Kitchens of Hope: Immigrants Share Stories of Resilience and Recipes from Home

“Every recipe tells a story,” assert the authors of this heartfelt cookbook, a fundraiser for the nonprofit Advocates for Human Rights. It’s structured around profiles of 37 immigrants to the U.S. who share family recipes that range from the simple (Colombian Hogao, a tomato and onion sauce) to the complex (German leek tart). Most are not professional chefs; instead, the focus is on home-cooked, everyday fare, often in serving sizes fit for a crowd. Doris Parker, whose family fled to the U.S. just before Liberia’s First Civil War, contributes instructions for peanut soup. Hiba Al-Hasnawi, who came to the states with the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project multiple times before threats on her life made permanent relocation a necessity, serves up baba ghanoush. Somalian Halima Mohamed, the founder of Hoyo, a food production company that distributes traditional sambusas, or meat-stuffed pastries, shares her flagship recipe. The breadth of experience the authors attempt to capture is admirable, but there’s a scattered quality to the finished product and some missing practical elements, like listing total cooking times or providing an index of recipes by ingredients or country of origin. Still, the noble intentions of this earnest anthology shine through. (June)