That One Dish Spotlight, No. 11: Zaynab Issa

A conversation with the food writer and content creator about third-culture cooking, the women who inspired her food, and her debut cookbook

The that one dish. spotlight is a column that connects us with amazing AAPI writers, artists, chefs, creators, and entrepreneurs who talk about the “one dish” that best captures their experiences living at the intersection of one or multiple cultures. Everyone’s got “that one dish” that provokes a certain emotion, becomes a staple they lean on in the ups and downs of life, or immediately transports them to a formative time, Anton Ego-style. Our personal experiences continue to show how food and the five senses involved with both making and enjoying it evoke vivid memories that serve as meaningful links to the past. You can check out TOD’s archive of past interviews here.

In 2020, Zaynab Issa posted her very first TikTok—an overhead 59-second clip of her creating Jerrelle Guy’s strawberry spoon cake, which she finished off with a drizzling of Nutella. That was the start of her documenting things she ate at home throughout the summer—everything from soft, pillowy cinnamon rolls to kale salad with crispy chickpeas—while the pandemic still raged on outside. Her calming aesthetic and penchant for storytelling were quick to garner views and likes, but it was creating and publishing a print zine formalizing her family’s East African-Indian recipes as part of a college project that really changed the game. Zaynab’s childhood had been a very food-forward one—not just because she had watched countless episodes of shows like “Giada at Home” and “Barefoot Contessa” on the Food Network or had started cooking at a young age, but mainly because she was surrounded by inspiring women in her community who were fantastic cooks. It was then when she realized that working in the food media space could indeed be a viable career path.

After the zine’s publication, she began contributing stories and recipes to pubs like Buzzfeed and Food52. She joined Bon Appétit as an associate editor in 2021, writing recipes inspired by her multicultural upbringing (think chewy carrot halwa cookies, seared salmon paka, and kalimati) and making appearances in test kitchen videos.

Earlier this month, Zaynab came out with her debut cookbook, “Third Culture Cooking”—with recipes inspired by her East African and South Asian upbringing, international travels, and the suburban Americana classics she grew up with (Cinnabon’s cinnamon rolls and TGI Fridays’ artichoke dip, we see you 👀). At its core, this book is a love letter to American cooking—in that third culture cooking is American cooking, with new generations taking inspiration from what our parents and grandparents made and making it their own. Read on for my conversation with Zaynab, where we talk about her cookbook, breaking into the food media space, and how the women in her life continue to inspire her cooking. Next week, I’ll be sharing a couple recipes from “Third Culture Cooking”—one for everyone on Wednesday, and a bonus recipe for paid folks on Friday. Be sure to subscribe so that you can get future dispatches, recipes, interviews, and features conveniently delivered to your inbox. ♡

Without further ado, here’s me and Zaynab:

Photo by Graydon Herriott

What was it about this idea of third culture, multicultural cooking that compelled you to want to write an entire book on it?

“The negative buzz around fusion food made me really want to dive into it because I feel like almost all the food I eat is fusion food. I think the reason people generally have a problem with the term ‘fusion food’ is because it’s devoid of context. It feels arbitrary and it isn’t always. Sometimes there’s a very good story and the food is really good. I’m not just making, say, gulab jamun cheesecake—I’m making it make sense. And when it does make sense, it can be such beautiful food. That was a big motivation for me.

I also feel like you can’t neatly identify my culture, identity, heritage as easily as ‘I’m this and I’m this.’ I’m not Indian-American necessarily. I’m not even just South Asian-American. There’s an East African component. There’s the Muslim part of things, which gives me a tie to the Middle East. I had a very international upbringing in that sense, and all of those influences affect the way I cook. Then when I got to thinking about American food, I realized that this is also a kind of fusion food, too; it’s a reflection of the people that were here and how they interacted with their environment. Even when we think about American food, it’s all influenced by dishes that came from somewhere else. We all have that shared history of migration; humans love to move around. We need to just own it, and not be so obsessed with the idea of purity but finding meaning in the mix.”

In your point of view, how does food become a medium for expressing the complexity of a cultural identity—especially for someone who grew up in a multicultural home?

“It’s a reflection of my own experience with the culture. It's not very clear-cut, it’s kind of muddled. I can’t say I have a 100% understanding of South Asian culture, even Gujarati culture, which is like the region my family is originally from because of the way that the East African culture influenced it. Everything is mixed up, and my perspective on culture is that you can engage with it as much or as little as you want, provided that you recognize it comes from somewhere else.”

What did food look like for you growing up? I’d also be curious to know how your understanding of your relationship with food and your heritage has evolved in the process of putting together this book.

“Growing up, I was in a very unique environment in that I had five women capable of taking care of me around all the time—my mom, my grandmother, my maternal aunt, and my two sisters, who are seven and 10 years older than me. There were so many generations that influenced the way I ate. I had teenagers around me who influenced my palette, and people in their late 20s who were into trendy things. I’ve got my mom, who’s got four kids and just needs to get dinner on the table. Then there’s grandma, who’s spending her whole day in the kitchen and regularly doing project cooking. I was exposed to so many different types of food and cuisine very quickly. On top of that, I grew up in a very Caucasian town; we were one of two families of color. That also influenced the way I ate and played into how I see food. Now I’ve developed my own taste. I prefer home cooked food, but I find restaurants to be really interesting and I enjoy going. I find them to be very inspiring and a great way to learn about other cultures. My mom and my grandma are still very big influences on me. I feel like Khoja food, Khoja being the ethnic group that I come from, is still so untapped. There’s room to play in developing traditional recipes, as well as flavor combinations that inspire the mashup fusion dishes that the book features.”

