Andy Baraghani

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An exciting and unexpected collection of 100 recipes that re-examines Chinese American food “The recipes in Kung Food are so vibrant and bursting with flavor that you’ll want to scrape your plates clean.”—Andy Baraghani, author of The Cook You Want to Be A DELISH BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR Jon Kung grew up as a “third-culture” kid: Born in Los Angeles, raised in Hong Kong and Toronto, and now living in Detroit, Jon learned to embrace his diasporic identity in the kitchen after pivoting his career from law school graduate to being a cook. When the pandemic shut down his immensely popular popup, he turned to social media—not just as a means of creative expression, but as a way to teach and inspire. Over time, Jon discovered that expressing himself through food not only reflected his complicated identities, it affirmed them. From dumplings to the most decadent curried mac and cheese, Jon inspires millions through his creative recipes and content. In Kung Food, he breaks the boundaries of flavors in chapters such as: • Snacky Snacks, Bites, and Cravings (Sesame Shrimp Toast, Vegan Fried Chicken Sandwich) • Noodles & Dumplings (Ginger Scallion Noodles, Buffalo Chicken Rangoon, Lamb Curry Dumplings) • Rice & Congee (“Clay Pot” Rice Tahdig, Mushroom Fried Rice) • Stir Fries (Szechuan Paneer, Faygo Orange Chicken) • Kung Foo Means “with Effort” (Hong Kong Chicken and Waffles, Dan Dan Lasagna) Through stunning, playful, and high-energy photos and Jon’s wit and humility, he brings forward a collection of recipes that blend cultural traditions, ingredients, and flavors with his ultimate goal of redefining what Chinese American food can be. Review “In their debut book, chef Jon Kung explores the notion of third-culture cuisine—the cooking that blends influences from multiple cultures. The product, which has captivated their followers on social media, are inventive recipes like jerk chow mein and chicken tikka masala rangoon that meld together unexpected flavors and ingredients and push the boundary of fusion cooking.”—Forbes, “Best Fall Cookbooks” “Jon Kung is more than just a popular Tik Tok chef, and his debut cookbook Kung Food is proof of that. An exploration of third-culture cooking through a Chinese American lens, Kung’s book is clever, sharp, and filled with a list of recipes that throws constraints like ‘authenticity’ and ‘tradition’ out the window.”—Food & Wine, “Best Fall Cookbooks” “From the Dan Dan Lasagna to the Mapo Paneer, the recipes in Kung Food are so vibrant and bursting with flavor that you’ll want to scrape your plates clean—but it’s Jon’s wonderful writing that gives new meaning to what it means to be Chinese American.”—Andy Baraghani, author of The Cook You Want to Be “Kung Food is one of those cookbooks that makes you want to sprint to the kitchen, book tucked tightly under your arm. Much like in his videos, Jon mixes heart, culture, an encyclopedic knowledge of spices, and good freaking food in a way that’ll make you excited to try everything. Also, thanks to this book my wok is properly seasoned for the first time ever. Can’t recommend enough!”—Alexis Nikole Nelson, James Beard Award–winning content creator and food writer “Kung Food flings open the gates to cultural cuisine and invites all of us to a stunning and sumptuous meal of delicious food and powerful storytelling, as well as Jon’s joyous pursuit of home cooking.”—Joanne Lee Molinaro, New York Times bestselling author of The Korean Vegan “Jon has captured the delicious complexities of being a third-culture kid and made me feel proud to consider myself one. His recipes feel at once nostalgic and novel, and at the same time they will teach us how to be a better and more adventurous home cook.”—Kristina Cho, James Beard Award–winning author of Mooncakes and Milk Bread “Jon offers a progressive and deeply creative take on Chinese American cooking while simultaneously inspiring us to pay homage to our collective food histories.”—DeVonn Francis of Yardy World “Jon will thirst trap you into a sensory journey celebrating the complexity of Chinese and American flavors. The industry cook in me wants to keep reading. Such a stunning and functional book.”—Matt Broussard, creator behind ACookNamedMatt “In his debut cookbook, Kung capitalizes on his TikTok fame to bring his cooking philosophy to the page. With his original recipes and unique voice, Kung has carved out a niche in a crowded market of cookbooks.”—Booklist About the Author Jon Kung is a self-taught cook who was known for his popups and intricate dinners served out of his secret kitchen Kung Food Market/Studio He is now a full-time content creator on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Jon has been featured in USA Today, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Interview magazine and lives in Detroit with his partner Jon (yes, he knows) and their dog, Mochi. