← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Food Writer Kiera Wright-Ruiz Connects to Her Latinx Roots Through Recipes and Stories
00:25:36
In her new cookbook, 'My (Half) Latinx Kitchen: Half Recipes, Half Stories, All Latin American,' food writer and recipe developer Kiera Wright-Ruiz reflects on her journey to embrace all of her cultural identities.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Listener Supported WNYC Studios.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We're kicking off this hour with a Food for Thought conversation about food and the way it shapes identity. The book is titled My Half Latinx, Half Recipes, Half Stories, All Latin American, and it is out today. These are stories and recipes by writer and recipe developer Kira Wright Ruiz. For example, she shares a funny and heartfelt letter declaring her love for plantains, a story about visiting her father's home country, Ecuador, for the very first time in 2017, and recipes for flavorful dishes such as Seco de pollo. The reason it's called My Half Latinx Kitchen is because her dad is Ecuadorian and her mom's Korean. Author Keira Wrightwedz joins me now to discuss. Tonight she has an event at P and T Knitwear Bookstore on Orchard street that's happening at 6:30pm but right now she's sitting across from me. Hi Kira. Hi, listeners. Do you come from a multicultural background? What are some dishes that make you feel connected to your heritage? Have you ever tried to make a family recipe on your own? We want to hear about it. Call or text us at 2124-3396-9221-2433 wnyc. You can call in and you can join us on air or you can text to us or you can reach out on social media. Olivet wnyc. Your new book takes a personal approach, merging traditional and modern Latin American recipes with essays about your upbringing. So it's sort of cookbook and memoir both together. Why did you decide you wanted to.
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Listener
Do that way, do it that way?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Well, yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. Great question. I wanted to do part memoir, part recipes because to me, I can't really talk about me being half Ecuadorian or half Latinx without talking about more than that. So while food is a huge part of how I view my identity and how I've learned to connect with my culture, it's not the end all, be all. So like, throughout the book, you actually will find many essays that have not to do with food, whether it's about me being a changa, which is like a specific look that was popular. Oh, quite about 20 years ago in South Florida or going to medieval times with my family who come to the US for the first time. And it's one of the main stops we do for their very brief US Tour. To me, culture is so much more than just the dishes we eat, but obviously through the food is the way I've been introduced more to my Ecuadorian side, but then also Latin, Latinx culture at large.
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Listener
How do you continue to honor these. These traditions, these cultural. In these cultural moments, we'll call them as you've gotten older.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
I think while I've gotten older, I've really had the opportunity to travel.
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Listener
Yeah.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
And you know. Yeah. Luckily working, getting that money to be able to afford plane tickets sometimes. But going to Ecuador for the first time in 2017 was a super informative experience for me. Like, for so much of my life, I felt I couldn't really access my Ecuadorian side or my Korean side because my dad, he was not part of my life for most of it. So like, the traditional way that I learned about culture was just very non linear. And with dishes, it was kind of like, how do I learn about Ecuadorian history and even the most basic things, like what do you cook when it's cold outside without kind of that parental figure sort of leading the way? And, you know, that's what this book really explores. But also on like my Korean side, my mom is adopted from Korea. So you said she's a bad cook. She is unfortunately a bad cook. Sorry, mom, but love her, but she's not into that. But also, even with, with her, she, because she was adopted, the comfort foods for her are really different than, you know, kimchi jigae. Like, that's not what she grew up with. So for her, it's like she loves grapple because she grew up in rural Pennsylvania, which is kind of like similar to spam with drizzled with molasses. So it's been really interesting being in a. Being able to have the opportunity to travel and like, get to go to Ecuador for the first time, get to go to Korea for the first time and learn kind of more on my terms, like, what does this culture mean to me? And like, how can I learn more about it?
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Alison Stewart
One of the first things you write.
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Listener
In the book is what are you?
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Alison Stewart
That's my, my reaction. What does that mean to you?
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Listener
When someone says what are you?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Yeah, what are you? Is a huge loaded question. So that's actually why I wanted to lead with it because if for me, it's a question that's Followed me my entire life. You know, I've even had like, well, just countless times people have just come up to me, strangers that, you know, I could be at the grocery store, they'll just be like, what are you? Like, really, really random.
