cooking with AYESHA CURRY
Her favorite pizza toppings “Arugula, figs, yummy cheese and prosciutto, lots of prosciutto.” Steph’s favorite pizza “He’s a classic guy, so he loves a cheese pizza or pepperoni-sausage-mushroom combo.”
And for the kids “Your basic cheese pizza, loaded with cheese and yummy marinara sauce, baked to perfection.” Topping she’d never put on pizza Peanut butter. “I just think that’s strange!”
ayesha Curry has a very full plate. On Thursday nights at 9 p.m. ET, she’s hosting ABC’s
Family Food Fight (in which teams of family cooks dish up their best recipes in hopes of winning the $100,000 prize). Her restaurant, International Smoke, a collaboration with chef Michael Mina, has locations in San Francisco, Houston, Aventura, Fla., and Del Mar, Calif. She’s also got her own cookware line, plus a line of kitchen textiles and bedding. We caught up with Curry to talk about her favorite pizza and life with her NBA star husband, Stephen Curry, and their daughters, Riley, 7, and
Ryan, 4, and son, Canon, 1.
Why she loves cooking with family
“[The] biggest message that I have is get in the kitchen, cook with your family—no matter what your family looks like, who they are, your friends, whoever. It’s gonna get messy, so messy, but the memories you’re making are worth it.”
Family members she’d have on her team if she competed on Family Food Fight
“I’d bring my brother Jaz. He claims that he can cook better than me. It’s not true, so in that heightened sense of competition I’d love to see if he would crumble or rise to the occasion.”
Signature dish they’d prepare
Her mom’s brown sugar chicken. “It’s this delicious sweet, sticky, gingery, soy-based chicken that I braise in the oven for almost two hours and it falls off the bone.”
First thing she remembers cooking
Pineapple fried rice when she was 12. “I’d do a little bit of curry, some soy, fry up the rice, crack an egg in there, with raisins, shrimp or chicken or whatever my parents had on hand. Everybody loved it. It got to the point where they’d start requesting me to make dinner because they liked it.”
Favorite secret ingredient
Brown sugar. “I like a teaspoonful in a lot of things people wouldn’t typically expect. I prefer it in my coffee. I like
to put it in anything tomato-sauce-based because it brings out the tomato flavor and cuts the acidity.”
Healthy-eating hacks “I like to take an hour on the weekend and prep out lunches. I’ll do quinoa, with lots of protein and veggies, and put them into containers and pop them in the fridge.” She also whips up sheet-pan dinners on busy nights.
Favorite comfort food besides pizza “Greasy-spoon Chinese food.”
Inspiration in the kitchen Her kids. “I have these three little human beings that I have been blessed to be able to take care of. So, you know, I’m always thinking what I’m going to feed the kids.”
On the menu at International
Smoke Barbecue dishes featuring flavors from around the globe. “Everywhere you go in the world, families have their family barbecue,” says Curry. “Nothing brings people together more than food at a barbecue.”
Food trend she’s glad to see go
away “That unicorn trend! It’s just too much food coloring. I wonder what our insides look like—are they Funfetti?”