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Introduction When people define themselves as “third-culture” kids, they’re usually referring to their experience as the children of immigrants or expats—those of us who grew up both in the culture of their parents’ country (in my case, Hong Kong) and the culture of the adopted country (US and Canada). As a third-culture kid, I grew up neither fully here nor there—I didn’t feel completely accepted as American or Chinese. Personally, I see “third culture” as being something that is inclusive and full of possibility. It has had a huge influence on art, literature, fashion, and design, and I would argue that it can also apply to food. I would describe my culinary style as American Chinese, or Third-Culture Chinese, and really what does that mean but to celebrate my own expression of cultural diversity where I live now? The American Culinary Renaissance that we saw in the 2010s brought a great affirmation of many countries’ diversity to what would be called New American restaurants. It was just the American acceptance of the ingredients of many of its cultural communities in one place (usually a place with lots of Edison bulbs). My third-cultural Chinese and New American Chinese food brings that mentality into the base of cooking that I know. It’s that same celebration of diversity in the food I taught myself to make and the food that I love. I’m far from the first person to discuss this idea of third culture, although I wasn’t aware of anyone applying the term to food and cooking when I started doing so. When I began posting TikTok videos a couple of years ago that dealt with the topic and how it influenced the way I cooked and thought about food, I noticed that sharing that part of myself really resonated with people. One comment on a video I posted for a pasta dish seasoned with traditional Chinese condiments sticks out in particular: “This felt like watching my Italian mom and Chinese dad conceive me.” And while the comment itself was a lesson in how very overfamiliar people are willing to get online, it showed me that many people can relate to this notion of expressing ourselves through food in a way that not only reflects our complicated identities but also affirms them. These were topics I sort of innately understood for myself, but it wasn’t until I started getting those kinds of comments on social media that I realized many people wanted a name to assign to those feelings and to legitimize them. If you’re gonna be a metaphor, you might as well be a delicious one. Nostalgia really does so much in shaping our understanding of what good food is and in some sense what our cultural foundations are. When I think of the cuisine I grew up with I think of the crispy panfried noodles we ate at the family-owned Chinese restaurant at the local strip mall in Toronto (the one with the arcade game I got to play when I finished my food), or the hearty Hong Kong borscht I ate after school in Hong Kong. There were grilled cheese sandwiches served with canned cream of chicken soup, crispy Shanghainese pork chops, macaroni casserole with flecks of charred broccoli, stir-fried spaghetti with hot dogs and tomatoes, gently steamed green vegetables laced with garlic, Spam-and-egg sandwiches, steak with cream of mushroom sauce and a side of rice, and extra-crunchy chicken wings, marinated in savory fish sauce and white pepper and lightly tossed in baking soda before frying, so the skin crackled when it hit the hot oil and shattered when you bit into it. These foods might not resemble the expected definition of “Chinese food” to some people. Or what people may eat in a Hong Kong household. And while I might not be able to express all the intricacies of my identity and culture in words, I can do my best to cook you a dish that captures my story—and it’s just as much cream of chicken soup with grilled cheese as it is congee. As long as I’ve been cooking professionally, I’ve been on a path to deepen my relationship with Chinese food. Not only to learn more about certain techniques and methods but also to really expand the notions of what it can be. The food I make at my pop-ups and on new media (and now with this book, traditional media . . . la-di-da, look at me) evokes nostalgia, inspires me, and allows me to reconnect with ingredients I grew up with but never fully appreciated. And for all I have learned about Chinese cookery, I will always feel like a student. The cuisine is so immensely vast and varied that there’s always more to learn. China might be a single country, but saying you want to master Chinese cuisine is closer to saying you want to master European cuisine rather than that of one of the countries in Europe. I used food as a means to explore my own identity, only to realize that there was more to it than I initially thought. Therapy would have been a more efficient way of going about this, but therapy doesn’t come with fries. One important thing to keep in mind: Chinese cooking is not a monolith. The dishes I grew up with and the way I prepare them are going to be very different from the dishes and cooking styles familiar to other Chinese people, especially since a lot of the time I’m just cooking with nothing more than my childhood memory to guide me. This is the only time you’re going to hear this kind of disclaimer from me—I’m not trying to be authentic to anyone but myself here. When you consider how broad the Chinese food experience can be, you start to see that the techniques of Chinese cooking are a good lens through which to look at other cultures, and finding connections and illustrating similarities in cultural foods are what I love doing. Once you free yourself from the strict dogma of “traditional cuisine,” you’ll become excited by new recipes instead of being intimidated by trying to perfect them, and you’ll find inspiration in unexpected places. One example is an American Chinese dish that’s beloved here in Michigan, where I live now: almond boneless chicken. It’s battered and fried chicken cut into thick slices, laid over a bed of iceberg lettuce, and topped with a mild brown gravy, toasted almonds, and a sprinkling of scallions. It’s a local icon, and despite being very old-school, some newer restaurants will take a stab at their own interpretations of it. While no one can pinpoint exactly where the dish originated, the fact that on older menus it’s sometimes called war su gai—a Cantonese name that means roughly “wok-seared chicken”—might offer a clue. It’s likely that the dish has its roots in Taishan, a region of Southeast China where many of the first Chinese Americans came from, and that, over time, it was adapted to white American tastes (the chicken deep-fried rather than stir-fried and the toasted almonds added). Almond boneless chicken evolved in a similar way to other American Chinese dishes such as chow mein and orange chicken and, more broadly, Chinese immigrant cooking around the world: Take a traditional Chinese dish, adapt it with new ingredients for new tastes, and sell it to non-Chinese consumers. Every wave of Chinese immigrants brought their own regional influences, resulting in dishes such as kung pao chicken from Szechuan and General Tso’s from Taiwan. The most familiar examples are staples like beef and broccoli, cashew chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and crab rangoon. But this Chinese culinary inventiveness wasn’t limited to the United States. It’s in Peru. India. Australia. Each immigrant community invented new takes on traditional Chinese dishes that reflected their third-culture experience—taking a beloved dish from home and re-creating it based on available ingredients. It could be something as simple as fried rice made with Mexican chorizo or a stuffed scallion pancake seasoned with Malaysian curry spices. It’s food that’s not limited by physical borders or meaningless rules of authenticity. It’s resourceful, it’s inventive, and it’s in line with the way so many Americans cook in our homes now. So why is “fusion” a dirty word in culinary circles? In the early 1980s, Wolfgang Puck started fusing Asian flavors with French and Californian cuisines at his LA restaurant Chinois on Main, and while his trailblazing work was thoughtful, creative, and playful, soon every nightclub with a kitchen hopped on the fusion train and smothered everything from wings to pizza rolls in teriyaki sauce and spicy mayo. The result, thirty-plus years later, is that nobody wants their food labeled “fusion”—which is funny, because that’s what most American chefs cook, myself included. At the end of the day, my cooking is a kind of fusion. And if I admit it, if we all admit it, maybe we can make it less of a dirty word than it used to be. This new fusion that I’m referring to as “third culture” takes a more thoughtful approach to the genre. It was so apparent back when it was an eighties fad that it mostly comprised Western chefs slapping on an “exotic” ingredient without any real care for whether it worked. It was a one-sided exercise really meant to be enjoyed by one community. Third culture embraces each side as equal, drawing from a lived experience that is immersed in both or multiple cultures, once again taking the mentality of the American culinary renaissance that came around in the 2010s and granting the rest of us the ability to take part in it. Because what was that food anyway but white American chefs realizing they could take part in the diversity of the communities around them? What’s stopping us from doing the same?

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR Author of the cult-favorite Cooking for Artists, Mina Stone, returns with a collection of 80 new recipes inspired by her traditional Greek heritage and her years cooking for some of New York’s most innovative artists. Growing up in a close-knit Greek-American household, Mina Stone learned to cook from her Yiayia, who taught her that food doesn’t have to be complicated to be delicious—and that almost any dish can be improved with judicious amounts of lemon, olive oil, and salt. In this deeply personal cookbook, Stone celebrates her grandmother and the other influences that have shaped her life, her career, and her culinary tastes and expertise. Lemon, Love & Olive Oil weaves together more than 80 Mediterranean-style dishes with the stories that inspired them. Stone offers home cooks a taste of her heritage with healthy, flavorful, and uncomplicated dishes such as Syrian Bulgur and Yogurt with Brown Butter Pine Nuts; Persian Figs with Cardamom and Rosewater; Baby Lettuces with Toasted Sesame Seeds, Mint, and Meyer Lemon Yogurt; and Braised Chickpeas with Orange Zest and Garlic Bread Crumbs. These recipes use fresh, flavorful ingredients to create elegantly simple dishes, complemented by beautiful, minimalist photography and original art throughout. A fresh and unconventional fusion of art and food, Lemon, Love & Olive Oil is an engaging (and delicious!) cultural and culinary tour, all complimented by the design of world-renowned artist Urs Fischer.