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Listener
It makes me a little crazy.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
But yes, just saying yes, it's not. It's not ideal because I feel like in the us when someone asks me, what are you? First of all, it's like a way to dehumanize someone a little bit because it's almost like I'm an object. It's not like, oh, where are you? Where are your parents from? Even that is still inappropriate to ask someone right off the bat because why.
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Listener
Do you need to know?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Yeah, it's my question. Usually people aren't asking that to people who are white. So I feel like, because I'm not white and very visibly so, it's immediately piques interest and almost creates this, like, otherness. And when people ask, what are you? It's always loaded because it feels like someone's trying to categorize me in their mind of like, do I interact with this person as someone who is Latinx? Do I interact with them as someone who. As Asian? Or like, oh, God forbid. They're a mix of the both and I have no idea how to interact with them. So it definitely is a very complicated question. And why'd you want to start with it then? I wanted to start with it because to me, that is sort of where it starts in so many ways because, like, how I've, like, growing up in the US and I started to kind of feel more complicated about my ethnicities. It wasn't just a narrative that I just felt naturally. It was like a narrative that's also imp. Imposed on me with those kinds of questions and people wanting to know where I fit in. And it's not like I was, you know, born from the get go, being like, how do I fit into everything? So it's as much of my environment living here as it is not at the same time.
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Listener
A new cookbook blends recipes with personal stories exploring Latin American cuisines, the lens of heritage and identity. It's called My Half Latinx Kitchen, Half Recipes, Half Stories, All Latin American. It is out today. I'm speaking with its author, Kira Wright Ruiz. Let's talk about your upbringing because you're really honest about it in the book. And there was one chapter you said was hard to write. It was about the people who were your foster parents who were Cuban. Why was that so hard to write?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Definitely going to foster care isn't a pleasant experience, I would say, for most people. So just on the emotional aspect of it alone, that's why it was difficult. But from a technical standpoint, it was difficult because I haven't had contact with my foster parents since I was in foster care, which was almost over 20 years ago. So trying to navigate these food memories from my time then was really challenging because I was trying to follow these sort of old, dusty memories in my mind to relive some of the most vivid food experiences I had during that really difficult year and a half. I was in the system, but I really wanted to write about it because I feel like within food it's almost never talked about. And like, with a lot of food writing, there's this assumption that people have money to buy the nice olive oil, to buy the flaky sea salt, to get all these, like, nicer taste and truly like luxuries. But while that is a reality for some aspects of food writing, it's not everyone's experience. And for me, I really wanted to shine light on my experience that, you know, there were times where I was super food insecure. There were times where, you know, I didn't grow up with money. And like, what does that mean for how food impacted me during those times? But then also, how can even looking at it now still sort of be a joyous experience with me having the opportunity to reclaim those memories?
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Alison Stewart
Listeners, do you come from a multicultural background? What are some dishes that make you feel connected to your heritage? Have you ever tried to make a family recipe on your own? How'd it go? Give us a call. 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. In your writing, you highlight how many countries there are to consider when you're.
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Listener
Talking about Latin American cooking.
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Alison Stewart
What are some a regional dish or a way of cooking something that you want people to know about?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
I feel really strongly about Ecuadorian shrimp ceviche because Peru gets all the credit. And, you know, I think Ecuador deserves a little Ecuadorian shrimp ceviche is very different than Peruvian ceviche. One the most famous version of ceviche in Ecuador uses pre cooked shrimp. And it's still very plump, very juicy, but usually the mixture has a majority lime juice, sometimes a little bit of orange juice. But really the key ingredient is like a little bit of ketchup, which I think can, if you're not used to it might sound kind of daunting, but it really creates this beautiful blush color to the Ceviche broth, but then also adds like a touch of sweetness and tang, which is just really lovely. So of course, you know, ceviche is such a huge category on its own, even within Ecuador. So like a recipe, my recipe is going to be different than maybe someone else's recipe, of course, but I think that it's just a really beautiful representation of what coastal food in Ecuador is like. And yeah, I, I want people to know more about the regional foods there as well.
