This recipe was taught to me at the 2014 Folklife Festival by Amina Harith Swaleh and Fatma Ali Busaidy, two women from the island of Lamu, just off the Kenyan coast.

Tian Yali brought this dish to the 2014 Folklife Festival from Tongchuan City in Yijun County, Shaanxi Province.

The vegetable medley called mukimo is common in Nairobi as a side for meals such as roasted chicken.

There are many different kinds of the small Chinese dumpling called shumai. The variety featured in this recipe is called “jade” shumai because both the filling and wrapper are a pale green color when cooked.

Cooking, by nature, is a deeply personal experience. Each ingredient is a cultural attribute, each method a piece of cultural knowledge, and each meal a social experience.

You only have to take a few bites of soda bread to see how it could have sustained a family of nine

The ingredients for this recipe come from 2014 Festival participant Fatma Ali Busaidy, whose traditional Swahili cooking from the east coast of Kenya frequently uses coconut milk, cardamom, and rice.

Tian Yali, one of the paper-cutting artists from the Folklife Festival’s China program, brought her special recipe for dumplings to the Five Spice Kitchen.

Today’s pick from the Five Spice Kitchen is a vegetarian dish that blends fresh sweet and sour flavors. In some Chinese cities, summers are hot and humid, leaving people with little to no appetite.

Huaiyang cooking is considered one of the four great traditions in Chinese cuisine, along with Cantonese, Shandong, and Sichuan.