Cookery by the Book

Cooking With Scraps
Turn Your Peels, Cores, Rinds, And Stems Into Delicious Meals

By Lindsay-Jean Hard

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.

Lindsay-Jean:                  I'm Lindsay-Jean Hard, and my new cookbook is, Cooking With Scraps. Turn your peels, cores, rinds and stems into delicious meals.

Suzy Chase:                  When did it first dawn on you to turn your peels, cores, rinds and stems into delicious meals?

Lindsay-Jean:                  Well, it was when I was still working at Food52.com. We were having an editorial brainstorm and someone brought up Gabriel Hamilton's new at the time cookbook, Prune, and the fact that it had a garbage column in it. They said, "We should do a column around that." I was like, "Oh my gosh, me, I have to have that column." I just, I don't know what it was, but something struck me about. For a couple years there, I had a column called Cooking With Scraps. I would hunt through the Food 52 recipe archives to find recipes that the Food 52 community members were sharing that made smart use of underutilized produce parts and other odds and ends. I just learned so much from the community at that time that I just wanted to share it with everyone. That's where this cookbook came from.

Suzy Chase:                  Talk a little bit about shooting the photography for this cookbook. Was it hard to make rinds and bits of this and that cookbook ready?

Lindsay-Jean:                  Well, Penny De Los Santos did all the photography for this, and she obviously did an incredible job, as did the styling team that worked on it. But I really think that it helps to show people that these aren't strange things and you're not cooking with garbage. They're just regular ingredients and they can be just as beautiful as anything else.

Suzy Chase:                  I read that you don't think that there are any perfect recipes. How come?

Lindsay-Jean:                  I just don't think that any recipe is above messing with to make it appeal to you. I mean, there are incredible recipes that I make and repeat and love, but I still tweak and play with them. I think that everyone should feel empowered to do the same thing.

Suzy Chase:                  In this cookbook, even salts and sugars don't go to waste. Since you have an entire shelf devoted to salt in your kitchen, please let me know what your favorite salt is.

Lindsay-Jean:                  Well, after reading Samin Nosrat's, Salt, Fat Heat Acid, I am a full convert to diamond crystal. But I still have a full shelf of salt and I still use a variety of it.

Suzy Chase:                  I live in the West Village in New York City near this shop called, The Meadow. It's so intimidating 'cause they have a million different salts.

Lindsay-Jean:                  They're just so fun. I think that's what's fun about the [inaudible 00:02:57] crisper salts in my cookbook. When you're using these scraps to be able to create new salts, they just become really pretty. They're different shades of color, and they have great flavor to them.

Suzy Chase:                  Throughout the book, you have included little sections called, Clean Out the Crisper. Talk about that?

Lindsay-Jean:                  Yeah, so these are looser recipes. They're not always necessarily using a scrap per se, like the other ones are. They're more to help you clean out what's left in your fridge. For example, there's quick pickles, there's tempura, there's strata, which along with frittatas and other egg dishes are basically the ultimate in clean out your fridge, since you can add in vegetables and stale bread, and leftover bits of meats and cheeses. There's a variety of different options.

Suzy Chase:                  I love your tempura idea, describe that.

Lindsay-Jean:                  Yeah, well a lot of the recipes in here have a Japanese influence due to spending a couple of years in Japan. One of my favorites from that time is tempura. It's just a great way to put to use whether you have one pepper and a potato and just a few odds and ends. Giving them this awesome crispy tempura and then dipping them in soy sauce or maybe a flavored salt.

Suzy Chase:                  There are so many foods we can freeze. Give us some foods we absolutely shouldn't freeze.

Lindsay-Jean:                  I tend to not freeze dairy as often. You definitely can freeze most dairy, but I think the dairy products that I tend to have most often are sour cream, and cheese. I will freeze cheese rinds for forage fort, which is in the book. If I want cheese to stay ... If you're freezing cheese, the texture isn't gonna stay the same so you got to be willing to use it in something like a dip or baking it or something. You're not going to want to just slice the cheese and eat it after you're freezing it.

Suzy Chase:                  Ew, no. Food storage always puzzles me. What are some food storage tips for, let's say, greens, herbs, onions and berries?

Lindsay-Jean:                  For greens, I try to not wash them until you're going to use them, because you'll get a longer life out of them. But, I know that sometimes that's hard because you might be more likely to use something if you can pull it out and it's clean, and you can eat it right away. If you want to wash them first, then I like to store them loosely wrapped, like in a tea towel or paper towels, and then in a plastic bag or some other storage container. You could also wash them in a salad spinner and just store them right in there and they'll keep pretty well in there too.

                                                      For berries I like to give them a vinegar bath first, so just a mix of a little bit of vinegar and water, then rinse them off. That keeps them so much longer than if you just put those straight in the fridge. In general I don't wash stuff first, but berries are one really good exception to that. For herbs, soft stem ones like parsley, basil, dill, I treat those just like I would a bouquet of flowers. I put them right into a glass of water. You can keep them on the counter at room temperature out of direct sunlight. Sometimes with basil, I will loosely cover them with a plastic bag. It just helps it stay a little bit longer.

                                                      Then for woodier stemmed herbs like rosemary, I treat those more like I would greens. Wash them and then wrap them again in a tea towel and put them in a storage container. Then for onions, cool, dry, ideally dark place. I often just keep them in a basket away from potatoes. But I did learn trick from a Food 52 community member, that you can store them in the leg of nylons or pantyhose. Put one in and then tie a knot, and then put another one in and tie another knot. You still want to keep them in a cool, dark place, but it helps them last longer because they've got great air flow around them, and you can just snip off one at a time.

Suzy Chase:                  Recently I read this stat that we're throwing away 165 billion dollars worth of food every year. Do you think we, as a country, have been throwing away more or less food in the past few years?

Lindsay-Jean:                  I hope that we're starting to become more aware of this problem, because those numbers are just so staggering. I mean, 40 percent of food in the U.S. goes uneaten, which is just mind boggling. I feel like the more that we're all talking about this that there's becoming more awareness around the issue. I hope that we're starting to shift in a better direction.

Suzy Chase:                  What is Aquafaba?

Lindsay-Jean:                  Aquafaba is the liquid that comes from cooking beans. It could be the liquid that you're cooking it in if you have dried beans at home. If you haven't worked with Aquafaba before, I think it's easier to start with the liquid that comes from a can of beans that you would normally drain off and rinse it down the drain. It's really a cool ingredient. It behaves just like egg whites do, almost. You can whip it up and use it in baked goods. I use it in brownies in the cookbook. You can also turn it into things like mayonnaise or meringues.

Suzy Chase:                  Now, I always thought that carrot tops were poisonous.

Lindsay-Jean:                  Yeah, it's a persistent myth. I think perhaps they are a little bit bitter. You definitely want to blanch it before you use them. They are not poisonous though. It's possible that if you ate pounds and pounds and pounds of them you could get sick, but I think that's the case with lots of different foods.

Suzy Chase:                  What do you think is the most underutilized, underappreciated produce part?

Lindsay-Jean:                  I feel like broccoli stalks are finally getting some of the love that they deserve. Maybe kale stems, because I feel like that's one that comes up a lot in recipes of the cut and discard. We're always told to discard parts of vegetables. In the kale stem, that one happens a lot. But, it's perfectly edible. In the cookbook I'm blanching them so they get really tender, and then blending them into hummus. You wouldn't even know they're there, but you're still getting the fiber from the kale and some other nutrients as well, I'm sure. It's just a regular, delicious hummus but you're not wasting part of the plant.

Suzy Chase:                  I really share disdain for kale with Mimi Sheridan. Do you think it's here to stay?

Lindsay-Jean:                  I hope it's here to stay 'cause I love it. I bet that even you would like this hummus because it doesn't taste like kale.

Suzy Chase:                  Okay. That's my kind of kale. You wrote, "Everyone has a crisis ingredient, something that can help you pull a meal together." What would your crisis ingredient be?

