A new restaurant, death threats, early labor, and a James Beard nod. In May 2017, the Palestinian- and Syrian-American chef opened Reem’s, a neon-filled Arab bakery in Oakland’s diverse Fruitvale neighborhood. As a former community and labor organizer, Assil wanted a bakery that would serve as an intersectional community space.

A proper pot of mafe starts with the right kind of peanut butter, says Nafy Flatley. But it’s different from what most Americans consider peanut butter, she says, because in her home country of Senegal, the peanut butter is made from scratch, with no sugar. Chinese food in Northern California has never been more varied and exciting.

Aisan Hoss fries mohi safeed (white fish) in her home, a dish to celebrate Persian New Year. The base for Aisan Hoss’ kuku sabzi, like most any good Iranian dish, is a pound of fresh herbs, and possibly more. For this frittata-like dish, she had patiently minced her way through vibrant green bunches of dill, parsley, cilantro and chives long before I arrived in her Hercules kitchen, filling a large stainless steel bowl to the brim.

I had stopped by to see her at FOB Kitchen, her pop-up at Gashead Tavern since 2015, which closed Friday, Feb. 2 (a permanent brick-and-mortar location for FOB Kitchen is in the works). We were nestled in a kitchen so small that more than two people felt like a crowd. Yet Dulce looked completely at home in front of a large pot of arroz caldo, stirring homemade chicken stock and ginger-scented rice with one hand while bouncing one of her twin baby daughters with the other.

The only thing Daniel Situ’s Lower Pac Heights kitchen has in common with the kitchens of his immigrant family are Cantonese ingredients. All of the family kitchens, whether in the city or on the Peninsula, are stocked with fragrant star anise and meaty Maggi seasoning sauce, dry Shaoxing rice wine and bing tong, a brown rock sugar with a caramelized taste that melts into sauces and braises.

Rock-hard, unripe avocados are enough to make a grown person cry (especially if you’re that person and you’re pumped to eat a big bowl of guacamole RIGHT NOW). Maybe the only options at the store were hard and unripe. Or maybe you thought it was ripe, but sliced into it and found otherwise. Sure, you could put it in a paper bag with a banana or in a bowl of rice and wait a day or two until it yields to gentle pressure.

There’s a good reason we leave Santa cookies on Christmas Eve: delivering gifts to every kid in the world in one night is a logistical nightmare. Santa deserves a break, and if cookies are his weakness, who are we to hold it against the guy? But there’s a way to give Santa (and your family) a treat without the bulk, and the secret is hidden inside your favorite fruit: avocado.

His wooden cutting board is covered in a vivid rainbow of spices when I arrive at his kitchen, small mountains of powdered red chile, turmeric and carom seeds in white prep bowls. He toasts fennel, cumin and coriander seeds in a dry skillet, shaking the pan every 30 seconds with the steady rhythm of a metronome so it doesn’t burn and turn bitter.

Khaman dhokla, a fermented chickpea cake from Gujarat, is India’s great blank-canvas dish. I noticed them out of the corner of my eye while in line at Vik’s Chaat in Berkeley, California: yellow sponge cakes topped with black mustard seeds, chopped cilantro, and coconut. Khaman dhokla! I remembered, as a kid, sneaking into the kitchen while my aunts, Lila Kaki and Rajni Kaki, were setting up dinner.

♦ 1  Save On my first trip to the Indian state of Gujarat, I learned to spot a soda vendor from a mile away. I could see one past the hoards of pedestrians in brightly colored saris, over the street cows walking fearlessly into oncoming traffic, beyond t

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You know avocados are tasty in guacamole, salads, and sandwiches, but have you ever thought of avocados in cheesecake? Avocados can add an extra bit of creaminess to the batter and when spiked with a healthy dose of lime juice and zest (an avo’s best friend!) , the results are phenomenal. Bonus: You don’t even have to turn on the oven for this cheesecake!

Lustosa is a Brazilian single mom in El Cerrito who runs her own day care, and is active in politics and her community. She has a fiance, and barely has time to cook a pot of feijoada (fey-zhoo-AH-dah), the slow-cooked black bean stew that is the national dish of Brazil. That’s why feijoada is considered a Saturday dish; it takes so long to make that restaurants in Brazil serve it only on Saturdays.

When I showed up at her shop, Secret Scoop Thai Gelato in Berkeley, she was testing new sorbet recipes. There was a blackberry with Singha, the Thai beer whose flavor reminded her of an ice cream shop in Bangkok that served alcohol-flavored ice cream. Then there was mango with Tajin, the Mexican chile-lime salt.

As a half-Indian kid growing up in the Chicago suburbs, butter chicken was my jam. When my family went to an Indian restaurant, I would go straight for the dish—it felt like the most approachable food on the menu (just roasted chicken in a vaguely Indian-tasting tomato cream sauce), and I knew that it wouldn't burn my taste buds off.

“This is called panje kesh, an Iranian technique to shape the dough with fingers,” he tells me. It’s ready when it becomes a large, thin oval, an expanse of dough hills and valleys from the pressure of his hand. His bear claw pats on a glaze made of milk, yogurt, turmeric and olive oil, and he then sprinkles the top with poppy seeds, dried nettles and dried wild garlic.