What made you so interested in food to begin with?

“Food has just always had such a massive presence in my life, it feels so central to it. When I hear people say things like, ‘I wish I didn’t have to eat,’ I’m, like, ‘whoa.’ That’s the best part of my existence. It’s definitely something I’m very passionate about. I feel like I fell into food media; I was trying to find this career path, but I just didn’t know it existed. It was so small at the time. Like, how do you become Rachael Ray? My parents were against me, as a woman, entering a professional cooking environment as a chef. I feel lucky to have found a place within a field that I’m interested in.

What stories are you most interested in telling?

“I'm thinking a lot about inspiration, culture, and identity. There’s 10 recipes in the book that are direct reprints from the women who made me love food and cooking, and they’re people who have come into my life at all stages. I often think of them as people very similar to me in terms of interests and capabilities—but our experience and interaction with food is so different in the sense that theirs is forced. There are tons of women in my community that had that expectation placed on them to engage with food, and they executed on that very well; they’re known within my community as good cooks. I felt very conflicted, though. I realized that they’ve spent so much of their life doing the same thing that I’m doing, but they never got to derive credit for it in the way that they deserve. That’s why it was important for me to name them in this book and use the headnotes to, yes, talk about the dish, but also give them their flowers, talk about the sacrifices they made and the value they bring to my life, and make sure they feel seen as my inspiration.”

What are some of those recipes?

“I have my mom’s pulao in there, which is a very cumin-forward Swahili pulao. It’s so good. It's made with goat and beef. You make the goat and beef stock from scratch and you cook the rice in it. And then you sweat down tons of onions. There’s lots of cumin seeds. There’s so much flavor in just one dish. My grandmother’s baklava is in there as well, and she always makes that during celebrations like a wedding or an engagement. It feeds, like, 50 people and is so delicious. My mother-in-law also makes an incredible Kuku Paka, which is a chicken and coconut curry. My husband’s aunt makes these amazing crispy deep-fried kebabs made with lots of soaked Italian bread. The exterior is very crunchy which is pretty unique for a kebab. What else? My best friend’s grandmother makes these amazing puris, which are basically fried dough, and she coats them in sugar when they come out—it’s so good with a cup of tea, very simple but delicious. Yeah, all of these women have been in my life for so long. They fed me on so many occasions, and all I could ever really tell them was thank you. They’ve impacted me more than they know. I wanted to use this book as an opportunity to let them know that they’re my inspiration.”

What else went into the thought process of putting these recipes together?

“From my editorial experience, I’ve really been trained to consider how things function together. I spent a very long time—three months, I want to say—nailing down the recipe list. I’d go back to it and go, ‘Okay, no, there’s too much of this. There’s too much of that.’ I tried to balance the whole book. Something I thought of very early on was to organize the book by mood and how much time you have, which I think is a reflection of how real cooks really cook. What do I have the bandwidth for, and how much time do I have to execute it? I tried to design the table of contents and the recipe list to reflect that principle, so there’s a really good mix of dishes that take 15-40 minutes to make, dishes that take longer than two hours, and dishes that are in between.”

Where do you see the future of third culture cooking going? I’m a huge proponent of it, but do you think it could potentially lead to a dilution of more traditional culinary practices particularly from our parents and grandparents? Do you feel like it’s something that will become a distinct culinary genre—or something that will be constantly evolving?

“I think it will be a constantly evolving distinct culinary genre. As far as diluting culture, I think that as long as we’re acknowledging that it comes from a culture—like fish sauce. Fish sauce isn’t American. It’s something I can buy in America, and is a fantastic ingredient that I lean on often. But I know where it comes from, and I think so long as that context exists there’s nothing wrong with [using it in other dishes]. It’s when you fail to provide context that you run into that issue of diluting culture.”

You grew up in New Jersey, but you hail from a Khoja heritage; your parents have roots in East Africa and South Asia. What’s one dish that captures who you are? Something that best encompasses your life, your experiences, your existence—without thinking of what's authentic, what dish is the most "you?"

“It’s actually in the cookbook, it’s one of the first recipes I thought of—the jugu scones, which have a very multicultural inspiration. They’re inspired by jugu cake which is a peanut rusk, kind of like a biscotti. They’re very dry and the peanut flavor is very apparent. They’re a lot of people’s favorite thing to dip in chai. I’ve never taken to them, but I did always love the peanut butter and jelly sandwich growing up, as did bread with butter and jam. I put all of that together and created a peanut scone served with slabs of salted French butter and strawberry jam. It kind of plays on all of the different things, all the different cultures that I’ve encountered. It calls to my home experience of having these jugu cakes that we’d get imported from Tanzania because my parents really liked to eat them. People would also give them out when they were coming back from a visit to Dar es Salaam. I think about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which is such a classic school lunch. All of these things combined create something really beautiful and elevated, but also so nostalgic every time I take a bite.”

Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.