http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/dining/asha-gomez-my-two-souths-cookbook-review.html 2016-09-27 19:04:38 Review: An Indian Twist on Southern Cuisine in ‘My Two Souths’ The chef Asha Gomez brings Indian spice to the South’s greatest recipe hits in her debut cookbook. === Can the remix be better than the original? It’s something to contemplate while working through the chef Asha Gomez’s debut cookbook, The first South in this book is Kerala, the Indian state on the Arabian Sea. Ms. Gomez learned to grind and combine spices in the kitchen of her family’s compound there. She moved to Queens and later to Atlanta, home base for her second South. There Ms. Gomez ran Cardamom Hill, Kerala and the American South meet in Ms. Gomez’s kitchen, and that’s where things get interesting. Yellow lentils lace breakfast grits, cutting them the way chicory stretches coffee. A bird’s-eye chile infuses heavy cream with a warming kiss for a gently spiced chocolate tart. Ms. Gomez’s lack of a classical cooking education is, in part, what makes this cookbook delightful. She intuits the needs and desires of the home cook; a chicken and rice dish is fancy in both name and flavor, but it dirties just one pot. She has a firm grasp on the greatest recipe hits of the American South, but it is her command of the Indian spice box that emboldens her, in dishes like brussels sprouts pachadi and Kerala fried chicken and rice waffles, to kick up the heat in ways that Emeril never will. Hers is Southern cooking, through and through. Recipe: