the best way to understand the unique work being done at Sanctuary kitchen is to hear from the women who spend their time there there we talked with co-founder and program manager Sumaya Khan as well as catering manager Carol Byer alcaras and Chef raazi for our listeners who are not familiar with Sanctuary kitchen I wonder if you wouldn’t mind describing it for us this is Samaya uh Sanctuary kitchen is a program of city seed which is a local New Haven nonprofit Sanctuary kitchen we partner with Refugee and immigrant chefs to build Economic Opportunity and build authentic Connections in the community using food we host um culinary events pre Pandemic those were in person cooking classes supper clubs and other events in partnership with local organizations and businesses and we also run a catering social Enterprise that provides regular employment for the chefs that participate as well as culinary and professional development here you know we catered For events dinners parties again pre- pandemic um and that has now shifted to to an online prepared Meal menu that customers can order twice a week we also sell Multicultural authentic products that our chefs make and sell them at the farmers market and other local uh retailers so Maya I’m dying to tell you so I put out a call for female chefs and female hospitality and people in the industry on my social media and the amount of response and the amount of answers that people said to me I just told Carol this off air you all are beloved in what you do right now yeah it’s been pretty amazing the support that we have from not just New Haven but all over Connecticut for the work that we do people just feel really connected with um not just the food because it’s delicious but the story behind the food like who is making this delicious and beautiful food the chefs each have their own story that they share through the food that they make anybody who comes through our doors who taste our food can really get that how many chefs are we talking about right now in the building so we have 11 catering chefs employed right now and we have 40 chefs from 11 different countries in our larger Network so some of the chefs participate in just the events that we host and then the 11 are actually working in our kitchen uh daily not all at the same time right right one of those chefs is rawa and I’m particularly interested when people study one thing and then grow up and become something completely different and for you you studied chemistry yes and now you are a chef can you tell us how you you went from studying chemistry in your home country of Iraq to now being a chef yeah so I came to America in 2010 I actually just finished my uh bachelor degree in science of chemistry that’s right I’m like study chemistry but the another talent for me and another hobby it is cooking so when I cooking like I smell the food something like back my memories to my to like remember my family when we have like some event all my family like cooking a lot food they smell like full on the our house so when I enter to the meet sumya and Carol I told them I have like a talent to cooking and they give me this opportunity so I’m really happy to work as kitchen to uh support myself support my family and also to meet like another uh women’s to be a friend with them I love that it sounds like you have quite a community of human beings and Carol you’re the catering manager also a little bit of a deviation because I understand you were also a children’s book illustrator I love when people’s brains work in so many different ways but can you tell us about your experience there and just uh what our listeners need to know about what you’re all doing there well I came to Sanctuary kitchen so excited to be working with the organization because for me it was completely new Cuisine not something that I was familiar with and I knew that there would be cultural and language excitement for me because it would all be new the um original cohort that we had some of them have moved on but we have this group of women who come together in in their countries they’re not would not always necessarily be friendly with each other they might not know each other’s cultures particularly but they come together and they share they share their backstories with each other they share their fears and their hopes and love of of having been able to come to America and to find work which you know as women in their countries was probably a little bit more challenging so you know like here we have this goal to help to educate in terms of professionalism and really give these ladies a a skill set like a chance to go out they have the skills they’re Great Cooks we’re just helping them enhance what they have and make themselves able to go out if they want and have their own businesses or work in other capacities in the food industry if they would like to it’s a priority this year for you guys what has been the priority especially during covid I mean it’s been a really strange year for everyone the biggest priority was keeping the chefs employed so we really focused on you know shifting from our catering model to this curbside pickup and the support from the community has been amazing they really believe in what we do and they also love our food so that was kind of the shift from March to until now you