Cookbook Food for Sharing by Ashia Ismail-Singer—Our Book Review

Being an immigrant often comes with an expectation of preserving one’s culinary heritage, along with developing curiosity about the foods and markets encountered along the way. Food for Sharing (the US title for The Laden Table), Ashia Ismail-Singer’s third recipe collection, draws on her Indian heritage, upbringing in Malawi and subsequent life in England and New Zealand, as well as influences from her extended family in France and the Arabic-speaking world. In her new cookbook, Ismail-Singer, a former nurse with a passion for simple food, pairs her recipes with her life memoirs: learning her mother’s famous biryani or sharing corn masala at family firepit evenings. Ismail-Singer steers away from classifying the dishes by region, instead grouping them by social occasions, such as breakfasts, picnics or festive feasts. To her, family gatherings are about mixing recipes from different regions and cultures, so by organizing the book this way, she presents food as a means of connecting with those cultures around the table. With so many cookbooks competing for attention, Food for Sharing stands out by offering a broader portrait of an immigrant kitchen shaped by mobility and exchange rather than strict authenticity. In the kitchen and between the pages of a cookbook, Ismail-Singer disrupts the idea of a singular isolated cuisine, creating one that spans geography. —Aibarshyn Akhmetkali