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Reading Cookbooks: Padma’s All American

| By | Cook Reads,Food,Staff Picks

As someone who writes cookbooks, I also enjoy reading cookbooks. I’ve blogged about this before in the context of historical and manuscript cookbooks, but this goes for any cookbook. Cookbooks that provide some backstory to the types of foods, ingredients or techniques are not only entertaining, but informative and educational as well. Offering personal experiences, guidance and other specifics to recipe headers can give helpful historical and cultural context to a recipe. I look for this type of information in the book’s foreword and author’s introductory paragraphs and sidebars. Why did they write this cookbook? What is so special about these recipes that they felt compelled to share them? This is especially important nowadays since just about any recipe can be found via a simple Google search or created using AI.

These are all things I aim to do when I write cookbooks myself and really appreciate it when others do the same. This was the case when I recently received Padma Lakshmi’s newest cookbook: Padma’s All American: Tales, Travels, and Recipes from Taste the Nation and Beyond: A Cookbook. Lakshmi’s path to cookbook writing is fascinating and unconventional. Born in India, she immigrated to the United States as a young child. She began modeling at the age of 21, which led to acting roles and more recent stints as a food expert, television producer and author. She is also well known for being an immigration and women’s rights activist and an advocate for the independent restaurant industry.

In Padma’s All American, Lakshmi’s introductory section is framed as a warm letter to the reader, relating how her personal experiences (both recent and from her younger years) drove her to write this book. As she explains, “This is a book for how we eat now – a chronicle of cultural exchange and adaptation. A book both faithful and freewheeling, with reverence for the immigrant and Indigenous histories behind the deliciousness.” She follows that powerful quote with a “Welcome to my kitchen” section explaining how she cooks, her kitchen rules, tools and ingredients. She is honest, admitting that “the recipes in this book are filtered through my palate and my way of cooking at home. I am not a chef … I am a home cook, a curious and voracious eater who seeks to bring all the flavors of my fellow Americans home.” I love that transparency!

Throughout the book, Lakshmi explores the variety of foods that have converged together over time to encompass American foodways, particularly what “American food” looks like through a modern lens. Going way beyond her Indian roots, she sinks her teeth into all the different foods that have made their way to America, while lovingly focusing on the immigrants who brought them. Leaning into all the different foods and cooking techniques she has experienced in her travels over the years and while filming her television show Taste the Nation, the result is part cookbook, part travelogue and part memoir.

A homage to the melting pot that is America, Laksmi intermingles her own personal memories and experiences with the stories of the individuals and communities that have generously shared their recipes with her. As she explains, she called this book Padma’s All American because it is her vision of what it means to be – and eat like – an American. The result is a treasured volume that will be appreciated by anyone who wants to learn more about the American experience, its foodways and how they have developed over time.

See links to reviews and other articles about Padma Laksmi and her books available via Rutgers QuickSearch here: