My (Half) Latinx Kitchen | Kiera Wright-Ruiz
Suzy Chase: When two podcasts collide, magic happens. Welcome to Dinner Party, the podcast where I bring together my two hit shows, cookery by the book and decorating by the book around here. We're all about cooking, sharing stories behind recipes, and creating a cozy home. I'm your host, Suzy Chase, a West Village wife, mom and home cook. Inspired by Martha Stewart trying to live in a Nora Ephron movie, surrounded by toile, plaid, cookbooks, decorating books and magazines, cooking in my galley kitchen and living my best life in my darling New York City apartment in the cutest neighborhood in the city, the West Village. So come hang out and let's get into the show.
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: Hi I'm Kiera Wright-Ruiz and I wrote My (Half) Latinx Kitchen: Half Recipes, Half Stories, All Latin American.
Suzy Chase: I want to start off with the question are you talk about how this question which relates to your cultural identity weighed so heavily on you at certain times in your life that you even questioned yourself. This question that has followed you for your entire life. First of all, I find that question offensive and downright rude. Have you ever found an answer that feels right for you?
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: What are you is definitely an offensive question. I think this is a very specific story, but one time someone asked me for my consent before they asked me that, and no, it was a good thing because no one in my entire life has asked me for permission to ask me that question. So I thought it was interesting that person in particular was a PhD candidate on Muslim relations after nine 11. So he had a lot of specific thoughts around race and it was so refreshing, be asked to have the power to give permission, to answer a question of what are you, when I'm asked, what are you in the us? It's never just a normal question. It's always loaded with a bunch more implicit questions that they're just not saying. So I feel like when they're asking me What are you, they're like, why are your eyes slanted?
Why are you tan? Why are you not white? I feel like those are the other sort of questions that's behind the question because I know if I were white, they wouldn't ask me that, and they're basically trying to figure out how to categorize me in my mind, or they're trying to figure out how to categorize me in their mind so they can move forward with the interactions. But with that, along with whatever else they've learned about Asian or Latinx or whatever they're assuming I am. So what are you is totally a loaded question. And I've had random people ask me that literally all the time before my name. So it really is something that I think for a lot of people who are not white in the US it comes up very often. And of course it's rarely even a more humanized question of where are you from?
Which is still inappropriate. But if I told them, oh, New York and Florida, that's not what they're looking for. But I think another thing that I've learned with that question is it really changes depending on what country I'm in. So for up until for most of my life living in the us, you is the question I got. But when I moved to Japan, the question started to change where typically in Japan, they don't ask what are you, they ask, where's your place of origin? With that, they're totally happy and more than content when I say New York. So it's kind of interesting how it sort of shifts because I realize the digging to try to categorize me into the sort of buckets, that sort of conversation doesn't exist everywhere. It is a very, very US centered mindset, and it's been refreshing to realize that my life in Japan, of course there's other issues with that, but I'm really free from that question now for the first time in my life, except the occasional person from the US that I meet there that asked me. But it is just interesting. Yeah,
Suzy Chase: You created an entire cookbook on the subject of ethnicity and you write so openly about your ethnicity, which by the way is Ecuadorian and Korean. So tell me a little bit about your parents.
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: So my dad is the one from Ecuador, and his whole family immigrated to New York actually in 1969. In a lot of traditional ways, culture is passed down from your parents. And in terms of my Latinx side, my dad hasn't been a part of my life for the majority of my life. So I learned about culture in a very non-linear way. And on my mom's side, she is born in Korea, fully Korean, but she was adopted from Korea and actually also moved to the US the same year as my dad. But she was adopted into basically an all white family and grew up in rural Pennsylvania and didn't see another Asian person actually until she was in her twenties. So her life is very untraditional in which we think of how culture is passed down. But even on my mom's side, I often think about how, yeah, she didn't grow up so deep living traditional Korean cultures celebrating all the Korean holidays and things like that, but in her own way, her trying to figure out how she fits in into the US and has grappled with that couldn't be a more Korean experience because so many people were adopted from Korea.
