Exclusive Clip: Andrew Zimmern's Family Dinner Shines A Light On Forgotten Traditions
Andrew Zimmern discovers America one meal at a time in his new show Family Dinner, which dropped five new episodes on the discovery+ streaming service Friday, March 12 as part of the Magnolia Network preview. On the show, Zimmern has the privilege of sharing tables with cranberry farmers in Wisconsin, a family from New Orleans (enough said about how good we think that food spread is going to be), the real von Trapp family of The Sound of Music fame, and a family in Minnesota that serves Zimmern authentic Russian pelmeni, among others.
In an exclusive clip of the upcoming show provided to Mashed, Zimmern sits down with the Leung family of New Jersey to eat a meal that goes back generations in the Chinese family. The scene represents a reunion of sorts. Sisters Sarah and Kaitlin Leung felt like they were missing out on their family's food traditions when their parents moved to Beijing in 2013. The pair started a food blog to showcase traditional Chinese recipes and keep the family connected, according to a statement provided to Mashed by Magnolia Network.
Cooking brings back warm memories in Andrew Zimmern's Family Dinner
In the exclusive Family Dinner clip shared with Mashed, the Leung family reconnects over a meal that really brought back memories for Sarah and Kaitlin's mother. She shares a story about how, as a child, she would be sent out with four pennies and a chopstick to pick up fried dough for breakfast. "At that time there was no bag of any sort, so I would poke through the fried dough and I would carry it very carefully to home," she recalls.
It was a memory mom had forgotten until the fried dough was back in her own kitchen. "To me it was just priceless. All that just came back to me," she says. Her daughters sense the importance of carrying the family's food traditions forward. "Sharing family dinners is kind of more important than ever," one of the sisters says. "The fact that my sister and I will be able to pass these recipes on is just so awesome."
"Those recipes are gold," she adds, "and somebody needs to write them down."
Zimmern brims with appreciation for being invited to experience the Leung's delicious traditional family meal. "Very few people can duplicate this," he says. "This is an incredible display of culinary firepower from a family that loves to cook together."
We can't wait to tune in to discovery+ to see the rest of the Leung family's story, as well as all the other corners of America Andrew Zimmern has to show us in Family Dinner.