Chef and humanitarian José Andrés is the type of person who rarely, if ever, follows a recipe. “I’m always adding and always taking and, more important, I’m honoring the tradition,” Andrés said. “Very often I don’t have all the ingredients at my disposal. I’m improvising,” which is also what volunteers at his World Central Kitchen relief organization have to do when feeding people in the wake of tragedy and disaster.
With “The World Central Kitchen Cookbook,” Andrés invites readers “to become one of us,” he writes in the introduction. “We will together be feeding humanity, feeding hope, one plate at a time.”
Hope is central to the work of World Central Kitchen. “Hope is all we’ve got,” he told me in his D.C. offices, before bursting into song to drive home that message. “Because without that, everything looks dark. Because without that, everything becomes impossible.”
Andrés and his organization spread hope through food — to those being cared for by volunteers and to the volunteers themselves, who may feel powerless but can at least help solve one short-term problem: hunger.
“At the end, everybody is just lifting each other up,” he said. “And by giving hope to the locals, the locals are the ones that become an essential part of the aid we provide because at the end they are the ones that come with energy, we don’t know from where, and they start being the ones that really come up with a master plan to help everybody because they believe in themselves.”
Often the face of the organization, he readily admits that the credit for its work is due elsewhere. “The only time I put my hand and my spoon in the pot is the photo that everybody sees,” Andrés said. “So it’s unfair because there’s many other people that really are the ones cooking.”
However, he will prepare family meals for the teams on occasion. One such moment was in Mozambique in 2019 in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai, which brought severe rain and winds exceeding 100 mph that displaced an estimated 400,000 people. “We had the team there of 12, 14, 16 people and I told them, ‘Are you hungry?’ Everybody [responded], ‘Yeah!’”
He improvised a version of suquet, a Catalan fisherman’s stew, a recipe for which appears in the cookbook and that I got to cook with him in his D.C. headquarters, which includes a research and test kitchen.
“The word ‘suquet’ is like ‘little juice,’ ‘little soup,’” Andrés said of the dish, which fishermen would prepare on the boat. It’s something he grew up eating and cooking, the essence of which he boils down to seafood, potatoes, a garlic and tomato sofrito, and pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika). At the end, picada, a dense paste of almonds, toasted bread, garlic, and olive oil, is stirred in to thicken the stew and add even more flavor.
In line with his predilection for not following recipes, we didn’t adhere to the one printed in the cookbook: Instead of making a separate fish stock, he made it all in the pot for the stew from water and the bones and head from the whole red snapper; he added a bay leaf simply because he wanted to, but mentions saffron would be another good addition; and threw into the picada some chopped parsley, which is only sometimes included.
“Today is not so much about following the recipe in the book, but showing the spirit of a dish that you can make in different ways and forms once you are able to understand the very basics,” he said.
We had issues with the induction compatibility of some of the cookware, so it took us a while to get up and cooking. “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm,” he said. Inadvertently, this snag in some ways resembled a situation that World Central Kitchen could face. “We keep adapting and trying.”
After more than an hour of talking, dancing and making music while enjoying a glass of wine — or “supporting the local economy,” as he would put it — he had to run to another appointment.
This, too, brought about a valuable lesson on adapting to the situation, regardless of what gets thrown at you.
“Sometimes in emergencies, you do what you have to do, and sometimes maybe you will be alone in front of the responsibility of making decisions to feed many people,” he said. “So because in four minutes I have to go and I don’t think this is going to be finished — this is the true spirit of World Central Kitchen — we will see if you will be able to embrace this situation we’re facing.”
I think I rose to the challenge.
Click here to get the recipe for José Andrés’s Red Snapper Stew, which you can follow as closely or loosely as you want. (“When they are able to understand the recipe and make it their own, it gives them powers that go beyond what they even know about themselves so that dish could become so many things at once,” he said.) And you can find even more of his recipes here or by searching his name in our newly redesigned recipe database.
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