it introduces people to a “diversity of ingredients” in
an approachable manner: “He doesn’t talk to you as
though he’s talking about an unfamiliar thing.”
Encouraged by the success of the snack, she turns
her attention to the Eggplant Pilaf, the recipe she’s
been looking forward to since she first flipped through
the cookbook. “I really liked the fact that you toast the
rice, then you add everything. Maybe I was
anticipating the bottom of the pan. Also I
quite like eggplant, and I liked that it had
so many spices, especially the cardamom.”
(And did you know, she asks, that when she
grinds her coffee, she puts a little of that
spice in there?)
The dish delivers, crispy-rice crust
included. Plus, “it did not require skills”
and makes the whole house smell ter-
rific. “You know what else is really deli-
cious about that pilaf?” she adds. “It has
lime juice in it. When you put in the water,
you use the juice of three limes or so. It
brings all those spices out ... I think that is
the secret ingredient, actually, the magic
ingredient.”
As a carnivore, she isn’t sold on Sharma’s
bid that it can be a “one-pot meal” (“You,
sir, are no entrée,” she addresses the pilaf
directly) and proposes it’s “probably really
excellent with a nice lamb shoulder.” She’d
also, if she might, suggest a tiny edit: Auber-
gine Pilaf sounds better, in her opinion. But
she’s partial to that word. he typewriter
she calls Genie was named for the purple
nightshade. She typed most of her latest
novel, An American Marriage, on that
machine and dubs it her favorite, though
she loves all of them—Tuscadero, Kermit,
Andre, Sofia B., Wilbur, a new Olivetti, the Underwood
Ms. Jenkins gave her, along with a few that are too old
to use. hey fill her apartment like characters in one
of her books.
Both Jones and Sharma are storytellers; her medium
is literary fiction, his culinary memoir. “Mine is the
story of a gay immigrant, told through food,” he writes
in the introduction to his cookbook. “It has been a
journey of self-discovery I embarked on more than a
decade ago, one that taught me to recognize the inher-
ent tension between originality and tradition, and to
opt for the former without rejecting the latter. It’s been
a journey of acclimatization, adaptation, and accep-
tance.” He could be describing the trajectory of one
of Jones’ protagonists.
his afternoon, in Brooklyn, it’s just her and the
typewriters. So when she’s eaten her fill of pilaf, she
packs it up and places it in her “food archive,” which
is what she dubs her freezer. In a few months, she will
move back to her hometown, Atlanta. She’ll bring her
fleet of typewriters—and a copy of Sharma’s book, with
its promise of more stories and good meals to come.68 NOVEMBER 2018
REVIEW
building who occupies the first two floors with her
son, or, as the writer refers to them affectionately, her
“landmother and landbrother.” She chose the recipe
because it reminded her of her grandmother, for whom
the featured grain was a staple. “I always associate the
texture and flavor with my father’s mother,” she says,
before sharing some family history. Her parents come
“from very different culinary traditions”—her mother
from Oklahoma, her father from Louisiana—and from
“different socioeconomic backgrounds.” Jones’ South-
ern grandmother “wasn’t an elaborate cook. Her food
was very practical, filling, yeah, like using cornmeal
in many ways.”
Coincidentally, Sharma, a Bombay, India–born immi-
grant who came to the U.S. to study molecular genetics
and now lives in San Francisco (where he started his
blog, A Brown Table), borrowed a trick he learned from
his grandmother when developing the recipe for this
dessert: “When making cakes with a coarse meal or
flour, such as cornmeal,” he writes, he lets “the cake bat-
ter sit overnight in the refrigerator, so it absorbs as much
liquid as possible. It gives the cake a very tender crumb.”
And yet, this is not, as they say, your (or anyone
else’s) grandma’s cake. It starts with a layer of Valen-
cia and blood orange slices set into a well-greased pan
that’s been sprinkled with fennel seeds and sugar;
when baked, the vibrant fruits’ juices will combine
with the butter and sweetener to develop an oozy cara-
mel infused with that warm, anise-like spice, which
is also ground into the not-too-sweet, pleasantly gritty
batter. Jones doesn’t have time to let it sit overnight,
or a 12-inch baking pan to put it in, so she settles for
a Dutch oven and moves it to the fridge for the couple
of hours she can spare.
Next, she moves onto another recipe that caught
her eye: Chile-Sumac-Pomegranate Nuts. She creates
a paste of cayenne, sumac, ground anardana (dried
pomegranate seeds), salt, sugar, pomegranate molasses,
and ghee, which she uses instead of the recipe’s regular
butter, because now that Sharma has introduced her to
the Indian clarified version, she is enjoying its deeper
flavor and versatility. She coats cashews, pistachios, and
walnuts in the wet spice mix and bakes them. “I would
like to say,” she discloses later, “those nuts, I ate them
all.” And: “hat pomegranate molasses is good drizzled
over ice cream. It’s good in a cocktail.”
he equally cocktail-friendly nuts are an example of
what she appreciates about Sharma’s cookbook—thate cook: novelist
Tayari Jones is the
author of An American
Marriage, long-listed
for the National Book
Award for Fiction.e book: Season is a
culinary memoir with
recipes by food blogger
Nik Sharma. ($35,
Chronicle Books)PORTRAITS: (JONES) NINA SUBIN; (SHARMA) NIK SHARMA. BOOK COVER COURTESY CHRONICLE BOOKS. OPPOSITE PAGE: PHOTOGRAPHY: GREG DUPREE;FOOD STYLING: CHELSEA ZIMMER; PROP STYLING: MISSIE NEVILLE CRAWFORD