810: Dǎc Biêt with Nini Nguyen and The Authentic Ukrainian Kitchen with Yevhen Klopotenko

The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters

American Public Media

Arts, Food

4.2 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we talk with two incredible chefs about their culinary connections to their homes. First, chef Nini Nguyen talks about growing up in New Orleans and her connection to her tight-knit Vietnamese community. She shares the delicious Vietnamese foods she grew up eating and talks about how that upbringing shapes her cooking today, Nini is the author of Dǎc Biêt: An Extra-Special Vietnamese Cookbook, and she leaves with her recipe for Grilled Rice Paper. Then, we head to Ukraine with chef Yevhen Klopotenko to talk about his work rediscovering traditional Ukrainian dishes that were once suppressed under Soviet rule. He tells us about his work, providing recipes online that have reached thousands of schools and getting traditional recipes like Borsch, finally recognized as Ukrainian. Yevhen is the author of The Authentic Ukrainian Kitchen, and he left us with his recipe for Syrnyky, delicious Farmer cheese pancakes.

Broadcast dates for this episode:

September 13, 2024 (originally aired)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Francis Lamb and this in the Gulf Coast of Mississippi
0:21.2	driving over to New Orleans like every chance we could get.
0:24.6	And you know the whole region was devastated and so much of it emptied out but so many
0:30.2	the people who came back bonded right away in the community to rebuild their homes
0:35.0	and neighborhoods.
0:36.2	And I'll never forget when I heard the amazing story that one of the very first neighborhoods
0:40.4	in New Orleans to get its power turned back on.
0:43.0	Wasn't the famous French Quarter or the wealthy garden district, but an immigrant Vietnamese
0:48.5	village miles east of the center city on a stretch of highway that runs through the swamp.
0:54.0	It's called Versailles, and the reason they were able to come back online so quickly was
0:57.8	because they were such a tight-knit organized community. They all came right
1:02.4	back home to start their rebuild. They
1:04.6	organized and showed the power company they were back and working and before too long
1:09.0	the vegetables that they had always grown for themselves became the local produce that chefs were proud to serve in the restaurants that were starting to reopen in the city.
1:18.0	I'm telling you all this because both of our guests today are chefs who are so proud of the food of their home
1:25.4	places that show extraordinary strength and resilience and beauty and their food tells those
1:31.3	stories. Later in the show we'll talk with Yevin Klopotenko,
1:35.0	who's leading the movement to rediscover
1:38.0	what Ukrainian cuisine really is
1:40.0	after decades of being whitewashed under Soviet rule.
1:44.0	And first, we're going to talk with the daughter of Versailles
1:48.0	that New Orleans Vietnamese community I was telling you about.
	...

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