Cookery by the Book

Pasta, Pretty Please

By Linda Miller Nicholson

Intro:                  Welcome to the cookery by the book podcast with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.

Linda:                  Hi, my name is Linda Miller Nicholson of Salty Seattle, and my new cookbook is called Pasta, Pretty Please. In it, I have hundreds of recipes for beautiful colorful pasta dough, and I make all of the doughs using vegetables, herbs, and super foods.

Suzy Chase:                  Your homemade, naturally dyed pasta comes in an amazing array of rainbow colors, shapes, and designs. How did you get started making this unique pasta?

Linda:                  Well, I've been making pasta since I was four years old. It was something that really resonated with me when my grandparents taught me, using nothing more than a rolling pin and my little four year old muscle. It was really something that has followed me through my entire life, and when my son was about the same age as I was when I learned to make pasta, he went through that inevitable picky phase that all kids go through, and would not eat his vegetables. I was just tearing my hair out, trying to figure out what to do to get this kid to eat his vegetables. If I were to tuck spinach under the cheese on a cheese pizza, he would detect it right away, like a truffle pig, and just ferret it out of there, and get rid of it or, you know, green smoothies forget it. And so, refined white carbs was just what this kid lived on, and even if they were organic and made by mom, I still kind of felt that little bit of guilt.

                                    I decided, "Well, you know what, I make pasta all day every day. Why don't I just puree the vegetable ingredient with the eggs, and color the pasta that way?" knowing that he would eat pasta. The rest really has turned into this beautiful colorful career that I have now, because he, he bit it hook, line, and sinker. For me, just knowing that I have this peace of mind of, "Okay, he's eating a cup and a half of noodles. He also secretly eating a cup and a half of spinach with that," or turmeric with that, or parsley, or beets. At this point he's 10, and he's well aware of what happened when he was younger, and he knows what all the colors come from, and he actually started to embrace some of the vegetables that composed the colors of pasta dough. But I think it's really cool that I have this sort of longtime family history with pasta, and then bringing it back to my progeny, into the next generation. It all sort of ties in and I was able to make my career out of something so a rooted in family.

Suzy Chase:                  You are the first pasta ninja I've ever talked to. How is pasta like textile to you?

Linda:                  Well, first of all, pasta ninja is not a thing I came up with, that was Harry Connick Jr. He decided that that would be my moniker and it has stuck ever since. I don't know that I necessarily have ninja-like quality with the pasta. I mean, I can't like scale walls with it or anything, so I suppose I could put that on my bucket list to try. Pasta sort of transcends food for me, and really moves into this form of artistic expression that is very similar to patterns that you might be able to achieve if you worked in textiles, so in fabrics and in patterns that, that exist on cloth.

                                    I think I realized that the first time when I was sheeting out like a really massive, massive, maybe, I don't know, 10 pounds, sheet of pasta, and it was very heavy, and as the pasta started flowing through my hands, and sort of achieving this leather like quality, I just got this real intense tactile sensation of, "Gosh, I could just drape this around myself," and that was just a single color sheet. I took it farther and started laying patterns down on the pasta, basically using other pasta to create lines and shapes and things overlaid on the pasta. That's when it really was like, "Wow, you know, the pastabilities are endless."

Suzy Chase:                  Pastabilities.

Linda:                  I had to get that in. I just, I had to get that in somewhere where. We're lucky we got it out of the way early on.

Suzy Chase:                  You say you have no professional training but you're not self-taught. What does that mean?

Linda:                  I think that you could say that you're self taught as sort of a ... We're in some by our life experiences, and so you don't just wake up knowing how to do something, you will have to put in a lot of hours, and part of that comes with live in the school of hard knocks. So, even though pasta is something that my grandparents taught me from a very sort of rudimentary perspective, just really making that well of flour on the kitchen table, dropping some eggs into it, stirring it up with a fork, and then kneading it into pasta, rolling it out with a rolling pin, you know, that was a very basic pasta lesson from them.

                                    But then I was a voracious reader, and apt student of anything I could get my hands on that talked about pasta. I would really dive deep into the microregions of Italy and figure out what the pasta shapes were there, and kind of try to, "Okay, what does Liguria make, and how can I really get into the trofie al pesto that Liguria's famous for, or the agnolotti del plin that Piemonte's is famous for." So a lot of reading and things like that, and then I lived in Italy for a few years. You just can't help but absorb the life of pasta. I mean, your veins bleed pasta after being there for a few weeks, or mine did anyway.

                                    Yeah, I mean I don't like to, I feel like self-taught is sort of giving yourself all the credit and I'm definitely informed by just the entire experience that I've had, meeting people, talking to people, trying a little bit of this, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't. I mean, that muscle memory is something that you can only create by practicing, by doing it yourself. But I really do, I feel like I find inspiration in absolutely everything in the world around me, in art, in media and cinema, in politics even, and I try to start to weave that into my medium, which is food.

Suzy Chase:                  Let's talk about sourcing. What kind of flour do you use?

Linda:                  I am a big fan of not getting too picky or too fussy with trying to source particular products because pasta, at its root, actually was something that really it was just designed to preserve flour. People had figured out a way to mill wheat down into flour, which was much easier to work with than just the raw wheat and less volatile. Then they needed a way to preserve that wheat, so that they could take it on conquests and Rome could become the Roman empire. Initially they mixed the flour with water and dried it, and that is where we got our first pasta, so no tools at all, no fancy, just wheat and that's it. So when people get too far down the path of, "All rIght, I need to source this particular flour and it's got to come from the downy hairs on virgin arms that grow in the Trevi fountain," I like to say, "All right, dial it back. Where do you live, and what's local to you? Let's figure out how to make pasta out of that."

                                    That being said, I tell people to look for certain qualities in the flour to make their lives a little bit easier, and the two qualities are that the flours should be fairly finely milled, and a way to think about that is, most people are aware of what semolina flour is, or even have felt something like cornmeal in their hands. That's very coarse and rough and has gone through a mill, but the mill lets the particles come out in a thicker fashion, whereas a finely milled flour, is going to feel like, almost like cornstarch in your hands, very light and very airy. The reason that the more finely milled flour is easier to work with with pasta, is because it absorbs the egg, or in my case, the egg mixed with the color puree better. Then I also tell people to look for a lower protein content, just because a lower protein content flour is going to make the dough easier to work with under your hands, so a nice, soft, easily kneadable texture.

                                    I do love ... Antimo Caputo makes a great flour called Pasta Fresca & Gnocchi, and that's a wonderful, very supple flour to use, if you can get your hands on it. Again, not a big deal to try to source it. Go to the store, go to the bulk bins. Look for something that ... One other thing to look for is, its color is your primary objective. You want a flour that's very light colored, so that the color of the flower itself doesn't impact the color of the puree that you're putting into it. But I always say to people, just go to the bulk section of your local grocery store. I probably shouldn't advise the people to feel the flour in the bulk bin. You can use the little scooper, you know, and kind of pour it back into the bin stuff. Look for one that is real light, real fluffy, and real white colored, and then the protein content should be on that bulk bin too. Look for one that's lower protein and that is your flour right there.

Suzy Chase:                  So let's say we don't have a pasta machine, how can we make your pasta?

Linda:                  I try once a week to make pasta with no tools beyond a rolling pin, because that's how I learned to do it. Or now that I'm an adult, in my case a bottle of wine makes a fantastic rolling pin.

Suzy Chase:                  That's what I used last night.

Linda:                  You get to drink the contents.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah.

Linda:                  Perfect, you get to drink the contents, and then you have this perfect thing to roll out the pasta. You know, my one ninja-like quality I guess with pasta I would say is, I have to make pasta everywhere I go and travel to and I'll bring a little tiny pasta cutter, like a little wheel, but I don't really bring anything else, so I immediately go buy a bottle of local wine, and I come back to my hotel room, and I find some kind of surface, clean it off, and roll it out using basically no tools, whatever I have on hand. I have tried to boil pasta water using an iron. It turns out the coffee maker works a little bit better for boiling water.

Suzy Chase:                  Wait, how did you do the iron? What was that setup?

Linda:                  It didn't work very well. It didn't work very well. We wound up sort of making crispy pasta, almost cracker-y toasts instead, and melted some mozzarella on the top. It was still really delicious because I think any food you make sort of under duress or with a challenge always tastes better. But in all practicality, in all achievability for what people are probably ... lengths people are willing to go to in context of the book, there is an entire section of gnocchi and other rolled pasta, and those are very easy to make. You don't even use the pasta machine for gnocchi.

                                    I think there are something like at least 20 recipes there that really don't require any tools at all, beyond rolling into snakes and then cutting those snakes with either a dough scraper or a knife, which most people have access to. That's the section of the book that I recommend people start with if they don't have a pasta machine. However, even, the sheeted pastas, even the rainbow sheet, is entirely pastable, I'm throwing it in there again, to make just with a rolling pin. You'll get a little bit of a workout, but it's entirely doable.

Suzy Chase:                  Let's go through some of the colors, and you can tell us what makes that color.

Linda:                  Okay.

Suzy Chase:                  Yellow. Let's start with yellow.

Linda:                  My favorite ingredient to make yellow is turmeric. Turmeric root is sort of having a moment right now. Maybe even as little as five years ago you weren't able to find fresh turmeric root in produce sections of grocery stores, and now I sort of make it a point to look through grocery stores everywhere I am, whether I'm in Peoria or San Francisco, and turmeric is really pervasive now, and you can find it almost in every produce section or at the farmers market. I prefer to use the fresh, whole turmeric root rather than powder. That's one of the things I cover in my pasta workshops, because I have access to both and I show my students, "This is what the powder looks like, this is what the fresh cut into turmeric root looks like."

                                    You'll see if you cut through a turmeric root, it's bright and vibrant and really just the essence of that color, whereas powdered turmeric starts to sort of take on a mustard hue as it ages in the bottle. For me, I love that bright just sunshiny, it's going to make you happy if you look at it yellow. so I go for the whole turmeric root, which incidentally is brain food. I'm not a doctor, and I don't necessarily want to make health claims, but I do know that I have a lot of turmeric in my diet, and I feel its lack if I am traveling for a week and don't have it. Incidentally, turmeric bioavailability is increased, so it's better for you if you mix it with fat, so it's fat soluble. I think that the turmeric pasta is really perfect for rich and delicious sauces, like cacio e pepe or you know, something with a little bacon or pancetta in it. I use that as my license to justify that richness.

Suzy Chase:                  Okay. Blue.

Linda:                  Blue is, there are two things that I commonly use to make blue pasta. One of them is a special spirulina called blue magic spirulina, and they have isolated the blue phytochemicals from the green, and so it's like the color of beautiful aqua blue tropical sea water. It's just a gorgeous, gorgeous pasta color. It is a little bit on the pricey side, and so the more economical alternative to that is a special flower that's native to Southeast Asia, called the butterfly pea flower. You simply steep these dried flowers in water until you have the desire blue that you're looking for. They get really dark really fast and they're just gorgeous.

