The World Central Kitchen Cookbook: Feeding Humanity, Feeding Hope

Introduction

In September 2017, Hurricane María slammed into Puerto Rico, the most powerful storm to hit the island in nearly a century. The devastation was widespread and deadly; the storm killed thousands of Puerto Ricans and left millions more without water or power for months.

But in the wake of that catastrophe emerged hope. A group of chefs, cooks, delivery drivers, community leaders, and relief coordinators—loosely led by Chef José Andrés and his nonprofit organization World Central Kitchen—banded together to cook thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of meals a day to feed the island. They called themselves Chefs For Puerto Rico.

Fast-forward five years to 2022, nearly to the day, and it was raining in Puerto Rico. Hurricane Fiona had spun over the island as a Category 1 storm, but gained strength frighteningly fast and dumped more than thirty inches of rain on parts of the island. Power and water were gone. Again.

And the chefs were back.

It wasn’t the circumstance that they would have wanted to mark the anniversary of their original heroics, but there they were, stationed around huge pans of arroz con pollo. The legion, spread across San Juan in the north and Ponce in the south, was larger now and worked with an efficiency born of the experience of having done it before. Many of the faces were familiar—Yamil López, Yareli and Xoimar Manning, Roberto Espina, Christian Carbonell, Manolo Martínez—and many were new. They quickly generated enough energy to meet the urgency.

Those chefs weren’t the only familiar faces.

In 2017, Ricardo Omar Colón Torres (pictured with José on this page), whom the team took to calling Ricardito, showed up every day for weeks to help support the team’s operations. Ricardito was twenty-two and has a rare genetic developmental condition, and he volunteered to do every job he was given. He put WCK stickers on meal lids, he built boxes to transport those meals, and he handed out bottles of water to people waiting in line. If there was a job to do, Ricardito did it to perfection with an eye for detail that kept everything moving at peak efficiency. His mom, Iris, volunteered, too, helping distribute meals to their community on the outskirts of San Juan.

And in 2022, Ricardito and Iris were back, once again helping out with the operation.

It’s a devastating reality that Fiona replicated the pain and loss caused five years earlier by María, wiping out infrastructure for extended periods. It was the worst kind of déjà vu. But with the bad there was also hope, a silver lining to the storm’s dark clouds. An immediate start, with the team making sandwiches before the storm even passed, meant people were getting fed faster. And a reunion of the team with volunteers like Ricardito and chefs like Yareli and Roberto was the fuel needed to power through. So, sure, history repeats itself, but the happy parts repeat along with the difficult ones.

The span from when Hurricane María hit Puerto Rico in 2017 until Hurricane Fiona hit in 2022 provides a microcosm of the work World Central Kitchen does around the world, offering people the healing power of food and goodwill in a moment of crisis. It also provides a timeline of sorts for this book, which is a collection of recipes and stories about people we have encountered and worked with over those five years, in locations from Puerto Rico to Port-au-Prince, Caracas to Kyiv, and virtually every corner of the world. These recipes and stories contribute to what we know as a universal truth, that food has the power to change the world, one plate at a time.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves…the story of World Central Kitchen starts well before Hurricane María.

Origins

The year was 2010, and José was near the top of his game. He had ten popular restaurants around the US. He’d been named Best Chef in the Mid-Atlantic by the James Beard Foundation and was well on his way toward an Outstanding Chef nod a year later. The year prior, he was named GQ’s Chef of the Year. Yet the most important award that José had received to date was the Vilcek Prize.

The Vilcek Foundation’s mission is to celebrate the lives and work of immigrants in America and it awards two prizes annually: one to a biomedical scientist and the other to someone in the sphere of arts and humanities. José is one of only two people to be honored for the culinary arts; chef Marcus Samuelsson, a longtime friend and Frontline Advisor of World Central Kitchen, is the other.

The prize included a $50,000 check, no strings attached. José’s career was on the rise, but he was far from wealthy. He and his wife, Patricia (Tichi), had three young daughters, and the rapid growth of the restaurants had left him stretched thin. But he and Tichi didn’t even have to discuss what to do with the money; they decided to put the entire prize toward funding a new nonprofit with the goal of changing the world through the power of food.