So it's also very valid and very, very much Korean, just in a different way. Basically with both of my parents, neither of them brought that traditional customary. Let's learn altogether what being Korean and Ecuadorian means because these are the recipes that we cook and love. My mom doesn't even cooking whether it's American or Korean food. Yeah. So part of the reason why I wanted to write this book is really challenge people's ideas, not just what ethnicity means, but how we learn about culture just because it's not always a straight line.
Suzy Chase: So how did you find yourself seeking out traditions to make your own if you didn't see it g-rowing up?
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: I wasn't always seeking it out. I was just like, I'm a child, I'm going to live my life. And basically throughout my upbringing, I've lived with different caretakers. So whether it was my grandparents on and off, and even within that, my grandparents, my grandma in that role, she's technically my step-grandmother, so we're not actually related by blood, but she's fully Mexican. I learned a lot about Mexican culture, but not because I'm ethnically Mexican, it's because she is Mexican and imparted a lot of Mexican culture and food and stuff like that. Actually kind of more what you think about in a traditional way, but I think for some people they're like, how does that work? You're not Mexican, but I think the world is so much bigger than you're only entitled to learn about culture based off your ethnicity. So with my grandma, yeah, that's always been a part of my story.
And from when I was born, she was actually my first caretaker. I was also in foster care for a year and a half. So the book touches about me living with my Cuban foster parents, which is sort of a reflection of also just south Florida, just because there's so much Cuban culture about. So even part of my childhood in Florida, just learning more about Cuban food and Cuban Customs is a part of the book as well. So there's really no one way I've learned about different cultures and customs. But definitely as I got older, I was more empowered to learn about culture on my own terms. So whether that meant going to Ecuador for the first time and really being able to see for myself where my family is from, or now that I live in Japan, I go to Korea a lot just for fun. And it's been really an empowering and freeing experience just to be like, oh, I can just experience this in my own way and have fun with it.
Suzy Chase: So in the book you talk about that there's a common misconception that Latin America is a monolith. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: I have so many thoughts around it because from a cuisine standpoint, definitely in the food world, there's this idea that if you just talk about one Mexican recipe or one Puerto Rican recipe, and mostly that's kind of it mostly and leans a lot more towards Mexican in the US in terms of food, that's enough to be like, okay, we did it. We can check the box off of Latin America, but Latin America is way bigger than Mexico, and I mean just being Ecuadorian, I never ever, and still now, see, it's such an underrepresented cuisine. No one ever talks about it. And especially in New York, a lot of food jobs are powered by the Ecuadorian immigrants that are here. So I think it really deserves a lot more credit, especially legit, they're the ones cooking at the fine dining restaurants that everyone's eating at and talking about.
Yeah, I mean there's just this blanket idea of what Latin America is in the us not for every single person of course, but in general because of honestly lack of representation from the people themselves. So one of the reasons why I even use the term Latinx versus Latina is because growing up there was to me only this one idea of what Latina meant, and that was through media that all the stereotypes that you associate with what a Latina is, it really enforces this idea that Latin American culture is one thing, but there's no one thing. There's an infinite amount of ways to be Latinx, and that's one reason why I really leaned into the term and that's why I feel really comfortable with it. But from a food perspective, even just in terms of Ecuador, it's one of the smallest countries within Latin America in terms of landscape, it's so extremely diverse. You have the Andan mountains, which grow an entirely different range of produce and animals and things that live there, versus the Galapagos Island, which is of course on sea level in one of the most diverse places in the world. So even just within these small countries, we rarely even talk about how there's regional cuisines, but of course there is. So how we interpret a Latin American cuisine in the us, I think there's such an opportunity to expand what it really means.
Suzy Chase: What is your go-to Ecuadorian dish and is it in the cookbook?