know shifting to Virtual events was um kind of a second priority and so you know we were tough yeah and you know everybody was doing it and one thing that we found because of uh shifting to Virtual um really allowed our audience to grow Beyond Connecticut so we’ve had people from Turkey attend our classes we’ve had people in California in Toronto it’s been amazing and for World Refugee day we actually partnered with 11 different organizations across the US and Canada to put on an event featuring our Refugee chefs and the work that we do it was so unique uh to the times right like we would never have thought of doing something like that outside of Co it’s amazing to hear the stories of the Silver Linings of when organizations or people have pivoted during the pandemic you pretty much have global domination now so it’s fine you should totally run with that but as I as I hear you talk and um especially about the community of women who come to the kitchen how do you make that connection with some of your female chefs do they come seeking you cuz it sounds like well it was a friend of a friend which is kind of very old school and I and I appreciate yeah it’s it’s been a range in our first year when we started we work closely with Iris which is the local resettlement agency here in New Haven and they refer their clients to us and we actually have an active application process as well so if you go to our website there’s a way to join as a chef to join as an intern to volunteer and now a lot of these folks that you guys work with or or have there the 40 chefs they’re not all formally trained chefs like we’re talking people who are just amazing home cooks or or mebe didn’t have any formal training but still can get out there and and really throw down in the kitchen none of the chefs that I’m working with now in the catering part of this um in in our 11 member cohort need any kind of cooking lessons they don’t need that they’re phenomenal what they’re struggling with when they come here is the fact that we use a different system they have to learn the American Universal system they’re all used to metrics you know it’s like a business which was not something that they were dealing with at home so in our culinary training that is a really uh an important fact that we have really addressed on the team side to make sure that we are addressing all of the things that they’re going to need to learn as professional uh culinary professionals when they leave leave Sanctuary kitchen if they choose to leave Sanctuary kitchen there’s a lot of things um the language they had an ESL program for one year that was predominantly based on culinary ESL and SOA speak a lot about that without that we couldn’t have even gotten to the place that we’re at now so I think that that’s really important to explain because the chefs that were able to have taken that really benefited a lot from it yeah so we’ve developed some training modules for the chefs to participate in and so the first one was a uh culinary ESL class that uh one of our team members Donna golden developed because there’s really nothing like it existing so she is an ESL instructor herself and one of our co-founders and she you know put in the time and research and put together a curriculum teaching English through food terminology um so everything from this is a you know a measuring cup to creating recipes and so forth and so you know a lot of the chefs have taken ESL locally to learn the basics and then this was to take it a second step so that they can become more comfortable in the kitchen and in terms of communication how long is that class with covid and breaks and switching from inperson to Virtual it took nine months okay so I want you guys to know this I went to CIA The Culinary Institute of America and I had seven days to do culinary French seven days I almost quit culinary school I was like this is insane i’ I’ve been here the second day and they’re speaking French I have no idea what they’re talking about oh wow let’s make it nine months that have been much better yeah well and we deal with two different languages in our kitchen we have farsy speakers and Arabic speakers so often times we have to have translations done or right interpretation um as part of that so coordinating all of that is another part of what we do in the kitchen it must be such a choreography because as I’m sitting and listening to you Somaya I’m thinking about the word cup i’ like a cup of tea is very different than poor me a one cup of tea for this recipe so if you’re new to this country and you’re new to this language and you’re in the kitchen it could get scary very quickly think yeah yeah because in our country we never use like the measuring cup or the bound we use kilogram there’s different like so it’s little bit hard but because of the classes and always Carl like teach us like in the beginning when she say you should cook like let’s say two cup of rice so every shf ask her it’s a big cup or a small cup so we mean big cup I think two cup from the one cup Chef PL you know you’re a chef like experienced Cooks don’t really follow a recipe right you just do your magic I I I drive our producer Robin mad when I give her recipes because I’m like I don’t know it’s up here it’s a technique how much is in there uh this much how till taste good