Lindsay-Jean:                  Chickpeas for sure. I love them, and it's a problem because my husband hates them. My go-to ingredient is one that he does not enjoy. But I'm doing the cooking, so it's just unfortunate for him sometimes.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh, darn.

Lindsay-Jean:                  Yes.

Suzy Chase:                  One of the most interesting recipes that caught my eye was, coffee ground cashew butter. Coffee grounds, really?

Lindsay-Jean:                  Yes. I think this one along with banana peels are going to be the two most surprising ingredients for people. But I was actually in New York at Food 52, and I was trying ... One of my colleagues had this jar of peanut butter that was like coffee and cocoa nib peanut butter. I tried a bite and it was so good. I just had this thought of, "I wonder if I can do this with coffee grounds?" It was delicious. The coffee grounds still have so much of that flavor left. Then I started playing around with it more and it didn't quite make it into the book, but it is on Food52.com for a French Silk pie that has coffee grounds in the crust along with some chocolate cookies. Then I also used coffee grounds to infuse whip cream to make a topping. They still have so much of that coffee flavor.

Suzy Chase:                  In this cookbook you mention a lot of Food 52 staff members. Talk about your time at Food 52 and your column.

Lindsay-Jean:                  Anyone who's familiar with Food 52, which is a food and lifestyle website that has pretty much anything a home cook could ever want or need or dream about. If you're in the food world and you're familiar with them, it seems like it would be a dream job and it definitely was. The six years that I spent there, I got to know so many of, not only the staff, but also the incredible community that Food 52 has built and brings together.

                                                      That column ... I mean, I learned a lot from the community members throughout my time there, but I especially learned a lot about cooking from writing that column, just because I would be searching for these recipes and finding these smart ways that they were using these ingredients. Then I felt empowered to experiment from there and use those ingredients and come up with my own recipes. I hope that I'm able to help other people do the same thing.

Suzy Chase:                  One of your favorite things is to ask home cooks what they make when they only have 20 minutes and need dinner. What would you recommend out of this cookbook?

Lindsay-Jean:                  I would recommend, I think probably the egg salad sandwiches with celery hearts and leaves. That one comes together and is a sandwich so it can be it's own meal. A lot of the book is sides and appetizers, and not always full dinner meals. But they are all easy and approachable recipes with short ingredient lists.

Suzy Chase:                  The other night I made your recipe for Brothy Beans with Roasted Garlic and Parmesan Rind. Talk about how this recipe was inspired by Food 52 founder's, Meryl Stubbs.

Lindsay-Jean:                  Yeah. Well as you said, a lot of my recipes have been inspired both by staff members and by the community members. But this one comes ... It's based off of one of Meryl's recipes that I really love. I think it was when she was sharing recipes that she was cooking for her daughter. Hers had more tomato in it, I think. But I love the idea of having a meal based around brothy beans. Using a Parmesan rind just boosts the flavor so much, of a pot of beans or a pot of soup. It's a really easy way to take simple ingredients up a notch.

Suzy Chase:                  I think the rind made the broth so creamy and salty.

Lindsay-Jean:                  Yes, yeah. I love it.

Suzy Chase:                  Now, to my segment called The Last Meal. If you had to place an order for your last supper, what would it be?

Lindsay-Jean:                  Let's see. I would have a Zingerman’s Enough Already bagel, which is their version of an everything bagel, with Zingerman’s Creamery cream cheese, and slices of fresh tomato just off the vine, and a Bloody Mary.

Suzy Chase:                  I didn't see that one coming, "And a Bloody Mary."

Lindsay-Jean:                  Yep.

Suzy Chase:                  That's so funny.

Lindsay-Jean:                  Yep. I'm choosing the breakfast of champions for my last meal.

Suzy Chase:                  Well, you have opened up a whole new world of thinking for home cooks. Thanks so much for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.

Lindsay-Jean:                  Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Suzy Chase:                  Follow me on Instagram at CookerybytheBook. Twitter is IamSuzyChase. Download your Kitchen Mix Tapes, music to cook by, on Spotify at Cookery by the Book. As always, subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

Delish: Eat Like Every Day’s the Weekend

By Joanna Saltz & The Editors of Delish

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.

Joanna Saltz:                  Hey, this Joanna Saltz, editorial director of Delish, and we have an amazing new cookbook out called Delish: Eat Like Every Day Is The Weekend.

Suzy Chase:                  So I read that you relaunched the Delish brand to gear it towards food lovers, and not food elitists. I find that there's so many elitists out there, I'm constantly talking about how I'm not a chef, or even a top notch cook. You've really tapped into something that home cooks want. Talk a little bit about that.

Joanna Saltz:                  Well, you know, when we took over Delish, now almost four years ago, there was such ... elitism is the right word for it, but it also was exclusionary, that the kitchen had become a place where only people of a certain level were allowed behind the counter, if you can imagine. And I knew there was a whole section of the universe that frankly loved food, and it was tempted to come and try things, but just didn't feel comfortable there.

                                                      And so when we were really trying to bring Delish to life, we really wanted to connect with those people, use all different kinds of tricks in our content to sort of lure people in to say, "Hey, it's okay, like Delish is for everyone, this is a safe space, it's okay to get into the kitchen, it's okay to mess it up, as long as you're having fun, and you're ending up with something that seemingly delicious at the end, like we're all friends here."

Suzy Chase:                  Give me a brief background on Delish the brand. Like when did you take it over?

Joanna Saltz:                  So Delish was started probably going on seven years ago, as strictly a landing page for Hearst to put their food content that was being developed by all the amazing brands in this company. So recipes that were coming from Good Housekeeping, Women's Day, Redbook, there's a long list. And so they were basically using Delish.com as sort of an aggregate for all of that content, and then they were packaging that content, "Chicken dinners from all the different brands", or, "easy weeknight meals from all the different brands", and marketing it out to MSN.

                                                      So that's really how the site functioned for the first probably three and a half, four years. It wasn't until that point that MSN and Hearst had decided they were going to sort of part ways, and MSN decided they were going to go to lots of different places for food content. And Hearst was sort of left with this challenge, do we make Delish into a standalone editorial property, or do we kill it?

                                                      And thankfully, they decided to put some resources behind it. I had been working as the executive editor at Food Network Magazine, I'd been before that at Seventeen, so I had been at Hearst brands for a long time at that point. And so I came over and got to build a team. It was really ... you know, just like the fact that it existed before, it was really a startup mentality.

Suzy Chase:                  So this is the first ever Delish cookbook with your huge following on the web and social media. Why did you feel the need to write a cookbook?

Joanna Saltz:                  Well, you know, because we had created such a fun space, I think that we felt like we needed to show that we were legitimate cooks. We have ... you know, what we always say is that we're food lovers first and content producers second. But at the end of the day, we knew that if we wanted to sort of play in the space with real food brands, that we needed to have a cookbook.

                                                      For me, also, I'm always about just touching audience wherever I can reach them. So for me, Instagram is as important as that event that you and I met at the other night, which is also as important as Facebook, which is also as important as the book universe. I just want the Delish brand to sort of be where all food lovers are.

                                                      We also have a bookazine that's on news stands now. So it's just, for me, about touching people and making them understand what our mission is.

Suzy Chase:                  What's the bookazine?

Joanna Saltz:                  The bookazine is called Delish Chicken Dinners, and it's a slightly heavier stock magazine. And it's jammed with 100 chicken dinner recipes, a really surprising idea. And it's great, you know, we're giving people what they want where they want it. So whether it's a fast video you want to watch on Facebook, or helpful weeknight dinners, like we want to be there for you.

Suzy Chase:                  One recipe that you're semi-famous for is the Texas sheet cake. I found it interesting because you grew up in New Jersey. Who taught you how to make a Texas sheet cake?

Joanna Saltz:                  Oh my gosh, I have to tell you that one of my secret idols is the Pioneer Woman. And I just always adored how she has had such a real sort of voice, and you know, frankly, for a Food Network star, she is someone who really allows the audience to see her, warts and all. You know, she's someone who's okay ... she's okay with messing things up, and okay with showing people her real life, and I've always sort of connected with that. And it was her Texas sheet cake that I started baking for my family, and it's a favorite. I honestly ... I can't get through at least two weeks without making one.

