The Brief

Jikoni means kitchen in Swahili, and it’s where chef Kiano Moju, author of AfriCali Recipes from My Jikoni, combines her unique blend of Californian and African cuisines.

On Sept 18, she’ll be joining LAist for a live cooking demo and conversation as part of our Cookbook Live event series, in conjunction with the James Beard organization, at the Crawford in Pasadena.

Her book was named the best cookbook by the New York Times and Bon Appétit last year, and she’s continued to turn heads this year with her impressive pop-up Jikoni in Culver City.

Moju was born in California to African immigrant parents — her mother is Kenyan, and her father is Nigerian. She primarily grew up in the East Bay in Northern California, and spent her summers visiting her grandparents' ranch in Kenya, where she learned traditional cooking methods of the Maasai, an ethnic group in Eastern Africa.

She describes her background as having both African and American food traditions. However, in her desire to fit in growing up, she says she sometimes “forget” the sack lunch her mother would pack, opting instead for bean and cheese burritos sold at school.

On weekends, Moju would attend gatherings held by local African community members, including Kenyans, Nigerians, Ethiopians and Senegalese.

“ During my childhood, all the small African countries would hang out. Everyone was together, sharing their culture,” Moju said.

A close-up of the Karakara pie, made with passion fruit and key lime, features a ginger snap crust that Moju will demonstrate for Cookbook Live.

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Kristin Teig

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Courtesy Jikoni

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After attending college at Syracuse University, Moju moved to London for graduate school, where she earned her Master's degree  in publishing with a focus in food media at the University of the Arts London.

During her time there, she hosted her first pop-up at a local pub. She called it Orange Street, named after the street she grew up on in Oakland. She began putting her own spin on the cooking she’d grown up with, making African tacos, using a variety of traditional dishes, such as fire-grilled shrimp, slathered with a South African compound butter known as Peri Peri — known for its light spice made with cayenne and sweet paprika — and Berbere braised pork, a spice mixture found in Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisines, with its sneakily peppery spice and hints of citrus.

Berbere pork tacos are being assembled in "AfriCali: Recipes from My Jikoni."

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Kristin Teig

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Courtesy Jikoni

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After completing her education, Moju moved to L.A. in 2017, where she began working with Tasty, an internet cooking series on BuzzFeed. There, Moju created a series of videos focused on cooking and baking, all while staying true to African staples like Nigerian jollof rice, — a tomato-based rice dish seasoned with curry and spices — and Kenyan beef samosas, which she enjoyed during her family’s holiday get-togethers. She started developing a collection of recipes that would eventually become her book, AfriCali, published in 2024.

Moju aims to make her dishes accessible and straightforward. The main ingredients for the recipes in AfriCali — such as tomato, garlic, onion, chicken, beef and lamb — can be found at any local grocery store. Other specialty ingredients, like berbere spice and egusi, a crushed melon seed traditionally used as a soup base in Nigerian dishes, can be easily purchased online.

" Whether it's Kenyan food, Nigerian food, or something inspired by, I really want these recipes to fit into people’s everyday cooking,” Moju said.

Speaking of egusi, I got to try some at Moju’s pop-up Jikoni at the Citizen Public Market in Culver City, where she’ll be until October. There, she served the traditional West African ingredient with cooked-down kale, where the bitterness of the greens and the nutty flavors of the crushed melon seeds came together.

A spread from Jikoni at the Citizen Public Market in Culver City, starting featuring peri peri shrimp, Swahili briyani, Kenyan butter beans in coconut sauce, kale and egusi, and attié, a cassava couscous dish.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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Moju has her hopes set on continuing the pathway she’s created for herself with AfriCali and her Jikoni pop-up, aiming to bring African culture to the forefront of mainstream culture. She seeks to expand the brand by incorporating more recipes, restaurant residencies, spice blends, sauces and potentially even homewares.

“ I'm trying to build an ecosystem where I'm teaching people about the food by creating a little world that people can jump into, at whatever point makes sense for them,” Moju said.

More Info: Tickets for Cookbook Live with Kiano Moju at the Crawford at 7 p.m., Sept.18, can be purchased here. 

The official start of summer is just around the corner, but temperatures are already beginning to heat up this week.

If you're at the beach today, temperatures are going to stay on the cooler side, with highs from 68 to 73 degrees in L.A. County, and between 70 and 77 degrees along the Orange County coast.

However, be careful in the water — forecasters say there's going to be dangerous rip currents and breaking waves from elevated surf up to 6 feet tall. Those conditions will last through Thursday.

Elsewhere, we're looking at highs of between 78 and 86 degrees for the valleys and up to 89 degrees for the Inland Empire.

Over in Coachella Valley, temperatures could climb up to 104 degrees. Stay hydrated!

Californians have been here before: The polls close and one candidate appears to be out of the running — only to see their fortunes shift as more mail-in ballots are counted.

