Lisa Kyung Gross dreamed of a cooking school with a curriculum of international family recipes; now there's a cookbook, too

The New York City-based cooking school League of Kitchens was founded on one simple, brilliant idea — immigrant women who are exceptional home cooks, invite strangers into their homes and teach them their best recipes. Launched in 2014 by Lisa Kyung Gross, the idea was inspired by her own grandmothers and her longing to cook by their side after they were gone. 

A decade later, Lisa and her 14 instructors have published The League of Kitchens Cookbook: Brilliant Tips, Secret Methods & Favorite Family Recipes from Around the World.

Evan Kleiman: Because of the name, League of Kitchens, I always think of these women as a group of superhero home cooks. Putting together this idea is such a particular undertaking. What was your inspiration to create such a business?

Lisa Kyung Gross: The idea came out of my own experience. My mother is Korean. She immigrated to the US in the early 1970s. My dad's American of Hungarian Jewish ancestry. His family came to New York City in the 1890s, so two very different immigrant stories. 

My Korean grandmother lived with my family when I was growing up, and she was a wonderful cook. She was always cooking but whenever I'd want to cook with her, she would always say, "Oh, don't worry about cooking. You should go study because studying is more important." She didn't really value her own cooking skills. They were kind of taken for granted. She really wanted me to have professional and educational opportunities that she didn't have and would have loved to have had. Actually, now that I have kids and I see that cooking with kids also slows you down a lot, I think that was probably part of it too, if she just wanted to get dinner done. 

I never learned to cook from her for those reasons. Neither did my mother because she was the youngest of six, and her older sisters learned but when she was coming out, my grandma said the same thing to her. 

So fast-forward after college, I had to cook for myself. I fell in love with cooking, and I wanted to cook these Korean recipes from my childhood but my grandma had passed away by that time. I tried to teach myself from cookbooks and from the internet, and nothing tasted as good as when my grandmother would make it. So I had this fantasy — I wish there was another Korean grandmother who I could cook with and learn her family recipes and cook with her in her home kitchen.

I stored that idea away, and I went on and did an MFA in participatory public art and social practice. When I came back to New York, that idea came back to me, and I thought, what if I could find amazing home cooks from all around the world who could teach small classes in their homes, teach their family recipes, and it could be just as much about creating this opportunity for cross-cultural learning and connection and exchange as it was about this culinary learning experience? That was the beginning of it all.

Taking the lead from her mother-in-law, instructor Damira Inatullaeva uses plenty of chopped herbs and apricots in mashhurda, an Uzbek soup. Photo by Kristin Teig.

It really is powerful, especially in this moment. What is most striking to me about this book is that these are truly home recipes. You can tell by the way that they're written. In most modern cookbooks, there's this format where there's a list of ingredients followed by maybe a few paragraphs of instruction. But the recipes in this book often have two to three pages of instruction. I feel like I can hear these women explaining to a son or daughter who's away at college how to make something.

I love that. Yeah, these recipes are unusual compared to many other contemporary cookbooks because I really wanted to capture those little details and tricks and ways of doing things that are so often left out of cookbooks. That frustrated me so much when I was trying to cook Korean food that tasted like my grandmother's. Often, those little things, they are the difference between something being good and something being exceptional.

Part of what is so charming and also practical is the language that's used in the book that describes how to do things. For instance, the page that's devoted to breaking down a chicken, I love how the first sentence of every step starts with, "Use your hands."

I love that you noticed that because I think one of the things our instructors do that is really central to home cooking and also many cuisines around the world where people don't use a lot of gadgets, is the best gadget is your hands, right? So you have to use your hands. Especially with breaking down a chicken, where people might be kind of squeamish or looking to not touch it, we're trying to say, "The key to breaking down a chicken in a way that's effective and comfortable is to really use your hands."

Usually, a cookbook which encompasses many different types of cuisine from all over the world wouldn't normally appeal to me but because this is so centered on the individual women and their stories, I find it so rich. One of the things that is fascinating to me is how so many ingredients that are used in recipes throughout the book are the same but they're used in so many different ways, like the variety of ways in which an onion is used. 

Totally. And actually, onions are an area where I really learned some subtlety and some of those subtle tricks from our instructors. If you notice, when you read in the book, about slicing an onion, we always specify whether you slice it root to stem or across the equator because the direction you slice it does affect how that onion cooks down. We have a number of recipes that involve grating an onion versus chopping an onion versus slicing an onion. It does different things. But you're right, the two things that are probably used in the most recipes are onions and garlic, for sure.

In Uzbekistan, Damira Inatullaeva bought freshly dried mung beans at the farmers market, where they would arrive with many small stones and sticks. Photo by Kristin Teig.

Introduce us to some of the instructors. I find Nawida, your Afghan instructor, to be so interesting. How did she learn to cook? Tell us about her.

Nawida was just naturally interested in cooking as a kid. She describes how when she would get home from school, she would go to the kitchen and sit and watch her mother and her grandmother cook. And they let her stay there and watch. At the age of 13, she started to cook meals for her whole family. She has many siblings. Her family always had guests. She always shares with pride how people would say, "Wow, Nawida made this? It's so good." She's 13. 

