My Family Recipe

On the season finale of My Family Recipe, host Arati Menon welcomes Adrian Miller, AKA “The Soul Food Scholar.” Not many people can boast their accomplishments as a food writer, James Beard award winner, attorney and certified barbecue judge; but Adrian Miller is one-in-a-million. Adrian talks about the dishes and characters who populated his childhood and his church community in Denver, Colorado. He tells us the story of the perfect cornbread and how this recipe represents so much more history and love than its simplicity might suggest.

The Little Blue Cookbook was a nearly lost family heirloom that Jennifer Justus discovered a few years ago. Decades prior to that, the cookbook’s butterscotch pecan pie recipe provided great comfort to her grandmother, who made the dish frequently when she and her husband were relocated by his Coast Guard duties during World War II. Inheriting this piece of history led Jennifer to wonder about her grandmother’s inner life and the trials and tribulations she never shared with her granddaughter. This episode explores inheritance, midlife crises, time travel, and of course, pie. Rebekah Turshen, the pastry chef behind Nashville’s City House and a friend of Jennifer’s joins the conversation to talk about adapting vintage recipes and how she helped modernize this dessert.

If you’re hungry for more of this story, you can read the original essay “The Butterscotch Pie Recipe Grandma Carried With Her Through the War,” published by Food52. Plus find Rebekah’s Turshen’s baking tips and recipe adaptation here.

Nyanyika Banda has a passion for studying the foodways of the African diaspora. Growing up surrounded with the culinary traditions of her father’s Malawian culture, she has had a lifelong hunger for exploration. In April 2020, she published an installment of My Family Recipe titled "The Chicken Curry That Put My Broken Family Back Together Again." It's about building traditions and finding forgiveness through a childhood recipe.

Lavanya Narayanan’s culinary heart is deeply rooted in both Indianapolis and India. Her family found a unique community of immigrants and ties to their shared Tamil culture in the Midwest: sharing music, holidays, and (of course) food. In this episode, Lavanya and her mother Bhooma share the origin story of a baked cabbage dish that brought with it a chosen family.

Gary Schiro had made plenty of his mother’s recipes, but one Sunday morning-not long after his mother passed away-an attempt to make her traditional meatballs and sauce went wrong. Gary wished he could have called her. He wished that he had asked her how to make the recipe properly. Despite having seen her make it 900 times, he never did. This episode takes a look at time-honored family traditions, examines unanswered questions, and is an attempt to reconcile feelings of regret. Plus, a cookalong with Gary goes to show that you can make any family recipe your own without sacrificing meaning, comfort, or deliciousness.

Arati Menon’s voice is a part of every episode of My Family Recipe. Her empathy and humor tie together the threads of diverse family recipes into the beautiful tapestry that is this series. In this episode, Arati takes her seat on the opposite side of the mic. HRN’s Julia Child Foundation Fellow, Kelly Spivey invites listeners to get to know the show’s host, her own family recipes, and what has drawn her to tell these stories.

Katie Workman’s Grandpa Bernie was a smart-cookie, a storyteller, and...according to family vignettes, a very slow eater. Katie shares a comedy of errors about her attempts to connect with her grandfather about food. There are stories of pranks, memories of laughter-filled meals, and of course, the legend of how Bernie unclogged a toilet with lemon meringue pie.

This episode features Coral Lee, Food52 Podcast Network’s Producer. For this conversation, she is on the other side of the mic sharing a deeply personal story of the cake that encapsulates her grandmother’s communal table. Coral explores the nature of intimacy, her hyphenated identity as an Asian-American, as well as the complicated relationship that she has with her parents.

Leche flan became Giselle Krachenfels’ favorite dessert both because it was delicious and because it connected her with Filipino culture. Having mixed heritage, Giselle felt the need to prove her Filipino identity and leche flan became a way to do just that. Except that she couldn’t get the recipe right. This is a story about how one dessert helped three generations of women navigate new surroundings and a sense of self.

When Joelle Zarcone was growing up, her mom made bolognese sauce every Sunday. Even after leaving home, Joelle’s mom would bring along her wooden spoon for visits, leaving her daughter’s freezer well stocked with sauce. After unexpectedly losing her mother to illness, Joelle had to figure out how to make the sauce for herself for the first time. This story about family tradition, grief, and a mother’s love touched many readers who share their thoughts in the second half of the episode.