![]() ![]() This and the gumbo on our menu is what I eat all the time.Ĭhef Kwame Onwuachi prepared dishes of Curried Goat and Grandma Cassie's Shrimp Étoufée for Francis Lam before their interview.įL: I feel like I just took a trip to Louisiana. You get to suck on the head like in Louisiana. KO: The best part is we keep the heads on, so all that juice is in the head. So, I took Worchestershire, orange juice, white wine, Abita beer, shrimp/crustacean stock – at the restaurant we do King crab, lobsters, shrimp we take all of that and caramelize those shells and make a crustacean stock from that – we add that all together with the holy trinity from Louisiana – onion, green pepper, celery – and reduce that down to a paste and then deglaze the pan with shrimp stock from when we seared the shrimp and add that paste back to it, let that reduce, and add more garlic, butter, house spice.įL: I know you just told me what I’m eating, but all I can say is, “What am I eating?!” This is so good. I was trying to think of how I could impart this much flavor into that while still keeping the tradition alive and not bastardizing her dish. We would dip bread into this butter and garlic house spice sauce. Now the sauce I feel like was the best part. I’ve taken that same idea and we use the same house spice she makes, we sear the shrimp in that and we put the shrimp off to the side. She takes shrimp and sautées it in this house spice that she makes and a little bit of garlic and thyme and butter. My mother is famous in our family for her peel-and-eat shrimp. KO: This is a variation of my mother’s shrimp. And it’s about making a comeback, cooking the food of black people from around the world, in a world where comebacks are not readily given to young black men. It’s about being a star on TV, opening an incredibly hyped restaurant, and having it all crash down before he was even 28. ![]() It’s about waking up one day, strung out, seeing that a black man had just been elected president of the United States, and realizing that he was meant for more than smoking weed and slinging pills. It’s about growing up running with gangbangers and selling drugs to pay for college. It’s about his mother's Louisiana Creole cooking. Kwame’s food is about a lot more than what cool cheffy ideas he has. At first, it’s like, this is curry, and then things starts to build and you get the heat from the back that comes from the Scotch bonnet chilies. She would wrap the curried goat in the roti and put it in my mouth, and it was one of those ‘aha’ moments at a very young age. I remember her opening the fridge, heating it up, heating up some roti in a paper towel, raveling the paper towel and steam billowing out from it. My grandfather is from Trinidad and my grandmother had it in the fridge. KO: This curried goat represents one of my earliest food memories. KO: You sear it, then braise it in chicken stock and let that reduce. You marinate the goat in that for about 28 hours. I marinated the goat in green seasoning, a Trinidadian marinade of celery, green onions, ginger, garlic, you do our fermented Scotch bonnets chilies, and a bunch of other ingredients. Kwame Onwauchi: We’re eating curried goat. PART 1: EXPLORING A WORLD OF FOOD FROM AN APARTMENT IN THE BRONX They read the title of his book and go, "What's being black got to do with anything? You just came out of nowhere and excuse me, who are you?" And he’s got a memoir that just came out, called Notes from a Young Black Chef, written with Joshua David Stein.Īnd that all sounds great, but it also means that he's got a lot of people pretty ready to throw water on his fire. He's a finalist for the Rising Star Chef award from the James Beard Foundation. This spring, he was named a Best New Chef by Food and Wine. He’s still in his 20s, and he’s everywhere right now. And it’s kind of a perfect metaphor for how the world thinks of Kwame. that honestly looks like it was all built yesterday. Outside his window you could see construction cranes everywhere, fancy condo building after fancy condo building, and it’s in a neighborhood of Washington, D.C. There was a whole room with no furniture, and you just know he doesn’t spend a whole lot of time hanging out at home. But you could definitely tell it’s a chef’s place. We were in his apartment, which he shares with his fiance and their dog. ![]() A little while ago, I got to have lunch with Kwame Onwuachi, chef of the restaurant Kith and Kin in Washington, D.C. ![]()
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