From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy

When I started writing about food in 2015, I was vegan, and this was the only thing anyone seemed to care about. It was assumed (and occasionally still is) that I would be offended by the existence of omnivores, that I didn’t really know anything about food or cooking, and that I couldn’t be trusted with an assignment outside the realm of vegan food. I was lucky to be able to convince some editors that there were really interesting stories to be found in the realms of nut-based cheeses, ethical chocolatiers, and vegetable-based food sovereignty projects. Then, the Village Voice brought me on as a contributing writer focused on vegan food in New York City (they were ahead of their time). Other food writers who were part-time or secret vegans and vegetarians would ask me to meet for drinks just to ask how I could do it; they felt that if they were open about their actual diets, it would keep them from getting work. How could they write about food and refuse a bite of steak? This is no longer the case, thankfully. Though mainstream reviews of vegetarian restaurants still express incredulity about the deliciousness of food-without-meat, it’s far more common now to find folks working in food media who don’t eat meat or who have a considered relationship to their consumption of animals. This isn’t to say it’s not without its complications or there are no longer any prejudices, but it’s finally accepted that a person can give up meat and animal products and still love food, recognize good cooking, and have rich conversations on culinary culture. It’s been a grand shift, and my forthcoming book No Meat Required is meeting a very different world than the one of eight years ago, when I quit my full-time copyediting job to put all my energy into becoming a food writer. One of the ways I recognized this change was the gradual ubiquity of vegetarian recipes with the byline Hetty McKinnon at outlets like Bon Appétit, the New York Times, and now her own “plant-powered” newsletter at the Washington Post. Her 2021 cookbook To Asia, With Love was received wildly well, and now she’s come out with Tenderheart: A Book About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds—a cookbook that explores grief and the ways in which we use food to navigate it. I wanted to understand her approach, because though she’s now such a well-known recipe developer, her vegetarianism has never been the most significant part of her public profile; she’s been able to shoot and style her own cookbooks; and she’s even started a magazine called Peddler Journal. This DIY streak that we share—she came to food through launching a salad delivery business in her native Sydney, Australia; I came to food through my vegan bakery—meant we had an immediate rapport when we hopped on Zoom. I also loved getting to talk to her about how she cooks for her kids versus how she approaches recipe development for cookbooks or her own personal newsletter, To Vegetables, With Love. The full audio is accessible above. The below selection has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. I want to hear about everything, because I feel like you came onto the scene, at least in the U.S., and all of a sudden you were everywhere—to me. In terms of like, your recipes were everywhere, your name was everywhere, you're a vegetarian, but it wasn't that being vegetarian was the most important thing about your work, which I found so, so game-changing. As a vegetarian, too, when you work in food, that tends to be the thing people introduce you with. But To Asia, With Love, which was such a huge success, which I have right here, you know, it didn't say vegetarian on the cover—it's not in the title. You have to open the book up and then you learn that it's vegetarian. So this isn't my traditional first question, but can you talk a bit about why you went vegetarian and how being vegetarian has influenced your trajectory in food? Yeah, so great question. I've been a vegetarian for most of my life, since I was...

