563: Top Chef's Eric Adjepong Gives Ghana the Cookbook It Deserves

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Talking to my mom about like jollof rice, she's not, she doesn't have a recipe book for it. It's all in the top of her head. So God forbid, whenever she passes away, it's gone with her. So how do we like put it down on paper, on wax, and make sure that this is something that can live on, on and on? This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard.

0:59Today on the show, I welcome Eric Ajepang into the studio, who, along with the writer Korsha Wilson, has released one of my favorite books this spring, Ghana to the World. It's a wonderful collection of stories and recipes that captures Eric's deep connection with Ghana and how the cuisine has shaped his career. Also on the show, Eliza catches up with sisters Alia and Radwa El-Kafis, authors of the brand brand new cookbook, Pretty Delicious. I hope you enjoy this episode.

1:36Eric Ajapan, welcome back to This Is Taste. It's great to meet you. Thank you. It's really good meeting you. It's good being back, especially for a pub day. It's wild. Wild. Your book is out today, Gone Into the World. We're recording this on pub day. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's a cool moment, one that I did not know will come. I got to be honest, there's a couple of times I was just like, man, this is way too much for me. This is the first time ever doing a cookbook. Korsha and I, the book's co-author as well. So there was a lot of growing pains. And, you know, we learned so much about ourselves and each other and the whole book writing process as well.

2:16and the day's finally here. So it's really, really awesome to sort of see the light at the end of the tunnel and have this beautiful book out. Well, I love the book. It was featured in Eater's Best Books of the Spring. Yeah. Terrific article there. And much more praise to come. It's a real journalistic work. You and Korsha, you know, visited Ghana. You unpacked your story here in the East Coast. Terrific work. Thank you. Yeah, it spans two continents, as you mentioned. Wow. Accra, Kumasi, where my family's from in Ghana, and here in the Bronx, all throughout New York. It really is like a labor of love and a lot of miles in between.

2:58Before we jump into the book, long-suffering Knicks fan. Well, how do you got to bring that up? I know, but as we're recording this, they're third. We're doing all right. We got an injury. You know what? But listen, I think as many seasons have come and passed, we do well up until one point. And then you realize the field is as stronger, you know, than ever. So there's a lot of great competition, especially East Coast. But, I mean, I love my boys, man. I love the Knicks. Have you cooked for any of them ever? Precious Achua. Oh, wonderful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Precious Achua. Name drop. Shout out to Precious.

3:33Yeah, definitely good name drop there. I mean, Brunson just is going to go on fire in the playoffs. He's the man. He's the guy. He's got to come in healthy. I think Tibbs is working the team out. Yes. Putting the miles on him. Getting some run. Getting some, getting legitimate running. But no, I am such a proud Knicks fan. That came from my father, who's all throughout this book as well. So I'm getting that fandom from him, a second generation sort of Knicks fan. When he came to the States from Ghana, he wanted to sort of like embody as much of American culture, New York culture, specifically as a cab driver and as a Knicks fan as well.

4:10So I watched him watching those, wow, man, NBA. Was it NBA on NBC games? NBA, NBC. You know the song. Yeah. Oh, you know it. You know it. And it's just that's been ingrained in my head. So those Patrick Ewan errors, man, that was on me. I mean, that's the Mason. Mason. So many good teams. Starks, Houston. Yeah. Love that. Let's go back to your father. You write really beautifully about your relationship with him, but you also write about Sundays spent with him in his cab. You were riding shotgun. He's picking up fares. What are you guys doing? What are you guys eating? You know, it's funny. I came to New York this morning.

4:47There's Ubers and Lyfts and all that stuff, but I always take a moment to actually get in a cab and sort of reminisce on those moments with Dad. That was sort of my first intro into the city. Like growing up in the Bronx, I knew the Bronx really well, but those Sundays with Dad, I would go to Queens and Brooklyn and Staten Island and everywhere else, and you see how eclectic the city is. and I'm so blessed to fall into this industry of food and culinary arts. We got a taste of everything, Trinidadian food, Jewish food, Hispanic food, African food. You name it, we did it. And my dad really emphasized the sort of melting pot that was at a young age.