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Listener
In terms of ceviche, say you're like, I don't want to do shrimp. What other kind of seafood or fish can people put in your recipe?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Well, actually that's not seafood or fish. There is a vegan recipe that is popular in Ecuador that uses like a local bean there.
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Listener
Oh, cool.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
So I do have a recipe for that in the book as well with like some suggestions to make it vegan, but super tasty, lots of protein and vegan friendly.
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Listener
How what was your recipe? What was your criteria for the recipes that would go into my half Latinx kitchen?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Yeah, I wanted. It really depends on the chapter because since each the book sort of chronologically follows my life up into being an adult. So like the first chapter is a bit about my childhood, really focus on Ecuadorian recipes just because it is such an underrepresented cuisine and food media overall that I wanted to give a little bit of a moment to like celebrate that Ecuadorian food with, you know, my. A little bit of experience as a child with it. And then it moves into like these key culinary figures in my life that have informed me more about like my Latinx identity, whether it's my Ecuadorian grandpa, my Mexican step grandma, my Cuban foster parents, my aunt who used to own a Peruvian restaurant in Miami. So it definitely kind of looks at these different countries cuisines on like a larger, you know, bird's point of view. But the last chapter in particular is sort of how, like this accumulation of these experiences of how I feel about food now. So like specifically with that one, with which recipes I chose to include and which ones I didn't, I really focus on the foods that made me feel the happiest. So like, for example, I have a really wonderful Elote Taquitos recipe in it because both of those individually just make me extremely joyous. And I was like, what if I just combine them to make them even happier, A happier dish.
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Listener
Let's take some calls.
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Alison Stewart
Madeline is online too, from Staten Island. Hi, Madeline. Madeline.
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Madeline
Oh, hi. How are you doing?
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Listener
Doing well.
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Madeline
Good. Yes. Can you hear me?
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Alison Stewart
Yeah, you're on the air.
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Madeline
Interesting book and I appreciate your sharing all that with us. Author. And what I wanted to say was that I grew up an Italian in an Italian and a Ukrainian family. My mother had to. My mother was Ukrainian. She had to learn how to cook Italian. It's one of the marriage prerequisites, I think, for in that generation. And I am married to a Cuban Mexican. So our kids have experienced and enjoyed all sorts of cuisines throughout their childhood. And they're feeding their own kids various meals that they've learned how to cook over the years. So what I just wanted to talk about for a moment was my Ukrainian side. When my friends, when we get together, we each select a meal night. And so I would say, well, do you want Italian? Because I do. I must say, I cook Italian pretty well, or do you want a Ukrainian? And they were like, ukrainian, it's exotic. And I'm thinking, how exotic can kielbasi and pierogi and sauerkraut and beef be? But I guess for some who don't have that type of meal, it is. And it's always a big hit. So that's one of my go tos when we have people over and my mother. And then I make a sauerkraut that my mom made. I don't just take it out of a jar or the refrigerator or can I saute onions and garlic and butter with butter and a little bit of olive oil and I add vanilla and orange rind as well as mint.
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Listener
What do you think about that?
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Alison Stewart
I want to ask you. Thank you so much for calling. What do you think?
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Listener
That's an interesting recipe.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of that. And I love that your household is so multicultural. I think that's really beautiful. Something that really struck me with what you were saying was exoticism. And I think, like, I actually live in Japan now and I've been living there for three years, and it's really helped kind of shifted my view of like, where are we talking from? So, like, what is seen as exotic or what's not? And what you. When, you know, she was just talking about how, like, oh, how is pierogi, like, exotic? Like, that's just totally normal for me. I'm. I have that experience all the time with American food in Japan just because there it is, you know, it is. The ethnic aisle is going to search American ingredients and American food. And it's like, that's funny. Oh, like the inverse exists. So I think it's just interesting to think about like the perspective of which we're coming from sometimes, because it can really shift.
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Listener
This is a funny text. I mixed Ashkenazi, Jewish and Filipino, though completely white appearing. And I love cooking foods from both sides of the family and often find myself putting ingredients from one side into dishes for the other. Especially a deep urge to put vinegar into everything. Lol. That's Samuel from Ridgewood.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
I love that. Also a huge vinegar fan.
