Asha Gomez honors her favorite staple
There’s a Swahili proverb that says, “Rice is all one, but there are many ways of cooking it.” Perhaps there is no other food as unifying and simultaneously delineating. Rice in some form is eaten in nearly every corner of the world, yet the myriad ways it’s prepared run the gamut of possibility. Italians eat arborio in risotto, the Japanese make sake, and the Spanish prepare paella. For chef and cookbook author Asha Gomez, rice has a special kind of duality in her kitchen. In her book My Two Souths, Gomez blends the flavors of her small hometown village in southern India with those intrinsic to the Southern cuisine found in her current home city of Atlanta, where she also owns two restaurants. “My childhood was surrounded by lush rice paddies and fields—it is one of the main crops in Kerala—and the grain appeared in some shape or form at every meal,” Gomez says. “Rice was the great equalizer, found in households rich or poor regardless of caste or creed.” In the American South, rice is very much a part of the historical and cultural fabric as well. “Whether it’s red rice or jambalaya,” she says, “it underscores the culinary synchronicity between the two souths closest to my heart.”
Tomato Rice
Mango Sweet Rice
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Hannah Lee Leidy
Hannah Lee Leidy is a food writer and editor based in the Carolinas. She is currently the digital content editor for Our State magazine, a position she came into following her time at The Local Palate. Her contributions have appeared in Condé Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, Epicurious, Culture, and Eater. She’s spent time working in restaurants in both front and back of house positions, doing everything from burning gateaux to expediting to shaking a Manhattan (don’t worry, this only happened once). An avid curd nerd, her favorite beat is reporting on boutique cheese makers; she’ll sniff out every creamery near and far whenever traveling. When not parenting a Bernese mountain pup named Ava, you’ll find her running or working on her lamination technique.
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