With the holiday season in full swing, Rachana and Jeanette from The League of Kitchens will expand your dessert horizons by introducing you to sweet treats from their home countries, Nepal and Lebanon, respectively.
Rachana, from Nepal, will be frying up some Sel (fried rice flour donuts) and Jeanette, from Lebanon, will show you how she shapes her Maamoul (semolina shortbread cookies stuffed with nuts). Afterwards, they will be interviewed about their experiences as immigrants to New York City, how they've adapted and improvised their cooking, and what these special dishes mean to their cultures. Join us for these insightful demos, tastings, and information about the holidays and food customs from each country!
The League of Kitchens is an immersive culinary adventure in New York City where immigrants teach intimate cooking workshops in their homes, and participants encounter a new culture, cuisine, and neighborhood with every experience. Each workshop offers opportunities for culinary learning and discovery, cultural engagement and exchange, meaningful connection and social interaction, and exceptional eating and drinking. Through this experience, they seek to build cross-cultural connection and understanding and increase access to traditional cooking knowledge.
Rachana was born in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, a country that shares borders (and culinary traditions) with China and India. Rachana’s grandfather worked as an administrator for the king and her father oversaw the farming of a family-owned property. He would frequently send fresh food from the farm, which her mother and daughters-in-law would cook for her six siblings and thirty to forty-five members of their extended family. Rachana came to the U.S. alone in 2006 and now lives in Flushing with her husband and two of her grown children. She loves to share her food and her Nepalese heritage through the League of Kitchens as well as through Eat Offbeat, a catering company where she works as a chef.
Jeanette grew up in the Lebanese city of Zahle and moved to the U.S. in 2006. She became interested in cooking as a teenager and vividly remembers learning to make tabbouleh from her aunts, a recipe she has painstakingly perfected over time. Formerly an elementary school French teacher, Jeanette now lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with her husband and three children, where works as a caterer of parties and events.