                                    I like to make that one as a water-based dough, so I don't usually add eggs. If I do, I'll just add one or two, because the yolk of the yellow in the egg will kind of dial back the blue blue of the butterfly pea flowers. But they also are a very popular ingredient right now. I know a lot of bartenders are using them in mixology, because they have some interesting pH qualities where they'll go from pink to purple to blue, depending on what you're mixing them with.

Suzy Chase:                  Green.

Linda:                  Green is, the world is our oyster there. Virtually anything that grows that's green, and that you like the taste of, can be made into pasta, and green, I feel, is really well covered in terms of the spectrum. You can go dark, dark, dark with a lacinato kale, and get almost like a deep sort of foresty green, or you could make a really cool, almost khaki color green with matcha. One of my favorite greens, because I am a big fan of brightness and colors that bring joy and happiness, is parsley because it's really like crayola, just classic, classic sunshine, garden, summer day green. So parsley really is, it's sort of my go to. It's also really easy to work with, because it doesn't have a lot of fibers like some of the darker green leafy greens do, so you don't have to blanche it or straighten it. You can actually just puree a parsley straight into the well of a blender with the eggs, and move forward making pasta, so it's also a really easy, versatile one to work with.

Suzy Chase:                  Red.

Linda:                  Red. Again, there are options for red. My go to is a mixture, so this is the first on we've talked about where you mix two things together to get a particular shade, and lots of shades can be achieved by mixing multiple ingredients together. You just want to be careful of mixing things that are across each other on the color wheel. You wouldn't want to mix with something purple with yellow, because you will wind up with something brown. For red, I mix beets along with a little bit of either paprika or harissa, so the orange from the paprika or the harissa, which is north African spice paste, will kind of tone down the pink in the beets, and achieve a very sort of fire engine, classic color red.

Suzy Chase:                  Okay. The last color is black. How do you do that?

Linda:                  So traditionally, black has been a very common color in Italian pasta, and they would make it with nero di sepia, or a squid ink, but it was always prepared with a seafood dish. They would have this nero di sepia pasta, often with vongole, clams or something like that. It has a very distinct taste that is delicious if, again, you're serving it with a fishy sauce. I was looking in the book to find a black that could be a little bit more neutral, and not have such an overt flavor, so that it could be paired with any sauce, and I came upon activated charcoal. It is essentially charcoal that's food grade and made through a particular process that removes any kind of carcinogens or big particulates, and it's made from very clean, usually it's made from bamboo.

                                    I use just a tiny little bit of that, like an eighth of a teaspoon will turn a four person serving of pasta nice and dark. It's a very nominal amount that you're getting, but it makes a very beautiful, neutral black that, doesn't have any extra flavor, because again, if we remember, this whole book was designed around achieving these colors, getting some kind of health benefit with the colors, but also not making them particularly detectable to sleuthing and enterprising picky people. Exactly.

Suzy Chase:                  Is there one color that just isn't pastable, that you just can't get the hang of? See how I did that.

Linda:                  I love that. I thought that was great. For me, the hardest color was blue initially, because blue, while it's one of the most common colors that occur in nature, it does not occur in a lot of plants. I mean you would think blueberries, but in all reality if you were go to blueberries, it's more purple. So blue really took me awhile, and it threw me for a loop in trying to come up with, "Okay. What's blue?" It always amazes me when people are like, "Oh, where do you get these esoteric ingredients for your pasta?" And the vast majority of them come literally from the grocery store, but there are a few like butterfly pea flowers, they're not expensive, but you do have to order them and they'll take a few days to arrive on Amazon.

                                    But yeah, I mean by and large people are like, "Oh, that book seems so intimidating. There's all these crazy colors and I don't think I can do it," and then after sitting with it and trying one or two of the recipes, people ... In fact, they say as an author, don't look at your Amazon reviews. I couldn't resist. Finally, after a couple months of the book being out, I had to go and look at them yesterday and I started to cry. They were all just so overwhelmingly positive, but this overarching theme through the reviews that really struck me and made me so happy was, people were nervous at the outset and they felt like I was there holding their hand the entire way. By the end of accomplishing their first recipe or their fifth or 30th, they felt super empowered and like there was no big sorcery or big mystery. This really is just a simple process that's been going on for thousands of years, at its core.

Suzy Chase:                  Last night, I attempted to make colorful farfalle with beets. It turned out super light pink, and more like gnocchi. I feel like I didn't roll out the dough thin enough. Can you talk a little bit about the dough preparation and rolling process?

Linda:                  Yes. You said that you used the wine bottle, right?

Suzy Chase:                  Yep.

Linda:                  To roll it out?

Suzy Chase:                  Uh-huh.

Linda:                  Okay. If you're using a wine bottle or a rolling pin, you do have to really kind of get your groove on from a muscle perspective, and roll it out nice and thin. People often ask, how do you keep the colors so vibrant? Well, the answer to that is to shape the pasta very thin. If you have a pasta sheeter, it's doing the work for you. You're just reducing the number down. There are two barrels that go across and they get thinner and thinner and thinner together. That's what makes the pasta sheet go from thick to thin as you're sheeting it through a machine. If you're doing that with the rolling pin, you're essentially doing the exact same thing, you just need to, as you're rolling it out, press harder and harder.

                                    One thing you can let help you if you are just using a rolling pin or a bottle of wine is gravity. I will often roll for about 30 seconds, and then I will hang the pasta over the back of the chair or on a rod or something, and let gravity pull it downward, which also helps the gluten in the pasta to relax and become more elastic, so that then when you come back to it, 60 seconds or a couple of minutes later, it'll roll and really get so very thin pasta. Only needs to be boiled for 30 seconds to a minute and it's done. That is how you retain the color. For the other thing to think about with not retaining color, you're also experiencing some of the nutritional attrition in the water, because there go all your beets into the water. So I tell people sheet or roll very thin, and boil for a short amount of time and your colors will hold beautifully and you'll have those extra nutrients.

Suzy Chase:                  Those are good tips. I also made your-

Linda:                  But also, if you were using the bottle of wine and you were drinking the bottle of wine as you were rolling out your pasta.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah. Forget about it.

Linda:                  Yeah. And experiencing some diminished physical, you know.

Suzy Chase:                  You may as well go out. No.

Linda:                  Hey, you're having a great time, and that's all that matters.

Suzy Chase:                  So I also made your brown butter pasta water sauce. Describe that.

Linda:                  One interesting thing that people who've read a lot of recipes might be familiar with is using a little bit of pasta water to sort of thicken whatever sauce that they're using. A thing that people don't realize is, when a chef calls for pasta water, they're talking about pasta water that has been boiling at the restaurant during service, and hundreds of batches of pasta have come into and out of it and all of the flours sloughing off of that pasta has essentially made this water sort of a viscous, already an emulsified substance, so it's no longer like water. It's already really nice and salty, and honestly you could just drizzle a little bit of that over some pasta by the end of the night at a restaurant, and it is sauce in and of itself.

                                    Well, so my little hack for doing that at home, because you are probably not boiling 30 pounds of pasta in your pot on the stove, is to sprinkle a little bit of semolina flour into the pot of boiling salty water, in order to kind of achieve that restaurant quality water effect at home by literally just adding your own flour to it. And the reason that I suggest to you semolina flour, and not regular white flour, is because if you throw a regular flour into boiling water, it will clump, whereas if you throw semolina into it, it's course enough and the grains are separate enough that it won't clump. It'll just kind of go in and emulsify into the water.

                                    So the brown butter sauce is very simple. You just brown butter the way you normally would, to the point that your kitchen smells really toasty and almost like warm chestnuts roasting. It's got a very autumnal smell to it, very aromatic, and once your butter is to that point, and it's nice and golden brown, you will add a little bit of the pasta water in there, along with whatever you're flavoring the brown butter with, whether it's sage or whether it's the one with the poppy seeds that we talked about, or there's one with paprika that's really delicious. You can really do anything with brown butter as a vehicle, but when you add the pasta of water into it and you whisk it, it gets nice and thick and sort of almost syrupy in texture, and it's a very simple thing, and yet it just dresses pasta. The way a perfect dress would cling to a beautiful woman.

Suzy Chase:                  Now to my segment called My Last Meal. What would you have for your last supper?

Linda:                  That is a really easy, and I know it's probably a total cop out that it's pasta, but ...

Suzy Chase:                  What kind?

Linda:                  My last meal is Cacio e Pepe with a lovely and warming glass of Brunello di Montalcino.

Suzy Chase:                  Where can we find you on the web and social media?

Linda:                  As far as social media is concerned, I'm very active on Instagram, and I feel like it is probably the fastest and easiest way to get a hold of me. My handle is SaltySeattle. In fact, my handle across all social media is SaltySeattle. I also am very active on Facebook, same thing, SaltySeattle. I have a YouTube channel that goes a little bit deeper into video tutorials for people who want that sort of video, visual storytelling component to learning the art of handmade pasta.

                                    Then, some really exciting news that is a little bit more brick and mortar, and not quite social media-wise is that I'm building out a pasta studio and I'll be having lots and lots more pasta workshops and classes and events in 2019. That should be ready in February, so you can head to my website, whIch is SaltySeattle.com, where I'll be, once I have a definitive timeline, posting all of the information on what will happen in the pasta studio.

Suzy Chase:                  Thanks so much, Linda, for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.

Linda:                  Thank you so much. This was so much fun.

Outro:                  Follow Suzy Chase on Instagram at cookerybythebook, and subscribe at cookerybythebook.com or in Apple podcasts. Thanks for listening to Cookery by the Book podcast, the only podcast devoted to cookbooks since 2015.

Avocaderia

By Alessandro Biggi, Francesco Brachetti, Alberto Gramigni

Intro:                  Welcome to the Cookery by the Book podcast with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.

Francesco:                  I'm Francesco Brachetti and I'm one of the co-authors of the Avocaderia cookbook, which we released last year and it has been a big success.

Suzy Chase:                  Your world's first avocado bar became an overnight success when it opened in early 2017 in Brooklyn. How did three Italian guys get into the avocado business? Avocados don't even grow in Italy.

Francesco:                  Well that's a funny story actually, because when we had the idea to open the world's first avocado bar I was living in Mexico, and my co-founder Alessandro was living in Seattle. So none of us was actually living in New York. And when Alessandro moved to Seattle, he struggled to find healthy and tasty lunch alternatives. So he was trying to eat simple stuff that were making him feel satisfied and healthy, and avocado was the perfect thing. Living back in Mexico, I used to eat avocado pretty much every single day, and when we started talking about this idea of using avocados as an item to promote a new type of diet that it's very healthy at the same time, but also very tasty we immediately thought, "okay, this is going to be a great success." Because usually when you have healthy food, it's not very tasty, but avocado is the perfect match. It's a super food on one end, and it's incredibly tasty, and rich in nutrients and good fats on the other hand. So that's how the idea of Avocaderia started.

