Chef José Andrés was in India to provide food to overworked medical staff when covid-19 had peaked in the country in 2021. His not-for-profit organisation, World Central Kitchen (WCK), partnered with Indian Hotels Company Ltd (IHCL) and chef Sanjeev Kapoor to serve more than 650, 000 meals to hospitals across India, reported a Mint Lounge story.
This is just one of the many examples of the relief work done at immense scale by WCK to provide food aid to crisis-hit populations across the world. They prepared thousands of meals for refugees of the Russia-Ukraine war and served millions displaced by the earthquake in Turkey, recently.
Last week, Andrés made an announcement about preordering the book, The World Central Kitchen Cookbook: Feeding Humanity, Feeding Hope, on his Instagram account @chefjoseandres. He said it will feature over 100 recipes of dishes that were cooked by his team during mission efforts. There’s a Ukrainian borscht, a soup containing beef and vegetables, that was prepared for refugees of the Russian-Ukraine war; Lahmacun flatbread, topped with minced meat and vegetables, was baked for those affected by the devastating Beirut port blast in 2020; and chicken chili verde provided to flood victims of Nebraska in 2019.
The cookbook also features dishes by chefs and celebrities. Michelle Obama shared a recipe for her breakfast tacos. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, contributed a recipe for her lemon olive oil cake that was in the news few years ago when she prepared it for women restaurateurs in Chicago.
The book will be released in September 2023, and the author proceeds will go towards relief work by WCK. In an Eater interview titled, World Central Kitchen and José Andrés Are Publishing a Cookbook, he shared, “This is gonna be one book that is going to lend itself to more books in the years to come. Not everybody’s a chef, and not everybody’s a cook, but the heart of what we are is cooking with feeling. I think it’s a good way to connect with people, the NGO that provides food in emergencies shares the recipes of the people that made the emergency response possible.”
The book, priced at 35$ ( ₹ 2892 approx), can be prordered on wck.org.