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: Yes, my go-to dish would definitely be seco. So specifically in the book, I have a seco depo recipe. It is a stew of a kind, but it's not served in a bowl. So basically seco means dry in Spanish, and the way it sort of marries this dish, which is very, very much not dry, is that it uses blended sofrito in it, and you have beer and you have tomatoes, a lot of things that release liquid and brown chicken in it, and basically you let it reduce. So a lot of the excess water evaporates really making the flavors more concentrated. And then on top, you're left with the more visible sofrito on top, still very much wet, still very much a stew, but you serve it on a plate alongside with rice and avocados and plantains. That's my chicken soup. So if I'm having a bad day, if I'm sick, if it's cold outside, if I just want to feel cozy, that's the dish I would make.
Suzy Chase: Speaking of plantains, you've written a love letter to them in the cookbook and you write, my life wouldn't be the same if we had never met.
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: That's another a great way to talk about how limited in the US the conversation around Latin American food is because just with plantains alone, people don't realize that literally you can cook them at every stage and not just a toe and not just a Maduro. You can take them from the green state, literally grate them up and make them into dumplings or use that as the base of for empanadas to literally fold into the dough instead of traditional flour. So many different countries have a million different ways that they use plantains, and I think that it's a great example of just the ingenuity of Latin American cuisine, but just also so much untapped stories that have been told in a mainstream way in English. But there's lots of different delicious plantain recipes out there that are worth exploring.
Suzy Chase: You say there's no breakfast dish better than the Ecuadorian Llapingachos.
Kiera Wright-Ru...: Llapingacho. Yeah.
Suzy Chase: It has such an interesting flavor profile. It has potatoes, onions, sazon with achiote and a peanut sauce. Can you chat about that a little bit?
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: Yeah, a lot of Ecuadorian dishes use peanut in them. So documentation is a little bit unclear, but it is believed to have been an influence of basically the people from Africa that were brought as slaves to Latin America. Maybe people don't remember, but very much slavery existed there as much as it did in the US as well. So that is one of the biggest contributions in Ecuador from the Afro-Latina community. And you can see peanut butter present in one of the national dishes called guatita, which is a peanut based stew mixed with tripe. Traditionally in my cookbook, I actually have a vegan version that swaps out the tripe with mushrooms just because I don't always eat meat at home. So it's a nice way to incorporate more veg. But yapping are like a cheesy potato patty. A chote is a huge, huge ingredient in Ecuador.
It's like the seed of a pod from the lipstick plant and the pod looks really funny. It looks kind of like a Dr. Seus character because it has little tiny red hairs everywhere and it's always very vibrant in color, but the seeds are a natural way to dye food. Some people say there's a slight earthiness to the taste of it, but I have often found it's very color first, whether it's Puerto Rico or in Ecuador, a lot of places will, if they use it in their cuisine, sometimes they'll take the seeds and fry it in oil. That's how they'll start the base of most recipes. But when my family came here, they just started using sasson, which is a seasoning spice blend that typically uses ground de chote seeds as one of the main components in it because it was just easier to get. So it's definitely sazon and a with achiote is extremely present in the book. If you want to cook from this book, you got to get eson. But yeah, llapingachos are just a really fun way to eat a hearty breakfast. The peanut butter just adds so much savoriness and it's also mixed with sofrito and a bunch of cilantro, so it adds a nice savoriness with some fresh bites because of the fresh herbs.
Suzy Chase: So tell me what you make when you miss your grandma.
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: When I miss my grandma, I'll probably make flotas specifically her chicken, which are also in the book. So it takes shredded chicken, you roll them, it's spice, you roll them in tortillas and you fry them, and then you top it with salsa, queso fresco, grandma, and lettuce. So I mean, they are a form of taquito, but in growing up I always used to call them flautas with my grandma. That's what she made for us all the time as the quick snack. So in Japan it's a little bit more difficult to get corn tortillas, but when I've missed her, I have made tortillas from scratch and done the whole process. So it just takes a little bit longer, but it's worth it.
Suzy Chase: Okay, so here's what I made on Thursday night. I made your carne asada tater tots on page 2 51 and your ceviche de cameron, if I'm pronouncing that right on page seven. I want everyone to know that ceviche is so easy to make. Can you talk about this?