Suzy Chase:                  You did an ingenious thing in April 2016. You launched an Instagram account to gauge interest in all things avocado. Tell me about that.

Francesco:                  Since we did not live in New York, we talked about, okay what is the best way that we can test the market and understand if there is a potential demand for our idea, without actually opening the restaurant, and the first thing that we thought was, let's open a social account on Instagram. Our plan was to promote avocado-based eatery and to understand the feedback and the reaction of the public. The first reaction was really overwhelming. So we got 500 followers the first day we opened the account. People were going crazy over the idea of an avocado bar opening in New York. We got a few articles on random magazines in New Zealand, in South Africa, and it was really overwhelming for us because we didn't have any idea about where we were going to open the place yet, about the menu. But we could see from day one the demand was really strong for this type of restaurant.

Suzy Chase:                  Then, exactly one year later you opened up the original Brooklyn location and had fifty-five customers lined up out the door. Were you freaking out?

Francesco:                  You can definitely see that we were not ready for this type of reaction. So for the first week we didn't even open to the public. We had to close the store entirely to have press coming in, doing interviews and to take pictures of our dishes, pictures of our kitchen and tell customers about our study. And the first day that we got ready to open to the public we were expecting around fifty to sixty customers throughout the entire day, but by the time we opened, we had over fifty customers in line. So that was a good start for us and we ran out of avocados in three hours. It was crazy.

Suzy Chase:                  Recently I've noticed that cookbooks have become so serious. The food in this cookbook is playful. Even your tagline is, 'Inspiring a happier lifestyle.'

Francesco:                  Yeah exactly that's all connected with our mission and our philosophy. So we think that food doesn't have to be serious to be enjoyable. We believe that food has to be real food and has to be healthy, genuine, not processed food, but it can also be playful. So using real and quality ingredients doesn't mean that you cannot have fun with food, you cannot enjoy your lunch. And we like to combine these playful bites to make people happy to come visit our restaurant and eat our food, and to offer them options that are very healthy with extremely high quality ingredients, and keeping in mind that what we put in our body is the most important thing that we do.

Suzy Chase:                  I love that, because for me, kale is not fun, is not playful, so I love your spin on it, how you wanted to make it fun.

Francesco:                  Yeah I think it's really important to engage with customers, especially sending the message that healthy food doesn't have to be a fad, it doesn't have to be a punishment when it can be something that you enjoy.

Suzy Chase:                  Right. According to the USDA per capita avocado consumption in the United States has tripled since the beginning of the 2000s. You're definitely contributing to that by using 3000 pounds of avocados a month? Is that right?

Francesco:                  That is correct.

Suzy Chase:                  Wow, that's crazy. Where do you get your avocados?

Francesco:                  So we only use Mexican Haas avocados from the Michoacan region. For our type of cuisine would be the best possible product that we can offer our customers.

Suzy Chase:                  I saw on you Instagram yesterday you had a quiz, and one of the questions was, is avocado a fruit or a vegetable?

Francesco:                  Avocado is definitely a fruit. The fruit with the least amount of sugar, so it's really the best fruit you can eat in the world.

Suzy Chase:                  How should we buy and store avocados?

Francesco:                  So there are different things that you should consider when you go to buy an avocado. First, you need to understand when you will consume the avocado. The second very important thing that you need to take in mind is how are you planning to consume the avocado? So if you are planning to do guacamole or planning to mash the avocado to get a cream or a spread, you should buy an avocado that is on the softer side. If you are planning to make an avocado salad or if you want to slice the avocado to do a tar-tar, a sashimi, a caprese, you should buy an avocado that is a little bit firmer because you need to be able to cut and slice, and you need a firmer consistency to be able to melt well with the flavor.

                                    Regarding the timing, when you buy an avocado that is green and firm, it will take 3 to 4 days to be ripe and to be edible. If you want something that is ready on the same day, then you need to go and search for the ripe avocados and usually it's a bit harder to find in grocery stores and supermarkets. So what I usually suggest is to try to plan in advance and purchase the avocados 3 to 4 days before consumption.

Suzy Chase:                  It was so nice meeting you the other day at your Chelsea location. I really enjoyed the 'chill-out toast,' although I've given up bread for the first ninety days of 2019, but it was still delicious, and the vanilla almond smoothie was so different. Can you describe these?

Francesco:                  Sure. So the Chill-Out has always been our basic toast, the classic avocado toast. We have this amazing multigrain bread from Balthazar Bakery, which we think is fantastic. And then we put avocado mash, which is simply avocado and freshly squeezed lime juice. We use a bit of sea-salt, black pepper, and then we garnish with shichimi, which is chili flakes from japan with tangerine peel that gives it a little twist compared to the classic version. This toast is one of the best salad for breakfast, it really gives you a lot of energy in the morning. At the same time, it's a very healthy combination of our ingredients, so we our customer enjoy this toast especially for breakfast, or after lunch as a light snack.

                                    Regarding the vanilla almond smoothie, it's something that it has in common with the other smoothie is the creaminess. So we see a lot of customers coming in and they say,“wow, you guys do avocado smoothies? How would that be like?" Because they also see avocado do savory dishes, but the beauty of avocado is that it's actually such a versatile ingredient that it can be combined with smoothies, with dessert, especially in smoothies. It gives the smoothie a rich creamy consistency that is very hard to obtain with other ingredients. So for example, in the vanilla almond, we mix base, almond, almond milk, agave, avocado, and the result is amazing, because it is a nice nutty taste with a very, very creamy consistency that nuts usually don't have.

Suzy Chase:                  Did a woman really fly from Australia to New York to taste your dishes?

Francesco:                  Yes, yes she did.

Suzy Chase:                  She did?

Francesco:                  And it was kind of amazing for us to really live that moment, because that was the moment we realized how big of an impact we had. And reaching out someone from the opposite side of the world, coming to a city like New York, just take a taxi, and come straight to your restaurant really indicated the affection and the passion that people have for avocado. So this emotional connection that they have with the fruit that is way beyond a restaurant, it's really an attachment that goes deep, deep into our customers.

Suzy Chase:                  Talk a little bit about your recipe for chilled cucumber soup. I read that you even wore a cucumber soup face mask while you wrote this cookbook.

Francesco:                  Yeah, that's again part of the beauty of avocado is that it's so versatile that you can literally do anything with it. Like in the store now we sell an avocado body scrub, so there are endless applications in beauty. And there's a very easy face mask that everyone can make at home, and it's something that I would recommend a lot of people to do. And the cucumber soap is one of my favorite things to be doing in the summer because it's very light. It's very refreshing. The beauty of it is that, [inaudible 00:11:16], it's very light, especially on a warm summer day in New York, and it's full of ingredients that will provide you with good [inaudible 00:11:25] like the cucumber, it has spinach, lime juice. So it's really a sense of freshness, and at the same time the avocado gives you the energy that you need to go through the day. So that's one of the best things you can be doing summer hot days in New York.

Suzy Chase:                  One of the most interesting recipes I found in this cookbook was on page 138, the panko-crusted avo-wedges with tangerine sweet and sour dipping sauce. Describe this.

Francesco:                  Yeah, so this is another very interesting recipe that we actually had a chance to serve our customers at some outdoor marketing in [inaudible 00:12:02] and it was a great, great success. And again I think that part of the beauty of this recipe is that you're eating something that reminds you of a french fry, but it's extremely healthy because it's simply avocado. We use panko to make the crust, so we don't use any processed or compostable dipping, and the flavor is incredible. So it's very crispy on the outside, and it stays creamy on the inside. It's like eating an incredible french fry, that could be the closest thing that I can use to describe it. But it's really something that's out of the ordinary, and I would recommend any person that buy the cookbook to try this at home.

Suzy Chase:                  The back of the cookbook has menu ideas, and a list of vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free recipes. Talk a bit about that.

Francesco:                  Yeah, when we started this project, the idea was always to keep our menu very focused on plant-based items and healthy food. And of course this idea translated in a menu that is very focused on vegan items or at least item menu that can be made vegan. So for example, we cook a lot of vegetables. We use vegan protein like tofu, we use seitan. And we think that it's especially during this time where people are consuming less and less red meat, we think that it is very important to provide alternatives that are healthy, and that also gives you the right nutrients for this type of diet.

Suzy Chase:                  Okay, so you have 21 funky Italian expressions in the back of the book. My favorite is, and I'm gonna butcher the pronunciation, “non e sempre domenica?” What does that mean, and did I really kill the pronunciation?

Francesco:                  So, “non e sempre domenica-”

Suzy Chase:                  Okay.

Francesco:                  -Means, literal translation is, “it's not always Sunday.” And Sunday for us in the Italian culture, I believe this is due to the religion ... So you have our country where Sunday is the day that everyone goes to church, and do not work. So it's the day where you have lunch with the family, you relax, and you associate Sunday with a good time. So when you say, "it's not always Sunday," it means you know that the rest of the week you have to work, you need to get things done, and there is a time to rest and relax, and there is a time where you actually have to work.

Suzy Chase:                  If you want to wow your friends, you've included a step-by-step guide on how to make an avo-rose. I love that.

Francesco:                  This is actually something that we came up, I would say, by experimenting and trying to find a new solution for one of our toasts. So we were really trying to offer a chill-out toast with a poached egg on top. When we tried the same version with a hard-boiled egg, it was very easy to lay out, because it was like the egg, and we kind of arrange it on the toast in a simple way. But with the poached egg, it was much harder to keep the egg in the same place, so we tried to arrange the egg in the center of the toast, and then it slides off, and it falls off the plate, and it was really not working out for me, in a logistic point of view. Some day we decided, okay what if we make kind of a cage for the egg, so that the egg can stay inside [inaudible 00:15:51], don't fall out, and in the toast, and when the customer have it, it looks pretty and it's easy to eat?

                                    And we started to play around with the avocado, trying to find a shape that could fulfill this goal. And we just started to cut, and shape it, and we tried with a heart. And then we just made this circle that came up as a rose, and we said, "this is perfect. This looks extremely pretty on the toast, we can put the egg in the center, the egg is gonna stay there forever." And that's really fulfilling a real need with something that looks pretty, and that's really what we take as a guideline when we design menu dishes.

Suzy Chase:                  So for my segment called 'My Last Meal,' what would you have for your last supper?

Francesco:                  Well, I guess it would have to be something very traditional of our country, but incorporating avocados, so I would go with the Mediterranean toast, which has Kalamata olives, feta, cherry tomatoes, sun-dried tomato, and of course avocado mash on top. I get the of Avocaderia, and the best of the Mediterranean diet together.

Suzy Chase:                  Where can we find you on the web and social media?

Francesco:                  You can find us on Instagram @avocaderia, and you can find us on our website at avocaderia.com, and Facebook, and twitter @avocaderia.