Suzy Chase:                  Really?

Joanna Saltz:                  And also I have a family of five, and we will sit down, we will house like an entire sheet, I'm embarrassed to say, we'll basically house an entire sheet cake ourselves. It's a sad, sad state, but I don't think we're at happiest as we are when we're eating that thing.

Suzy Chase:                  So what are a couple of go to recipes for busy moms out of this cookbook?

Joanna Saltz:                  Frankly, what's funny about the Delish mentality, is that we're trying to reach busy moms the same way we're trying to reach millennials, young people who are a little bit intimidated by cooking, and they both, frankly, want the same thing. Like things that are easy and somewhat foolproof, so and this ... I would say that this cookbook as a ton of great recipes that sort of suit both needs.

                                                      Personally, I'm obsessed with the crack chicken, which is a breaded chicken ... it's just sort of like breaded chicken tenders, but it's got this amazing like tangy, limey, barbecue sauce on it. We call it crack chicken because the first time we made it, we couldn't stop eating it, like literally the staff was like clawing at each other trying to get at it in the house, in the office.

                                                      So I usually use that as a great jumping off point for like gaging whether or not our audience is going to be into it, and they have kind of gone crazy for it.

                                                      I also love the sheet pan shrimp boil, which is basically all the flavors and sort of the elements of a classic shrimp boil, but sort of laid out and cooked much quicker, you don't need the giant pot, you don't need the whole mess. But you get that old bay, you get that amazing like lemon, you get the andouille, and it cooks up in basically 35 minutes.

                                                      So to me, that's the kind of thing that like if you can make something super surprising and interesting on a weeknight, like that's a really big win.

Suzy Chase:                  I made that twice last week.

Joanna Saltz:                  It's so good, right? Why is it so good?

Suzy Chase:                  My husband was out of town, and my 12 year old said, "You have to make this for dad when he gets back."

Joanna Saltz:                  You know, I think the other thing too about sort of the way we structure a lot of our recipes, is we like to like base things on flavors and familiar sort of combinations that people sort of know and trust, or know and remember. I think that's honestly one of the things that we use to sort of draw people in, to make them feel comfortable in our space.

                                                      Another recipe I love is the buffalo chicken meatballs, which to me is like the perfect mix of like you're making a great weeknight dinner, but like everybody loves buffalo wings, this is the kind of thing where you're like, "I love buffalo wings, I'm going to try and make these meatballs." That's another great recipe.

                                                      Meatballs, to be honest with you, at Delish are always a big win, and we're always looking for ways to sort of make them a little bit more fun than your basic, boring. The buffalo chicken meatballs are one of my favorites as well.

Suzy Chase:                  Over the weekend, I made your grilled cheese dogs, and the garlic smashed potatoes. And my 12 year old-

Joanna Saltz:                  Oh my gosh.

Suzy Chase:                  Went crazy.

Joanna Saltz:                  Both huge winners. The-

Suzy Chase:                  So good.

Joanna Saltz:                  Garlic smashed potatoes are so good. Actually, and the grilled cheese dogs, grilled cheese hotdogs are also a really big winner with the Delish audience. We turned that recipe into a video, and the video went absolutely crazy. I think it got like 25 million views in like the first two days.

                                                      But that's another one of those things that people love grilled cheese, they love hot dogs, and they're like, "This looks cool, I'm going to make this."

Suzy Chase:                  Speaking of videos-

Joanna Saltz:                  So your wish is ... yeah, please.

Suzy Chase:                  Yesterday I made your stuffed jack-o-lantern peppers for my kid too.

Joanna Saltz:                  Oh, so fun.

Suzy Chase:                  I've been like all Delish all the time this week.

Joanna Saltz:                  I get it, I love it, you're full immersion, I like that.

Suzy Chase:                  That was so cute, and it's perfect for Halloween.

Joanna Saltz:                  Well that's the kind of thing too that like ... you know, we want our recipes to be really fun, and we want them to be engaging for kids too. I think it's so important, you know, I have three kids, and I really try to engage them in the kitchen. My daughter hears like a pot coming out of the cabinet, and she comes running like Pavlov's dog. Because she loves to get into the kitchen.

                                                      But for me, the jack-o-lantern stuffed peppers are sort of that perfect recipe where it's like something an adult would eat, right, but also something that a kid can be totally enchanted by. So you know, when we can hit both, when we find that Venn diagram, where the ... like the perfect spot in the middle, we get really excited.

Suzy Chase:                  I noticed that this is one of those rare cookbooks where every single recipe has a color photo. Talk a little bit about that.

Joanna Saltz:                  That is so important to me. You know, to be honest, since I didn't have a very strong culinary background, I am somewhat ... I collect cookbooks, and I love to see what the thing is that I'm making. It's super important to me. And frankly, I get frustrated when cookbooks don't have it, because I'm like ... basically I use it as a marketing tool. And when we were developing recipes for the book, you know, I said to my team, "I want someone to be standing ..." I imagined that someone was standing in line at Barnes & Noble, or a bookstore somewhere, and they were paging through the book, and I wanted them to be so enchanted by every recipe in there, I wanted them to be able to basically open to any spot in the book, and be drawn in by what they see.

                                                      And frankly, that started, that mission starts with a color photo. That's extraordinarily imperative. Don't you find it so much more helpful when you can see what the end result is?

Suzy Chase:                  Oh, I do, especially in this Instagram day and age, where you can kind of see what it-

Joanna Saltz:                  Totally.

Suzy Chase:                  Needs to turn out looking like, so you can take the picture.

Joanna Saltz:                  Completely, it's marketing.

Suzy Chase:                  Yes!

Joanna Saltz:                  You're marketing yourself, let's be honest. This is all part of the package. You have to market your life in a very specific way, and the food that you make in your kitchen is just one of those elements.

Suzy Chase:                  Tell us about the Delish team.

Joanna Saltz:                  This team is amazing. So I think as I mentioned, we started ... we were super small, it was just five of us. And we were like rubbing two stones together to make anything work. One of my ... my deputy editor, Lindsey Funston, she was like cooking recipes, we had a tiny test kitchen in the corner of the Hearst Tower, and she was like making recipes and then shooting them with her phone, like basically on the floor in front of a window that had really nice light. Like, this is where we started.

                                                      Now we are 18 strong. We have an amazing video team. We have a news editor, we have a features editor, we have a fantastic food team that develops, but also comes up with crazy ideas. And we are all just so invested in this mission of bringing a fun food voice to the world.

Suzy Chase:                  Some recipes hae a little icon that says "Delish fave", how did they get that distinction?

Joanna Saltz:                  Oh, that's a great question. Well we have a few in here that are a classic, we call them OG Delish, that we are obsessed with and have been obsessed with from the beginning. You know, even though our beginnings here are sort of humble, a lot of those original recipes really resonated with our audience and killed. One of them is the Tuscan chicken pasta, which even when we kind of were still figuring out how to do video, and kind of figuring out what our audience wanted, that video did insanely well in the universe.

                                                      And so the ones we've marked that, "Delish fave", are the ones that we just like ... our audience has always come back to time and time again.

Suzy Chase:                  You also have Delish diary entries. One that I love was Delish goes to the ultimate Taco Bell. Describe that.

Joanna Saltz:                  Oh my gosh, well that is one of my favorites too. You know, one of the things too about when we were building Delish was in order for us to be like a truly welcoming food space, we needed to acknowledge the fact that sometimes people don't feel like cooking. Some nights they want to eat Chipotle or get take out, or eat Taco Bell, or McDonald's. Or some nights they want to just get from the Tai restaurant downstairs. So we've always been a food brand that has sort of welcomed and embraced like the brands that America loves. And Taco Bell has been an early sort of ... and early adopter for us, like a company that we really felt close to. We have a crunch wrap knockoff in the cookbook, which you might see.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah.