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Alison Stewart
All right, I wanted to ask you about your seca de pollo. It's a dish that most people ate growing up. You have to cook it slowly, right? So what are the key ingredients to give it that depth when you're cooking it?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
For seco, which is like an Ecuadorian stew kind of, that really reduces. So you're left with a lot of the sofrito on top, which is lovely, but the depth is really coming to, giving each layer its time to like, do its thing in the pan. So for example, browning the chicken in the very beginning just immediately adds more depth to the chicken flavor. So, like, you need to give it time. Don't rush the browning. And then when you are, you know, cooking the sofrito, you want to give it its time to have that nice char and like to really help build that depth of flavor. So, like, with each layer, you're kind of like, you know, layering each flavor as you're going along and you don't want rush the process because if you do, you're not going to have as flavorful of a seco, in my opinion.
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Listener
I'm going to read the ingredients for seco de paella.
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Alison Stewart
Onion, green bell pepper, garlic cloves, chicken, tablespoon of salt, virgin olive oil, one 12 ounce can of beer. What does a 12 ounce can of.
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Listener
Beer do to it?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Yeah, I mean, beer and you know, alcohol obviously is wonderful to help tenderize the different proteins while it's cooking, but also it really gives it a distinct taste. So like, traditionally seco in Ecuador was made with like an. A really ancient fermented drink that you can't really get in the US So like modern times, a lot of people use beer in its place because it does have that kind of like bitter taste with a little bit of like an acid sort of kickback to it. So it's helping kind of round out the different notes and flavors and really helps give that seco its depth.
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Listener
A new cookbook blends recipes with personal stories. It's titled My Half Latinx Kitchen, Half Recipes, Half Stories, All Latin American. It's by my guest, Kira Wright Ruez. If you'd like to give us a call. If you're multicultural background, we want to hear the stories and the dishes that you make. You feel like you've connected to your heritage. 2124-339692-22433. WNYC. Let's talk to Elizabeth from Manhattan. Hi, Elizabeth.
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Madeline
Hi.
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Elizabeth
Thanks so much for taking my call. I just want to say, love cooking with beer. I'm making something this evening that includes also a 12 ounce can of beer because for all the reasons that your guest described. But the reason I called was to say yes to ketchup in ceviche. I learned how to make ceviche from a woman who is the Ecuadorian wife of guy that I know in the neighborhood. She taught me how to make ceviche. And the first time that I made it using ketchup, it was Passover. So I don't eat ketchup during Passover because it's not kosher for Passover. So first I had to make my own ketchup. I obviously also did not use shrimp in the ceviche, but yes to ketchup.
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Listener
Thank you so much for calling in. Let's talk about your recipe for kimchi, chorizo and cheddar empanadas. What inspired this trio of kimchi, chorizo and cheddar?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
I mean, it just sounds like they should all belong together, right? A little bit.
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Listener
Kcc, sure.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Yeah. I love it. Let's make it a thing for combining my Korean heritage into the book. It's actually the only recipe in the whole book that has kimchi in it. I wanted kimchi to be represented at least once in a because it's obviously such a cultural ingredient for my Korean side in Korea overall, of course. But I didn't want to force a marriage between the two sides of myself for every dish just for the sake of checking off a box of gotta make it fusion. Let's do it. But I felt in terms of empanadas, literally anything can be an empanada. Recently I just saw a sweet potato empanada, sweet potato pie empanada. I was like, wait, that's amazing. I wish I came up with this with a little bit of marshmallows inside too. And I was like, whoa. But for this specifically, I just thought it, it would, it just sounded really good to me when I was concepting what recipe should be in the book. And when I made it, it was a huge hit. Like, everybody loved it because it really, like the kimchi helps cuts. Cuts the richness of the chorizo and obviously the cheddar just kind of blends everything together and adds like that nice cheese pull moment. So you really. It sort of ch. Checks all the boxes of what you're looking for for like a really tasty dish.