It's happening in the races for L.A. mayor and California governor as the votes continue to be counted in the primary election.

More and more Californians are voting by mail, and people who turn their ballots in closer to the deadline tend to skew more progressive. There are an estimated 140,000 outstanding vote-by-mail ballots in L.A. County that still need to be counted, and about 92,000 in Orange County.

A not-unusual flip

In the mayor matchup, Spencer Pratt, a former reality TV star, had a significant runner-up lead over L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman when polls closed June 2. But Raman had been steadily picking up votes as results rolled in, taking over the second spot from Pratt as of Sunday. By Monday, the Associated Press called the race for Raman. She will face incumbent Karen Bass in the November general election.

The race for L.A. mayor started to noticeably shift last week. More than 140,000 ballots were processed Friday, and once they were added to the total, Raman had inched closer to TV personality Spencer Pratt in the race for second place. Most if not all of the ballots were vote by mail, according to estimates based on results from the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder / County Clerk.

Nearly 157,000 more ballots were processed by Saturday, about half of which were vote by mail.

Raman was nearly 22,000 votes ahead of Pratt as of Monday.

It’s been a similar story in the governor’s race. Republican Steve Hilton was in the top spot with a lead of a few percentage points over Democratic challenger Xavier Becerra last Tuesday. Becerra has now eclipsed Hilton by about 202,000 votes and is headed to the November runoff. It was unclear who would be joining Becerra in the general election as of Monday.

Vote surges that flips races and advance lower-ranked candidates to the general election aren’t new (which is why you may hear some refer to Election Day as election week or election season).

In 2024, for example, L.A. City Council District 14 incumbent Kevin de León wrapped up election night ahead of his challengers, but the lead eroded in the days following.

Ysabel Jurado, a tenants rights attorney that was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, picked up enough votes to overtake de León and eventually win the general election.

Voting by mail is more popular with Democrats than Republicans, and California accepts those ballots up to a week after the election (as long as it was postmarked on or before last Tuesday).

Changes in the results have started to slow down and should continue to drop off after Tuesday's deadline.

When to expect new numbers

Updated vote totals are being released as ballots continue to be verified and counted.

The drops continue this week and are expected around 4 p.m. today through Friday, according to the registrar-recorder.

The updates will become more infrequent starting next week as the number of outstanding ballots dwindle. Drops are expected around 4 p.m. June 16 and 18, as well as June 24 and 26.

How to tell if your ballot has been counted

You can track when your vote has been received and counted through the Where’s My Ballot? tool.

You can sign up to get notifications through that tool, but some voters have been reporting delays, which the Registrar-Recorder’s Office said it’s aware of.

County officials saw a “large volume” of vote-by-mail ballots around Election Day, which could lead to slight delays, a spokesperson told LAist in an email. Those ballots need to be processed and scanned before notifications can be sent.

L.A. County also has its own vote-by-mail tracking tool that may update quicker. You can check the status of your ballot here.

Orange County has a similar tool for tracking your ballot, which you can find here.

How to stay up-to-date

You can sign up to get the latest L.A. County ballot count updates sent straight to your email inbox here. You can sign up for Orange County updates here, and from the California Secretary of State here.

You can also find them on our L.A. results and O.C. results pages.

You can also sign up for Make it Make Sense here, LAist’s newsletter about the primary election results.

Something unusual is happening with only a few days remaining before the U.S. men's national team opens its World Cup campaign against Paraguay: Tickets for the match are not sold out.

Although numbers fluctuate regularly, FIFA's ticketing website still shows 132 tickets left to sell for a game that's set to take place in Los Angeles on Friday. Meanwhile, resale platforms such as StubHub and SeatGeek — and FIFA's own marketplace — also show thousands of tickets on sale.

The number is even higher for Canada's opening match against Bosnia Herzegovina in Toronto on the same day, with 226 tickets left in FIFA's website and a high number of tickets available in resale markets.

That's unusual for high-profile events such as the opening matches of the World Cup — traditionally among the hardest to get tickets in the tournament. This year will feature three hosts in the U.S., Canada and Mexico — but so far only Mexico's opening match against South Africa on Thursday looks to be virtually sold out.

Ticketing experts widely agree on the reason: the prices. FIFA dramatically jacked them up for the tournament — especially for high profile games. The most expensive regular seats for the U.S. opener against Paraguay are priced at $2,735 — more than the final cost for the 2022 World Cup final — while the cheapest are $1,120.

Even President Trump said he wouldn't pay those prices.

"I would certainly like to be there, but I wouldn't pay it either, to be honest with you," Trump told the New York Post in a recent interview.

The other two remaining games for the U.S. national have far fewer tickets available, given that prices are well below the ones for the opening match.

Prices have also fallen sharply

There are not only plenty of tickets left to sell — a number of them are also available below FIFA's face value. According to Ticketdata, which tracks prices across the resale platforms, the cheapest pair of tickets for the opening match for the U.S. and Canada was $951 as of Monday morning, while in FIFA's resale platform, tickets were available for as low as $690.