Suzy Chase:                  Awesome, thanks for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.

Francesco:                  Thank you very much for having us.

Outro:                  Follow Suzy Chase on Instagram @cookerybythebook, and subscribe at cookerybythebook.com, or in Apple podcasts. Thanks for listening to Cookery by the Book Podcast, the only podcast devoted to cookbooks since 2015.

Learn with Betty

By Betty Crocker

Intro:                  Welcome to the Cookery By The Book podcast, with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.

Cathy:                  Hi, I'm Cathy Swanson-Wheaton, and I'm the Executive Editor of the Betty Crocker and Pillsbury cookbooks at General Mills in Minneapolis, and I'm here today to talk about Learn With Betty, our brand new cookbook.

Suzy Chase:                  I find the hardest part of being a home cook is being a confident cook, how can this cookbook help us with our confidence in the kitchen?

Cathy:                  I know, right. Isn't that really what people struggle with? Whenever people find out what I do, or even my family and friends, when we talk about what we're eating these days, that always comes up. It's like people, "Oh gosh, I wish I could make a great cheesecake," or, "I wish I knew how to make a good meatloaf." That's where the inspiration from this book really came from, is that cooking really is not difficult, if you understand the simple tips and tricks to make things turn out.

Cathy:                  We thought this would be a fabulous book for any kind of cook. I've had requests from friends who have said, "I have a nephew with special needs and he loves to cook, but he really needs a lot of step-by-step help, do you have a book?" It's like, "Absolutely, Learn With Betty is that." Or for the kids in college, just the new couples who are trying to cook more from home. They know what's going in their food more than eating out. It's great for them, or even the established cook who says, "I've been making potato salad for years, but I just have trouble. The potatoes are always mushy. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong."

Cathy:                  This is who we were looking at, all these different people, and trying to help them by giving you the recipes that you'd love to have in your hip pocket and be able to say, "Got friends coming over dinner, I've got something I can make for that," and really wow people with everyday good food. Although, we did throw a few surprises in there, and we can talk about that later if you want.

Suzy Chase:                  Tell me about who this cookbook is geared towards, and what sorts of things you wanted to include, that went along with the Betty Crocker brand?

Cathy:                  Betty Crocker is all about really, and always has been, about really inspiring the home cook to be able to make good food, and really get joy from cooking and joy from sharing it with others. You really find that food is really what brings people together. That's where conversations start and memories happen.

Cathy:                  We really wanted to gear this cookbook towards every type of cook that is out there, from a brand new cook, to someone who's been around the block for a while and is just looking for some inspiration or some tweaks in how to make some recipes better. Just feel confident that you don't have to practice ahead of time. You can follow a recipe for the first time, and have it be successful.

Suzy Chase:                  Who was Betty Crocker?

Cathy:                  Betty actually isn't a real person, which some people really don't know that. The secret's been out for quite a long time now. She's almost 100 actually. She was created when there was a contest, when our predecessor company, which was a flour milling company, held a contest and said, "If you can complete this and send a letter in to us, you will get a flour sack," it looked like a Gold Medal flour sack, "Pin cushion." Pin cushions were all the rage those days.

Cathy:                  All these people, thousands of people were writing in for this pin cushion, but along with it came all kinds of cooking and baking questions. The smart executives of the company at the time realized that there's a big need out there, and hired home economists to answer those letters and really help the home cook.

Cathy:                  Betty was created. They just took the name Betty because it was a warm and friendly name of the day, and put it together with Crocker, which was the last name of a very loved executive that had just retired, and she was born. She was just created to really help the home cook, and has really served quite a lot of people over the years. During the Depression, when money was tight and people were off at war, she really helped then. She just continues to be trending with the times, helping people know how to cook what's out there now, and just a trusted cook in your kitchen.

Suzy Chase:                  I love this, in the 1920s, Betty got anywhere between 4,000 and 5,000 letters per day, as women moved into the big cities. In 1924, one station in Minneapolis debuted the Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air. I love that. Was this the country's first radio cooking program?

Cathy:                  It actually was. In today's terms, with all the cooking shows that are out there, this was like the first one. It was on the radio, and it debuted in Minneapolis, and then became a national program. It actually ran for 27 years, which makes it one of the longest running radio programs of any type ever done. It was very popular.

Cathy:                  I just recently learned this, and I thought it was so funny, that they had an unexpected audience with this program, that they weren't thinking they were going to get.

Suzy Chase:                  Truckers?

Cathy:                  Men started listening to it when they came home from the war. They loved her warm and friendly voice, and how she was describing how to make these lovely dishes. I thought that was kind of fun to learn.

Suzy Chase:                  That's nice. It probably reminded them of their mother.

Cathy:                  That could very well be. There's something about having home cooked food, it just brings comfort to people.

Suzy Chase:                  In 1936, the first official portrait of Betty Crocker was released. Who determined what Betty would look like and what she would wear?

Cathy:                  It's funny, when you look at all those photographs now, she's got a very kind of stern, not necessarily friendly looking smile to her, but at the time I think they wanted to instill the idea that she is serious, that she has something to say, and that she can be very helpful.

Cathy:                  What they actually did for that first portrait was they took the eyes of one woman in the office, the hair of another, the lips of another, and they created the first Betty Crocker. Then they just passed her on a piece of paper and asked different people to sign the name. They just found her signature in one of the people who worked in the office.

Suzy Chase:                  In the 60s, I think she had a bit of a Jackie O look going on. Was that on purpose?

Cathy:                  I do think that they took inspiration from the women of the day, that were inspiring and that women looked up to. Yeah, some people say she looks like Jackie O. There's a couple there that kind of look like Mary Tyler Moore, I think, the '65 or the '69 portrait. Which is interesting too, because not only was she popular on TV, but that show was as if she worked in Minneapolis. There's still a big statue of her in downtown Minneapolis, so that's kind of a fun nod as well.

Suzy Chase:                  I always wanted to live in that Mary Tyler Moore apartment.

Cathy:                  I know, me too.

Suzy Chase:                  Remember the sunken living room, and her cute kitchen?

Cathy:                  Yeah, wasn't that the coolest?

Suzy Chase:                  Yes.

Cathy:                  Oh my gosh, that was very cool.

Suzy Chase:                  In the 70s, it seemed Betty was ready to go to work.

Cathy:                  Yes, some of the portraits, starting in '69, she had more business suit, business attire on. They were trying to show that yes, more and more women were entering the workforce. The funny one I think, is the one in 1986, where she's got her red suit, of course, but she's got a white bow tie. That just always cracks us up, those that have worked in the kitchens, because would you ever bake or cook in a bow tie? That's probably not a good idea, standing over a stove. It was kind of the clothing of the day, so it did fit her.

Suzy Chase:                  After all these years, Betty is still relevant and people look for her inspiring recipes. What do you think contributes to her longevity?

Cathy:                  I love that question. I think for those of us that do and have worked on Betty Crocker, there's a little bit of Betty in the hearts of all of us. We really feel that we want to help the consumer. It's always been primary that we do very quality work, whether it's the products that we make or the recipes that we develop.

Cathy:                  We thoroughly test them, and we think about the consumer all the time, "Will they understand the directions? What can we do to help them understand how to make something turn out well?" I think it's just this quality and this love of feeling like we are Betty Crocker, that has added to the longevity.

Suzy Chase:                  Describe how the recipes are divided up in Learn With Betty.

Cathy:                  Oh, sure. We covered every eating occasion, from appetizers to desserts, but then what we did was we ... They're divided that way, but every recipe is like its own cooking lesson. It has the main recipe. It has all the techniques that you would want to know about how to make it successful, and these aren't difficult things at all, but just tips and tricks we've learned over the years.

Cathy:                  Then we have a beautiful photograph of that recipe, and five ways to change it up. Once you understand the method to how to put it together, we let you get cheffy with five ideas, and I think that'll even inspire people even to come up with even more of their own. It's really like over 300 recipes that you get in this book. It's 62 core recipes, and then five more for each one.

Cathy:                  We had fun picking the recipes that were going to go in this book. We have a fabulous consumer response department that answers over a million queries a year. We were able to tap into them and say, "What are the recipes that people are struggling with, that they would like help with?" We polled each other here at General Mills and at our publishing company. I also went out on Facebook to my friends and said, "Tell me what are the recipes that you'd love to be able to do, that you don't know how to do." That's how we kind of arrived at the recipes that we have in the book.

Cathy:                  I wanted to throw in a couple, there's some standards that gosh, it doesn't matter that it's been around forever, like meatloaf, for example. You make a good meatloaf, and people are just going to talk about it. It doesn't have to be some fancy recipe that's Instagrammable. Actually, home cooked comfort food is Instagrammable, right?

Cathy:                  We have those kind of recipes, but I also threw in a couple of really fun ones too, that people would say, "Wow, this is unexpected." We have a cold brew coffee pie, which is just different and very on trend now, with people loving cold brewed coffee. You get a whole variety of things, so it's like no matter when you're cooking, whether it's for just a weeknight meal or you want to impress the neighbors or something, you've got a whole gamut of things to choose from.

Suzy Chase:                  Speaking of meatloaf, the other night I made the savory meatloaf on page 84, and I also used the mashed potato inspiration on page 86.

Cathy:                  Oh gosh, awesome.

Suzy Chase:                  I think meatloaf takes us all back to our childhood. I read in Bon Appetit, about meatloaf, they had a whole article about meatloaf, and they said it was here to stay in the 1950s, largely in part due to Betty Crocker. Did the meatloaf recipe premiere in the first Betty Crocker picture book?

Cathy:                  It actually did. It has changed slightly, but yes, that recipe was in our very first book, which oh my gosh, has sold so many copies. They said at one point that the only book that sold more copies than this is the Bible, which I thought was really interesting.

Suzy Chase:                  Wow.

Cathy:                  Yeah, back in the day, Betty Crocker was trying to help women back in 1950. Money was tight, they didn't have a big food budget. Women used to have meat grinders, and they would grind their own meat, and use the trimmings then in recipes. This meatloaf was awesome, because it used meat trimmings, both beef and pork, and then you could extend it by adding oats or breadcrumbs to it, so that you actually get a more filling dish than just made with all meat.

Cathy:                  It debuted in the 1950 cookbook, but since then what we've done is we've recognized that people usually don't have a half a pound of ground pork around. We've made the meatloaf all with ground beef, and we've also added a little bit more seasonings, because our taste palettes have become more sophisticated over the years. Now it has the addition of Worcestershire and garlic. Back in the 1950 cookbook, they just suggested that you could top it with ketchup. Today, in the Learn With Betty book, you can top it with ketchup, or chili sauce, or barbecue sauce. I personally love chili sauce, it just adds an amazing taste contrast to the meatloaf, and people go, "Wow, what is this?" It's so simple to put together.

Suzy Chase:                  That just took me back to my mom's meat grinder, back in the day. Remember, they used to screw it on the edge of the counter?

