"This Candied Sweet Potatoes recipe is one of the dishes that is part of this emerging kind of food genre that my wife and I have been cultivating, which is Afro-Asian cuisine. My wife is Chinese-American and we like to bring together our different cultural food ways. So this candied sweet potato is kind of a staple dish in African-American cuisine, especially during the holidays, and I decided to kind of give it an Asian twist by adding tamari and miso, which are two staples in Japanese cooking."
On his family's diet
"When my wife and I met she was actually a vegan, and then she got pregnant. We often joke that she turned into a cavewoman because she started eating all types of — she was eating everything, chicken and beef. And my wife continues to eat chicken and some eggs and fish, so, you know, it's a compromise. Our daughter does have a mostly plant-based diet, but she eats eggs and sometimes she has fish maybe a couple times a week. So, you know, we think this is the best diet for her, and at a certain point, she'll be able to make the decision about what kind of diet she wants to continue having."
On the African-American tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year's
"The lore is that the black-eyed peas actually represent copper or pennies. And so along with that, one typically will have a green dish such as collards, mustards, turnips, chard, kale or cabbage, and the leafy green dish actually represents money. And then with that, one might have some cornbread, which represents gold. You eat it on New Year's, and it's supposed to usher in a very prosperous and abundant year."