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In 'Curry And Kimchi,' Cooking With Balance, Streamlined Recipes, And No 'Freaking Out'

A western Massachusetts couple with decades of experience in professional kitchens across the country run a renowned local restaurant. Now they’re releasing a cookbook, too.

Unmi Abkin and her husband Roger Taylor own Coco and the Cellar Bar in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Their cookbook, “Curry and Kimchi,” comes out at the end of the month.

Taylor was surrounded by food from an early age. His father is a baker. Taylor says he’s worked in restaurants since he was 15.

Abkin’s childhood was completely different.

“I love to feed people, and I think that is based a lot on when I was very young — I didn’t have a lot of food. I was an orphan,” she said. “There’s nothing better than me making a good meal for my family, my friends, our customers, and seeing that joy that you can create by just food.”

Even with the couple's familiarity with work in a professional kitchen, they’ve forged a new path with the release of their cookbook.

“My wife eats, sleeps, drinks and dreams food,” Taylor said. “We’ll be at a bookstore, and she’ll be perusing a book — and she can, as she’s reading it, imagine the things cooking in the pan, and what it would look like and what it would smell like, and take it all the way to its logical conclusion. I can’t do that. She can.”

A view of the kitchen from the dining area at Coco and the Cellar Bar.
Credit Carrie Healy / NEPR
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NEPR
A view of the kitchen from the dining area at Coco and the Cellar Bar.

Food was coming out of the Coco kitchen while we talked, gathering on the table in front of me. It looked just like the photos in the book that accompany each recipe.

The cookbook itself is designed and laid out differently than I’m used to: recipes are in narrative form, and appear on a single page. Most recipes, you’ll find a list of ingredients and measures, and then directions.

“This is how we write our recipes in our restaurant,” Abkin said. “To prep all this food, you need to keep it as streamlined as possible. That’s why we have the directions in a different color than the ingredients. The whole going back and forth — we decided to make it easier. Many times, when you read recipes, people rewrite it. So it’s already done for you.”

At this point, the table was filling up with food from the cookbook — more than 10 bowls, from ribs to a Thai curry. 

Plates of food piling up on the table at Coco and the Cellar Bar.
Credit Carrie Healy / NEPR
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NEPR
Plates of food piling up on the table at Coco and the Cellar Bar.

“This is our coconut curry,” Abkin said. “I think the beauty of this dish, I think this is a prime example of a balanced dish. Another thing that we love to do is have the accoutrements right near it. For the curry, I like to have fresh herbs and fresh lime that you can squeeze in.”

One intriguing juxtaposition in the cookbook is where the authors follow a shiitake mushroom and tofu pad thai with a recipe for mornay sauce for mac and cheese.

“Despite this being a relatively Asian-focused cookbook,” Taylor said, “our daughter felt pretty strongly that if we were making a cookbook that people were going to be using at home, that it should reflect some of the things that she likes to eat, as well. So the mac and cheese recipe in there is near and dear to my daughter’s heart.”

The chefs have simplified some of the recipes for home cooks. They’ve cut hours off the braise time for ribs by using an Instant Pot. But when they’re cooking ribs at the restaurant, they cook it a full four to five hours. 

“It takes a very long time to for it to get soft and succulent,” Abkin said. “These ribs [though], we cooked in the Instant Pot. And you’ll be amazed at how tender it is.”

The recipe for hoisin glazed baby-back ribs calls for 32 minutes of Instant Pot cooking. And yes, even cooked in an Instant Pot, they were tender, and covered in a balanced — what they call “grownup” — barbecue sauce.

Balance is a strong theme throughout the cookbook, and for the couple.

“We’ve been working together for 17 years,” Abkin said, “and it’s such a great working relationship, because we both have our own strengths, and that really helped with the cookbook.”

Taylor seamlessly finished Abkin’s thought.

“Something that helped us with the restaurant as well is: generally speaking, we’re not both freaking out at the same time,” Taylor said. “One of us can be strong when the other is having a hard time, and it sort of helps keep things on a more even keel.”

Carrie Healy hosts the local broadcast of "Morning Edition" at NEPM. She also hosts the station’s weekly government and politics segment “Beacon Hill In 5” for broadcast radio and podcast syndication.
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