Sometimes, the universe just doesn’t want you to make a dish. You hand-pick all your ingredients, do your chopping and dicing and mixing, pull out your go-to cookware and … the stove won’t light.

This food metaphor is meant to soften the blow of there not being a full podcast this week. Ann and Tarik were in the studio with their rundown of food news all set to go, and then our fancy audio equipment did the equivalent of the stove not lighting. So we did what any great chef does in this situation: Scrap the five-course meal you had planned and make a decent salad.

Most of what you’ll hear in this salad-ified episode comes from HYFIN's Megan Matthews — one of the DJs providing the “sound” half of our upcoming SoundBites event Feb. 27. She has the good fortune to be paired with Centraal Grand Café & Tappery’s Rebecca Berkshire, who welcomed Megan into the kitchen for a chat about what they both have cooking for the big night (tickets for which are on sale now).

Tarik also didn’t want to miss an opportunity to talk about another cookbook that caught his eye recently: Black Power Kitchen from Ghetto Gastro. The Bronx-based culinary collective put together 75 recipes — mostly plant-based — that blend cultural heritage with innovative cooking techniques. 

Strong Back Stew, Triboro Tres Leches and their version of a classic bodega chopped cheese are just a few examples of what you’ll find in these pages, which include way more than just recipes. The photography is incredible (there’s nothing like a great good photo), plus they fold in original artwork and essays that draw the connections among food, community and Black excellence.