Kiera Wright-Ru...: Well, thank you so much for making it. I hope you enjoyed it.
Suzy Chase: It was so good.
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: Yay. That's amazing. Yeah, ceviche is super easy. I mean, Ecuador and ceviche technically has some cooking because all you have to do is quickly cook the shrimp just until it thick, they're pink, and then you toss 'em into the citrus. But besides that, there's literally no cooking. It takes around 15 minutes to do from start to finish once you have all the ingredients prepped. But yeah, the base is usually just citrus juice, so you just got to juice them, have onion and tomato and cilantro. You add in the shrimp. And one of the key things that makes Ecuadorian ceviche, Ecuadorian ceviche is a little bit of ketchup. So it gives a little nice tank, some sweetness, but really gives the citrus broth a beautiful blush color.
Suzy Chase: It was so good and those darn tater tots, I mean it was a full meal.
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: Yeah, I mean the tater tots carne asada is definitely a very fun recipe. I think it's a huge crowd pleaser. So it's based off my time eating carne asada fries from taco trucks in la, which they really shouldn't make carnes fries a bigger thing in New York. I think it's a very west coast thing, but switching the fries with tater tots is kind of just my version. I love tater tots so much.
Suzy Chase: So the very last chapter is a reflection on the outlook you have today and a lot about Tokyo, where you've been living and writing the last couple of years. And I'd love to hear about how you chose to live in Tokyo.
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: I've wanted to live abroad since I was around 15 years old, and for a long time it was just kind of about where I wanted to go. So narrowing out every place in the world. But the first one I went to Japan was in 2017, and it was the only place I had been that when I left, I cried because I was just so sad to leave it. So once that happened, I was like, okay, let's change every direction in life to head here. And I just love Tokyo so much. I mean, if you love a city, Tokyo is literally the biggest city, so it checks that box, but also just in terms of day to day, the subway works, it's clean, it's really, really safe. It's just one of the safest countries in the world, which when I come back to the US I forget.
I can't just leave my phone out on any table to hold my place. But in Japan you can do that. And the food in Tokyo is just like, in my opinion, the best in the world. There's just so many incredible things people are doing out there, whether it's of course very famous for its pizza, but also I've had some amazing, amazing tacos there. It is literally the city with the most Michelin stars. So there's that. I feel like it's just such a great place to foster creativity because of just how buzzy it is of a giant city, and it's a really international place as well. So it's been great to meet other people since my level of Japanese is still growing. So nice to meet folks from different parts of the world too there.
Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called The Perfect Bite where I ask you to describe the perfect bite of a favorite dish, and it could be out of the cookbook.
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: I mean, to me the perfect bite is definitely like a stewy savory thing with rice in some plantains, specifically maduros. So you get that sweetness and the savoriness altogether in one bite, but also rice because I love rice. I think a lot of bites in my opinion can be a little bit perfect. So it sort of depends on what I'm feeling. But I love picadillo, Cuban picadillo, which I have one in the book because I love a tomato-based meaty dish. So picadillo does that rabo encendido does that, which is a Cuban oxtail dish, and of course seco as well, which is also tomato-based. So those are the three I'm thinking of that. If I took a little bit of the meat, got a spoon mostly with the broth, had about a third of it with rice, and then plopped on a little bit of maduro on top, that would be the ultimate bite.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: Yeah, you can find me on online K-I-E-R-A-W-R-R. That's where I'm at.
Suzy Chase: Thank you so much for writing this cookbook through the lens of your personal experience. Everyone's going to want to read this like a novel. It was such a special read for me, and I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show.
Kiera Wright-Ruiz: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Suzy Chase: Okay, so where can you listen to the new Dinner Party Podcast series? Well, it's on substack suzy chase.substack.com. You can also subscribe to Dinner Party for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Additionally, the episodes will be available on Decorating by the Book and Cookery by the Book. Long story short, you'll be able to listen to it virtually everywhere. Thanks for listening. Bye.
