The James Beard Award-winning chef of Underbelly Hospitality, a
champion of Houston's diverse immigrant cooks--Vietnamese, Korean,
Mexican, Indian, and more--shows you how to work with their flavors and
cultures with respect and creativity.
JAMES BEARD AWARD FINALIST
Houston's culinary reputation as a steakhouse town was put to rest by
Chris Shepherd, the Robb Report's Best Chef of the Year. A cook with
insatiable curiosity, he's trained not just in fine-dining restaurants
but in Houston's Korean grocery stores, Vietnamese noodle shops, Indian
kitchens, and Chinese mom-and-pops. His food, incorporating elements of
all these cuisines, tells the story of the city, and country, in which
he lives. An advocate, not an appropriator, he asks his diners to go and
visit the restaurants that have inspired him, and in this book he brings
us along to meet, learn from, and cook with the people who have taught
him.
The recipes include signatures from his restaurant--favorites such as
braised goat with Korean rice dumplings, or fried vegetables with
caramelized fish sauce. The lessons go deeper than recipes: the book is
about how to understand the pantries of different cuisines, how to taste
and use these flavors in your own cooking. Organized around key
ingredients like soy, dry spices, or chiles, the chapters function as
master classes in using these seasonings to bring new flavors into your
cooking and new life to flavors you already knew. But even beyond
flavors and techniques, the book is about a bigger story: how Chris, a
son of Oklahoma who looks like a football coach, came to be "adopted" by
these immigrant cooks and families, how he learned to connect and share
and truly cross cultures with a sense of generosity and respect, and how
we can all learn to make not just better cooking, but a better
community, one meal at a time.