so Carol spends a lot of time teaching the chefs how to write down their recipe so that it’s replicable and consistent and standardize it and then scale it as well you know it’s one thing to cook for your family and it’s another to cook for 50 which is actually pretty common with a lot of their chefs they all came from cultures that they cook for their whole extended family regularly so cooking for 20 or 30 people is actually not difficult for them that’s an afternoon lunch usually I hear you I’d like to talk about this idea of community because we know that in kitchens that is one specific type of community but at Sanctuary kitchen Community takes on a complete completely different meaning because you have such a diverse collection of human beings sometimes coming from places that are War torn and at war with one another and yet here they are in this kitchen sharing something this common experience so wonder if you guys wouldn’t mind telling us about what that experience is like and and what makes it so unique to SK our chefs are encouraged to speak freely it’s a safe place it is a sanctuary and that it’s the place to really present their feelings if they have something to say it yeah I was going you know our premise of starting Sanctuary kitchen is really to build community you know we strongly believe that cooking together eating together is probably the most intimate way of getting to know somebody regardless of the language you speak regardless of your economic status your residential status you know there’s the community that that has been built between the chefs I think I shared one of the pictures of one of our favorites is you know chefs from Syria Iraq Sudan and Afghanistan all sitting together around a table and rolling grap leaves I mean that’s something that would never have happened in their home countries right especially now during covid when everybody else is so isolated like coming together in the kitchen has been such a Saving Grace for everybody because it is that one social contact that even if it’s at six feet um with masks that communication is still happening and that bonding is happening and then on a larger scale we have the community forming outside of the immediate Chef Circle so people who attend our events um who come to our cooking classes I mean our cooking classes are not like cordon blue they’re you know we’re in together and the chefs are sitting with the attendees and getting their hands dirty and talking and sharing and it’s such a cozy environment and once the event is over a lot of those relationships that have just started you know they continue outside love that that’s great it’s really beautiful to see and it just reinforces how impactful this work is and how necessary it is Roba before we finish up I wanted to ask you was there a dish in particular that you were bringing to Sanctuary kitchen that you weren’t sure how it would go over how people would respond to it and then you were really surprised when they liked it yeah so as a main dish I do briyani the people really like it and I do also rice with FAA beans they call illa it’s also really delicious and as dessert I do H rice delicious uh with milk and zafaran and like almond on the tub with cinnamon yeah and the cardamon pods in there too and like golden R oh yeah now we’re talking yes and like Bak called Burma with Walnut so I feel all the food the people like it and they was ordered a lot can you talk to us about uh the volunteers cuz it takes a village to put something like this together and you have quite a lot of them and what they do yeah I mean we would not have been able to do our work and do all this programming without the great support of our volunteers we have about over 200 Volunteers in our Network since we started and there’s a variety of ways they can be involved they can come to the kitchen and help with food prep they can support at events you can volunteer as an interpreter if you speak in another language or translator so if you speak Arabic or farsy or Swahili French Spanish those are all greatly welcome you can come to the farmers market and help sell and lastly if you have other skill sets uh graphic design development marketing cleaning anything you know uh you welcome All Hands regardless if you got hands and you want to work they got a job for you they’ll find something you do for sure yeah right so uh deliveries you know all kinds um and some of it can be done remotely some can be done in person um we have protocols for both that are safe and the and City see the farmers market it’s open all winter long right every Saturday 10: to 1 um in Worcester Square that’s awesome um we have a socially distant outdoor winter Market I love it thank you friends we appreciate you so much thank you to give me this chance to talk about my field at s kitchen that last voice was RA gazi we also heard from Sumaya Khan and Carol Byer alaras all members of The Sanctuary kitchen team in New Haven before we go a reminder listeners you can check out a new recipes from heirloom kitchen by Anna Frances gs on our website visit cpu. seasoned you’ll find Anna’s mom’s meatball recipe a Moroccan Tajin and a big pot of Sano I’m Maris Castro and I’m Chef Plum season is produced by Robin Doan nakin and Katy tarsi thanks for listening see you next [Music] week [Music]