Joanna Saltz:                  But Taco Bell, when we had heard about this monster Taco Bell in Vegas, we sent a team there to go check it out, and write a story. And it was insane. It's two gigantic floors, they have this huge wall of all different kinds of icees, like all different flavors that you can get booze in if you want. It's got like a huge store that's got Taco Bell merch. So, and then actually what they just recently started doing was they offer weddings, like you can actually get married at the Taco Bell.

Suzy Chase:                  I saw that. Oh my god.

Joanna Saltz:                  Isn't it amazing? Isn't it great? And they do a cake that's made out of their little cinnamon dippers-

Suzy Chase:                  Oh no.

Joanna Saltz:                  They do like a bouquet that's got hot sauce in it. I mean, they will take it to ninth degree. But honestly, only a true food lover, frankly, could like imagine getting married and feel comfortable getting married at a Taco Bell. I just ... I love that. You know, Delish, we want it to be a place where food lovers can come, but also you'll hear food stories that you don't hear everywhere else. The book also has an amazing story about this 90 year old woman who's like a beer pong champion. She plays for the beer championship every year with her grandson. Which is amazing.

                                                      There's a great story about the ... Sonic does the carhop skate off. You know, when you go to Sonic the guys come out with their trays on roller skates, and so every year they gather all their guys together and they have a skate off. And it's these guys that are like the most amazing roller skaters you have literally ever seen. But no one's talking about that stuff. You know, everybody is, to your point about elitism, talking about the world's fanciest restaurants, but there are these guys who are just doing this amazing thing because they love their job, and they love Sonic.

                                                      So we want to be there for those people too.

Suzy Chase:                  I love that. I love Sonic too.

Joanna Saltz:                  Exactly.

Suzy Chase:                  I'm the high, low eater.

Joanna Saltz:                  Well you have to be. That's the thing too, and that's what I hope people get out of this cookbook, is that we are all of these things on any given day. You know, I love eating fancy food too, and then sometimes I want to eat chips out of the bag and not be embarrassed by it. And sometimes I ... like sometimes like now that I'm out in the world, like meeting all these great people, sometimes I am having like Giggle Juice for dinner, because I like had such a crazy day. You know, sometimes like our lives are ... we want busy weeknight meals, and sometimes we want to go a little bit more time and make a gorgeous layer cake. And then sometimes we want to get taken, and sometimes we don't feel like eating anything, and we want to be totally fine eating flaming hot Cheetos.

                                                      So we want ... we're for all the types of food lovers.

Suzy Chase:                  What's in Giggle Juice?

Joanna Saltz:                  Oh, gosh. That recipe is one of my absolutely favorites. And if you notice, it's how we start the book, because I said like I thought it would only be appropriate if Delish started their book with a laugh. It's something that one of my editors had seen as she was researching all kinds of crazy things to do with booze, but it's actually ... it's got Moscato, which is something that our audience loves, certainly a very polarizing wine, some people find it too sweet, but America really loves Moscato. Lemonade, pink lemonade, it's got lemon lime soda, a little bit of vodka, and then it's garnished with sliced strawberries, lemons, and like a sugar rim.

                                                      So it definitely goes down easy-

Suzy Chase:                  Oh yeah.

Joanna Saltz:                  As I'm sure you experienced. But it's also such a conversation starter. Like food should be fun. And food, and making food with your friends and your family should be fun. So for me, I love those kinds of things too, that like when you serve it, you're like, "This is called Giggle Juice," like what a funny little conversation starter. You know, what a funny way to get like a little bit of a laugh out of your guests.

Suzy Chase:                  Now to my segment called My Last Meal.

Joanna Saltz:                  Okay.

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

Joanna Saltz:                  All right. I love steak. Personally, I love skirt steak because I love like how tender it is. So I'd probably have skirt steak, grilled skirt steak, with A1 on the side because A1's my favorite. I would have french fries, so steak frites, the fancy way to say it is steak frites, but I would have skirt steak, and I would french fries, a gigantic mound of french fries, preferably homemade, but if you had to buy it from a store I'd probably get Five Guys because they're also my favorite fries. And then I would have ... I love Diet Coke, so I would have a Diet Coke on the side, I'm just saying it, no shame. And I love Dairy Queen ice cream, I love a Dairy Queen soft serve with rainbow sprinkles, it's my favorite, favorite. But then also I'd probably eat an entire Texas sheet cake.

                                                      So as long as I could have two desserts in this scenario, steak frites, and Dairy Queen and Texas sheet cake. That's what I would do.

Suzy Chase:                  Okay. I have to tell you-

Joanna Saltz:                  That's hard.

Suzy Chase:                  I'm doing the last 90 days challenge, where you have to give up something for the last 90 days of the year. And I gave up Diet Dr. Pepper, and I am dying.

Joanna Saltz:                  No. No, no. No. No, I can't do it. I honestly can't do it.

Suzy Chase:                  I'm 30 days in and I am dying.

Joanna Saltz:                  I am dying for you, I don't even know how you're doing it.

Suzy Chase:                  I'm drinking coffee, which is gross.

Joanna Saltz:                  No. No, I love coffee too, but I'm also like ... I don't know sometimes that's like ... I just need it to get me through. But I mean, it's terrible, my husband gets so mad at me. We have such a La Croix addiction at the Delish kitchen. We go through it so quickly, and so for a while I was really trying to wean myself off, but I just got right back on the wagon. Like, I'm like no, I miss it too much. So I commend you, my friends, I don't know how you're doing it-

Suzy Chase:                  It's rough.

Joanna Saltz:                  But I'm very, very impressed.

Suzy Chase:                  Well I'm 30 days today, so ...

Joanna Saltz:                  No, that's good. Keep it going, stay strong.

Suzy Chase:                  I feel like a crack addict or something.

Joanna Saltz:                  Stay strong.

Suzy Chase:                  I'm like dreaming about it.

Joanna Saltz:                  Well just think about how good it's going to ... it's going to taste so good when you get back on.

Suzy Chase:                  Exactly. Where can we find Delish on the web and social media?

Joanna Saltz:                  You come to Delish.com, crazy new stuff there every day. We're developing like close to 200 new recipes a month, so it's a machine, you literally every day you come back you'll see something new and fun. You can find us on Instagram at @Delish, and on Facebook, same thing, @Delish. And we're also like really big into Instagram stores, we do great polls there so you can engage with us. And you can find our amazing book in bookstores, and you can find our amazing bookazine on news stands. Certainly if you ever see any of those things out in the wild, send us pictures, we love to sort of re-gram, repost what our audience is making, we love that communal spirit. So, and it doesn't even have to look beautiful. Send it how you make it. We give props to literally everyone who gets in there and tries.

Suzy Chase:                  I mean, don't we all want to eat like every day is the weekend? Thank you so much Joanna for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.

Joanna Saltz:                  Thank you.

Suzy Chase:                  Follow me on Instagram @CookerybytheBook, Twitter is IAmSuzyChase, and download your Kitchen Mix Tapes, music to cook by on Spotify at Cookery by the Book. And as always, subscribe in Apple podcasts.

Season
Big Flavors, Beautiful Food

By Nik Sharma

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.

Nik Sharma:                  Hi, I'm Nick Sharma and my new book is out, it's called Seasoned: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food.

Suzy Chase:                  Whenever I do research on a cookbook, I don't read any of the existing interviews, because I want my content to be organic, and with you, it was so tough, because you've been everywhere on social media and the web. Were you prepared for this onslaught of publicity and notoriety?

Nik Sharma:                  Not really, but I'm happy to see such a positive reception, and everyone's been so warm and forthcoming about the book. It's amazing, especially for a first time author. You never know what you're walking into, and this has been the most amazing experience, one that I'm extremely grateful for, and also one that I could have never imagined.

Suzy Chase:                  So I'm gonna read the very first entry on your blog, A Brown Table. Here we go.

Nik Sharma:                  Okay.

Suzy Chase:                  Beginnings, July 20th, 2011.

