NYC NOW - Avoiding Veggies Because of Cyclospora? NYC Chefs Share Creative Ways to Enjoy Them

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

A cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to recalled Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce has sickened hundreds and left health officials recommending cooked produce over raw salads... which is a tough sell in the middle of summer. NYC Now producer Iru Ekpunobi walks us through the ways New York City chefs Sohla El-Waylly, Ayo Balogun and Nasim Alikhani recommend to keep eating cooked vegetables safely without giving up on flavor. Photo: Caroline Lewis/Gothamist Got any questions, comments or story ideas? Send us a message at [e-mail]   Episode Notes: At least one tornado hits NY, damaging Long Island surf clubs Albany woman planned to bomb State Capitol, federal prosecutors say Also, Connect with the featured chefs from this episode on their official social media channels: Chef Sohla El-Waylly  Dept of Culture by Chef Ayo Balugun Sofreh by Chef Nasim Alikhani Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre. I have been avoiding raw vegetables and raw fruit just because I don't want to make someone else feel uncomfortable at the table. Some folks are trying their best to steer clear of leafy greens and other raw veggies as cyclosporiasis continues to threaten the intestines of thousands across the country. On today's show, we talk with a few New York City chefs about ways we can steal safely. eat our greens. But before we get into that, here's a few headlines. When you think of tornadoes, I am sure New York City doesn't come to mind. But that changed amid some crazy wet weather Thursday. Meteorologists confirmed one rare tornado touchdown in our area while some New Yorkers were getting

drenched. Photos and videos shared on social media show water sprouts touching down off the shore of Atlantic Beach on Long Island and the eastern rockaways in Queens. And once that giant funneled, touched land, it officially became a tornado. The last tornado on Long Island was recorded in Suffolk County in September of 2022. An Albany woman is in custody after she allegedly pledged her support to ISIS and planned to bomb the state capital. Prosecutors say 35-year-old Jessica Bowie had a gun and a dummy explosive device after meeting with informants she thought would help her with the attack. She's charged with attempting to provide material support for a designated terrorist organization. It'll be another event for weekend in New York City, especially with anime upon us.

Expect massive crowds and folks dressed in their best cosplay costumes near the Javids Convention Center through Sunday. Tickets are still available to anime NYC if you're having FOMO. They start at $65. New York State has recorded over 900 cases of cyclosporiasis. That's according to the CDC. And if you don't know what cyclosporiasis is, well, good. for you, dear listener, because it's a parasite and the symptoms are rough. Diarrhea, cramping, nausea. Yeah, not fun. So if you're feeling a little nervous about

enjoying your salad right now, you're not alone. Now, to be clear, this current outbreak has been linked specifically to iceberg lettuce sold by Taylor Farms that have since been recalled. And the City Health Department's advice is pretty simple, actually. Wash your produce really, really well under clean running water and cook it to 158 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. Now for me, this doesn't sound appealing, to be honest. I mean, big fresh salads are half my diet in the season like this. Our producer Iru Ekpanobi initially felt the same way. So they spoke with three prominent New York City chefs to learn a few tips and tricks to help us stay safe while still enjoying our end of summer greens.

Hey, Iru. Hey, Jena. What got you starting on this one? I've been trying to get better this year at getting my greens in. Okay, good for you. Thank you. Health as well. Yeah.

And I didn't grow up eating salads or really a lot of raw vegetables. So it's been this adult adventure for me to figure out how to make them tasty. What do I like? What do I not like? Then this outbreak hits. So it's been tough. It's been tough. Yeah.

And I know that health officials are saying that the safest way is to fully cook your vegetables. How do you make that appealing in the middle of summer? when folks like me really just want something light and fresh. I did not have the answer. I was very curious. You know, we live in one of the best, arguably the best food city in the world. We have amazing chefs in the city. And if anyone knows how to make something that sounds so an appetizing yummy, it would be them.

Hi, I'm Sola Elwayla. I'm a cookbook author and video personality. Sola is a New York Times bestselling author and has won a ton of big food award. She's trained in fine dining and she makes a lot of really good video content about how to make cooking accessible and easy and something that you're not intimidated by. I am cooking for friends right now and I have been avoiding raw vegetables and raw fruit just because I don't want to make someone else feel uncomfortable at the table. Her specialty for this moment is blanching, which is a way to cook your vegetables and still eat them cold like a salad. Yeah, yeah, blanching is definitely a life hack, not full. cooked, but still not raw. Good middle ground. Did you know about my, I, to me, this was like a light bulb moment.