Cathy:                  Yes, yup, they used to do that.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh wow. I wonder where that went? It's probably in storage.

Cathy:                  I know in this day and age, you can get them for your big stand mixer, you can do it over again if you want.

Suzy Chase:                  Allison Roman wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago in The New York Times called How To Eat In 2019. Her thing is to spend less time in the kitchen and more time at the table. One of her go to's are tiny bowls filled with food that don't require any cooking.

Suzy Chase:                  Now, most of the recipes in your appetizer chapter follow this idea.

Cathy:                  Yeah, they do. That can make a lot of sense, because I really feel that when you have casual appetizers, it not only sets your mood as a hostess, it makes you less nervous about having people over, but it also sets the mood for your guests, in that this is going to be fun, and relaxed, and we can say what we want, and we can laugh, etc.

Cathy:                  Back in the 50's, appetizers used to be so frilly and froo froo. You put all this time and effort into them, but today it's like gosh, if you have a killer appetizer, like a really good guacamole, who doesn't love that?

Cathy:                  I do have to say that I think we shouldn't miss the opportunity to get joy from the process, as well as the end result of having the food done and ready to eat. I've really found that I've gotten a lot of memories, great memories from cooking with my sisters, or baking cookies with my sons at Christmastime, or with my husband when we were dating. There's really a lot of joy that can be had in preparing it together. That's one of my favorite ways to entertain, actually, where not one person is responsible for the entire meal, which takes a lot of the pressure off, but you can have fun throwing things together, and then enjoy what you made.

Suzy Chase:                  I love that. People always want to help.

Cathy:                  Exactly. Yeah, they feel bad if you're running around the kitchen and they're sitting there doing nothing. We always do that at the holidays when we fondue. I started out and I'd have everything prepared when people came over, and I'd be exhausted. Then I started thinking, "Wait a minute, why don't I have people help me get everything on the table? We can have people making the cheese sauce, tossing the salad." People love that, and it's kind of become a tradition now, that everybody has their job that they want to do when it's time to get the fondue ready.

Suzy Chase:                  Can you tell us about the Betty Crocker kitchens?

Cathy:                  There have been two or three different versions of them over the years. Originally, they were created to develop the prototypes for new products, answer letters that those consumers have been asking us ever since the beginning, and create recipes that can go on the backs of packages and things, for our products.

Cathy:                  I actually worked in the last set of kitchens, that kind of dates me. We used to have seven kitchens that represented areas from around the United States, and they were open for tours. It was really fun to have people come through. They had over two million people come through on tours, from celebrities and dignitaries, to Girl Scout groups and school groups.

Cathy:                  In the early 90s, they closed those, because we were doing so many new products, that it was so confidential that we would have to shut our curtains or shut our curtains and our glass doors if we were having meetings in there.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh my gosh.

Cathy:                  Yeah. These people would want to come on tour, and now only half of them were going to be open or whatever. We didn't feel like we were doing a service to the consumers, if they came all the way to see them and there wasn't enough to see.

Cathy:                  Today's kitchens are at least triple the size of that. We have over 18,000 square feet, I think it is. They're actually not available even to the company. You can't just get down there and go mulling around, unless you have a special badge. We do have huge glass windows that overlook some of our kitchens.

Cathy:                  We have people there, home economists, food scientists, and chefs that create the recipes down there, using appliances that people can have in their own kitchen. It's consumer appliances. We're not baking in big bakery ovens or whatever. We're testing things just the way you could make them at home. We have both gas and electric ovens in each cooking area, so that we can test the difference. Sometimes we'll find that a recipe will bake differently in a gas oven versus electric. We account for that. Depending on what kind of oven you have, you know that it'll work out every time.

Cathy:                  It's really fund to be down there. It's a very creative atmosphere. I'm glad that they're still in existence, because we just are always creating really fun and exciting recipes that show up either on our websites or in cookbooks, those kind of things.

Suzy Chase:                  I noticed that you included lots of color photographs, and remembered that in the first 1950 cookbook, it was a picture book. Did you take inspiration from the first cookbook for this latest one?

Cathy:                  Until you said that, I'm not sure I even realized that I did, but subconsciously, absolutely. That book was such a big seller because it did include photographs with the recipes and how to make them. People back then, just as people now, still find that photographs really add a lot for helping to understand what something should look like.

Cathy:                  It was interesting too, when I'm going through that 1950s book, I realized that in a way it is sort of like this book now, where there were tips and techniques with the recipes. We just added now the addition of giving you five new ways to create every recipe after that. Yeah, in a way, they are very similar, and we're still holding to that traditional Betty way of doing a cookbook.

Suzy Chase:                  Moving on to my segment called My Last Meal. What would you have for your last supper?

Cathy:                  Do I have to pick one thing?

Suzy Chase:                  No.

Cathy:                  Let's see. Actually, I think I would probably choose fondue. That's because I would have my family and friends, and people that have meant a lot to me, with me to help prepare it, and enjoy that time. Then fondue is one of these meals where you can't just rush through and be done. I love it, because it causes you to sit, take your time, and you get to have a lot of conversation. I would hope that we could go over all kinds of memories of things that have been wonderful and stuff over my life.

Cathy:                  I'm from the Midwest, so can you ever get enough cheese? There would be cheese fondue. Then, of course since it's my last meal, I wouldn't have to count calories or anything, so I'd probably have to finish it up with the Betty Crocker chocolate layer cake and chocolate frosting. I love the recipe that we have in Learn With Betty, that's why I chose it, because it's so good. Then homemade vanilla ice cream, I think that would do it. Or maybe the killer brownies too, that's a really good recipe too, that was in Learn With Betty. Oh my gosh, it's got three different kinds of candy bars in the brownie and also in a peanut butter frosting. Oh my gosh, yes, that probably would be it.

Suzy Chase:                  Wow. Where can we find Betty Crocker on the web and social media?

Cathy:                  Betty Crocker is out there to help you, even when you have a last minute need. You can go to bettycrocker.com on the internet, and you can also find her on Facebook and Instagram.

Suzy Chase:                  What's better than having Betty right there in the kitchen with you? Thanks Cathy, for coming on Cookery By The Book podcast.

Cathy:                  Thanks, Suzy. It's always enjoyable to talk to you.

Outro:                  Follow Suzy Chase on Instagram, @cookerybythebook, and subscribe at cookerybythebook.com or in Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening to Cookery By The Book podcast, the only podcast devoted to cookbooks, since 2015.

Unsavory Truth

By Marion Nestle

Intro:                  Welcome to the Cookery by the Book podcast with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cook book authors.

Marion Nestle:                  I'm Marion Nestle. I'm Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health Emerita in New York University, and author of the recently published Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.

Suzy Chase:                  Professor, you are a consumer advocate nutritionist, award-winning author, and an academic. I'm sure I'm leaving so many things out. But to sum it up, you are our public health hero, and I'm honored to have you on my podcast.

Marion Nestle:                  Glad to be here.

Suzy Chase:                  You love the intellectual challenge of figuring out what we eat, and how diets affect our health. How hard was it to separate the truthful information from the lies?

Marion Nestle:                  Well, I've been at this for a really long time, so it didn't happen immediately, but I started out as a basic scientist, and approached the study of nutrition from the standpoint of somebody trained in science. And so I looked, right from the beginning, at what is the science that backs up dietary advice? And I could se immediately that there was going to be a big problem in that, because it is impossible to do the kinds of studies about diet and health that we really need in order to come to firm and compelling conclusions. And so this gets us into a gray area, which I like very much and find very exciting and intellectually challenging, is how do you find out what people eat, and how do you find out how diets that are extraordinarily complicated affect our health? Big questions.

Suzy Chase:                  So in Unsavory Truth, you kick off the book with story after story about Coca-Cola. Give me some examples of how Coke influences nutritionists, journalists, and other researchers.

Marion Nestle:                  Well, it's interesting that you mention that, because in today's New York Times, there's a front page story about how Coca-Cola worked with scientists in China-

Suzy Chase:                  In China.

Marion Nestle:                  ... of all places, to make sure that Chinese policy focused on physical activity rather than diet as a leading cause of obesity. Obesity is the result of calories that you consume in food, and calories that you expend in physical activity. But because physical activities doesn't take nearly as many calories as you think, and it's really easy to overeat, if you wanna lose weight, you've gotta eat less. There's really no other way to do it. And what these scientists who were funded by Coca-Cola and worked very closely with Coca-Cola, through an organization called the International Life Sciences Institute, or ILSI, what they did was get the Chinese government to focus on physical activity as a way to prevent obesity. Physical activity is hugely important for health, but for body weight, not so much.

Suzy Chase:                  Do you feel like Coke is kind of losing their grip in America, so they need to find other markets? Is that this whole Chinese thing, do you think?

Marion Nestle:                  Oh, there's no question about that. Sales of sugar-sweetened beverages started falling in about the year 2000, and have fallen steadily since then, so that they're now at least a third below what they were in the year 2000. That's a huge loss in sales. And in order to make up ... And the reason for that loss is that the public health message about sugar-sweetened beverages is out there. Everybody knows you're not supposed to drink your calories, and you're not supposed to eat a lot of sugar. That's really quite well known across the general population. So for Coca-Cola to keep its sales up, it has to find other markets, and it has gone into the developing world big time, even though people in the developing world don't have a lot of money, they've got enough to buy sugar-sweetened beverages. And they can make it up in volume. And the major soda companies have invested billions of dollars in marketing in Asia, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and so forth. And I wrote about all of that in my book, Soda Politics, that came out in 2015, and that's very well-known. And it's been interesting to watch what's happened with Coca-Cola since.

                                                      I take on Coca-Cola a lot in Unsavory Truth, mainly because its activities have been so visible. And the activities of the other companies which may be equivalent, are not as visible. They're quieter, they're just not made public. One of the reasons why we know so much about Coca-Cola's activities has to do with investigations like the one that's reported in the Times today, but also because of emails that emerged in various ways over the last couple of years that demonstrate Coca-Cola's very close involvement with researchers, its focus on research to demonstrate that physical activity is more important than what you eat or drink, and what you way, that any evidence to the contrary that links sugar-sweetened beverages to type II diabetes, obesity, and other such diseases is so badly flawed that you don't have to pay any attention to it. And that in fact, there's no evidence that links sugar-sweetened beverages to obesity, type II diabetes, or any other problems. And those research studies, which ... And we know they were funded by Coca-Cola, because the investigators have to say that in the papers that they write, and there have now been many analyses of Coca-Cola's funded research as compared to equivalent studies done by independent researchers to show that industry-funded research almost invariably comes out with results that favor the interest of the sponsor.

                                                      So we know a lot more about Coca-Cola than we do about other companies, and I'm sure they're quite unhappy about that.

Suzy Chase:                  Well, and now they've launched their whole transparency thing on their website. And I was reading that, and they gave more than $2 million to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Now, are they trying-

Marion Nestle:                  Isn't that nice of them? Isn't that nice of them?

