Larderie has really opened up my cooking options. I never thought that glass noddle soup would become a weekly staple in our home, but the selections have been wonderful to really expand my options. Also, the sheer amount of joy I get from opening up the box and seeing beautiful ingredients and a wonderful book to discover can’t be overstated. In a time when it can feel like Groundhog Day, having all the tools I need to create something new and different is nourishing to my soul.
Brittany
I really love the creativity this influences. It’s changed the way I look at my options. It’s changed the spice plans and marinades that I do for meat and veg. And it’s made me more confident in approaching things from a different culinary point of view.
Jay
I'm an experienced cook who loves to experiment in the kitchen but it can be hard to jump into a new cuisine with [unfamiliar] ingredients. Having a beautifully curated box full of handpicked special ingredients and a book I know will be easy to use has helped me get outside my comfort zone and introduced me to some new flavors and techniques that have been really simple to integrate into my regular cooking rotation.
It's beautifully organized, well-written, the flavors are fantastic, then Rick Martinez points out that reducing a cuisine to "easy" and "simple" is where "marketing and racism intersect... When you call something authentic, you're necessarily saying that everything else is not."
In Mi Cocina, Martinez highlights how Spanish colonialism has merged with indigenous foodways, where Lebanese immigrants have influenced "Tacos Arabes," and how Chinese immigrants who constructed railways layered soy sauce into the Mexican culinary lexicon. Just as Mexican food has evolved in Mexico, it has evolved in the United States, morphed by countless Mexican Americans and those who have enjoyed their cooking and meals at their tables.