Listen, I'm the daughter of caterers, so yeah, I'm on. But don't like to do it. Sola says for blanching, first you get the biggest pot you have and you fill it with a lot of water and salt and you bring it to a boil. And then you grab your leafy green vegetable. So bok choy, asparagus, green beans, anything. leafy, any of your herbs. So you boil the vegetables in the water for one to four minutes, and you'll see the colors start to change. It's like kind of amazing. I love to stare into the pot and like trip out and it makes me feel a little high because I'll be like, whoa, it goes from like green to like so green. And that's when it's done. Wow, she's a real chef in that description. You see why she's one of my favorites? Yeah. After you blanche, you'll shock the vegetables in an ice bath,

which keeps them nice and crispy. And as long as you don't want to, leave them in too long, it'll still be good to make a salad. You'll have cooked vegetables that are now cool for the summertime, and you dress them like you would a salad. Because it is cooked, you might want a little extra crunch, so I'd go for like a little crispy rice on top or a little crouton or like crushed up corn nuts, crushed up fritos. Get creative. As sexy as she's making blanching this salad sound, I'm still not a fan, only because to me what this is going to taste like is a salad out of the fridge with all the toppings on it, including a dressing on the second day. If that's your jam, do your thing. So for you, you'd probably sick with buckchoi or asparagus.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's fair. Okay, so blanching gets you a cold salad that's technically cooked. Coming up, Iro went even further outside the produce aisle and found out how chefs from Nigerian and Persian kitchens have been cooking their vegetables long before any of us heard the word cyclospiriasis. Stick around. Welcome back to NYC now. Before the break, we got the case for blanching

your greens from chef Sola I. Waley. Now, Iru's going to introduce us to two more chefs showing that fully cooked vegetables don't have to mean boring, starting with a Nigerian chef cooking recipes that have been in his family for generations. In the spirit of getting creative, what does chefs say about warm vegetables?

Like I said, I didn't grow up eating a lot of raw vegetables. I'm Nigerian, and our cuisine doesn't really have that. We really cook all our vegetables down into soups and stews. Okay, well, did you talk to a Nigerian chef? Exactly. You know him, actually. Who? Chef Ayo. Chef Ayo. Oh, that's the only one I know.

My name is Ayur Balogun. I am a chef at the Department of Culture. sometimes I radio quara, and I live in Brooklyn. NYC now went to his restaurant for an episode a few years ago. The Department of Culture. Department of Culture, which is Chef Ayles' Nigerian-inspired restaurant where he cooks Nigerian recipes from his childhood, small plates, very inspired.

He's always changing up the menu. And he also owns Radio Quara, which he defines as Department of Culture's American cousin. So he told me that in the midst of everything going on, he's sticking with traditional Nigerian cooking methods for vegetables, which is basically cooking the life out of everything, and I can say that. Nothing will survive there if it's harmful if you've cooked it completely out. Some may say we cook the life out of our produce and meat.

It kept us alive, though, right? And I'm happy you both are alive. Thank you, me too. Keep cooking. Keep cooking. He recommends Eforero, which is a traditional Nigerian spinach, stew, cook down in a blend of palm oil and spices. I want to explain how to cook Eifford to somebody who's probably never cooked Eiffel before. So it might not be the most traditional way.

This is Brooklyn Eiffel. We're making hipster Eiffle. Yeah, give me it a hipster Eiffle. To make hipster Eiffle, he says, grab some cooking oil. Just use what you have. Don't go out there trying to find palm oil. And then get some bouillon cubes or seasoning cubes. Put them to the side.

grab some habanero peppers, red onions, and bell pepper, and then blend all of these together. And then you're going to let your cooking oil heat up and start frying them down. Okay. So at this point, you're going to need to add some type of umami element, which is going to make it actually flavorful and not just tastes like cooked vegetables in oil. We use an ingredient called Iru, which is my name, but, you know, not the exact one, but yes, that's me. And it's fermented locust beans. But you can use dried fish, dried crayfish, or even miso, if we're leaning into the Brooklynification of F-O-R-R-R-R-R-W. Keep it hippie.

Exactly. And then once you have this really amazing aromatic sauce-slash-stew-going, adding your greens, cook them down. Just make sure your vegetables are very clean. Wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, like a billion times. Then, after washing it, mix it and stir fry it together, it's going to release a little bit water and then let that cook down into it a little bit and that will give you a little nice effort to make. I feel like it has a lot of similarities to soul food cook greens.

And by that I mean you get your greens in, but you can also add a protein if you want. So you can add meat or you can add tofu or mushrooms. And it's really hearty and filling. This one is definitely a warm dish. It's not pretending to be a cool summer dish. And if you cook it traditionally, you'll add a little spice. Would you eat this even in the heat of American summer, of East Coast summer? The heating Lagos is way more intense than the one we have here.