                                    "In the next few weeks, I plan to get a bit creative and sift through my cookbooks to see what I can come up with. Perhaps I will try to be adventurous and bake some bread, one of my biggest fears, or try my hand at infusing rustic recipes with exotic seasonings. Here's to my future on cooking, writing, and eating, and telling you all about it."

                                    Share with me what you're thinking after I read that.

Nik Sharma:                  Oh God. What did I do? Why did I do it? I didn't know what I was getting into, you can tell from the tone of that paragraph. I think it was a couple of lines, maybe. I had no idea what I was getting into, I had no idea what to expect, and I really did not know how to make bread back then, I used to struggle, but yeah, it's been a long time, it's been a couple of years now.

Suzy Chase:                  In addition to being a cookbook, Season is also an immigrant story, a love story told through food, my favorite kind of cookbooks. This is where I learn the most about food and culture. When you started thinking about this cookbook, were you thinking about educating people through your stories?

Nik Sharma:                  I wanted to write about something that was different. I felt that people had already written quite a bit about traditional Indian food, and food that was American, so there was really nothing new that I would be contributing to the equation. And I didn't see a point then in my writing anything.

                                    The second thing was also about, can I talk about food from an immigrant's perspective, 'cause I had lived in India at this point, but I was in America, and experiencing food and flavors that were new to me, and I kind of always have loved the pursuit of flavor more than anything, and that is really something that I was passionate about and wanted to write about, and I figured let me try this in a blog format and see how it goes.

Suzy Chase:                  So why didn't you wanna write a traditional Indian cookbook?

Nik Sharma:                  Well, the thing was, it's already been done. And, well, a lot of mainstream Indian food has already been written about, so there was nothing new that I would be contributing to the equation, right? People have written quite a bit about north Indian food, which is what is served predominantly at restaurants. You will se a little bit from a few of the regions, so when I come to write about that, you an already get that information elsewhere, what am I trying to share with you? That's nothing new.

                                    So instead I focused on, and I still do this, I focused on regions of India that people probably haven't heard about, so like, for example, my mom comes from the west coast of India, from a Portuguese colony called [inaudible 00:03:59], my family does, and I started to write about that food, because that is something that I knew wasn't being cooked in the mainstream restaurants in Indian food. You wouldn't see that in food media, so I said, "Let me talk about the stuff that I know that I think people should really pay attention to. Hopefully they will," so I started writing about that.

                                    And then the second thing was, I also realized, as an immigrant, even though I grew up in India, I was not actually cooking anything traditional. I was not making dahl every week, I was not making furuta or roti every week, so I said, "Let me talk about the food that I'm cooking at home, because that is the food that I'm actually connecting with my experiences living in India and living in America."

Suzy Chase:                  I was at a panel discussion a few weeks ago with Ruth Reichl, and one of the panel members brought up the fact that cookbooks and food writing used to be exclusively the domain for the wealthy white wife. John Birdsall wrote in the foreword of your book that your blog posts challenged biased assumptions about who food belongs to. Talk a bit about that.

Nik Sharma:                  So, it's true. I feel it's true that a lot of ... I mean, if you look predominantly and you just take a quick poll of the writers that are out there, they're all predominantly white, and a lot of them are women, and I don't read a lot of chef cookbooks as much, so I can't really speak for that, and I'm sure that a lot of them are just white male driven, but it is true, and even when I was in blogging, if you look at the early years of blogging, a large part of it is pretty much a white driven population of writers.

                                    And that's fine, but there should be space available and made for writers who don't sound and look like them. I had no idea what I was getting into, I didn't have a real game plan, I just wanted to talk about food that I was really excited about and I felt people might be interested, maybe. You know, maybe there was a 1% chance someone would be interested in what I was writing about. And so that's what I decided to write about, and it connected with people.

                                    But there was also the thing with food media, where you look at a lot of the photographs, for example, a lot of them are pretty much driven to an audience that is white, and I had no option, when I started to photograph, I decided to photograph myself, so there was no other option for me to hire a model to shoot, to pose in my photos, I just rented what I had, so I didn't think twice about it. But I think it's true that there should be space made available for people who are from these countries, so that they should also write about their food, because their perspectives are just so different, and that's what makes the food world richer as a community.

Suzy Chase:                  I'm cracking up, because you just said that you thought there was a 1% chance that people would be interested in your writing.

                                    Oh my God.

Nik Sharma:                  I had no idea.

Suzy Chase:                  You were so off.

Nik Sharma:                  Because you don't know what you're getting into, and I had no professional training in anything, so I felt like ... I mean, I still feel like I'm the underdog when I walk into a room, because I don't ... I'm pretty honest about this, I have no formal training, I did work in a pastry, I was pastry cook for a while, but a lot of what I know now is just through reading or trial and error, and I have to work hard at it, 'cause I have no professional training, so I need to work harder, read more, learn more so I can have a decent conversation about food.

Suzy Chase:                  What is asafetida? Did I say it right?

Nik Sharma:                  Yes, you did. Asafetida is also called hing. It's obtained from the resin of a plant, and it's used in Indian cooking to mimic the smell of onions and garlic. Traditionally, you would see it only in Hindu cooking, so the Hindu communities in India, you will see this ingredient predominantly used, and also, what happened back in the day, and this is kind of the dark history of asafetida, where widows, women who had lost their husbands would have to give up eating onion and garlic, because those ingredients were considered to be aphrodisiacs in a way, because they raise the body temperature, and so a widow is not allowed to have it in their parts in the Hindu community, and so, like my grandmother, when she lost my grandfather on my dad's side of the family, she's Hindu, she couldn't use onions or garlic in her cooking, so she would use asafetida to mimic that taste and smell.

Suzy Chase:                  Do you use it in your cooking?

Nik Sharma:                  Not as much, because I use onions and garlic. I mean, there's no point. I don't see the point of it, it's a substitute, right, and there's no point in adding them together with onions an garlic, I've tried that, I really never notice the difference, so I don't. Unless I'm running low, then maybe I will add it. And I don't add it in everything, 'cause honestly it's such a specific ingredient that it doesn't work well in other dishes. It works well in very few Indian dishes.

Suzy Chase:                  So within a few months of arriving in America, you decided to come out to your family and friends. Why did you pick that particular time, and how was it received by your family back home, and your friends in Cincinnati?

Nik Sharma:                  So, I knew that I was gay, which is why I moved to America, I wanted a safe place to be surrounded by hopefully a community, I had no idea what I was moving into, and I kind of had this assumption that moving to the west would make me feel safe, and I was on an academic campus, so when you're in academia, people are much more liberal and much more accepting, so I came out to a professor and to a really close friend at first, I knew my professor was gay, and my friend was straight, but I came out to them, and then with their support, I decided to go public with it. I came out to my parents, my dad was really cool, my mom initially had a hard time, because she comes from a Roman Catholic family, so it was a little bit of a struggle for her initially, but we worked it out, and within a couple of weeks, we were fine.

                                    So I had a very fortunate experience coming out. In Cincinnati, I had a large group of friends who were ... So I was on the medical campus, and they had a student's association for gay students and queer students, and students who were questioning their sexuality in the medical campus, so we could kind of all support each other. There were professors who were physicians and scientists, so it was a large group of people who would meet maybe once a month, and kind of support each other, which was amazing.

                                    And then through them I learned of organizations that existed that supported also gay students and queer students in general in their academic pursuits.

Suzy Chase:                  Talk a little bit about what you've learned from your husband Michael and his family's southern food influences.

Nik Sharma:                  Well, he loves to eat, Michael really loves to eat. He likes meat and potatoes, let's see ... Meat and potatoes, he's not so much into fish as I am, I like seafood a lot, but he's from the south. His family comes from a farm right on the border of Virginia and North Carolina in Roanoke, and his family, they cook a lot of southern food, in fact a lot of the southern food ideas or the concepts that I've got are through his mom, having cooked with her. Whenever we visit they do biscuits, they do cobblers. His mother cans a lot, so a lot of my love for canning has actually come through canning with her and talking about it with her. They grow a lot of stuff on their farm, too, so I've known my love for gardening also, I feel has been triggered by her.