5:25Those Sundays were, man, pivotal to my upbringing, to how I view the world, to how I understand the world views me as well. and really, really great moments just between, you know, father and son, heart to hearts, talking Knicks, talking basketball. What are you eating? Are there any, like, restaurants that stick out in your mind that you'd, like, pull into? Oh, man. Bodegas. We'd go into, like, the, you know, the mom. It was mostly mom and pops. Yeah, right. Yeah, it was mostly mom and pops. My dad loved onion rings. Massive. Wide man. Wide man. That's a great food to love. It's a great food to love.

6:01He loved onion rings, especially from Burger King. Selfish drop right there. But he was that was his number one thing. So I remember many nights or many car rides filled with onion rings and also just different food from everywhere across the city. And, you know, moments I'll never forget. So, Eric, talk about your relationship with Ghana. You know, you're born in the United States, but you're traveling to Ghana a lot as a kid, as a young adult. You live there for a period. But what is that like upon reflecting on it for this great book, your relationship with Ghana? Like it's got to be, you know, you have two identities in some ways.

6:39Yeah, yeah. Dual citizen. Yeah, okay. Yeah, which is awesome. So I had the awesome experience of, you know, my folks came to the States in the late 80s from Kumasi, Ghana. And, you know, I am the first person in the family that was born here in the States. So I have a true understanding of American culture, but then also like a very traditional, growing up in a very traditional West African home. from the music to the like communal gatherings, the funerals, the birthings, the, all of the above was very, very much West African. Um, and, you know, going back and forth, especially at a young age, a lot of stuff that I forgot, you know, from two to five, but a lot of things I remember, you know, being at grandmother's house, my grandparents' house and, um, calling the street vendors out, you know, in the morning or, uh, having dinner with my grandparents.

7:30Um, you know, the tree there was a massive tree uh right in the center of their yard um and that was sort of the communal space it's huge shade everyone's kind of put their chairs around it um and it was sort of like the uh um the center for the communal talks the family talks the all of it we were always i remember that tree like it was yesterday so um it was a moment for me and then now growing up i get to go back and experience Ghana as an adult now. And it's amazing. Ghana to me is home as much as America is. So I feel just as much as myself when I'm there as I do over here. But there's just a different pace.

8:12There's a bustle that's a little bit different. Very similar to New York, honestly. Really? But, you know, a little bit more grit, a little bit more culture. it's a cool moment to sort of be in a space where everyone generally looks like me you know so there's a blending in um that i don't have to worry about being here in the states and it just feels different so um i love it it's home um i love being there i can live there i would live there i will live there yeah you will yeah yeah yeah open a restaurant there maybe absolutely yeah for sure that would be cool i've consulted for a space um in ghana so i got the opportunity to be there for months on end.

8:50It was like a four or five month project. What's it like? Just like leaving the States for four months as a professional, as a chef and opening a restaurant in Ghana. A lot different. Yeah. What is permitting the same? Jess is going to bring that up. It's different politics. We're getting things drop ship from like China and Italy. There's, oh man, the idea of work, the idea of hustle. You know, coming from New York, it's go, go, go, go, go. In Ghana, it's a different pace. It's very, everyone takes their time. Okay. Not great if you're a chef trying to open a restaurant. You know what? It doesn't bode well with some industries, especially hospitality.

9:33But sometimes you have those chefs and culinary sort of entrepreneurs and people in the industry that really have that sort of like, that gumption about them. So in Ghana, it's a beautiful space to be in. And, you know, I can't imagine my life without it. What was on the menu of this restaurant? Were you doing your own cuisine from America, doing an American style? Or were you doing Canadian cuisine? Yeah, yeah, exactly that. So just trying to, you know, refine – well, not refine. I mean, so many kind of dishes and food and ingredients is refined by itself. But sort of put a different spin on what traditional food is there.

10:07So things like – man, it was like a jollof rice, obviously, but we're pairing it with different, you know, proteins. We have wings and kebabs and chichinga and so many other things that were just really very authentically Ghanaian, but then also riffs off other places in the world that have inspired me all throughout my career. Well, Eric, you returned to Ghana in 2011. As you write in the book, you were working on a master's thesis in public health and nutrition. And you got to go back and interview chefs and folks in food. And I didn't know about your academic background. It's really cool that, you know, in addition to being a chef, you've done public policy work.

