Scan the table of contents of “Pass the Plate: 100 Delicious, Highly Shareable, Everyday Recipes” (Clarkson Potter, $35) and you’ll quickly get a sense of the eclectic cooking style that’s won Carolina Gelen millions of Instagram and TikTok followers. Seductive-sounding recipe titles such as Turkish Eggs with Spiced Butter and Garlicky Yogurt, Honey Chipotle Salmon Tacos Dorados and Brown Butter Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies perfectly capture the cross-cultural flavors of the moment.
You might be surprised to learn that, before immigrating to the U.S. in 2021, most of Gelen’s culinary education took place in the one-bedroom apartment where she grew up in Transylvania, Romania. In the book’s introduction, she fondly recalls sharing bountiful dinners with extended family members in which the person closest to the food would ask everyone to “pass the plate” for them to fill it.
She showed an aptitude for cooking at age 5, when her mom allowed her to roll dough for doughnuts — a joyful weekly ritual that later inspired her to replicate more worldly dishes made by Nigella Lawson and her other TV chef heroes. But her parents, having suffered through communism and poverty, steered her toward ambitions that offered more financial security.
Not wanting to disappoint them, she studied computer science in college and landed an internship with an auto parts company. But she was miserable. So she applied for a visa and got a summer job working at resort restaurants in Park City, Utah. She posted videos of her meal creations, which led to producing content for The New York Times and Food52 from her new home in the Rockies.
The recipes in Gelen’s first cookbook draw from diverse influences, with a handful of streamlined heritage comfort foods such as Think Cabbage Roll in a Casserole (no rolling required) and Zingy Sour Veggie Soup made with jarred sauerkraut and a whole garlic head.
All are heavy on flavor, light on labor and likely to have everyone at your table passing their plates for seconds.
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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