                                    And, you learn so much when you have that family connection, it's very different where it's just whipping up plates when you have people that you become friends with or are family, living in a place and have been there for a while, you learn a lot more about their [inaudible 00:12:07], and so that's been a really amazing gift, just to have that knowledge available that I can tap into and ask them for help when it comes to cooking, and I love it, I absolutely love it.

Suzy Chase:                  What is the family's favorite thing that you make?

Nik Sharma:                  Definitely ice creams, when I come, there is always a request for ice cream, which is fantastic, 'cause that's the easiest thing to put together. The other thing that they've really become fond of is this rice and layered meat dish that I make, it's Indian, it's called byriani, I don't know if you're familiar with it.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah.

Nik Sharma:                  But it's ... Okay, so basically what I do is I get beef or chicken, they don't like goat, so I don't cook lamb or goat for them, so what I do is I season the meat with [inaudible 00:12:51] and a bunch of spices and let it sit overnight, and then the next day fry potatoes, cook the rice separately, and then layer everything and give it a good steam. And they love it, that's one of their favorite things that I make for them. Also, it's a one pot dish, so with a large family, it's the easiest thing to do.

Suzy Chase:                  As with your blog, you did all the photography for this cookbook, and I read-

Nik Sharma:                  I did.

Suzy Chase:                  Your dad was a commercial photographer.

Nik Sharma:                  Correct.

Suzy Chase:                  Did he foster your love of photography?

Nik Sharma:                  Absolutely not. My dad was really strict-

Suzy Chase:                  Really?

Nik Sharma:                  Yeah, so my dad was really strict on me when we were growing up, we were never allowed to touch his camera equipment, and I actually hated the cameras, because they would take up so much space in the house when he brought his equipment home, and they would always be in the way. So there was no desire for me to learn photography, and he was busy with his work, so I never had a chance to learn anything from him. It was only until I started blog when I was in America that I picked up the camera for the blog, and that's what kind of pushed me into it. I guess it might be a bit genetic, I don't know, but yeah, everyone's really surprised when I say that.

Suzy Chase:                  That's so funny. Do you talk about photography with him.

Nik Sharma:                  Yeah. A little bit. Not too much, because my father's super critical, and he is sometimes, I go through my photos and says, "Okay, you need to fix this, you need to fix this," and it's fine sometimes, but sometimes it gets overwhelming, so I kind of just stay out of it a little bit, which is a much safer zone for me to be in.

Suzy Chase:                  Well thank God you moved. We all have to get away from our father. Anyway, I digress.

                                    How do Indian cooks approach seasoning?

Nik Sharma:                  So, one of the things that I noticed when I moved to America was that in India, the way cooks, even home cooks, approach seasoning, is so different from the way it's done in the west. In the west, we're always looking at a single ingredient, and ingredient driven or seasonal focus, typically, and we're always looking to amplify the flavor of that ingredient complimenting, but if you look to Asia in general, and India also, we are looking not to improve a single flavor of an ingredient.

                                    We want the dish to taste really good, but we're also looking for strong contrasting flavors, things that explode in your mouth, they usually don't make sense on paper, but when they come together in a dish, it works really well, and so I started paying attention to that more from a scientific perspective, initially watching how if something is ... Like, if an ingredient is cool, chefs will usually add a cool ingredient, so if it's milky, maybe cardamom or vanilla, and in India, if you look at it, you'll see other things being added in. Like you will see ghee being added in, in addition to cardamom, I'm just referring to milk in this example. If you're looking at meat, you will see a lot of different spices, you'll see chilies, you'll see cinnamon, you'll see nutmeg, you'll see turmeric, all these things that really don't make sense.

                                    And then when you look at western food, it's very single ingredient focused, and I was fascinated by this. It was beautiful just to see how over time and evolution, people had developed their own cuisine based on their likes and dislikes, and it was fascinating.

Suzy Chase:                  Speaking of contrasting flavors, on Sunday night I made your recipes for steak with orange peel and coriander on page 171, and your red onions with coriander on 274. So describe the spice combination that goes on that steak.

Nik Sharma:                  One of the things I love about coriander is that it reminds me of citrus, in a very fragrant, but much milder and very different way. It's got a nuttieness to it and when you toast it, or you crack coriander seeds, you can get that aroma, and it goes so well with red meet. You can do this with lamb, too. I ... Season the steak with a bit of cracked coriander, which also adds a little bit of texture to the steak when you're slicing the steak and eating it, it gives a little bit of crunchiness, I like that with spices. And then the orange peel that you use in the steak gives it that ... It bumps up that citrus aroma, but it makes it gentle, because it's also being heated, and it permeates the steak. I love that.

Suzy Chase:                  I have never had citrus on a steak before, it was amazing.

Nik Sharma:                  Uh huh (affirmative), and it's better than using fresh, because it's dried, if you use fresh it kind of gets destroyed really fast. If you use dried citrus peel, it holds longer, it acts better when it's on the steak at that high temperature. It's so beautiful.

                                    And then the red onions, the pickled red onions, I feel like a steak, you don't need too much to go with it, and the orange ... Sorry, the pickled red onions, they're just a super way to add that bright note of acidity, which goes so well with every bite.

Suzy Chase:                  Totally. Those pickled onions were to die for, and they were so easy.

Nik Sharma:                  And it's quick.

Suzy Chase:                  So quick, two hours, bing, bang, boom.

Nik Sharma:                  Yeah.

Suzy Chase:                  What's your mother's favorite cookbook?

Nik Sharma:                  I don't think she has a cookbook.

Suzy Chase:                  Really?

Nik Sharma:                  My mom hates to cook. Which is why I ... My mom hates to cook, which is probably why ... I have a lot of family, I guess a lot of family things coming out, but my mom hates to cook, which is why I think I actually started to cook as a child, and any cookbook that she owned are all with me now. She asked"Do you really want these?" I said, Yeah, I'm gonna take all of them," and she said, "Okay, fine."

Suzy Chase:                  That was easy.

Nik Sharma:                  Yeah.

Suzy Chase:                  A couple weeks ago you were mentioned in your home newspaper in Bombay, how did that feel?

Nik Sharma:                  That was really cool. I did not expect a response in India about the book, but it was so wonderful that I knew when my mom sent me a clipping, she sent me a newspaper clipping and said, "Look what we saw in our local newspaper," and I think for her to see that, and my parents to see that gave them a sense of pride, which is really amazing, because they don't live here, so it's one thing for like, to get acknowledged here, but it's another thing for them to see their son in a newspaper that they've been reading for so many years of their lives.

Suzy Chase:                  So growing up in the Midwest, my mom only made potatoes, and never grain, so it's super intimidating to me. What is the key to making grains stand out?

Nik Sharma:                  I think with any grain first of all, it's really important to understand how it tastes without anything else, what the texture is like, because you can have something as simple as rice, but there are so many different kinds of rice, from basmati to wild rice, each of them with such different texture profiles, some are even stronger in aroma, like basmati has a really strong aroma, and then you've got jasmine rice, which has a beautiful fragrance, too, and so I think learning how those things taste, and that gives you a really good end point, and then build on that.

                                    So what I do is that's how I always start with even seasonings, I taste them raw, or cooked, to see how they actually feel before actually using them in an entire dish. So I do that with grains, and one of the things to do with grains, first of all, if you're using rice in this case, make a pilaf, use a scented oil, or a fat, like ewe, or a good olive oil, you could use such oil, and then add aromatic things, like onions, garlic, dried herbs, that's always easy to find. You could also have fresh herbs, for a little bit of brightness add a little bit of acid in the form of a lime or a lemon, fold that in really well, and grains can be so much more exciting.

                                    I think you could also do something fun, like if you had left over nuts, I always have a bunch of nuts, like two tablespoons, one tablespoon, throw those into your rice or your pilaf, or your quinoa. Fry them in a little bit of oil, or even a little bit of dried fruit. It just adds so much depth to the dish.

