Bookworm, Issue 32
The Book: Kitchens of Hope by Linda S. Svitak and Christin Jaye Eaton, with Lee Svitak Dean and photographer Tom Wallace
The Kitchens of Hope cookbook clearly affirms food as nourishing for the soul, in addition to feeding the body. This collection of recipes from thirty-seven immigrants to the United States shares the flavors of their homelands alongside their personal stories. Learn to make Nepalese curry, Mexican red pozole, Zimbabwean beef stew, or Greek Christmas cookies, but as importantly, appreciate how immigrants have and continue to enrich our food experiences in this country.
The immigrants’ stories are the heart of this cookbook. So rather than offer a wine pairing to compliment a specific recipe, my choice is one with its own immigration story. This 100% varietal wine is made with a grape variety that encountered trouble in its birthplace, but after traveling far, found a new home – and ultimately global renown.
The authors tested 50-plus recipes alongside the contributors – cooking in the immigrants’ home kitchens, and in the process, discovering that their conversations about life were as important as the cooking techniques and ingredient lists. The book evolved to include some of these stories, as well as beautiful color photographs of nearly every contributor and their finished dish. The combination of portraiture, personal stories, and special recipes beautifully acknowledges these people, celebrating their foods as well as their humanity.
The immigrants, from 30 different countries, are “everyday people,” including nurses and doctors, entrepreneurs, chefs and restauranteurs, attorneys, teachers, mentors, and human rights advocates and activists. Some fled war and violence, others came for an education or to reunite with family. All stepped bravely into the unknown, and in these pages, share generously something from home.
The book is organized thematically around stories about community, resilience, opportunity, justice, hope, and celebration. Recipes range from simple (coconut cookies) to complex (pupusas), but regardless of the cooking skill involved, most ingredients are readily available at the grocery store. When they’re not, helpful notes suggest additional resources. Usefully, the notes also indicate when to plan in advance, for example soaking beans overnight, and other tips for success.
I had an opportunity to hear the authors and contributor Loan Huynh speak at a book event at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis in September. Huynh shared her emotional “power of one” story, which is included in the cookbook’s forward. When Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975, Huynh was five years old. She fled with her father, pregnant mother, and three siblings. Departing ships were at capacity and already out to sea; from the beach, Huynh’s father begged them to come back for his children, even if he and his wife were left behind.
One ship sent a boat to retrieve Huynh’s entire family. She writes, “I hope our captain knows the ripple effect he initiated – his own power of one. I do, as we gather around my parents’ dining table in Houston for my Me’s pho each Christmas Eve. I am forever grateful.” In the cookbook, Huynh shares this treasured family recipe with us.
For the immigrants featured in Kitchens of Hope, their recipes and flavors evoke powerful memories – of home, of beloved people and places. My own favorite foods do the same, and this connection between taste and memory adds meaning to a meal. Sometimes we cook because we need to eat, but other times we prepare and share food to declare our love.
The authors are giving their proceeds from the cookbook to the Advocates for Human Rights. This Minnesota-based, global nonprofit provides free legal help to people seeking asylum or who need assistance with other human rights issues.
The Wine: Zuccardi, Poligonos Paraje Altamira Malbec, 2020, Uco Valley, Mendoza, Argentina $32.99
Even inside of a place, shades and shapes of difference endure. Where a shift in altitude, aspect, soil, compels identity to give way to nuance. A poligono, a polygon, reveals its many sides. Earthy, herbal, saline, fruity, and spice-laden. Nearly deep-purple and knit together by ripe black plum, blueberry, red cherry, and jammy blackberry. Layered with leather, black olive, sage, gravel, and black peppercorn. Marked acidity in one sip, chalky texture on the next, full and intense throughout. Fresh, savory, and immensely satisfying. 14% ABV.
100% Malbec, a village wine from Paraje Altamira in Mendoza province’s Uco Valley, made to “reflect the people of the region.” Stone-filled vineyards sit at 3500 feet. Fermented with native yeast in concrete tanks and aged in concrete vessels. Oak is intentionally avoided to accentuate aromas and flavors of this special place.
I first tasted this wine in June during a “terroir talk” with Sebastián Zuccardi at South Lyndale Liquors in Minneapolis. The focus of the tasting was to teach us about how the Andes mountain range influences the wines of the Uco Valley, where Zuccardi is located. “We make mountain wines,” Zuccardi said. Wines in which mountain people, and a mountainous landscape, climate, water, and soils form the identity of the wines.
Peruse the Zuccardi website to see some spectacular photographs of the Andes Mountains, the vineyards, the soils, and their impressive concrete winery.
Why the pairing works:
Just as immigrants carry food traditions to their new homes, some bring their winemaking heritage, as well, resulting in the spread of grape varieties and wine styles around the world. Our paired wine is made in Mendoza’s Andean foothills where the story of Malbec is inextricably linked to the story of modern winemaking in Argentina.
In the mid-1500s, Spanish colonizers brought European vitis vinifera vines to South America, but I’m going to jump ahead to the 19th century to lay the foundation for Malbec’s rise.
Malbec likely arrives in Argentina with immigrants from France, Italy, and Spain in the 1820s. In the 1850s, an agronomy school and a vine nursery are built to help bolster the country’s wine industry. French botanist Michel Aimé Pouget brings cuttings of Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Gamay, Petit Verdot, Sémillon, Malvasia, and Muscat to the nursery.
Importantly, this genetic plant material arrives from France before the phylloxera pest (accidentally introduced from North America in 1863) devastates European vineyards. Vines are affected in Cahors, Malbec’s ancestral home in southwest France, and in Bordeaux and the Loire Valley. Eventually scientists learn to graft vitis vinifera onto American rootstock to combat phylloxera, but Malbec’s troubles are not over. The variety is susceptible to rot, mildew, and frost, and so Malbec struggles in Bordeaux’s damp and unpredictable climate. Many producers replace it with more suitable Merlot and Cabernet Franc vines.
Malbec grows best in dry and sunny conditions, a perfect match for the Mendoza province in western Argentina, where Spanish and Italian immigrants continue to arrive, along with their drinking culture. “Unlike many New World wine regions where winemaking was restricted to an elite, the origin of Argentina’s modern era viticulture was popular and widespread among immigrant families,” according to The Oxford Companion to Wine. Helpfully, a railway connects Mendoza to Buenos Aires in 1885 providing quick and easy access to the region’s wine.
But decades of economic and political turmoil follow, and Argentina’s winemaking future only begins to brighten again in the 1990s when wine enthusiasts abroad pick up on the country’s juicy and affordable Malbec wines. Malbec achieves greatness in the Andean foothills, benefitting from intensely sunny days and cool nights. Well-draining, less-fertile gravely soil and low rainfall minimize disease and rot. Malbec thrives, maintaining natural acidity and developing thick skins and full flavor.
Producers focused on quality, like Zuccardi, thoughtfully craft terroir-driven, cellar-worthy wines that reflect this special mountainous growing region. And today, many of the world’s great Malbec wines are first and foremost associated with Argentina, despite the grape variety’s French origin.