Suzy Chase:                  They're so thoughtful and generous. Is that them trying to get brand loyalty from children?

Marion Nestle:                  Oh, of course.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh.

Marion Nestle:                  Of course. If you're selling a product, it doesn't matter what the product is, you want an audience for it. You want people asking for it. You want children asking for it. You want children to understand that Coca-Cola's a treat from the time they're very, very young. You want them asking their parents for it. You're wanting them to associate Coca-Cola with wonderful, entertaining, fun activities with music that you like, with sports that you like, so that it becomes a normal part of your childhood, something that you're going to look back on with great fondness when you're an adult, and hopefully drink the product through your entire life.

Suzy Chase:                  God, that's so insidious.

Marion Nestle:                  It's normal business practice.

Suzy Chase:                  So you mentioned some emails. How do you feel being monitored by Coke?

Marion Nestle:                  Well, I start Unsavory Truth out with story that just completely blew me away.

Suzy Chase:                  Me, too.

Marion Nestle:                  In 2015 and '16, when there was the election of, when Donald Trump was running against Hilary Clinton for President, and there was all of this business about getting the Russians involved and the Russians' hacking of Hilary Clinton's emails as part of her campaign. While all that was going on, the emails were being posted on the Wikileaks site, but also there was a set of them that got posted on a brand new site called DC Leaks. And I heard about that. I wasn't paying that much attention to the email, but I got messages from two people who knew about my work, who wrote me and said, "Marion, you're in the Hilary Clinton emails!" And I thought, "That's impossible. How could that possibly be?" I didn't have anything to do with Hilary Clinton's campaign. But in the emails that had been picked up, there was a cache of emails from a person who worked with Hilary Clinton, a woman named Capricia Marshall, who, while she was helping Hilary Clinton with her campaign, was also consulting for Coca-Cola and getting a retainer of $7,000 a month from the company, for whatever work she was doing with them.

                                                      And those emails, amongst other things, talked about ... They were emails between her and an executive of Coca-Cola, and they talked about a lecture that I had given at the University of Sydney in Australia, when I was working as a visiting scholar at the University of Sydney in early 2016, just beginning the research for Unsavory Truth. I had just published Soda Politics, and I gave a lecture on that book to the Nutrition Society of Australia, and I remember that somebody came up to me, and it was a small group, it wasn't a very big group, but somebody came up and said, "You know, there's a representative from Coca-Cola here. Is that a problem for you?" And I said, "Of course not." I had just published this book about the sugary drink industry, and I assumed there was somebody from that industry in every talk I gave. They would be interested in what I was saying. Well, it turns out, this person took notes, very good notes, actually, on my talk, and sent them up the chain of command and they landed, the notes on my lecture landed in these emails.

Suzy Chase:                  Wow.

Marion Nestle:                  And the notes were accompanied by a recommendation that Coca-Cola monitor my activities in Australia and also monitor the activities of Lisa Bero, the scientist at the University of Sydney that I was working with. So that was kind of amazing. That's how I started the book. And those emails also talked about Coca-Cola's attempts to influence journalists, attempts to influence researchers and other kinds of things that are germane to the things I discuss in the book.

                                                      Let me just say one other thing about the emails, 'cause this came out much later, was that the DC Leaks site that had all those emails was taken down, but before it was taken down, it was copied and all of those emails are available at the University of California at San Francisco, in their food documents library. So that was a lucky break, that they copied them just in time.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh, totally. Did that make you think, "Okay, I'm doing some really, really good work. It's all paying off since Coke is monitoring me?"

Marion Nestle:                  Oh, I was just terribly flattered.

Suzy Chase:                  Yes, totally.

Marion Nestle:                  You know, "Really? I turned up in Hilary Clinton emails? That's amazing!"

Suzy Chase:                  Little old me?

Marion Nestle:                  Yeah, little old me, really? The idea that anybody thought I was important, you know, I'm an academic! I teach students. I thought it was just amazing that anybody thought I was important enough to track.

Suzy Chase:                  So even Hershey and the Almond Board of California funded a study promoting dark chocolate and almonds in the Journal of the American Heart Association. So I guess chocolate went from candy to a health food?

Marion Nestle:                  Well, I think everybody thinks that dark chocolate is healthy and good for them. I mean, I ask audiences about this all the time, and say, "Is dark chocolate good for you?" Every hand goes up. And it's really Mars that spent a fortune trying to demonstrate that chocolate is a health food. It's a plant extract, after all. Nevermind the sugar and other things that get added to it. And the effort to market chocolate as a health food, it seems to me, to be a very good example of how industry funding skews this kind of science. Mars did hundreds of millions of dollars worth of studies over years to demonstrate that the anti-oxidant flavonols in cocoa had anti-oxidant activity that would reduce heart disease risk, and they never could really prove that. And they certainly couldn't prove that eating chocolate had the same effect, particularly because the flavonols are destroyed in cocoa processing into chocolate. And then eventually, they found a way to stop the flavonols from being destroyed, and they're now marketing flavonol supplements derived from cocoa, and have changed their marketing so they're no longer marketing chocolate as a health food, and instead, are trying to market these supplements.

                                                      But that's a long story that the FDA got involved in, but the word is out, and everybody believes that dark chocolate is good for you. Well, it might be if you ate pounds of it, but then that wouldn't be so good in other ways.

Suzy Chase:                  In the 1950s, the tobacco industry executives were aware of the link between cigarettes and lung cancer.

Marion Nestle:                  Well, this is an old story, and a very depressing one. When the information started to come out that cigarette smoking raised the risk for lung cancer, and that information was available in the early 1950s, the tobacco industry got together and said, "We gotta fight this." And the first thing you do, is you cashed out on the science. So they funded their own studies to show that no, cigarette smoking didn't have anything to do with cancer. And then they did other things. They funded scientists, they funded professional associations, they funded arts organizations, they funded physical activity associations. They did everything they possibly could to redirect attention away from cigarettes as a risk factor for cancer, and sort of made the whole thing confusing and muddy, and it was decades before the research was so overwhelming that everybody had to accept the idea that that cigarettes were harmful.

                                                      So I think the cigarette industry was responsible for a great deal of illness during that period, and they were perfectly well aware of it. There's a huge amount of documentary evidence also at the University of California at San Francisco, which collects this sort of thing that demonstrates that the cigarette companies were well aware of the problems, which simply gets much more complicated, because people don't eat just one food, they eat many, many different kinds of foods. Diets vary from day to day, from week to week, and differ enormously from person to person. So it's very hard to pin down a health problem on one particular food or ingredient. But this has certainly been the attack of Coca-Cola, which is a sugary beverage, to deflect attention from the sugar. That was certainly an aim of a lot of that research.

                                                      And now, we see a vast amount of research coming from healthy foods that are simply trying to get a marketing advantage by funding research that will show that they have appropriate health properties.

Suzy Chase:                  How dos nutrition research differ from food science?

Marion Nestle:                  Well, food science is about making and selling food products. It's about studying the ingredients of food and what they do, and developing food ingredients that can be put into processed foods that people will eat it. I mean, it's a much ... It's a food industry. It's actually an arm of the food industry. It's the food industry's research arm to help it develop products that they can sell. At least, that's what it's been, historically. Only recently have food scientists started to look at food ingredients in health, which gets them much more into the nutrition research area, and puts them at risk of conflicts of interest.

                                                      Nutrition research is about how to make people healthier through diet and finding out what the health properties are of ingredients. So these are two different fields. They're almost always in different academic departments, and sometimes different schools in universities. And attempts to unite food science and nutrition departments have never worked very well.

Suzy Chase:                  In terms of the latest dietary guidelines, how accurate are these guidelines, and can we take them at face value?

Marion Nestle:                  Well, I'm not sure accurate is the right word to use to describe dietary guidelines. These are meant to be general statements of principle about what healthful diets include, and these principles are so simple that the journalist Michael Pollan can do it in seven words: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. I mean, it's really that simple. You wanna advise a largely plant-based diet. And dietary guidelines have always promoted eating more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. And when they are talking about what you should eat more of, they talk about food. But when they talk about what you should eat less of, salt, sugar, saturated fat, they refer to the nutrients, not the foods that are the main sources of them, because if they talk about those foods, they get into too much trouble. It's just politically impossible to suggest to the American public that eating the main sources of saturated fat, which are animal products, it would be better if people ate less meat and dairy foods, that's not gonna go over very well, because there are groups that are responsible for raising dairy cattle and beef cattle in every state in the Union. And every state in the Union has two senators, and they have a lot of power. These lobbying groups have a lot of power.

                                                      So the dietary guidelines are stated in euphemisms, when it comes to what you should eat less of.

Suzy Chase:                  At the end of Unsavory Truth, you have ides on what needs to be done with researchers, food companies, reporters, and eaters. What is your advice for us eaters/consumers?

Marion Nestle:                  Well, first of all, recognize that who funds the research has a great deal of influence on what the outcome of that research is. The general findings about industry-funded research are that industry-funded studies generally come, not always, but most of the time, come out with results that favor the sponsor's interest, that that the size of the gift matters, the more funding you have, the more likely you are to produce results that favor the sponsor's interest, and that the influence, and this is the really tricky part, the influence is unconscious, largely. People don't realize that they're being influenced. Researchers who take food industry money don't believe that it has any effect on the way that they design, conduct, or interpret the research, even though lots and lots of evidence shows that the influence is there, whether they recognize it or not. That makes it really difficult to deal with.

                                                      So I say for the public, if you see a study that has a result that seems miraculous, it's probably not, because science doesn't work that way. If the results of a study favor a single food or a single ingredient, you wanna raise the question of who paid for the study, because useful studies about diet and health don't focus on individual nutrients or individual foods, they focus on dietary patterns, the collection of foods that people eat on a day to day basis. And if, whenever you hear, everything you thought you knew about nutrition is wrong, that one should send a huge red flag in the air to be especially skeptical, because again, that's not how science works.

Suzy Chase:                  What are some of your food predictions for 2019?

Marion Nestle:                  Oh, 2019, we're gonna have lots of politics, clearly. And there will be continued efforts to relax any kind of discussion on what people would be better off not eating. The big food issues are what's gonna happen to SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp program, the one program that we have left that supports food assistance for the poor, that's gonna be a big one. We're gonna have new dietary guidelines, and committees being appointed. And there will be a lot of discussion once that committee is appointed, about what that committee is going to do, and how it is going to review the research. I expect to see lots about that. And food will continue to be a front page story, as it has been. A full employment act, for me, I'm happy to say.

Suzy Chase:                  You're not retired.

Marion Nestle:                  No, I'm not, actually.

Suzy Chase:                  Now, to my segment called My Last Meal. What would you have for your last supper?

Marion Nestle:                  Oh, dear. Well my favorite food is ice cream. What can I say? Vanilla, but a really good one.

Suzy Chase:                  Perfect. Where can we find you on the web and social media?