Suzy Chase:                  So I can't end this interview without hearing about your darling new kitten that you scooped up out of your backyard.

Nik Sharma:                  He is adorable, but he's also got so much energy right now, he is across the trainer that my other two pets never had. My two year old cat, exhausted, my eight year old dog is exhausted from both of them running around, and right now in the morning, I woke up at 4:00 AM today, and they were all awake, they ate, the other two are still sleeping, the younger one is still running around. Too much energy for them.

Suzy Chase:                  He'll calm down.

Nik Sharma:                  I kind of enjoy this phase, though, 'cause he's keeping ... He's letting them sleep, and they used to be really annoying at one point, waking me up at five to eat, it's amazing to see what the kind of magic this little one has brought.

Suzy Chase:                  So, now to my segment called My Last Meal, what would you have for your last supper.

Nik Sharma:                  Ice cream. I would do a good luck tart lemon, or a passion fruit.

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

Nik Sharma:                  You can find me on my blog, my site's called www.abrowntable.com, and you can also find me on Instagram or on Twitter, and the handle is A Brown Table.

Suzy Chase:                  Joe Yonan of the Washington Post called you an important new voice. Yours is the story of a gay immigrant told through food, and we're so thankful you told your story, thanks so much for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.

Nik Sharma:                  Thank you for having me on today.

Suzy Chase:                  Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, and while you're there, please take a moment to rate and review Cookery by the Book. You can also follow me on Instagram at Cookery by the Book. Twitter is I am Suzy Chase, and download your Kitchen Mix Tapes, music to cook by, on Spotify at Cookery by the Book.

                                    Thanks for listening.

Everyday Dorie
The Way I Cook

By Dorie Greenspan

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.

Dorie Greenspan:                  Hi, I'm Dorie Greenspan and my latest cookbook is Everyday Dorie: The Way I Cook.

Suzy Chase:                  It's so nice to chat with you again. Last time we talked it was about Dorie's Cookies. Now Everyday Dorie is similar to Around My French Table but not French. Talk a little bit about that.

Dorie Greenspan:                  It's so not French, Suzy. In fact, so many ... I realized as I was looking at the recipes that I'd collected for this book that my cooking has really changed over the years. So Around My French Table was published in 2010. So, that's eight years ago. And over that time, I've been living more in Connecticut. I still live part-time in Paris. I still live part-time in New York City. But I'm really spending a lot more cooking time in Connecticut where I am so far away from a supermarket. And I don't have ... There's one specialty store but it's kind of a trek. And so, I realized that my cooking has become simpler and way more practical, that I'm really depending on all those great condiments that I got from the supermarket that are sitting on the refrigerator door and the stuff that I've got in my pantry. So this is truly, when I say everyday cooking, this is everyday cooking.

Suzy Chase:                  Reading cookbooks makes me happy. Writing cookbooks makes you happy. What about writing cookbooks makes you happy?

Dorie Greenspan:                  Suzy, everything. I love creating new recipes. My husband says that if my editor didn't say, "Okay, time's up, you've got to turn them in," I would just be constantly working on tweaking recipes. I love creating recipes. I love writing them. When I'm writing them, I'm thinking about the person who's going to be in the kitchen making them. And I like to think of writing recipes as a conversation that I'm having with a home cook. And that's a pleasure for me. And I love sharing what I've done. I love knowing that what I've worked on will be made by someone else and that person will share the food at his or her table. Every step of the process of writing a cookbook has its own kind of pleasure.

Suzy Chase:                  Talk about how you sneak in a little surprise in everything you make.

Dorie Greenspan:                  I love, I love when a dish has something unexpected especially when you think you know the dish. So for instance, meatballs and spaghetti. It took me years to make meatballs and spaghetti because every time I would make the meatballs, my husband would say his mother's were better.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh no.

Dorie Greenspan:                  We've all been through that, I think. But the truth is, I didn't love meatballs. Take a meatball, take a bite of it, take another bite, all the bites were the same. And so, the surprise that I snuck into the meatballs, walnuts and oats. So the oats kind of make the meatballs a little fluffier. They make some space in the meatballs. And the walnuts are a change in texture. And so, now when you have this meatball, every bite is a little different.

                                                      Or one of my favorite recipes in the book is called Oven Charred Tomato Stuffed Peppers. I love this dish for a million reasons. The surprise is, okay, when you look at it. It is sweet bell pepper. I cut it in half. And what you see are halves of cherry tomatoes all over the top of the peppers. And they're drizzled with oil and there are some herbs thrown on top of them and they go into a really hot oven. And they become soft and sweet and melty and charred. But what you don't see is that little surprise tucked under the tomatoes. It's a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture. And so, you taste the peppers and you taste the tomato together and you think that's what you're getting, you're getting tomato and pepper. And then, you get something more. It's a great dish. It's beautiful when it goes into the oven. It's beautiful when it comes out. You can make it ahead. You can serve it hot, warm, or room temperature. So for me, that's like my ideal. That recipe, I think, is the spirit of my new book.

Suzy Chase:                  So you split time between New York City, rural Connecticut, and Paris. Where will you be celebrating the holidays this year with your son and new daughter-in-law?

Dorie Greenspan:                  My new daughter-in-law, I'm so happy for our whole family. The joy of having a new daughter in law is having a jointly expanded family and yes, we will all be together. She's been in our family for a few years now and we celebrate holidays and birthdays together.

                                                      So we will be having Thanksgiving as we have had for the past few years at a friend's house in New York City. And we split the cooking. Well actually, everybody who comes brings something. One of her friends always brings lasagna because that's what she had for Thanksgiving growing up. And so, there's a turkey. And I always make a cranberry sauce and I'm in charge of dessert. I make a soup. And this year, I think I'm going to make the roasted butternut squash soup from the new book. And I'm going to surprise everyone because in addition to my usual pumpkin pie, I'm going to bring a dessert from the book which I just think it's going to be perfect for Thanksgiving. It's called the Triple Layer Parsnip and Cranberry Cake.

Suzy Chase:                  Perfect.

Dorie Greenspan:                  Yeah. I think it's going to be just the right ending for the dessert. It's a three layer parsnip cake. Think carrot cake but parsnips. It has cream cheese frosting and filling and it has a cranberry jam that you make in a flash. And I put it between the layers and so you get that beautiful pop of color with the really comforting cake.

Suzy Chase:                  I like the trend in cookbooks where if you're a more seasoned cook, you can swap items in a recipe. And you've constructed all of your recipes so ingredients can be swapped. Give me an idea of what you would swap in, let's say, your Warm Squid Salad.

Dorie Greenspan:                  Oh, I love that salad. That's a really simple salad and squid cooks in a minute so it's a great spur of the moment salad. But you might not have squid at the spur of the moment. So, that's a salad that could easily take shrimp instead. I always keep some shrimp frozen at home. You could also use the base in the salad for some leftover chicken if you had it in the refrigerator. So I like, as you said, when you can play around with a recipe, when you can make your own choices, when you can do at home what I do at home which is look at what I've got and find a place for it. As I said, this book is truly my most practical cookbook.

Suzy Chase:                  You have a book you've talked about called L'Art de Couper le Fromage, The Art of Cutting Cheese. What is the proper way to cut brie and around cheese like Camembert?

Dorie Greenspan:                  That book was given to me when we first moved to ... Actually, I bought it when we first moved to Paris about 20 years ago because I realized that I wasn't cutting a ... A cheeseboard would be passed around at a friend's home for dinner and I was looking left and right to see how people were cutting their cheese because I knew that I didn't know that rules.

                                                      If you've got the whole cheese that's round, then you want to cut a pie shaped wedge out of it. If it's being served as a wedge, never, never, never cut off the nose. Don't cut off that tip. You want to cut a slice from the long end of the triangle. And what you're really aiming for is to cut cheese so that the last slice of whatever cheese it is looks like a little mini version of what the whole cheese was. It's not always easy. And that's why I bought the book. There are rules for pyramid shaped cheeses and for square cheeses. But with a brie or a Camembert, the reason you don't cut the tip off is, well, it doesn't look so pretty afterward, but the tip is the best part of the cheese.

