Amboy: Recipes from the Filipino-American Dream

Alvin Cailan built a wildly successful food truck into a group of esteemed restaurants featuring his personal flavor-packed take on Filipino-America food. In Amboy, he shares his food and his personal story.

Cailan's family and heritage are evident everywhere in the book, But so is his relentless search for flavor and his willingness to rethink just about any dish he encounters. Although the book begins with a recipe for cooking oh-so-indispensable rice and traditional Filipino dishes that Cailan's parents and other relatives made family staples, it's not long before its sweep encompasses all kinds of other ideas. There are hot dogs with garlic fried rice, beet-cured hard-cooked eggs, biscuits and gravy, and dinuguan, a stew of pork and pig's blood with cream and jalapeños. Any list of such recipes is going to be inadequate to convey the range of Cailan's curiosity and invention, which are worth paying attention to.

The chef's personal narrative runs through the book. It's moving, and colorful, and thoughtful and makes it very clear that Cailan's success is something he created himself.