Stony Brook program brings cooking from home to campus dining halls
Stony Brook students Rumbidzai Kangira Mate, of Zimbabwe, left, and Nicole Diaz, of Peru, brought recipes from home to the SBU Eats kitchen at Stony Brook University Credit: Elizabeth Sagarin
Rumbidzai Kangira-Mate, a native of the African country of Zimbabwe, is "miles and miles away from home" while studying at Stony Brook University for her master's in social work. So when she learned earlier this year about the university's new Cooking From Home program, she jumped at the chance to participate.
Cooking From Home, part of the university's "SBU Eats" dining offerings, invites students to share family recipes that reflect their culture with university chefs — initially cooking those dishes with the chefs for a first tasting. The chefs then "scale up" the recipes as they prepare the dishes for the larger campus community.
"I was very excited to just share where I come from, my culture with the people I am living with here. This is now my family here in America," Kangira-Mate, 42, said last week at the university's East Side Dining hall, one of several dining locations on campus.
"I wanted them to have a taste of Africa," said Kangira-Mate, who lives in Lake Grove. The dish she shared with SBU Eats chefs is called Sadza Nemuriwo Unenyama. "Sadza is the starch. It's like corn, pounded corn. The way you cook it, it comes out to be a solid, kind of like a mashed potato, smooth and soft. Nemuriwo is the greens, collards," though she said any kind of greens can be used. "And then unenyama is the meat. For my dish we did beef," said Kangira-Mate, who is called Rumbi.
She said it was exciting to have her dish served to the Stony Brook community. "You miss home, and when I did the [Cooking from Home] program, it took me back home ... The food, the smell, the taste takes you back home. I felt so happy to see people come" to the tasting. "We created community. We were dancing ... Whilst we were dining, interacting, it was like an exchange of culture. I really, really enjoyed it."
And that's the feeling that Cooking From Home seeks to foster.
"Because we really do feel that the way to build community is one meal at a time," said Diana Walker Kubik, executive director and chief financial officer of the university's Auxiliary Services Association. "That's what the Cooking From Home program is," she added. "Any student that comes to us and says 'I have a recipe I want to share with this community,' then we help them get that recipe out to the community."
Often "the origins of these recipes are very interesting because they all have a story behind them, as to why the students want to share the meal with the community here," Kubik said.
Ken Ferro, director of operations at East Side Dining, said of Cooking From Home: "People are able to take experiences, the things that they value from their homes and celebrate the diversity of that with the entire team over here."
With such a diverse student body, SBU Eats officials and participating students said it made sense to offer meals that reflect the diversity of cultures. According to 2024-2025 demographic statistics on the university's website, among its 18,263 undergraduates, 45.9% are Asian, 35.7% are white, 15.9% are Hispanic/Latino, 9.7% are Black/African American, and 1.1% are American Indian. (Individuals may appear in more than one category.) For 6.8% of the student body, they had no race or ethnicity information.
Cooking From Home grew out of a casual conversation in the fall of 2023 between Kubik and student Nicole Diaz, 22, a business major who worked part-time in the Auxiliary Services Association office. Diaz graduated in May.
"Diana asked me what as my favorite spot to eat here" on campus, said Diaz, who now works full-time in the association's accounting department. "I said I usually go for the ones that remind me of food from home," said Diaz, who is originally from Lima, Peru, and now lives in Farmingville. That happened to be an eatery in the Student Activities Center that featured fried rice, "which is very similar to the dish I brought here that I cooked."
That dish, Arroz Chaufa, Diaz said, involves rice, chicken, even hot dogs, red peppers, scallions and soy sauce. Chaufa, she said, "is a word that is used when it's like Chinese and Peruvian fusion. Peru has a lot of Asian fusion in food." The dish is special to her, Diaz said, because her mother made it a lot back home. It took a little investigating though, she said, to find an American hot dog brand whose taste approximated the Peruvian hot dog she was used to. She said they ended up using Nathan's beef hot dog.
Diaz also told Kubik about the potluck dinners a business fraternity on campus, Delta Sigma Pi, had every semester, where students brought food that reflected their cultural heritage. Kubik said her department decided to help the students get the ingredients needed for their dinners.
Ultimately, Cooking From Home meals debuted in October 2023, Kubik said. It is part of the university's dining options and has been offered about five times.
Diaz treasured having her dish featured at a dining hall. "I really felt like it was a piece of home, bringing it here ... I think the best part for me was, like, Face Timing my parents and showing them." She said a sign with her picture and the name of her dish were placed outside the dining hall. " 'Hey, Mom your dish is here,' " Diaz said she told her mother. "They were so proud. That was the best part for me."
Kevin Kenny, executive campus chef, said the chefs worked with students to turn recipes "their mother, their grandmother, their father made on a regular basis, bring them [the student] into the kitchen with us, work directly with the chefs and turn that recipe into something we could put on paper and turn into something we can serve to the masses in the dining halls."
Diaz recalled how challenging it was to get her mother to give her precise measurements, instead of telling her simply to "eyeball it."
"We've done Latin food, Asian cuisine, African," Kenny said. Although the chefs "are trained very broadly on international cuisines," he said, the benefit for the chefs of working directly with students on their vision of recipes "gives us a different layer to the dish," such as learning a particular cooking technique or incorporating different spices.
The chefs also have to "scale up" the recipes to serve large groups. "It's a difficult thing to take a recipe from 10 to 800," Kenny said, noting it means cooking smaller batches of, say, 50, to maintain the flavor in a family recipe. "We can make 200 pounds of mashed potatoes in a shot, no problem," Kenny said, but Kangira-Mate's dish involved smaller batches because of the intricacy involved in whipping the sadza.
East Side Dining hall's sous chef Juan Garcia said he learned from Kangira-Mate about the "whipping technique" for the sadza. He also liked the social interaction. "It gives me an opportunity to understand their backgrounds."
The dining staff advertises what nights they are doing the Cooking from Home Programs, Kenny said, "so people can look forward to them. We really like working with the students, too. They generate a kind of excitement. They're bringing their friends and families to try to the food."
He said the feedback had been "all positive."
Rich Maha, regional director for dining at Stony Brook, said the program "really just builds a sense of community. We're their home for the next four years.,..We want them to be as comfortable as possible ... It really builds a special bond."
Stony Brook is not alone when it comes to incorporating diverse menus in its dining halls to varying degrees. The National Association of College and University Food Services' magazine, Campus Dining Today, featured such programs at a few colleges in recent articles. Babson College, in Massachusetts, for instance invites "dining associates" to submit a family or cultural recipe and explain its significance. Rider University in New Jersey asks students what dishes they would like and seeks their input in how their family prepares the dish.
Meanwhile, the food services group has awarded Stony Brook a gold award for its "SBU Eats Tiny but Mighty: Unleash the Power of Microgreens with SBU Eats Teaching Kitchen and Community Garden Club's Garden to Table Workshop."
Rumbidzai Kangira-Mate, a native of the African country of Zimbabwe, is "miles and miles away from home" while studying at Stony Brook University for her master's in social work. So when she learned earlier this year about the university's new Cooking From Home program, she jumped at the chance to participate.
Cooking From Home, part of the university's "SBU Eats" dining offerings, invites students to share family recipes that reflect their culture with university chefs — initially cooking those dishes with the chefs for a first tasting. The chefs then "scale up" the recipes as they prepare the dishes for the larger campus community.
"I was very excited to just share where I come from, my culture with the people I am living with here. This is now my family here in America," Kangira-Mate, 42, said last week at the university's East Side Dining hall, one of several dining locations on campus.
"I wanted them to have a taste of Africa," said Kangira-Mate, who lives in Lake Grove. The dish she shared with SBU Eats chefs is called Sadza Nemuriwo Unenyama. "Sadza is the starch. It's like corn, pounded corn. The way you cook it, it comes out to be a solid, kind of like a mashed potato, smooth and soft. Nemuriwo is the greens, collards," though she said any kind of greens can be used. "And then unenyama is the meat. For my dish we did beef," said Kangira-Mate, who is called Rumbi.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- Stony Brook University's new Cooking From Home program, part of the university's "SBU Eats" dining offerings, invites students to share family recipes that reflect their culture with university chefs.
- Students who have participated said they liked sharing food from home with the larger campus community. "I really felt like it was a piece of home, bringing it here," said Nicole Diaz, who is originally from Lima, Peru.
- Rumbidzai Kangira-Mate, a Stony Brook graduate student originally from Zimbabwe in Africa, said when her dish was showcased: "We created community. We were dancing. ... it was like an exchange of culture."
She said it was exciting to have her dish served to the Stony Brook community. "You miss home, and when I did the [Cooking from Home] program, it took me back home ... The food, the smell, the taste takes you back home. I felt so happy to see people come" to the tasting. "We created community. We were dancing ... Whilst we were dining, interacting, it was like an exchange of culture. I really, really enjoyed it."
And that's the feeling that Cooking From Home seeks to foster.
"Because we really do feel that the way to build community is one meal at a time," said Diana Walker Kubik, executive director and chief financial officer of the university's Auxiliary Services Association. "That's what the Cooking From Home program is," she added. "Any student that comes to us and says 'I have a recipe I want to share with this community,' then we help them get that recipe out to the community."
Often "the origins of these recipes are very interesting because they all have a story behind them, as to why the students want to share the meal with the community here," Kubik said.
Ken Ferro, director of operations at East Side Dining, said of Cooking From Home: "People are able to take experiences, the things that they value from their homes and celebrate the diversity of that with the entire team over here."
With such a diverse student body, SBU Eats officials and participating students said it made sense to offer meals that reflect the diversity of cultures. According to 2024-2025 demographic statistics on the university's website, among its 18,263 undergraduates, 45.9% are Asian, 35.7% are white, 15.9% are Hispanic/Latino, 9.7% are Black/African American, and 1.1% are American Indian. (Individuals may appear in more than one category.) For 6.8% of the student body, they had no race or ethnicity information.
Cooking From Home grew out of a casual conversation in the fall of 2023 between Kubik and student Nicole Diaz, 22, a business major who worked part-time in the Auxiliary Services Association office. Diaz graduated in May.
"Diana asked me what as my favorite spot to eat here" on campus, said Diaz, who now works full-time in the association's accounting department. "I said I usually go for the ones that remind me of food from home," said Diaz, who is originally from Lima, Peru, and now lives in Farmingville. That happened to be an eatery in the Student Activities Center that featured fried rice, "which is very similar to the dish I brought here that I cooked."
Kevin Kenny, executive campus chef at Stony Brook University, says SBU chefs worked with students to turn recipes from "their mother, their grandmother, their father ... into something we could ... serve to the masses in the dining halls." Credit: Elizabeth Sagarin
That dish, Arroz Chaufa, Diaz said, involves rice, chicken, even hot dogs, red peppers, scallions and soy sauce. Chaufa, she said, "is a word that is used when it's like Chinese and Peruvian fusion. Peru has a lot of Asian fusion in food." The dish is special to her, Diaz said, because her mother made it a lot back home. It took a little investigating though, she said, to find an American hot dog brand whose taste approximated the Peruvian hot dog she was used to. She said they ended up using Nathan's beef hot dog.
Diaz also told Kubik about the potluck dinners a business fraternity on campus, Delta Sigma Pi, had every semester, where students brought food that reflected their cultural heritage. Kubik said her department decided to help the students get the ingredients needed for their dinners.
Ultimately, Cooking From Home meals debuted in October 2023, Kubik said. It is part of the university's dining options and has been offered about five times.
Diaz treasured having her dish featured at a dining hall. "I really felt like it was a piece of home, bringing it here ... I think the best part for me was, like, Face Timing my parents and showing them." She said a sign with her picture and the name of her dish were placed outside the dining hall. " 'Hey, Mom your dish is here,' " Diaz said she told her mother. "They were so proud. That was the best part for me."
Kevin Kenny, executive campus chef, said the chefs worked with students to turn recipes "their mother, their grandmother, their father made on a regular basis, bring them [the student] into the kitchen with us, work directly with the chefs and turn that recipe into something we could put on paper and turn into something we can serve to the masses in the dining halls."
Diaz recalled how challenging it was to get her mother to give her precise measurements, instead of telling her simply to "eyeball it."
SBU sous chef Juan Garcia cooks in the East Side Dining hall at Stony Brook University on Dec. 10. Credit: Elizabeth Sagarin
"We've done Latin food, Asian cuisine, African," Kenny said. Although the chefs "are trained very broadly on international cuisines," he said, the benefit for the chefs of working directly with students on their vision of recipes "gives us a different layer to the dish," such as learning a particular cooking technique or incorporating different spices.
The chefs also have to "scale up" the recipes to serve large groups. "It's a difficult thing to take a recipe from 10 to 800," Kenny said, noting it means cooking smaller batches of, say, 50, to maintain the flavor in a family recipe. "We can make 200 pounds of mashed potatoes in a shot, no problem," Kenny said, but Kangira-Mate's dish involved smaller batches because of the intricacy involved in whipping the sadza.
East Side Dining hall's sous chef Juan Garcia said he learned from Kangira-Mate about the "whipping technique" for the sadza. He also liked the social interaction. "It gives me an opportunity to understand their backgrounds."
The dining staff advertises what nights they are doing the Cooking from Home Programs, Kenny said, "so people can look forward to them. We really like working with the students, too. They generate a kind of excitement. They're bringing their friends and families to try to the food."
He said the feedback had been "all positive."
Rich Maha, regional director for dining at Stony Brook, said the program "really just builds a sense of community. We're their home for the next four years.,..We want them to be as comfortable as possible ... It really builds a special bond."
Stony Brook is not alone when it comes to incorporating diverse menus in its dining halls to varying degrees. The National Association of College and University Food Services' magazine, Campus Dining Today, featured such programs at a few colleges in recent articles. Babson College, in Massachusetts, for instance invites "dining associates" to submit a family or cultural recipe and explain its significance. Rider University in New Jersey asks students what dishes they would like and seeks their input in how their family prepares the dish.
Meanwhile, the food services group has awarded Stony Brook a gold award for its "SBU Eats Tiny but Mighty: Unleash the Power of Microgreens with SBU Eats Teaching Kitchen and Community Garden Club's Garden to Table Workshop."
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