The New Filipino Kitchen

In this cookbook anthology, U.K. restaurateur Chio-Lauri delivers heartfelt stories and solid recipes from 30 chefs, professional writers, food workers, and home cooks from around the world who are well-versed in Filipino cuisine. The two- to six-page essays with recipes are filled with family tales, particularly maternal ones. White House executive chef Cristeta Comerford, perhaps the best known of the authors, offers a short but sweet homage to her mother, then presents a sweet and sour fish dish, escabeche-inspired fried snapper, with a sauce that calls for banana ketchup. San Jose poet Janice Lobo Sapigao extends the motif with her long prose poem, “Eight Ways to Cook Like Ma,” before tendering a bowl of tinola, a classic Filipino chicken soup, with ginger. Adventures in food service is another favorite subject, and Chio-Lauri contributes a delightful piece on the topic, harkening back to being a single woman on the “quest for Mr. Right,” while running a restaurant that catered to couples. The recipes, generally rendered in family-size portions, run the gamut from crispy pata, a pork hock entree with more than 20 ingredients and a four-hour prep time, to the simpler sous vide fried chicken breasts, where hot-water immersion decreases the frying in oil time by 75%. Remembrances of kitchens past are paired with ideas for tomorrow’s dinner in this sentimental exploration of a wildly diverse cuisine. (Sept.)