Marion Nestle:                  My website is foodpolitics.com, and I do a blog post once a day, almost everyday during the week, where I talk about food issues of various kinds, and that goes out automatically to my Twitter feed, @marionnestle. And that's the extent of my social media, these days.

Suzy Chase:                  Well, this has been so informative. I cannot thank you enough for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.

Marion Nestle:                  My pleasure.

Outro:                  Follow Suzy Chase on Instagram, @cookerybythebook, and subscribe at cookerybythebook.com, or in Apple Podcasts.

                                                      Thanks for listening to Cookery by the Book podcast, the only podcast devoted to cookbooks since 2015.

Almonds, Anchovies and Pancetta

By Cal Peternell

Intro:                  Welcome to the Cookery by the book podcast with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.

Cal Peternell:                  My name's Cal Peternell and I'm the author of most recently, "Almonds, Anchovies and Pancetta." I also wrote "12 Recipes" and "A Recipe for Cooking," and I'm the host of the "Cooking by Ear" podcast.

Suzy Chase:                  Growing up in the late '70's and early '80's, it's my understanding that meat was the center of the American plate. I mean the message, beef, it's what for dinner got drummed into our heads. Talk about the idea of being vegetable focused.

Cal Peternell:                  You know, if you go farther back than that, because I know what you're talking in the beef, it's what for dinner campaign and all that. But if you go farther back, all the way back, people have been eating this way for a long time. Where they eat a lot of vegetables, grains, greens, beans and they use a little bit of the right kind of meat, mostly cured pork or cured fish, to add a little flavor to it. And also, it's an economical way to eat, where you don't have to have a big roast, you can have just a little smoked pork, like a ham hock or something like that, that you throw in with the greens or a little bit of cured anchovies that you put in your salad or you put ...

                                                      So that you can feed a lot of people with a lot of vegetables and just add that little extra deliciousness with a small amount of the right kind of meat. And it's really the way that I like to eat and my family likes to eat now. And I think a lot of people like to eat that way.It's not that we're vegetarians, it's just that we really love vegetables and we want to eat a lot of them.

Suzy Chase:                  Take me through the thought process of narrowing down this cookbook to three main ingredients.

Cal Peternell:                  Well, I always had this fantasy about opening a restaurant that would be called Anchovies and Pancetta because those would be the only kinds of meat that were served there. That we'd be doing, like I say, lots of vegetables and salads and stuff and just be seasoning them with the meats like that. And I was actually at an event in New York at the 92nd Street Y, and I was talking about that and I said maybe I could write a cookbook like that and my editor and agent were both in the audience and they both perked up and we talked about it afterwards and we came up with this idea that we could come up with a book that had three chapters for each of those ingredients, so it's almonds, anchovies and pancetta.

                                                      And I guess the way I chose them is there's more than those three ingredients flavoring the dishes in this book. So there's almonds in the almond chapter, but also other kinds of nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts. And in the anchovy chapter there's also things like bottarga and shaved bonito and fish sauce and of course in the pancetta chapter there's all kinds of cured pork. But those are the ones that I use the most to deliver a little extra fat. Of course, anchovies and pancetta deliver salt as well. But there's something more that they bring, because you could just add salt.

                                                      I've come to believe that they represent a certain amount of time and also if you think about in a way as sort of like an artifact of the time that it took for it to either grow on the tree or the fish to reach maturity in the ocean or the livestock, the pork, the pigs on the farm. But then if you cure fish or pork, there's extra time that's going into it. It's sort of a short cut, because I love to do long cook dishes, like last night I cooked a pork shoulder and I seasoned it the day before and then I brought it to room temperature for a couple of hours and then I braised it for a couple hours and I love that.

                                                      But you don't always have time for that. So by using these ingredients that already kind of, one of the things that they have in them in addition to salt is time. Not the herb, but actual hours. And so you're kind of short cutting. You're getting that depth of flavor that you might get from long cooking, but you're just doing it in the moment, because that pancetta has already got the time in it. That gives it that depth.

Suzy Chase:                  Speaking of salt, you say cooking is so much about salt. Why is that?

Cal Peternell:                  Well, these ingredients, of course, the nuts aside, there's so many things are considered delicious delicacies now that are born out of the ability to use salt to preserve food. So that when you have an abundant catch, you eat all the fish you can right now, but you can't eat it all now, so you have to figure out a way to make it last, in case tomorrow there's no fishing in that. And salt is what allows you to do that. And the same with pork. There's a scene that I've always loved from "Grapes of Wrath," when the Joad family is packing up their farm and getting ready to head west and they have a couple of pigs and they slaughter them and they keep the chunks of meat and they pack them in these barrels full of salt. And then they roast the rest of it. The ribs and the bones and the stuff that won't really work being salted and they just have a feast of pork.

                                                      But they can't eat it all, so they pack it in salt and bring it with them and eat it over the months on the road. And I feel like that, salt is what makes that kind of thing possible and these foods that we all love, things like baklava and umeboshi and on and on, were born out of that kind of planning ahead, being sort of thrifty and they only can happen because of salt. I think also then, on a flavor level, salt, as my friend Samine says, salt makes things taste more like what they are.

Suzy Chase:                  Yep.

Cal Peternell:                  It sort of emphasizes their own innate flavor and I think that sometimes people are a little shy about salt, about using salt. Or they feel like they're not that confident, they don't know quite how to use it. Which leads one to my one rule about cooking, which is that you always need to taste your food and one of the things you're often tasting for is salt.

Suzy Chase:                  I just got maldon salt. What's the one way you use maldon? Because I'm not sure exactly what to do with it.

Cal Peternell:                  Yeah, I think maldon is great. I love maldon salt. I actually kind of ... you've probably done this too. You frame one of those beautiful little pyramids and you do a snack on it.

Suzy Chase:                  That's the only thing I've done with it.

Cal Peternell:                  Yeah. I mean, maldon of course, you're not going to throw a handful of maldon salt into your pasta water because it's all about the texture of those little crystals. It's a finishing thing and I think, I like to put it on, like if you were ... Hard boiled eggs is a great place to put it. If you butter a piece of bread and put a slice of radish on it, like french style, that's a great place for that kind of salt. And there's maldon, there's other salts that are being produced like that now.

                                                      They're about the texture, so you want to use it in a place where you're going to notice that texture. So just finishing things and also, it's quite beautiful, so you want to be able to see it.

Suzy Chase:                  So I'm always striving to become a more instinctive cook. How can this cookbook help us home cooks with that?

Cal Peternell:                  What I try and do with my cookbooks is set a tone that allows you to relax and really cook and I really try to be not too demanding of my reader. I find some cookbooks, even ones that I really admire, there can sometimes be this kind of demand for ... you have to have the right piece of equipment or have to have just the very best ingredients that can sometimes actually be a barrier to cooking. So I always say, you should cook with what you have now. You should think about those ingredients and think like, you know, I should try and get better turnips, these were okay, but next time I'm going to ... I saw those really beautiful ones at the farmer's market I'm going to try and get those or if you only ... so many dishes start with onions, carrots and celery and if you're missing the carrot, it doesn't mean you shouldn't go ahead and cook with onions and celery. But you should think about like, what does the carrot bring to it? What am I missing here and maybe next time I should add some carrots. They last a long time in the fridge, I'll just make sure I have them.

                                                      Likewise with equipment. If all you have is a thin aluminum pan, it doesn't mean you shouldn't cook dinner tonight, but you should start looking when you're at the flea market next time for some nice cast iron that's going to make you a better cook. And as far as being ... I think that also, I often offer alternatives to ingredients. If you don't have this, you could use this. Or if you don't ... In this book, if you don't love anchovies, than honestly I think if you think that you don't love anchovies, you actually do love anchovies, you just haven't really had them the right way.

                                                      You can use the almonds often in the place of those. So I think being instinctual cook comes down to ... The honest truth is you have to cook a lot. You have to find the pleasure in cooking that will encourage you to keep cooking and that will eventually make you a better and more instinctual cook, because you've already done it before and you're remembering, oh yeah, the other time when I did this it worked that way so it'll probably work that way again. Or it didn't work out and so this time I should to do it a little bit differently.

                                                      I don't think people should cook a recipe just once, I think they should cook it a couple of times until they feel like they kind of really get what's happening with that combination of ingredients.

Suzy Chase:                  In the almond section you have a recipe for almond butter and cucumber sandwiches with shallots. Describe this and why is this recipe personal and private for you?

Cal Peternell:                  I think we all have our guilty snacks, our guilty pleasure thing that maybe we don't ... we try to run out of the store before anyone sees us with it in our hands. I have mine. They're salty snacks, I won't say exactly what they are, but-

Suzy Chase:                  Cheez It's?

Cal Peternell:                  Yeah, it's something like that.

Suzy Chase:                  Okay, go on.

Cal Peternell:                  But then we also we have that thing. I don't know if you have it, but definitely these things that, especially when I'm working and I'm by myself and I'm just hungry and I go in the kitchen and I start looking around. And those little sandwiches came out of that. Out of having that combination of ingredients and just thinking, oh that could come together in a really great way that would satisfy what I need right now. Some nice bread, I like to use the dense, grainy bread that I think of as being more Northern European kind of bread and either toasted or not. Spread it with some nice almond butter. A couple slices of cucumbers, a little bit of shallots or scallions that you squeeze a little lemon or lime juice so it tempers them a little bit and you put that on top there and it's like a little open faced sandwich.

                                                      It's the kind of thing that it felt like, oh this is my snack and nobody else would really go for this, that combination of things. But then I started to think, you know, actually I think probably everybody has something like this. And so, I included that in the book, not only because I think it's delicious and I think other people might too. But just to encourage people to try to get back that instinctive thing that's ... And something we talk about on the podcast is we think people have gateway dishes that they're afraid to cook. They feel like they don't have the instinct for it. But if you can show them that one thing that they can make and have success with, it can give them the confidence to like, oh if I could make that little sandwich that good, maybe next time I could do something more with it. Or, you know, it's not that far off from another dish. That I should try that. And you build on that and your confidence grows and you become better.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah. I think a lot of cooking is confidence.

Cal Peternell:                  Yeah. And I think every time I take a lift, you know ride, I always ask my driver, do you cook? And a lot of times they'll say now and I push and I'm like, well really? Because it's hard for me to imagine someone who never cooks anything. And you know, usually they'll admit, they might say, yeah no, I don't cook. And I'm like what about toast? Do you make toast? And most people will admit that they do. And I feel like, that's cooking. That's a step. In my first book in 12 Recipes, the first chapter is about toast, because we've all had toast, it's just okay, and then you also, hopefully you've had that time where you're like, oh my god, this is something really different. And it might be because the bread was really great of it might be because someone swiped a clove of garlic over it and poured on some delicious olive oil.