On the day I sit down to write this piece and edit this audio, I wake up to a 5:54 a.m. text from my friend Diego. I was bleary-eyed upon waking and didn’t respond immediately, and so he called at 8:57 a.m. He’s the owner and baker behind Panoteca San Miguel, and I think I’ve started a couple of pieces already with moments when he’s called me out of the blue. Random calls from a baker are food writing gold. The subject matter is almost always besides the point: He’s one of the most enthusiastic and unflappably happy people I know, always up for a collaboration, and he deeply understands the significant intermingling of food and printed matter. (We spoke about the indie food magazine from Argentina Anchoa and me doing a pizza pop-up at the bakery for my book release.) He lives on the timeline of bread, and bread begins early in the day. I like to get on that wavelength: I’ve been feeling quite down lately—worried about the book release, worried about taxes, worried about Sahara Dust and wildfire skies over the two places I call home—and I needed a dose of positivity. Nothing about life and business are simple, especially not in Puerto Rico, but his focus on flour, flavor, community, and the beauty of early morning sunlight on a freshly baked croissant reminds me what really matters in life is good food and people to eat it with. (Of course, to maintain all of this, we need to do something about the multiple crises we face, but I digress…) It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve developed an easy-going relationship with bread. I was born, as I say all the time, on Long Island in 1985. This was not a bastion of crusty baguettes and airy sourdough. I refused most bread, especially the white kind; I didn’t see it as food, and usually it would be stuffed with a selection of cold things that I didn’t feel would go well together. Bread was such a fraught subject that I never brought a sandwich to school, and my mom would pack me fried chicken cutlets and a salad. Other kids made fun of me, but I didn’t care, because my food was delicious and, to me, theirs was not. My working mom enabling me in this way, likely turning me into a food writer ready to tell everyone else their palate is wrong (though I hope I rarely actually do this!), is a kindness I will never be able to repay. Something changed in the late ’90s, and perhaps someone who was more conscious of food then can explain why (I was conscious mainly of Duncan Sheik), and I will never forget being in the local Waldbaum’s supermarket and picking up a round loaf of a sort I’d not encountered before. “Peasant bread” said the sticker, and somehow I knew it was the bread I’d been searching for my whole life. It was around this time that my mom started to make French toast with challah, too; it was a bread renaissance. I didn’t become a sandwich person overnight. This would take time, and I’d have to endure my mid-twenties wellness phase, during which my big treat for the week would be sweet potato fries with salad at a local pub, paired with precisely one beer. Eventually, I would open my heart up to more bread, but it’s not since I’ve been in San Juan that I’ve become a daily toast consumer. We have quite a few bakeries to choose from, like Diego’s, or El Horno del Pane, or Spiga, or our farmers’ market go-to Levain. We are never without a loaf, unless something has gone wrong, and our daily weekday lunch tends to be a simply dressed green salad, a piece of sourdough toast, and one fried egg each. Of course, I’ve worried that I’m not a good enough food writer, a good enough cook, without making the sourdough myself. I simply don’t want to, though, and I’m not good at it. We love to make flatbreads, burger buns, and all sorts of bread-type things in the house or in our Ooni, but for the sourdough to continue to be good, be special, be a meditative moment in the middle of hectic days, we need to support a local bakery—and with that support, there’s a community. There’s...

In the first edition of the From the Kitchen Podcast, I talk to Abi Balingit, author of Mayumu: Filipino American Desserts Remixed, about how she got into desserts, moving from the Bay Area to New York City, and the uniqueness of her neon cookbook in a sea of beige sweets. Significant Moments01:00: I ask Abi about where she grew up and what she ate, and she talks about a multigenerational household and the ubiquity of adobo in her home. 05:00: Abi talks about working full-time and writing 75 recipes for her cookbook. 07:00: How the limited space of a New York City apartment with roommates influenced the way she wrote her recipes. 11:00: The use of color in Abi’s cookbook and her style in general. 13:35: Talking about cold desserts that aren’t baked and the use of agar-agar in Southeast Asian desserts, which influences my own tropical sweets in Puerto Rico. 17:00: The move from West Coast to East Coast and how this has changed the way she cooks because of ingredient access. 21:00: Talking about the process of developing the adobo chocolate chip cookie recipe that has been the breakout success of the cookbook. 23:30: How the restraints of baking are a place of freedom. 25:00: Is cooking a political act? Next month’s cookbook conversation will feature Melissa McCart and Rick Easton to discuss Bread and How to Eat It—a bread book that is decidedly not about baking bread, a subversive turn that I’m very obsessed with. Follow Abi on InstagramFollow Alicia on Instagram & TikTokSubscribe to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Paid subscribers are receiving this on Friday—just in time for weekend listening—while it’s going out to everyone else on Monday morning. For more, see the full audio archive of interviews with folks in food and culture, as well as the recipe index. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe