All Of It with Alison Stewart

A new book revisits the days before antibiotics, when tuber­culosis killed one in seven patients. During that time, Sea View, New York’s largest municipal hospital, recruited Black southern nurses to work at the hospital after white nurses quit en masse. The book is titled, Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis. Author Maria Smilios joins us to discuss.

Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello is on tour, and his next stop is at PS 200 - The James McCune Smith School. The Harlem-born musician will perform and speak to middle schoolers in his home turf on Thursday 11/2, as part of a nationwide tour of public schools in collaboration with the music education nonprofit Music Will. Morello joins us to discuss the work he's doing with them.

Born in 1930s Shanghai, Zhou Yinghua faced childhood trauma, personal loss, and systemic prejudice before becoming an actor-artist, and inventing a new identity, Mr. Chow. A new documentary attempts to tell the story of how he built his empire. Michael Chow and director Nick Hooker join us to discuss their film, "AKA Mr. Chow."

[REBROADCAST FROM Feb. 16, 2023] When comedian Gabe Mollica turned 30, he took stock of his life and realized he had no friends. His desire for connection became, "Solo," his one man show, which started at the SoHo Playhouse and is now showing at the Connelly Theater in the East Village through November 18.

Ossie Davis's daring farce, "Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch," has been revived on Broadway for the very first time. Tony-winning actor Leslie Odom, Jr. plays Purlie Victorious Judson, a Black man determined to win back the money for his community church from Ol' Cap'n Cotchipee. Tony nominee Kara Young stars as Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins, a woman who gets caught up in Purlie's scheme. The production is directed by Tony-winner Kenny Leon, who joins us alongside Young and Odom Jr.

In honor of the 5th anniversary of All Of It, and Alison's recent kidney donation, WNYC is holding a blood drive at our SoHo studios to encourage people to consider bodily donations that could help save lives. Alison speaks with Jennifer Flood, Heather Flood and Cynthia Flood, co-founders of the Flood Sisters Kidney Foundation about their own family's experience that led them to found their organization, which helps connect living donors from around the country with patients in need of a kidney.

A new cookbook from food writer and cookbook author Emiko Davies explores the recipes, flavors and cooking techniques from everyday Japanese cuisine. She joins us to discuss Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking: Memories and Stories from my Family’s Kitchen.

SUKIYAKI

Welcome Home Sukiyaki

Serves 4

This dish has a special place in my heart. It was everyone’s favourite signature dish of my obaachan, and one of the rare occasions she would cook meat. It felt like such a special treat and still is for me when my mother makes it. I’ve lived continents away from home since going to university; after being away for a year, sukiyaki was the dish (along with Temaki – page 97 – if it was summertime) that my mother would make to welcome me home.

Invented in the Meiji era, after the Emperor dropped the 1,200-year-old ban on meat, sukiyaki was a dish that encouraged the Japanese to embrace eating beef. We make sukiyaki in the Kanto (Tokyo) style, where the sauce goes in first and everything is simmered in it, then taken out as each ingredient is cooked. In Kansai style (around Osaka), the meat is grilled first in the pot, usually with some beef tallow to grease it, and can be savoured as is, followed by the sauce and vegetables.

Starting with a sweet sauce of mirin, sake and soy sauce, simmering right at the table, you place the well-marbled, paper-thin slices of beef into the sauce, along with vegetables, tofu and shirataki noodles. Every ingredient takes on the most wonderful flavours and everyone has their favourites. (Mine?... The tofu, which is like a sponge that soaks up that sauce, and the spring onion, which becomes impossibly sweet – I love it so much I make an easy version of it to eat anytime, see page 138.)

Guests are served bowls of rice and bowls with a single raw egg cracked into them. You beat the egg with your chopsticks and it serves as a dipping sauce for the boiling-hot foods coming straight out of the pot. As the hot, saucy meat or vegetables hits the raw egg, it becomes a deliciously, creamy sauce – think carbonara – and it is one of my favourite parts of this dish.

INGREDIENTS

300 g (10½ oz) marbled beef  (such as sirloin), very thinly sliced

1 block of medium-firm tofu, cut into 1.5 cm (½ in) slices

2–4 spring onions (scallions) or 1 leek, cut on the diagonal into 5 cm (2 in) pieces

1 pack of enoki mushrooms

4 king oyster mushrooms,  sliced lengthways

1 small head of napa cabbage,  chopped into 2.5 cm (1 in) segments

1 large bunch of shungiku chrysanthemum greens, or similar,  cut into 5 cm (2 in) sections

200 g (7 oz) shirataki noodles

4 bowls of freshly cooked Japanese short-grain rice (page 80)

4 very fresh eggs, for dipping (optional)

SUKIYAKI SAUCE

125 ml (½ cup) mirin

125 ml (½ cup) sake

125 ml (½ cup) soy sauce

2 tablespoons sugar, or to taste

125 ml (½ cup) water

METHOD

To make the sukiyaki sauce, place the mirin and sake in a saucepan and  bring to the boil, which will evaporate the alcohol. After 2 minutes, turn down to a gentle simmer and add the soy sauce, sugar and water and continue simmering, stirring occasionally, until the sugar is dissolved.  Set aside. (You can make this in advance and keep in a jar in the fridge for up to a week.)

To prepare the table for sukiyaki, set up the burner in the centre of the table with the pot of sauce on top (sukiyaki is normally cooked in a cast-iron pot). Arrange the beef on a platter and arrange the tofu, vegetables and shirataki noodles attractively on a separate platter. Serve each guest a bowl of rice,  a bowl with a freshly cracked egg, if using, and some chopsticks. 

Turn on the burner and bring the sauce to a simmer over a low–medium heat. Add the meat and some of the vegetables (enough to fit – you’ll do a few rounds). Pick out the ingredients as they are ready – most things take mere  minutes to cook: the tofu and greens are very quick; the cabbage, leek or spring onions can go longer, for example.

