Cookbook Review: Cooking for the Culture | Listen

Cooking for the Culture feels like a mirror of Toya Boudy as she slowly reveals herself to us. It’s filled with stories about her childhood in the kitchen learning techniques from her parents for stretching food, which, she says, “take roux knowledge,” and cooking for pay as a teenager at a corner convenience store. Boudy also writes unflinchingly about her desire to “take everything back that was used to make fun of us as black people.” She shares the liver and onions recipe her mother cooked for her when she found herself pregnant at 15. She talks about professional burnout, finishing her culinary degree, and starting her own YouTube channel. She reveals a deep and practical knowledge of the roots of foods like beans and rice, brought to New Orleans in the 1700s by Haitian refugees from enslavement and eaten on Mondays because they could simmer while the women did their weekly washing.