And people are eating that every day. It's sweating while they're inhaling their effort. So, yeah, definitely. I like that. I'm with Chef Io here. I love spicy food. It doesn't matter the weather. I'm from New Orleans.

People are built different. Yeah. I feel way different there. So this recipe will definitely take you a little bit longer than just a quick weeknight dinner. But it'll be worth it, flavor-wise. So it's given like soul food collard greens vibes. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly that. Which hot take, I think, can be a main. It doesn't have to be a side. It can definitely be a main. Just give me a whole bunch of it, a slice of cornbread on the side. Exactly. Yeah. Yummy and safe.

But if you do need a short 10-minute recipe, I got you too. Okay. I reached out to another renowned New York City chef. My name is Nassim Ali Khani. I'm chef owner at Sofrey restaurant in Brooklyn. Sofra is a Persian restaurant, and chef Nassim is Iranian and cooks mostly Persian cuisine. And her recommendation for enjoying cooked cooked vegetables is to cook by sauteing and then enjoying with a bright sauce on top. I love how you're saying enjoying, right?

It's not us eating vegetables. because we need to, we need to enjoy them as well. You can quickly saute, string beans, snappies, broccoli. I like to steam them. Steam is very powerful. People don't know it can kill the germs. So I steam many of these vegetables I want, and then I add any kind of sauce I want to them later.

Okay. And are you enjoying, like, the fresh flavor, or did you say you add a sauce or seasoning to them? Depending on what I want to do, I just, this is not a traditional Iranian cuisine for my home. Sometimes it can be as light as the lemon juice and vinegar. And I add a little bit of mustard to it and that becomes a dressing for my cauliflower or broccoli. If you look at Sophrie's menu, you'll also see roasted zucchini, roasted cauliflower, roasted eggplant dishes.

That sound amazing. And listeners can go and take some inspiration from those if they want. Chef Nassim also reminded me that Persian culture cooks a lot with dips and stews, not unsimilar to Nigerian cuisine. And so veggies don't have to stand alone. They can be blended into a sauce for your pasta or a dip that you're dipping some other food into. Did you talk with any of the chefs about where they're getting their veggies? Because there's a lot of talk about farmers markets. There really is. And Sola and Nassim both said that they shop at farmers markets for their households. But our colleague Jill Webb asked a public

health expert more about this. Her name is Professor Margaret Horlick Romanovski. She's a professor at Brooklyn College. She's an epidemiologist. And she says that shopping at farmers markets keeps your food closer to the farm that it came from, which can avoid the bacteria that causes outbreaks like this. The distance from farm to fork is the shortest it can possibly be. It's harvested on the farm. It's packed into the crates on the farm. The crates are taken to the farmers market, and it's sold to the consumer at the farmer's market. So yes, we've been hearing a lot more about farmers markets because buying your produce there can keep you safer during an outbreak like this one.

But Professor Horacea Romenovsky also acknowledges that there are barriers that make it difficult for every New Yorker to just up and start buying produce from farmers' markets, including the fact that farmers markets are more expensive than supermarkets. They're also open only a fraction of the hours that supermarkets are open. and they're not equitably distributed across neighborhoods. You find more farmers' market in higher-income neighborhoods than in lower-income neighborhoods. So that's a bummer. And if you can't get produce from the farmer's market and you still want a good summer salad,

Dr. Horlick Romanovski says, Everybody loves a good salad. The safest way is to eat warm salad. Oh, my gosh. More warm salad recommendations. I can't win, Ero. I can't win. But haven't you gotten some tips, you know?

I have gotten some tips. I thank you for going out and talking with all these chefs, Chef Sola, Chef Io, Chef Nassim. I also want to point out I'm recognizing a pattern here, all Brooklyn-based chefs. Got to love it. Brooklyn's where the party's at. It's true. Before we go, Iru, what are your main takeaways from these conversations? For me, as long as cyclosporiasis is still in the conversation, I will be.

be cooking my vegetables. You don't have to, but if you want to, there's some good suggestions. Second, I think you can take advantage of having the world's cuisine in one city and get inspired by non-Western recipes. Yeah. I already knew FROB, but I'm really inspired by the chance to make a Persian dip. And third is, if people have access, check out your local farmer's market. Yeah, that's something I do regardless, honestly, before cyclosporiasis. So if you have access to one, definitely check out your local farmers market. All right, dear listener, you take it easy. And, you know, if you're willing to continue to take your chances, do you?

That's WNYC's Iru Ekpenobi, producer of this fine podcast, NYC Now. Thanks so much, YRue. Thanks, Jena. And thank you for listening to NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre. See you next time.