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Alison Stewart
I hope this doesn't offend you, but can you use store bought dough?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Yes. Oh my God, of course. Yeah, absolutely. I like actually the one of the only reasons why I put an empanada dough recipe in the book was because I live in Tokyo and they don't have store bought empanada dough. But I think go ahead, do it. Like whatever makes cooking more approachable and fun is a great place to start.
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Listener
I want to talk about garlic crabs.
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Alison Stewart
Guayaquil garlic crabs. Big old one on the COVID Yes. It was your. Was it your grandfather's favorite recipe?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
Oh, tell us a little bit. What's so special about the crabs?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Yeah, well, in Guayaquil, which is where like my family is from in Ecuador is a coastal city, they're really famous for these red crabs that are everywhere. But I think red crabs, you know, of course they're red after they're cooked, but beforehand they really have this like beautiful rich purple color with like a sort of sunset look on them. They look really different from like crabs we get in the US they're also like more bubbly shape and they kind of remind me of like tiny inflated balloons. But yeah, it's, it's. Guayaquil is so, so well known for its seafood dishes just because they're right along the ocean. And when I went to Ecuador, there's a well known institutional crab place called the Red Crab. And like, as you walk in, it's l like a 15 foot crab on the top that welcomes you and you're like, great. Love that. Yeah. But yeah, I just sat there for it felt like I was in a vortex of just eating garlic crabs for a really, really long time. And I just wanted to kind of give that moment, enshrined that moment in the book. But also I think it's a really nice homage to my grandpa because it wasn't until I was older and started learning more about like the history of Guayaquil in Ecuador that I was like, oh, my grandpa love loves crabs for like a reason. It's not just like because he loves crabs randomly.
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Listener
If we had to have a dessert to wrap things up, what would you say?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Hojicha. Tres leches. So I have like a few variations of tres leches in the book just because it's so delicious. It's so good. Yeah. But hojicha is a roasted green tea that is really popular in Japan. It has, like a nice earthy taste, a little bit of a smoky profile. But combining it with tres leches, I think is just a really fun way to rethink what tres leches can be and, you know, is a nice homage to, like, where I'm at in my life living in Tokyo.
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Listener
Do you have a favorite recipe? I know it's so hard, but one you really like?
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Yeah, I love my aunts, Rabo and Cindido.
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Alison Stewart
Oh, yes, your aunt.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
That's right. You write about her a lot because. So it's a Cuban aqua oxtail dish that literally means like, tail on fire. So it's actually has red wine in it. A slow braise has a little bit. You throw in some raisins, they grow plump over the course of the, you know, three, four hours of cooking. But every moment of that dish, from cooking it to eating it, feels so self indulgent because, like, how often I feel like in food media these days, but in general, you were looking for recipes that take 20 minutes or less to cook and just try to get dinner on the table. But this is like a pure rejection of that. Like, what if all I did was really try to nourish myself and take the time away from everything else to cook oxtails for three hours and then end up with a super luscious, slurpable, almost texture of oxtail because there's just slide off the bone. And I gave it like an alternative title in the book. It was like, what do I like? This is also what I want to eat to feel super rich. To me, it's just exudes luxury in every single way.
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Alison Stewart
This is a great text. We grew up in New York City with my parents, Japanese American and Jewish in the 50s. With so many cultural foods, just living in the South Bronx was a culturally inclusive, rich life. My mother, a Japanese American who was incarcerated during World War II, was an amazing cook. Everyone who came to our home wanted to know what my mom was cooking or baking. Thank you for sharing the deep relationship of our cultural identity with our love of home cooking.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
I love that. Thank you so much.
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Alison Stewart
And final question. What's that?
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Listener
Your tattoo? No. This one? Yeah. He's cute.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
I got a little flan tattoo, complete with whipped cream and a cherry. Yeah, I'm a big flan fan. Also got a pandan coconut flan in the book as well.
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Alison Stewart
My guess has been cure right Wiz. The name of the book is half Latin My half Latinx kitchen, Half recipes, half stories, All Latin American. Tonight you'll be at PNT Knitwear at 6:30.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
Thanks for coming by.
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Kira Wright Ruiz
Thank you so much.
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