100 bold cookie recipes that take the gold-star standards beyond what you’ve ever known ONE OF THE TEN BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker • ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Food52, Salon, The Kitchn • “Jesse Szewczyk is nothing short of a cookie mastermind.”—Food52 Move beyond the same-old chocolate chip, peanut butter, and oatmeal cookies with Jesse Szewczyk’s collection of 100 brand-new, boldly flavored, and intriguing yet familiar recipes. Sophisticated and approachable—many don’t even require an electric mixer—these new classics are divided into chapters by flavors and attributes such as Chocolaty, Boozy, Fruity, Smoky, and Savory. Unexpected combinations like Malted Brownie Biscotti, Key Lime Pie Meringues, Smoked Butter & Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Chewy Blueberry Muffin Sugar Cookies, and Pretzels & Stout Cookie Bars will become your go-to treats for stealing the show
at bake sales, gift exchanges, and holiday cookie swaps. Jesse’s trustworthy recipes and pro baking advice deliver sweet satisfaction to anyone looking to up their cookie game.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The highly anticipated debut cookbook from the creator of The Mediterranean Dish website, with more than 120 recipes for bright and flavorful Mediterranean diet-inspired meals. “I want to cook everything in this book! It’s not just beautiful—the recipes are fresh and exciting.”—Gina Homolka, New York Times bestselling author of the Skinnytaste cookbooks What began as one of the first online Mediterranean food blogs has blossomed into the leading site for modern Mediterranean cooking and lifestyle with millions of readers—and now it is the inspiration for the long-awaited first cookbook from Suzy Karadsheh. In her cookbook, Suzy brings cross-culturally inspired dishes from throughout the Mediterranean into American home kitchens, using easy-to-find ingredients and easy-to-follow, tested-to-perfection recipes to make your meals more vibrant, delicious, and yes—even a little healthier, too! Born and raised by the sea in Port Said, Egypt, Suzy lived in Michigan and Des Moines with her family before moving to Atlanta, where she now lives. Her modern cooking reflects the rich and complex traditions of the Mediterranean and Middle East, from Greece and southern Spain to Jordan and Tunisia, as well as inspiration from her new Southern roots. Practical and weeknight-easy recipes include: Spanakopita Egg Muffins, Chicken Shawarma Bowls, Garlicky Spinach and Chickpea Soup with Lemon and Pecorino Romano, Roasted Asparagus Salad with Cherry Tomatoes and Basil, Middle Eastern Rice Pilaf with Toasted Vermicelli and Pine Nuts, Orange-Cardamom Olive Oil Cake, and of course Homemade Pita Bread to serve with just about everything. Suzy’s winning combination of approachable instructions, reliable recipes, stunning photography, charming authentic stories, and simple assemblies is sure to thrill anyone hungry to eat healthier food that bursts with flavor and spice.

JAMES BEARD AWARD FINALIST • IACP AWARD WINNER • Plant-based cooking meets the dynamic flavors of Vietnamese cuisine in these 125+ recipes and variations—from the James Beard Award–winning author of Vietnamese Food Every Day A BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Food Network, Good Housekeeping, San Francisco Chronicle, Epicurious Although many people think of Vietnamese cooking as beefy pho and meat-filled sandwiches, traditional Vietnamese cooking has always involved a lot of plants and seafood and a little meat. In Ever-Green Vietnamese, Andrea Nguyen details how cooks in her home country draw on their natural resourcefulness and Buddhist traditions to showcase a wide array of herbs and vegetables in flavorful, comforting recipes. Filled with the brilliant advice and exceptional teaching Nguyen is known for, the book offers recipes for flavor-boosting condiments and sauces (her incredible DIY vegan fish sauce), exciting ways to enjoy tofu, and dozens of vegetable-driven sides and mains, including a few that incorporate a bit of meat (many with vegetarian or vegan options). Home cooks will revel in Nguyen's ingenious recipes for: • favorite snacks, like Smoky Tofu-Nori Wontons and Steamed Veggie Bao • Vietnamese classics, like Fast Vegetarian Pho and Banh Mi with Vegan Mayonnaise and Bologna • simple sides, like Nuoc Cham Cabbage Stir-Fry and Green Mango, Beet, and Herb Salad • wholesome hacks, like Sweet Potato and Shrimp Fritters and Oven-Fried Crispy Shiitake Imperial Rolls Full of cultural context, loads of instruction, and practical cooking tips, Ever-Green Vietnamese is perfect for anyone looking to incorporate plant-based Vietnamese cooking into their busy lives.