10:49So what's this like? Because as a reporter myself, I'm interested in how you go and report and interview folks. And then you probably got a real sense of an opportunity to cook there. 100%. Yeah, so I did my master's in international public health nutrition at the University of Westminster in London. And I had the opportunity to do my thesis project in Ghana, specifically on the Maggie bouillon cube from Nestle. It's a huge sort of – it's a bouillon cube that became really popular in the 80s. And you think about like the moments of industrialization happening in Ghana around the late 70s, 80s, where people before that were cooking very, very traditional, taking bones and stock and creating depths of flavor hours and hours on end.

11:39And then Nestle coming in and sort of dropping the bouillon and getting that done in a matter of minutes, right? So that flavor profile is sort of, man, synonymous with a lot of Ghanaian food. And I wanted to understand the rise of noncommunicable diseases that happened or was happening in the country and this relation to the bouillon cube. Because, you know, you put one and two, you get flavor. You put three and four, you get a boom of flavor. But then also it does, you know, some negative effects to your body on the long term. So, yeah, that was that. I went to two different cities, Kumasi, the second biggest city, and then Accra, the capital city.

12:13And I did a food frequency questionnaire. So I talked to street vendors. I talked to chefs. I talked to everyone that I can get my hands on as young as like 15 and as old as like 90. I think I spoke to someone and just really how do you cook? How did you watch your parents cook or, you know, your guardians cook? What are you doing now? And sort of just collected all that information and use it as a thesis and sort of concluded that, you know, the use of the Maggie Q's was something that was really relevant and popular again in the late 80s, but really boomed towards the early 90s. and you know different ways and methods of creating the same dishes have changed gradually from really traditional again cooking things through time versus sort of using that bouillon cube to kind of speed the process up and it was amazing it was cool to to just kind of get in the field and talk to people yeah get a true understanding so yeah I accomplished so much on the academic side but then it's kind of like pre-research for the book as well oh which was That's why I think the book is so editorial.

13:14You and Korsha, you clearly have a background in writing and reporting because it's so rich and there's a lot of great information about Ghana. Don't be impressed. That's all Korsha. All right. That's all Korsha. We'll give Korsha credit. Korsha makes me sound a lot smarter than I am. She was amazing in this whole production and really the start and end of this book. I cannot imagine doing it without her. But to your point, the whole sort of journalistic side and that really getting the deeper answers behind everything. Not only did Jennifer Sitt, our editor, but Korsha herself was very curious about sort of getting to the granular level of everything.

13:58And, you know, we really got to that point. So between the head notes, between the little stories in between, it was really just a labor of love from Korsha's side. You know, a little bit from mine as well. I'll give myself a tiny bit. Yeah, you probably took some time off, especially at the end of a shift, working a restaurant, opening a restaurant. When did you start cooking professionally? Because you've got this academic career. Are you cooking kind of parallel at that time? Or did you make a big change from the academic world to culinary world? You know, so in many West African homes, the ideal sort of profession is doctor, lawyer, engineer type thing, right?

14:38So telling my parents, to my folks that I wanted to be a chef at a young age. My mom saw it in me very young. And I think I got an immediate sort of boosting and approval rating from my immediate family. But like the community at large, it was this tough sell, you know, like telling people that I want to cook as a man. It's a matriarchal sort of society. Women are the ones that are in the kitchen dominating. You go to the markets in Ghana, it's women mostly doing all the work. So as a man and wanting to kind of get into this female dominated industry, that was a tough sell. But, you know, I was smart enough to go to Johnson & Wales University.

15:15Shout out to Providence, Rhode Island. Oh, yeah. And I did my bachelor's in culinary nutrition. So sort of appeasing the medical side of things. You figured it out. Yeah. Figured it out. Yeah, exactly. You know, tried to find the middle ground between the two. But, you know, it's funny because when you know better, you do better. And, you know, I learned to really love that industry and love that side, the science of it. And that's really what was the genesis for me to go to London and continue that master's degree. So the culinary thing was – or the drive for culinary was the push and then simultaneously the sort of education and the know-how and putting – not only making a good dish technically but how is it affecting a city, a country, a region, a state, whatever the case is also came into play later on.