José had just visited Haiti in the aftermath of one of the deadliest earthquakes in history. He traveled with CESAL, a Spanish nonprofit organization that advocates for cooperation and social action, and they brought solar cookstoves to cook meals without electricity. It was also a chance to learn about the realities on the ground after a disaster of such immense magnitude. He quickly realized that he—and his entire profession of cooks—could be doing more. Having spent years volunteering in and around Washington, DC, notably at Robert Egger’s DC Central Kitchen, José decided he wanted to get involved in Haiti’s rebuilding by applying his skills to develop new ways to feed the world. His initial idea, based on the early work he had done with CESAL, was to introduce solar cookstove technology to Haiti.

José started talking to his longtime business partner Rob Wilder about launching a new organization to fulfill that dream. Rob and José had worked together for years: Rob had originally hired José in 1993 to work in a newly developed Spanish restaurant, Jaleo, which introduced tapas to downtown Washington, DC. Over the years, Rob, José, and their original partner, Roberto Alvarez, built a handful of concepts in DC and beyond: Café Atlántico, minibar, Zaytinya, and Oyamel, to name a few. These restaurants, and José’s burgeoning identity as a culinary prodigy, led to the accolades of the 2000s.

He quickly realized that he—and his entire profession of cooks—could be doing more.

Rob Wilder and his wife, Robin, matched José and Tichi’s donation, so the project—which they named World Central Kitchen, inspired by the hometown heroes—had $100,000 to get the work started. (According to Tichi, José walked around with the actual Vilcek Prize check for $50,000 in his wallet for months before cashing it!)

José and Rob brought on Javier Garcia, a lawyer and food importer whom José knew from DC’s Spanish community. Javier had recently started his own nonprofit and was familiar with the process—vital for navigating the legal challenges of creating a new NGO.

The three of them brought on Fredes Montes (pictured above), a World Bank financial specialist, as executive director, and put together a passionate board of directors, including Robert Egger, and an advisory board full of experts in multiple disciplines: disaster relief, technology, agricultural development, economics, solar energy, and more. With the seed money, a solid structure, and the motivation to create positive change in Haiti, the small team got to work.

Longer Tables

The first project that José and Fredes ran was simple but profound. In the first year of operating, they traveled to Haiti regularly to listen and learn, determined to understand the need before asserting what their role would be. On one visit with CESAL, they went to Cité Soleil—Site Solèy in Kreyòl (Haitian Creole) or Sun City in English—a neighborhood of a few hundred thousand people in the capital city of Port-au-Prince that’s one of the most impoverished communities in the Western Hemisphere. They visited a nutrition center for mothers and their babies; the center’s mission was to both feed the mothers and teach them about healthy eating for their families. José and Fredes noticed that the women were scattered around the room, holding their kids while trying to eat. It seemed awkward for the women, difficult to focus on the lessons while juggling the kids and food. It wasn’t the educational moment the organizers had planned.

There was something elemental missing from the event’s venue: a table. The women had to hold their babies as they balanced their plates of food, a juggling act that made it difficult to pay attention. By introducing a place for the women and their children to sit and eat, the organizers created a comfortable environment that facilitated learning. The women got a moment to relax and eat a meal with their babies as well as pay attention to the program. It took off from there, with more and more women from the community joining the conversations each week.

It was a minor victory, but it was also a catalyst: It set the path for the organization, both strategically and metaphorically. It was proof that very simple solutions can have profound impacts, which has always been a motivating driver for José and now a tenet of World Central Kitchen. People are hungry? Feed them. They’re thirsty? Give them water. Farmers need a boost after a disaster destroys their equipment? Give them money to rebuild.

José was laying the groundwork for the next ten years. One of his mantras eventually became Longer tables, not higher walls. While this was a rallying cry in the second half of the decade, José was living the idea before he ever said it by setting a table and inviting people from all walks to sit around it, treating everyone with dignity and respect.

After returning from his first trip to Haiti, José wrote a series of op-eds for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo in which he more or less laid out his argument for what would become WCK—though he hadn’t come up with the catchy name yet.

It’s all right there. So many of José’s motivating principles for WCK: the importance of chefs, feeding the many, disaster relief, supporting local economies. It’s a road map for the future of the organization, the structure of which José started to develop with Tichi, Rob, Javier, and Fredes.

The original articles of incorporation for the organization, codified in August 2010, stated that WCK’s purpose was to provide food for vulnerable people, to support local agriculture, and to promote environmentally sustainable cooking fuels and technologies. As you read through this book, you’ll see that those three pillars shaped our mission.

Cocineros sin fronteras en Haití.

El Mundo, April 17, 2010, José Andrés

(Excerpt)

Tengo una gran necesidad de que mi profesión, no solo sea una profesión para la élite y alguno más. No solo servir al 0.1 por ciento de la población, también quiero tener el mejor restaurante. Pero no uno sin lo otro. Pienso que algún día, nosotros, los cocineros, formaremos parte de esa mesa donde se deciden las grandes acciones mundiales.

Algún día no muy lejano pienso que tendremos que crear un Cocineros sin fronteras. Donde una flota con cientos de camiones cocina se podrán enviar a las zonas con hambre crónica o en emergencias puntuales. Camiones cocina que podrán producir cientos de miles de comida. Comida caliente con cocineros voluntarios que acudirán a la llamada ante una urgencia.

Con estos Camiones cocina podremos utilizar los productos locales, ayudando rápidamente a la economía local. Cuando llegan alimentos de afuera los productores locales no venden su producto. Los precios se desploman. Nadie compra. Y en momentos de desgracia es importante que el comercio interior continúe. Soy un soñador.

I have a strong need for my work to be something more than serving the elites. I do want to have the best restaurant, but I also want to reach beyond the top 0.1 percent. These two goals are not mutually exclusive. I think that one day, we cooks will form a part of this table where we help decide initiatives on a global scale.

Someday, not too long from now, I think we’ll have to create a Cooks without Borders. Where a fleet of hundreds of trucks equipped with kitchens will be sent to areas with chronic hunger or other emergencies. Trucks with kitchens that will be able to produce hundreds of thousands of meals. Hot food with volunteer chefs that answer the call in an emergency.

With these food trucks, we will be able to utilize local products, quickly helping the local economy. When food and other goods come from abroad, the local producers can’t sell their product. The prices plummet. Nobody buys anything. And in these moments of misfortune, it’s important that the local economy continues. I’m a dreamer.

Cooks without Borders

Tichi remembers José’s early passion for creating an organization centered around cooks and chefs: Food is José’s world—not just food in terms of high-end cuisine, but the fact that he loves to entertain, to cook for people; he loves to see people enjoying food. His way of showing that he cares for you, to show love, is to feed you. As a cook, José wanted to share that love more broadly—not just for him to feed his family and friends but for cooks everywhere to feed their own communities.

In 2014, the organization first launched our Chef Network, a group of notable chefs who were committed to supporting the cause when José and WCK called on them. Anthony Bourdain, Carla Hall, Andrew Zimmern, Victor Albisu, Aarón Sánchez, and others made up José’s Front Line, with dozens of other chefs representing the Committed Crew. A handful of chefs traveled with WCK to do culinary trainings abroad. Award-winning pastry chef Pichet Ong traveled to Zambia to teach baking classes, while Victor Albisu went to Nicaragua to teach knife skills and food safety.

The idea, now known as the Chef Corps, was revitalized in 2019 and then expanded over the following years. Our network has always been vast, but as we’ve cooked in more cities, states, and countries, we get to know more and more chefs around the world who are driven to care for their neighbors because they believe hospitality expands beyond the walls of their restaurants.

Now, WCK’s Chef Corps has hundreds of representatives in dozens of countries who are standing by, ready to run to the frontlines when disaster strikes. In this cookbook you’ll find a handful of recipes from Chefs Corps members, including Eric Adjepong (this page), Reem Assil (this page), Sofia Deleon (this page), Guy Fieri (this page), Tyler Florence (this page), Sanjeev Kapoor (this page), Emeril Lagasse (this page), Marcus Samuelsson (this page), Brooke Williamson (this page), and Brian Yazzie (this page).

Rooted in Relief

Before Hurricane María, no one thought of WCK as a disaster relief organization. There were a few moments of foreshadowing, though, like in 2016 when Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti’s southern Tiburon Peninsula head-on, destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and affecting more than a million people. Longtime WCK board member Jean Marc DeMatteis, a friend of José’s who helped establish many of our early projects in Haiti, worked with José and David Destinoble—a prominent Haitian chef and cofounder of the Haitian Culinary Alliance—to set up a field kitchen outside the city of Les Cayes. The 15,000 meals they cooked by the end of the operation were the first emergency food relief WCK produced, paving the way for hundreds of millions more.

Less than a year later, María devastated Puerto Rico, and the organization learned what we could contribute under the worst circumstances. It’s where José met Ricardito and thousands of other volunteers who showed up every day to support the mission. It’s where Nate Mook, a friend of José’s and a documentary filmmaker, first made his mark on the organization, becoming CEO for the next half decade. It’s where the Chefs For Puerto Rico team, the first food fighters, came together to cook hundreds of thousands of meals, motivated by the fact that they were the only ones taking responsibility for feeding their communities.