Then, later on, when she got married, she moved in with her husband's family and extended family, and it was a household of 35 people. She and her sister-in-law were in charge of cooking three meals a day for a household of 35 people. She always says, "Oh, there were usually five or seven guests at any meal." Either she or her sister-in-law would cook the meal, and then the other one would do the dishes. So for 10 years, Nawida cooked at least one meal a day for about 40 people.

Unbelievable.

When I hired her, she was in her mid 30s, and I said to people, even though she's not a grandma (she's 35), she cooks like a grandma, because of that incredible practice she got mixed with her natural talent for cooking.

There's a photo of her making fried eggs in the book, which I know is going to change the way I fry eggs forever. Tell us about that recipe.

That recipe is the one that I probably cook the most often. I cook it multiple times a week for myself and for my kids. Basically, you take some ghee, you heat it in the pan, you put in some chopped garlic, you put in a pinch of turmeric, and then you fry an egg over-easy in that. If you don't have ghee, you can use olive oil or butter or a mix of the two. It is so delicious and beautiful and nutritious and nourishing and so simple. 

It's one of those things when I talked to Nawida about adding this to the book, she was like, "That's not a recipe. You can't put that in a cookbook." But I said to her, "If you didn't grow up in an Afghan family, you're not going to know that recipe. You're not going to know how to do that."

Inspired by her Korean grandmother's food, Lisa Kyung Gross founded a cooking school where immigrant women act as instructors. Photo by Kristin Teig.

I have to say, the chicken chapter felt new to me, which is a rarity, since we're inundated with so many chicken recipes. Tell us about Mirta and her Argentine whole roast chicken.

Every recipe, we start with a quote from the instructor. Her's is something like, "I love this recipe because it's no work." And it truly is. You basically put down about an inch and a half of kosher salt on a baking sheet. She always puts a piece of parchment paper first. It's also super easy to clean up. Then you just perch a whole chicken on top of that, and you bake it. It makes this really crispy-skinned, juicy roast chicken. 

Of course, all of us have cooked so many different types of roast chicken, different approaches, different recipes, and this is the technique that I found to be the easiest, most hands off, most dependable way to make a beautiful roast chicken. She learned it from her cousin, who's an airline pilot. I love that he would make this for her every time he'd come to New York. 

She also, in this super smart way, puts in some whole sweet potatoes when she bakes this. Then, she eats those baked sweet potatoes cut open with some olive oil and salt, mashed that way. Again, so simple but I had never thought to do that with olive oil before. I guess in America, you get used to butter and baked potatoes but olive oil and sweet potatoes, it's just such a delicious, comforting meal that's so easy. And something about that salt, I think it just absorbs moisture, or something, makes such a crispy, juicy chicken.

Yeah, probably the way it helps radiate the heat too. I'd love to talk about Damira. Tell us a little bit about her background and what dishes we might find if we went to one of her classes.

So Damira is our instructor from Uzbekistan. She grew up in Samarkand, which she always says is the crossroads of the East and West, because it was a central point on the ancient Silk Road. She was actually a cardiologist in Uzbekistan but they have a forced retirement age of 50. Her husband is a retired professor of Central Asian History from the University of Samarkand. So when you go to their home, you also get him, as a bonus, to talk to about the history of Central Asia. 

Their kids all came to the US to study. That was through a State Department program, I think, for former Soviet countries. They actually applied for the green card lottery and won, so they moved here in their mid-50s. She always says they wanted a new adventure, they wanted a new experience.

She shares all these recipes she learned growing up from her mother and from her grandmother and her extended family. We have four really interesting recipes of hers in the book. One is a soup called mashhurda. It's a green mung bean soup with rice, carrots, and onions. At the end, you add whole dried apricots and it's topped with a dollop of labne and a lot of chopped cilantro and dill. It's such an interesting soup with unfamiliar but delicious flavors, where that large quantity of fresh herbs is so fragrant. I always love that bit of sweetness from the apricot and then the creaminess from the labne. It's such a satisfying soup.

With family recipes passed down through generations,The League of Kitchens Cookbook brings the famed cooking school's classes into the home kitchen. Photograph courtesy of Harvest.

Yeah, I marked that one too. It was one of the first I tried from the book. Another part of the book that I really love are the glimpses we get of the women's kitchens. It's such a reminder that none of us need huge islands.

True. One of the things that I loved about making this book was we made the photos in a very unique way. As you know, most cookbooks are shot in studios, and food stylists cook the food. The props, the dishes, tableware, and textiles are usually rented. I knew from the beginning that I wanted the instructors to cook the food, I wanted to do it in their homes, and I wanted to use their stuff. So we actually did 14 shoots in every instructor's home. 

Every instructor brought out all of their dishes and tablecloths and color and everything. Our stylist helped the instructor match food and tablecloth and dishes. Then, the instructors cooked and plated the food themselves. I think that really gives the photos a different kind of cultural connection and expressiveness, and the food really reflects the instructors and their families and their cultures and cuisines. To me, I love that. That's what I love about these photos.