16:05And the more I learned about it, the more I fell in love with it and really just wanted to put all of it together. So now I can't think of my life without sort of that background in nutrition and public health as well. From February 20th to March 7th, dive into Canada's biggest culinary festival, Montreal en Lumière, an exclusive partnership with the McCord Stewart Museum and its exhibition On the Menu Montreal, a restaurant story. The 2026 festival invites food lovers on a flavorful journey through time. Montreal's top restaurateurs will reimagine 65 years of the city's iconic astronomy, crafting inventive, nostalgia-inspired dishes with a modern twist.

16:48Prepare your palate. World-renowned chefs, including several Michelin-starred talents, will team up with over 80 of Montreal's finest local chefs to create unforgettable, one-of-a-kind menus. The full program is available at MontrealOnLumiere.com, presented by Lotto Quebec in collaboration with National Bank. Hi there, it's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request? A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on Three Things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair?

17:26You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, And will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste Listener Survey link in our show notes. Doing the Maggie Project at a young age and seeing how just one element can change public health. I mean, a follow-up to that. I mean, is Maggie still as pervasive as it was in 2011? You know, yeah, no. Oh, I think a lot of folks are sort of getting hip to the sodium levels and all the other additives that are in the cubes. And, you know, it provides amazing flavors, sure.

18:09But I think people are kind of, it's the pendulum swinging backwards. And, you know, people wanted to go back into the more traditional methods of cooking. And it's cool to see that. I mean, if you're doing the deft hand and you're doing it with the sort of the knowledge of what it's doing, then you can, you know, a little bit can go a long way. But if you're like just throwing tens and thousands of macacubes in your jollof rice, then obviously that's what's... The sodium levels are going to cause a public health situation. Which, I mean, is of course happening in the United States too. Which happens everywhere, exactly.

18:39You know, those types of seasonings and flavorings in foods have been bad for public health. Right. It's a Western product that sort of made its way across the Atlantic and sort of situated itself in West Africa. And to that point, a little bit of those habits about the sodium and high cholesterol and all those other noncommunicable diseases started sort of becoming more prevalent when it wasn't an issue before. So it shows a little bit of how maybe some of the negative effects of food and sort of industrialization can happen. Well, let's talk about the recipes, Eric. I mean, they're wonderful and I have a couple of specific questions.

19:18But what I really like about this book is that you really smartly defined the style of the recipe. You have words for them. You have Sankofa, which is more of a traditional approach, and the Nia Onim, which is I call an updated approach. I'm paraphrasing. So cool. Thank you. I've not seen it done that robustly. Of course, people will say, this is a riff of a classic. You literally have the graphics. What caused you to do this? Again, Korsha Wilson. So we, kind of putting the recipes together, we noticed that there was a divide in some of the things that I didn't want to touch. Recipes that I just wanted to keep as pure and traditional as possible.

19:58And then as a chef and as a creative, I'm sensitive about my shit. Oh, yeah. I want to kind of impart a little bit. It's an Eric recipe. It's exactly. It's an Eric recipe. This is me, right? So I have an opportunity to make my own, you know, I'm doing my own cookbook. Why not put a little bit of my own recipes in there? And this is just really just a culmination of things that I've experienced, restaurants that I worked in, you know, being able to be in spaces like the Food Network and doing Top Chef, you know, those chef camps, so to speak, and kind of just working with other chefs and getting that sort of creative energy and flow.

20:30I wanted to be able to sort of flex my muscle there as well. So we noticed that there was almost like a 50-50 divide on just recipes that were completely mine and riffs off like these ingredients that are very traditional and indigenous to Africa and West Africa and Ghana specific. And kind of my like sort of whimsical ideas of what they could be, you know, and then also taking homage and really putting trust and also honor into the traditions of older recipes and traditional recipes. So yeah, we have annotations for two. And I think it's really cool. Like you mentioned, I've never seen that before neither.

21:08And that was a cool sort of thing to put in there. So it's been a while since I've seen a West African Ghanaian cookbook specifically. And I think it was really necessary to kind of like separate the two. So my hope is that, you know, you can take those traditional recipes and carry on those legacies. But then, you know, if you want to have a nice sort of riff on, you know, more modern stuff, you can do that too. What's one traditional recipe that you and Korsha worked on the most? Ooh, the red, red recipe, the jollof rice classic, the wache is another classic dish that we read and worked on and stuff that – what's so cool about kind of having this book as well is that we were able to put things in writing and actually stamp it in a book.