                                                      Or it might be just because you're really hungry. But thinking about what you're ... Being attentive to what you're doing. Being present with the ingredients that you have, I think can start to give you that confidence of like oh, I get it. I get what's happening here in the kitchen and can lead to more confidence and eventually to a certain amount of innovation.

Suzy Chase:                  So moving on to the anchovies section, you have a recipe for artichokes and new onions baked with anchovies and bread crumbs. Talk about how you and Russell Moore used to make this dish together at Chez Panisse.

Cal Peternell:                  Russ and I go way back. We were chefs together at Chez Panisse for many years. And we also would cook a lot together at my house or his house with friends. There was something that would happen when he and I would cook. And there's a few other friends who are cooks that this same kind of synergy happens where we know each other well enough. We've cooked together well enough that we truly collaborate and kind of flowed together. It's almost like, I don't know if this sounds goofy but it's a little bit like a dance.

                                                      Sometimes we don't have to talk too much, we just kind of have this thing where we're really on the same page and if you've ever had that kind of an experience of crafting something together with someone, it can be kind of profound and really comforting in a way. That you have a kindred spirit. And in the book I talk about how my wife and I cook together and I guess we have something similar, but she ... It's not really her thing. I mean, she likes to be with me and we like to chat while she's spinning the lettuce and I'm making the vinaigrette or whatever. There's just something more that happens with someone who's really on the same page with you. And that's a recipe that Russ and I came up with when we were still cooking at Chez Panisse and we just wanted to make this little bundles of ... you know. It was spring, the artichokes were beautiful, the new onions were amazing. I don't know if you are familiar with new onions, but they kind of look like a giant scallion.

Suzy Chase:                  Yes.

Cal Peternell:                  They're just a great thing to eat raw, to fry, to roast. They work so many ways and they're really lovely too, sometimes they're kind purple. So we roast the onions, we cook the artichokes and we curled the onion around the artichoke and put a little bit of anchovy on there and some bread crumbs. Of course, we put lots of olive oil and baked it and you know, bread crumbs and anchovies all kind of come together and there was like this little loose bundles that we served with grilled lamb. But they're great any way.

                                                      They do take a little bit of work because there's artichokes involved and whenever you're cooking with artichokes there's a certain amount of prep. But it's totally worth it and the season for them is coming up. You know spring time is when those ingredients are at their best.

Suzy Chase:                  So you mentioned your wife, Kathleen Henderson, who's an artist. And I'm going to read a blurb from "Art in America." It says Henderson's scenarios generally take place against a stark background of blank white paper. That made me think of you plating food on a blank white plate. Do your artistic styles converge at all?

Cal Peternell:                  They do. And maybe not though in the way you might expect. It's interesting that you point that out, the white plate, white paper thing, because I do think that ... it just makes me think about ... It's something I said to Alice Waters when I was still at Chez Panisse and when we travel we'd eat in all the restaurants that are getting the buzz and stuff. And I came back from a trip one time and I said Alice, I think the fact that we're just putting food on a regular flat ceramic plate is an incredible innovation right now, because if you're eating at these places where food is served on a stone or a log or a little dish that you carry and you have to hold in your hand and pull the pin before you eat it or someone's spraying bubbles at you. I ate a dessert one time that was served on a pillow full of lavender smoke. So it's funny to think about food being just served on a plate and what that's like. No one's doing that.

Suzy Chase:                  So for the pancetta section of the book, I made your recipe for brusselsssprouts with pancetta, ginger and cilantro on page 147.

Cal Peternell:                  Oh, great.

Suzy Chase:                  So let's talk about that dish.

Cal Peternell:                  Yeah.

Suzy Chase:                  First, can you describe it?

Cal Peternell:                  I came up with this recipe for brussels sprouts that includes a little pancetta. You could use bacon too. But that it brings in some Asian flavors like ginger, cilantro and basically you roast the brussels sprouts. If they're big, which they usually are, a little bit too big to roast whole, I cut them in half, I toss them with a little oil and salt, put them in a nice hot oven. Sometimes you got to splash a little water on the tray if things are starting to get too dark before they get cooked through, because to me, I want them to cooked all the way. I don't want to be crunching so much on them.

                                                      And then you just saute a little bit of pancetta, like I said you could also use bacon and in fact, if you were vegan, you could use almonds here for vegetarian. You cook the pancetta a little bit. You throw in a little bit of ginger, let that sizzle. Maybe do this thing that I love to do with herbs, so many times herbs are added right at the end, but cooking herbs in the pan does an amazing thing. It kind of infuses the flavor into the fat that you're using. It also fats the color. So I throw in a good handful of cilantro and let it sizzle in there with the pancetta and ginger and then throw the brussel sprouts that are already cooked in. Toss it around. Squeeze on lime juice. Taste it, see if it needs a little more lime juice. And that's it. And it's kind of, it's both familiar but also a little exotic because it's got a little ginger and cilantro.

                                                      How did yours come out?

Suzy Chase:                  It was amazing. I'm going to make it for Christmas.

Cal Peternell:                  Oh yeah? Good, perfect. Yep.

Suzy Chase:                  The cilantro and the ginger is so unexpected. You just don't, you're like, what is that, oh my gosh.

Cal Peternell:                  Excellent. I'm so glad to hear that. And it looks nice too, right? It's sort of-

Suzy Chase:                  It's so pretty.

Cal Peternell:                  Yeah. And you could put a little, I don't know if it's in the recipe, I don't think it is. But you know, like so many things, a little bit of hot pepper flakes if you want something a little spicy would be nice in there too.

Suzy Chase:                  So, you have a podcast that I adore called "Cooking by Ear." Can you tell us about it?

Cal Peternell:                  So "Cooking by Ear" is a podcast that my partner, Kristina Loring, my podcast partner and I came up with. We had this intention to find a way to make a podcast that could teach you to cook. That you could actually cook along with in real time. And I called my guests or I'd send them email and we'd agree on ... and I asked them, what would you like me to teach you to cook? And we come up with a dish that works in the time that we have and I show up at their house and the guest is sort of a proxy for the listening audience, because we felt like we need to make it ... I have so many years of experience cooking and I can get a little too chefy maybe sometimes.

                                                      Like with the books, I wanted to be very approachable and inclusive. And so having a guest who's not a professional cook brings me back to the level of the lay person who's cooking along. They keep me in line a little bit if I'm going too fast or if I'm not explaining something enough. So we get ourselves set and when you download the episode of "Cooking by Ear," you also get an ingredients list, a shopping list. So when you have your ingredients together and you're in the kitchen and you got air puffs and fans and you're ready to go, you hit play, and you cook along with us in real time. The episodes are 40 to 50 minutes.

                                                      For example, the first episode was with the actress, Frances McDormand, who's just wonderful and funny. So we went to her house and while we cut the onions you cut the onions. And then while the onions are cooking, it takes a little while, so we talked to Fran about how she decided to be a pig in "Mom" or we talk about how her husband, Joel Coen, loves to make pies. And then when the onions are done and we start cooking the risotto you do the same. And then while simmering along we talked to Fran about the way her mother would make these salads or whatever.

                                                      And at the end of it, you're cooking along with us, of course you can hit pause if you're timing is off or if you get called away for something for a second. But the idea is, 45 minutes later, you've not only heard these funny stories about Frances McDormand and got to sort of get to know in a more intimate way because you're in her kitchen with us. But you also have a pot of risotto done and you've learned to make it. I don't know if you've heard the one with Fran, but it's hilarious and there's a lot of other ones that are really funny and sometimes sad and poignant. And worth a listen.

Suzy Chase:                  I did. I loved that she gave you a tour of her kitchen. So in my head I have this visual of her kitchen.

Cal Peternell:                  Yeah, yeah. And she showed us some of her favorite plates and things like that.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah. Uh huh.

Cal Peternell:                  Yeah, and we've been really lucky and for me, I've learned as much from our guests as hopefully they have learned from me. But we've been really lucky with getting amazing people to join us in the kitchen and I found that when you are around food and you're eating and you're cooking, you have a task, that it opens a door a little wider into people's lives. In season one, we also cooked with the amazing poet, Tommy Pico. Director Mira Nair who made "Mississippi Masala" and "Monsoon Wedding." We cooked with Alexander Payne who made "Sideways" and "Downsizing." He was really hilarious.

                                                      We went to New Orleans and switched the format up a little bit and the hip hop artist, Big Freedia showed us how to make her booty pop and potatoes, which was-

Suzy Chase:                  Okay, stop. What else did she show you how to do?

Cal Peternell:                  She gave me a lesson, I'm not going to say that she taught me how to twerk, because I absolutely cannot twerk.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh my god.

Cal Peternell:                  She gave me a twerking lesson and I can tell you, she summed it up ... actually she got very excited because she said that we gave her a new hook for a song.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah, then she had to write it down.

Cal Peternell:                  Yeah, she ran and wrote it down and she ran and told the boyfriend that she just got it and goes like this. You put your hands on your hip and you arch you back. You put your booty in the air and you shake it like. Or twerk it like that.

                                                      And it turns out I can't really get low enough. I need to do much more Pilates or something in order to deal with it.

Suzy Chase:                  Squats?

Cal Peternell:                  In order to be able to twerk right. Have you ever tried to do it?

Suzy Chase:                  No.

Cal Peternell:                  No. Yeah. I thought like, oh my god, I'm going to hurt myself, they're going to have call 911.

Suzy Chase:                  Throw something out. Well I think it's great. There are so many food podcasts out there just talking about food. But I think it's so brilliant that you're in the kitchen and we can hear your conversation and the cooking sounds. I love it. So that takes me to my segment called my last meal.

Cal Peternell:                  Yeah.

Suzy Chase:                  What would you order for your last supper?

Cal Peternell:                  I was thinking about this and it's a dish that I've been a little bit obsessed with and I'm not alone and it's spaghetti cacio e pepe. Do you know cacio e pepe?

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah. You know it's funny, I interviewed a cookbook author yesterday and she said the very same thing.

Cal Peternell:                  Okay, well that's because it's the most delicious and comforting. I would demand that it's spaghetti cacio e pepe and it's made with one very, very long strand of spaghetti that just goes on and on and on. And I would slurp it up slowly.

Suzy Chase:                  Never ending.

Cal Peternell:                  And I'd ask for a glass of cheap red wine to go with it.

Suzy Chase:                  Where can we find you on the web, social media and where can we find your podcast?

Cal Peternell:                  My website is calpeternell.com. On social media I'm @calpeternell, one word. And the podcast is available everywhere you get your podcast, Apple Podcast, Stitcher, you know, all the podcast places.

Suzy Chase:                  Wonderful. Well thanks so much Cal for coming on "Cookery by the Book" podcast.

Cal Peternell:                  Yeah, thanks for having me, it's been a real pleasure.

Outro:                  Follow Suzy Chase on Instagram at cookery by the book and subscribe at cookerybythebook.com or in Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening to "Cookery by the Book" podcast, the only podcast devoted to cookbooks since 2015.