From East Africa to New Jersey, third culture cooking is fusion food with more intention

The last time Good Food spoke to Zaynab Issa , she was telling us what's on her table at iftar (kalimati and Afghan mantu). Now, she has a cookbook — Third Culture Cooking: Classic Recipes for a New Generation . It focuses on the culinary interplay of her East African and South Asian roots filtered through an American suburban upbringing. Evan Kleiman: Let's start with the title of your book. How do you define "third culture cooking"? Zaynab Issa: I think of third culture cooking as cooking that doesn't have a specific influence that you can pin down to just one place. I feel like all of us. Yeah, it is the way most people cook these days but I think it has a little bit more context behind it. It's fusion food but a little bit more intentional. Store-bought tortellini can be swap