21:57A lot of African, traditional African recipes are orally told and sort of passed down. So, you know, when we were initially doing the research, not only going to Ghana and seeing how people cooked, but also going home and like talking to my mom about like jollof rice. She's not she doesn't have a recipe book for it. It's all in the top of her head. So God forbid, whenever she passes away, it's gone with her. So how do we like put it down on paper, on wax and make sure that this is something that can live on, on and on? So we did so. I watched my mom like a hawk and those little, you know, the joke is you stop cooking or you stop adding the seasoning until the ancestors tell you, right?

22:36We had to write it down. We had to write down how much of the pinch was and how much that was. And it took a little time, but I think it was absolutely worth it. Tell me about tomato on tomato. I love this recipe. I read it right away. I'm like, it's so crafty. Tell me about how you came up with that. So more of that modern take. That's right. It's more of an Eric recipe. Yeah, Eric recipe. I love tomatoes. It's one of the, I say, man, integral, just base ingredients in West African cooking. It's either stewed. It's either raw. It's somewhere. It's somewhere on the plate. And I wanted to celebrate that, especially during the summer months.

23:14That was the inspiration. Tomato on tomato is a tomato soubise, and a soubise is just an onion sauce that's been cooked down and with a little bit of cream. But we add tomato to that, and it's cut with fresh tomato. There's a tomato like – there's tomato on tomato everywhere. I mean, it's cool. It's like tomato to the third power. Tomato to the third power. Yeah, I like that. I should have named that. It's cool. And it shows your real deep technique, and your chops are so real. And I want to ask you a little bit about Elmina, your new restaurant in Washington, D.C. Cheers. I'm looking at your tasting menu.

23:49And I mean, just the salad alone is a baby gem lettuce. It's tuna seared lightly or raw and then salad cream. I'm just like I pull that out because it's just like it seems amazing, delicious. Yeah, it is. It's a riff off of the Ghana salad, Ghana salad. It's traditionally if you go and you get a salad in Ghana, it has egg. It has salad cream, that Heinz salad cream, right? Yep, yep, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, exactly that. So very, you know, it has tuna in it. It has beans. There's a whole bunch of stuff in there. So I wanted to take it a little bit a step further. We're doing a quail egg.

24:26We have that called, you know, as you said, that ahi tuna that's been almost a taki style, seared very, you know, aggressively, but that inside is very raw. And plated beautifully with our homemade salad cream. and we have a Banyards sort of dressing that goes along with it as well. So it's delicious. It's really light, refreshing, almost like a niçoise salad. And I wanted to sort of play off those flavor profiles, creamy, acidic, textures everywhere. And I love it, yeah. So it's a tasting menu. Yeah. And your opening to see you open three weeks ago. Yeah. That's like a lot for you to oversee and you're doing a book tour.

25:07How's it going? the jury's still out yeah no it's going really well I'm so blessed to have an amazing team back in DC who is holding things down my CDC chef de cuisine Wale he came down from New York to DC with his three children and pregnant wife because he believes so much in this idea we've worked together for a few years now he's traveled actually that project we talked about in Ghana he's came to he's come over and helped me with that and chefs that sort of come and really stops what they're doing in their life and career to sort of like pick up on this idea that I have for West African food and Ghanaian food specifically.

25:45So I started this idea. Honestly, the idea came to me very, very young when I knew I wanted to be a chef around that eight or nine age, but more in my adult life. It's just really, really cool to see people sort of buy into it. And I've got lofty goals for the place. I think we can really put this food on the map in a really special way. And, you know, to have people who believe in me and do that, I trust them wholeheartedly with it. But yeah, at the same time, as a book is happening, there's a lot. It's a busy time. But when you're doing your service, just take us to the restaurant a little bit.

26:20Because when you're doing a tasting menu, how many courses? And is it like a long meal? Yeah. Yeah. So on average, the experience is about an hour and a half. Cool. I like that. It's not three. It's not three hours. No, one and a half. Let's go. That's great. Yeah, nobody wants to eat through the Titanic or anything like that. No way. So hour and a half for the larger table, maybe like an hour and 40 or whatever. But it's four courses. There's a couple of surprises in between. But we go through the sort of the lexicon of West African and Ghanaian food specifically, which is amazing. So the Ghana salad is one of the first starters.