Pride & Food 🏳️🌈
Queer food creators to know and love
Sara,
Thank you for the tribute and recipe for probably my favorite meat, lamb. I love the name of the recipe you shared being “Spoon Lamb” - meat so tender you can cut it with a spoon. I find making big pieces of meat pretty intimidating but this one looks so approachable! A half a bottle of wine as an addition also only seems right.
Today is the first of July meaning Pride Month is sadly over. It was my first one in New York in a while! Pride is meant to be a joyous celebration but also a time to remember our history as a community and reckon with the current struggles for liberation. It’s been a difficult month, year, eternity for communities suffering all over the world. Through the celebrations this month, I witnessed tributes to Palestine, Sudan, Congo. Queer Liberation is Liberation for All.
To celebrate and honor another Pride month, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite queer POC creators in the food space. I love them all for the way they use food to tell stories and show love for their communities and identities.
Get them (and their recipes) on your radar:
Nadia Diaspora
Nadia is a queer Palestinian and Southern chef and storyteller, focusing on modes of healing through art, community, and food. She has dedicated her platforms to Palestine, sharing resources for support, education, and mobilization. I can’t wait to make her Ful Mudammas, a fava bean based dip often eaten for breakfast. She shares her own family recipes and uses ingredients from her family’s farm in Palestine. Her content and recipes are filled with love for Palestine and it’s beautiful foods.
Nasim Labichi (aka Labhco)
Nasim is a multi-cultural Brooklyn based cook whose recipes bring together elements of his Moroccan-Puerto Rican background into fresh, colorful, vegetarian recipes. Queerness figures into so many of their recipes and content. He speaks to that in this piece on them in Edible Manhattan (and the illustrations are amazing). I’m personally excited to try to his recipe for Spicy Cold Noodle Soup in these hot summer months to come, which riffs on a Maangchi recipe but incorporates gochujang and nut butter to make a rich broth.
Kia Damon (aka Kia Cooks)
Kia is a wildly accomplished chef that infuses her recipes with ingredients from her upbringing in Florida. Her food and content honors her Black lineage and food traditions and I’m very excited to read more in her for debut cookbook, Cooking with Florida Water. She has also lead many initiatives that focus on feeding QTPOC community in New York. One chillier day, I’ll make her Real Good Tomato Bisque Grits. It looks so rich and comforting, like it “tastes like a hug” in the words of Sara.
Cy Loves Frogs
I won’t lie, Cy’s content was one of the biggest sources of comfort for me during Covid. Her recipes are so infused with queer love, often inspired by making favorite foods for their lovely partner. Her recipes bring in elements of her Vietnamese background and she also incorporates many other Asian ingredients. I’ve made her Korean Mayak Eggs many, many times which are so simple but explode with flavor. And the leftover marinade is perfect for fish, tofu, or just to drizzle on whatever.
Edy Massih
Edy is a Lebanese-American chef and store owner of Edy’s Grocer here in Greenpoint, which has an amazing array of Lebanese and Middle Eastern ingredients and goodies. Collaborating with other queer food creators is the Edy’s Grocer magic. Despite not being a big dessert girl, I love the rose water, tahini, pistachio infused treats he sells. If I ever endeavor to become a better baker, I’d definitely attempt these gorgeous Salted Tahini Chocolate Tarts or one of this other sweet treats.
A running letter between long distance friends who love to eat
Do you miss your best friend? Are really hungry you right now? If the answer to either of these is yes, you know what to do.