Other games across the 104-match tournament also still have many tickets left to sell — despite FIFA President Gianni Infantino's claim that every match is "already sold out." That's especially the case for lesser well known teams such as the Jordan against Algeria match, which still had hundreds of unsold seats in the FIFA's web site.

Demand for high-profile tickets such as Argentina and Portugal was far higher, however, with many of those games looking largely sold out.

Will the opening matches sell out?

Whether eventually the U.S. and Canada opening matches will sell out is hard to answer. Throughout the sales process, FIFA has closely guarded how many tickets it has actually sold and how many are left to sell, making it virtually impossible to gauge.

In addition, like other teams, FIFA could also sell tickets in other platforms including third-party ones such as SeatGeek, which can further obscure how many tickets are left to sell.

FIFA and organizers, however, are hoping for a surge in excitement that leads to a last-minute rush of sales for the opening matches as well as for those such as Jordan against Algeria that look far from being sold out.

Ben Shields, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, says perceptions so far of the tournament have been shaped by how expensive tickets and travel has been for a tournament taking place across an entire continent.

That, he says, "does not seem to sit well with many."

But that could change.

"The hope or bet — for FIFA is that once the matches start — and the greatest players in the world compete for the most prestigious prize of them all, the sport as business lens will fade into the background and the World Cup will be seen and experienced as the enduring global institution that it is," Shields says. "We shall see."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Orange County’s top elected leaders on Tuesday are set to discuss what to do with $3.7 million recovered from the Andrew Do corruption scheme.

Do is now serving a five-year sentence in federal prison after he admitted to accepting bribes in exchange for awarding millions in tax dollars meant to feed needy seniors and people with disabilities in his district.

As part of the plea deal, Do acknowledged taking more than $800,000 in bribes through his two daughters, including a down payment on the house his youngest daughter Rhiannon Do later forfeited to resolve the criminal case. The scheme was first uncovered by LAist.

Federal officials recovered money from seized bank accounts and two properties connected to Do’s scheme — including the Tustin house his daughter bought.

The county Board of Supervisors is expected to publicly discuss plans for the recovered funds as they make decisions on the overall county budget at their meeting Tuesday. Public comment will also be taken.

What to do with the money?

Ahead of Tuesday’s discussion, Do’s successor said the funds should support residents of his former district who were deprived by Do and his alleged co-conspirators.

“For the past five years, every other district in Orange County has benefitted from the same community funds to support their cities, nonprofits, civic projects which strengthens their communities,” Supervisor Janet Nguyen wrote in a mass email to constituents last week. “However, our district went without because Do stole what belonged to our residents.”

“This money was stolen from the First District, and it must come back to the First District,” Nguyen added.

Nguyen was Do’s mentor and former boss more than a decade ago, before the two had a bitter falling out by 2016.

She encouraged residents of her district to send letters to the board and to speak during public comments.

Several county supervisors told LAist they supported a similar approach, one in which the recovered money goes to support the original intended recipients: seniors and people with disabilities in Do’s former district. Some supervisors have since advocated a broader view of how they’d want to use the money, noting that it was meant to address disruptions caused by the pandemic. Now that years have passed since the initial COVID-19 outbreak and lockdowns, some supervisors argue community needs have changed.

“We are so many years on, and the problems that money originally was to address (mostly Covid impacts) are now behind us, that I think we should have a discussion about how and where to spend it,” Supervisor Don Wagner told LAist via text message in March. “The budget is so tight and the needs so great across the county.”

Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said he’d work toward a fair distribution of the funds to best serve residents, with a focus on current needs.

“We will definitely consider what areas of the County were harmed by Do’s scheme, but we must also remember that the funds were intended for relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, a threat we are no longer facing,” he said in March. “We also need to consider addressing the current needs of residents with any dollars returned to the county.”

Millions more haven’t been recovered, at least yet

The amount of taxpayer money recovered so far is less than half of the $7.9 million Andrew Do admitted was diverted from specific meal contracts.

In a lawsuit seeking to recover funds, the county alleges the total amount lost in the scheme was even larger: $13.25 million. The county’s suit — scheduled for trial in November 2027 — covers all of the money Do gave to two nonprofits accused in the scheme, Viet America Society and Hand to Hand Relief Organization.

That leaves more than $4 million — and possibly much more — not yet recovered.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office noted they have an ongoing criminal case against Do’s alleged co-conspirator Peter Pham.

“Assuming we obtain a conviction in that matter, we would expect to seek restitution,” the spokesperson, Ciaran McEvoy, said.

Pham left the country on a flight to Taiwan in late 2024 and remains a fugitive, according to McEvoy. The case against him also includes charges against another alleged co-conspirator, Thanh Huong Nguyen, who led the Hand to Hand nonprofit.