 To avoid contamination of chopsticks in the sukiyaki, rather than allow every guest to use their own chopsticks, use a pair of saibashi, cooking chopsticks, which are longer than regular chopsticks, that stays by the pot and anyone who wants to take something out can use those alone. Otherwise, appoint a ‘cook’ who is in charge of distributing the foods as they are ready to come out.

VARIATION 

Simply leave out the beef and add a little extra of the other ingredients  (my favourites are the tofu and the leek, but mushrooms are excellent  in this dish, as they soak up the sauce so well); vegans only need to leave out the dipping egg, too.

ON THE INGREDIENTS

My mother eyeballs this recipe, so it is always  a bit different each time, so when I asked her for her recipe she turned to one of her oldest and best friends, Chieko, who is also a brilliant cook, to share her recipe, which is just perfect. Sukiyaki sauce has a distinctly sweet flavour, and my mother likes  to keep the sugar to a minimum – you could use  a little less if you prefer, too. 

Traditional ingredients in sukiyaki include shirataki noodles, which are gluten-free noodles made of yam starch; different types of Japanese mushrooms, such as enoki, fresh shiitake or oyster mushrooms; and chrysanthemum greens (shungiku, 春菊), which are confusingly not the leaves of chrysanthemum flowers but actually another plant that resembles them – they are deliciously bitter, and you could substitute another bitter green for them, or simply try spinach, bok choy (pak choy), broccoli rabe or even watercress. If you manage to find shungiku to include here, note that like spinach they cook very quickly and will only need about 30 seconds in the pot. The quality of the beef is important here and, for an occasion dish like this, it is worth splurging for – there isn’t too much meat as it isn’t the main star of the dish. Not only should it be good quality but it should also be well marbled so that it remains very tender. Recently, in Nagano, we enjoyed sukiyaki with a delicious wagyu particular to the region where the cows are fed only apples. My mother buys impossibly thin, pre-sliced frozen beef from her local Korean grocer and it is perfect for this, as the slices should be paper thin – about 2 mm or at most 3 mm (¹⁄8 inch) thick. If you can’t get the pre-sliced beef, choose  a nice piece of marbled steak from your butcher, put it in the freezer to firm up for about 1–2 hours and then you should be able to slice it thinly.

Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" is the latest in a long line of critically acclaimed films from the 80-year-old director. From "Who's That Knocking at My Door?" to "The Irishman," the filmmaker has been a dominant force in every one of the last five decades of filmmaking. New York Magazine contributors Tim Grierson and Will Leitch join us to discuss their ranking of Scorsese's filmography and where his newest work fits into it.

Broadway stars and friends Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells have reunited on the stage as two friends determined to make a hit new musical about... Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. They join us for the whole hour to talk about the hilarious new show, "Gutenberg! The Musical!"

A new cookbook from “Binging with Babish” creator Andrew Rea walks home cooks through mastering basic skills and recipes in the kitchen. Rea joins us to discuss Basics with Babish: Recipes for Screwing Up, Trying Again, and Hitting It Out of the Park.

CARBONARA

Italian dishes are regularly bastardized here in America, and carbonara is far from an exception. Bacon, peas, mushrooms, garlic, even scallops have invaded this simple Roman staple, and you know what? Who cares. Put what you want in your carbonara, just don’t serve it to a purist (or post it on the Internet) if you don’t want to catch an earful. I will not debate, however, that far and away the best expression of carbonara is the properly executed genuine article. Eggs (or just egg yolks for added richness and color) are practically whipped into an emulsion with pork fat and Pecorino Romano, creating what is perhaps the richest sauce in the pasta lexicon. The sauce’s rich, complex flavor is largely furnished by guanciale, a difficult to find cured pork jowl. Luckily, the much more widely-available pancetta is a fine substitute!

SERVES 4 TO 6

3 large eggs

1 large egg yolk

4 ounces of finely-grated Pecorino Romano or Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (or 2 ounces of each!), plus more for serving

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/2 pound guanciale or pancetta, diced

1 pound dried linguine

In a large, high-walled sauté pan, bring 2 quarts water to a boil, just enough in which to comfortably cook the pasta.

In a liquid measuring cup, combine the eggs, egg yolk, cheese, 1 teaspoon salt, and 2 teaspoons pepper. Whisk or beat with a fork until evenly combined. Set aside.

In another large sauté pan, combine the guanciale with 1/4 cup water and cook over medium-high heat until simmering. Continue to cook until the water is evaporated and most of the fat from the guanciale has rendered out, anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, add the pasta to the boiling water and cook for 1 minute less than the suggested cooking time on the package. Drain, reserving 1 cup of the pasta cooking water.

Discard all but 3 tablespoons of fat from the guanciale, lower the heat, and add the pasta along with 1/4 cup of the reserved pasta cooking water. Cook, tossing, until the pasta is evenly coated in fat. Take the pan off the heat and allow to cool for 10 seconds if it’s sizzling loudly. Add the egg and cheese mixture, immediately and vigorously stirring it into the pasta, taking care not to let any of the egg sit in one place for too long. Stir in more pasta cooking water, 2 tablespoons at a time, until the desired consistency is achieved. Season with more salt if necessary and serve with extra cheese grated over the top.

Note: Try the (Michelin-starred chef and master of pasta) Luciano Monosiglio method—it’s fun! Put the eggs and cheese in a blender and slowly stream in a half cup of pasta cooking water while the blender is running. Throw a hunk of guanciale in there if you really want some pervasive pork flavor, followed by 2 tablespoons of reserved fat from the pan. Blend until smooth and add back to the pasta in the hot pan, cooking over low heat until thick.