Priya Krishna never felt represented in the cookbooks she thumbed through as a kid. They all seemed to cater to a white, Western audience, and the mini pizza and fruit soup recipes inside didn’t challenge her tastebuds or abilities.
So, Krishna — a Dallas native who’s now a cookbook author and food writer at The New York Times — decided to write the cookbook her younger self longed for.
Priya’s Kitchen Adventures, Krishna’s fourth cookbook and her first written for children, is an ode to the dishes she experienced as a child during international travels with her mother, who worked in the travel industry. The book, which is studded with Krishna’s family travel photos and stories, is as much a travelog as it is an introduction to kitchen basics and global flavors.
The author, known for her 2019 cookbook Indian-ish, told The Dallas Morning News she wanted to create a collection of recipes that would meet kids where they are while pushing them out of their comfort zones and introducing them to different cultures.
“I looked for comfort foods kids would eat at home but would also expose them to new flavors,” Krishna said. “I didn’t shy away from chiles in adobo. I didn’t want to make assumptions that kids didn’t like spicy foods or fish sauce.”
The 54 recipes in Priya’s Kitchen Adventures represent 12 countries, and each one is tied to a memory from Krishna’s childhood, like dipping steaming pita into oil-slicked hummus bi tahina in Cairo, experiencing hot pot for the first time in Nanjing, and ordering curry chana out of a van in Tobago.
Much thought went into creating kid-safe recipes that minimized knife work and handling raw meat, Krishna said. To make sure the recipes struck the right balance between challenging and doable, she relied on 30 recipe testers, all between the ages of 6 and 12.
“They were my North Star,” she said. “I took their suggestions seriously. One of the things that was so delightful about the recipe testing feedback was how candid and honest they were.”
She loved the testers’ input so much that each recipe in the book features a quote from their feedback forms, like the gratin dauphinois described by one 9-year-old as “even better than Tater Tots!”
While the book may be geared toward an elementary-aged audience, the pared-down recipes and the step-by-step guides illustrated by Anu Chouhan are great for anyone who’s ever been stumped by how to dice an onion or too intimidated to attempt profiteroles.
Fifteen recipe developers, including Krishna’s husband Seth Byrum and cookbook author Rick Martínez, contributed to the lineup of dishes featured in the book.
Krishna describes her previous cookbook Indian-ish, which she co-authored with her mother, as a documentation of how she grew up in the food industry. Now, Priya’s Kitchen Adventures is the story of how she got there. It’s also, in a way, a gift for her inner child.
“When I was growing up, there were not a lot of cookbooks with brown-skinned girls on the cover,” she said. “It would have been so nice to see myself in cookbooks. I wish I could go back in time and give my younger self this book.”
Priya’s Kitchen Adventures is currently available for presale and will be released April 30, 2024.