María was just the beginning. Since then, WCK has worked in dozens of countries on six continents and served hundreds of millions of meals. In the following pages, we’ll share the stories of many of those operations, the people responsible for cooking those meals, the communities who receive them, the friends and partners we’ve made along the way, the farmers and fishers who help supply our kitchens, and, of course, the recipes for many of the dishes we’ve served to nourish, empower, uplift, and give hope to the people we serve.

So…How Does WCK Do What We Do?

Lunch and dinner for 20,000 hungry people is an operation most chefs aren’t prepared for. Even chefs who work as caterers or in banquets rarely prepare meals for more than 1,000 or so—and almost never twice in a day. World Central Kitchen’s Relief Team regularly cooks thousands of lunches and then starts all over again for dinner—seven days a week over the course of an operation.

The Relief Team has a skill set well beyond cooking—we need to have expertise in supply chains, transportation logistics, diplomacy, communications, nutritional analysis, and more. Our teams receive on-the-ground training throughout each emergency response and develop other skills when we’re not in the field, such as food safety, first aid, anti-racism, and crisis response management. And beyond the operational logistics of feeding people in the aftermath of disaster, there is an emotional component to every response—the WCK team will give a hug, lend an ear, or share a cry with people who have lost friends and family, pets, homes, businesses, belongings. We must be emotionally prepared to enter into some of the most intense situations facing humanity—and be equipped with an endless supply of empathy.

Each operation is different, but they share many similar challenges. Each prepares WCK for the next, and leaves our team better equipped, better able to handle whatever is thrown our way.

Wherever There’s a Fight

Art serves as an inspiration for so much of life, and the work of World Central Kitchen is no exception. A simple quote José borrowed (and slightly paraphrased) from one of his favorite authors, John Steinbeck, has become our tagline. In the 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, the main character, Tom Joad, is processing the death of the preacher Jim Casy—and Joad makes a commitment to be a better man in the future, to be more like Casy.

I’ll be aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be everywhere—wherever you look. Whenever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Whenever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there…I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.

José latched on to one line, Whenever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. He adapted it to highlight collective effort:

Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people may eat, we’ll be there.

If you ask anyone on the Relief Team what their driving mantra is, they’ll cite John Steinbeck—whether they know it or not. This at-all-costs attitude underlies every moment of every mission. The team will always throw a few extra sandwiches and bottles of water into the car as we make deliveries, just in case we find someone who hasn’t had lunch yet.

Really! If you’re hungry and see a vehicle with the WCK logo on it, flag it down. There’s a pretty good chance there’s a brown bag with a ham-and-cheese sandwich in there with your name on it.

How to Use This Book

This book is set up a bit differently from most other cookbooks—how often do you pick up a cookbook from a disaster relief organization? The chapters are laid out not by season, meal course, or protein but by WCK’s values, which are intrinsic to who we are as an organization. So it made sense that they would drive the structure of this book.

And for us it’s an opportunity to share not just recipes but the stories behind them, and the people and places that make each dish special. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be able to do the work we do.

Many of these recipes come from WCK kitchens around the world, developed either by our staff or the volunteers and partners who work with us. Most of the recipes were developed for large batches, but they’ve been scaled down to serve four to six without sacrificing the soul of the dish. On this page you’ll find tips for scaling the recipes up for larger serving sizes, should you find yourself cooking for a crowd.

Many of the dishes were adapted. Where ingredients are difficult to find, we’ve tried to include reasonable, culturally appropriate substitutions. But if you cook one of these dishes and it doesn’t taste exactly like you’ve had it in Indonesia or Ukraine or Haiti, it might be because the recipe was adjusted to make it accessible to the widest possible audience. That said, sometimes we chose to stick with tradition—like in the Rondón (this page), which just wouldn’t be the same without the conch and the pig tail.

A Chapter Overview

The chapters follow the core values and inspirations of WCK as an organization: empathy, urgency, adaptation, hope, community, resilience, and joy. Here’s what to expect in each.

Empathy (This Page)

The ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand how they’re feeling is instrumental to the work WCK does. The team will cry and laugh with people, give a comforting hug, and spend time listening and learning about their lives. The recipes in this chapter embody warmth and love; these are recipes that take time. They need to cook for hours (like long-braised meats), or spices need to be toasted and ground by hand, or ingredients need