Suzy Chase:                  I know.

Dorie Greenspan:                  Right? So if you cut it off, you're considered selfish.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh no.

Dorie Greenspan:                  So you want to cut the cheese so that everyone gets a bit of that tip.

Suzy Chase:                  The pressure.

Dorie Greenspan:                  I know. That's why I bought the book.

Suzy Chase:                  I think we all need that book. And then, I heard that it's impolite to go back for seconds.

Dorie Greenspan:                  The way a French dinner party works is you compliment the host or hostess who's cooked the meal by complimenting the food that he or she has made and you are allowed to ask for seconds for everything that's homemade. But the cheese was not made by your host and so you get to go around once. You may take as many pieces of cheese as you want and as much cheese as you want, you just aren't supposed to take seconds.

Suzy Chase:                  Okay, I'm going to write all this down.

Dorie Greenspan:                  Call me if you need help.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh gosh, I will. I'll call you tomorrow. So I heard you say, "Had I been born French, I wouldn't have learned to bake." Talk a little bit about that.

Dorie Greenspan:                  You know, I'm convinced of that. It's not ... The way we bake at home in America is so different from the way French people bake at home. French people rarely bake at home. In part, it's because there are so many pastries available and there's so many pastry shops that are ... I think it's like a zoning regulation that every other street has to have a pastry shop. And so, there's pastry everywhere. And there isn't, for a long time, ovens weren't reliable. I mean, my first apartment in Paris was an adorable apartment and it didn't have an oven because it was in a building that was so old that the electricity and gas lines ... well, there were no gas lines ... couldn't support everyone having an oven. And this is still true in some places in Paris. So baking wasn't the pastime that it is in America.

                                                      Also, French people do bake but they bake very simple things. The most popular homemade dessert is a yogurt cake and that's made ... Almost every French person can make a yogurt cake and can recite the recipe from memory because it's based on the size of the yogurt container. I don't know it by heart but it's like one container of yogurt, two yogurt containers of oil, three yogurt containers of flour. It's a very simple, incredibly delicious cake. But the tradition of home baking is not as strong in France as it is here.

Suzy Chase:                  Julia Child once said to you, "We're so lucky because we work in food and that means for the rest of our lives, we'll be learning something new." What did you learn while putting this cookbook together?

Dorie Greenspan:                  Well, as I said, I learned something about myself and the way my cooking has changed. And I learned, Julia was so smart. And I learned about boosting flavors. I learned about getting the most out of each ingredient, that you don't need a long, long list of ingredients to make a dish flavorful. You need the right ingredients. You need the right combination of ingredient. I learned a lot about flavor working on this book.

Suzy Chase:                  Let's say I'm coming to your house in Paris. What do I get when I arrive?

Dorie Greenspan:                  If you come to my house in Paris, what you get when you arrive is the same thing you get if you come to my house in New York or Connecticut. You get gougeres. So gougeres are cheese puffs. They're made with the same dough that you would use to make cream puffs but they're savory. They have cheese in them, a mixture of cheese. And that's become my house special. So I make the gougeres. I think last Christmas my husband said that I made about a thousand gougeres.

Suzy Chase:                  A thousand?

Dorie Greenspan:                  This year I'm going to ... Oh, I think so.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh gosh.

Dorie Greenspan:                  Because I was making a hundred at a time. This holiday, I'm going to make the little marks on the tile behind the oven and keep count of how many gougeres I make. So aside from the fact that they are so delicious, they're the perfect welcome bite because you make the dough. I scoop the dough using a little cookie scoop. Scoop out the dough and freeze the gougeres unbaked. I freeze them on a little cutting board or something. And then, when they're frozen, pop them into an airtight container. And then, whenever company arrives, you just pop them directly from the freezer into the oven and you have ... the whole house smells cheesy, warm, delicious, inviting. And you've got this hot, I was going to say warm, but they're hot, these hot cheese puffs to serve with champagne, sparkling wine, or white wine. Which is the other thing that I would give you as soon as you came through the door.

Suzy Chase:                  I love it.

Dorie Greenspan:                  So I've been making gougeres forever. And in Everyday Dorie, I actually changed my recipe. Something I hadn't done in, I don't know how long but we were talking before about having a surprise in a recipe.

Suzy Chase:                  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dorie Greenspan:                  I put a little bit of Dijon mustard into the batter. The batter is fairly neutral. It's a holder for all that good cheese that you put in it. And so, I put some mustard in to kind of perk up the flavor. And I also put some toasted nuts into the gougeres. It can be walnuts. It can be pecans. So again, you have that element of surprise. You have the custardy, cheesy puff and then every once in a while you get a little bit of the chew and snap from toasted nuts.

Suzy Chase:                  The other evening, I made your recipes for Fresh Off the Cob Corn Chowder on page 72 and your Dark Chocolate Pudding on page 294. So the chowder is a complete meal. I think all you just need to add is a crusty roll and you're set. I read your Playing Around box on that recipe because I was out of bacon. So, I used shrimp instead.

Dorie Greenspan:                  Someone once said that my Playing Around box just gives people permission to play around, to make changed in the recipe. And that's what I really hope that people will do. If you find a recipe you like, I hope you'll make it your own. Shrimp is a great addition to this.

                                                      So the chowder is ... it has potatoes because chowder. It has corn. And you're actually taking the corn off the cob but you're using the cob to flavor the soup. And one of the things that ... Well, I couldn't stop playing around with this because I was thinking you could add a little cream or half and half to it. Or you don't have to. You could drizzle a little oil over the top, like chili oil just to add some pop to what is a really soothing, comforting dish. Pesto would be good with the chowder. Grated Parmesan would be good. Ham instead of bacon. I mean, just shrimp or lobster instead of or in addition to any of the ingredients. My mind just keeps going after I've created a recipe and I think that about all the possibilities. And so, I provide the Playing Around box in the hope that it will get you thinking and obviously, Suzy, it did.

Suzy Chase:                  It sure did. So the Dark Chocolate Pudding made me a little nervous because the recipe said to whisk energetically. And the liquid starts out so watery. So you really have to have faith that if you energetically whisk, it's going to firm up into a pudding and it did.

Dorie Greenspan:                  I was just waiting for the, "And it did."

Suzy Chase:                  It totally did. But I was just like I've got to be energetic.

Dorie Greenspan:                  Well, you know, when I'm writing the recipes and working on them, I work on them after I've developed them and I've written them, they get sent off to Mary Dodd, my recipe tester, and she works on them and we go back and forth. But I'm trying to, as I said, think about the home cook, think about ... I try to be with the cook cooking the recipe but of course, I won't physically be there. So I try to give you as many keys to success as possible. And so, the word energetically is there so that you'll pay attention and do that.

Suzy Chase:                  I did. And it said energetic whisking for about five minutes or so. So I was like here we go.

Dorie Greenspan:                  Did it say it will be your workout for the day?

Suzy Chase:                  No. No, you need to add that in the next printing of the book. No, it was incredible and it definitely thickened up as pudding should and it was so good.

Dorie Greenspan:                  Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad. I love that pudding.

Suzy Chase:                  I, like you, feel like pudding is a very American thing. What do your French friends think of this pudding?

Dorie Greenspan:                  To them, they think it's French. If I said this is American chocolate pudding, they would say oh, no. This is just like our creme au chocolat or it's a little bit or very much like crème patisserie, like pastry cream. They would recognize this pudding immediately and take it as their own.

Suzy Chase:                  Now to my segment called My Last Meal. If you had to place an order for your last supper on earth, what would it be?

Dorie Greenspan:                  I don't have to have a typical meal. And while I always told Joshua, our son, that he had to eat his meal before he got dessert. This is my last meal so I don't have to do that. I would have as much ice cream sundae as I wanted. That's what I would have. With hot fudge, with toasted nuts, with vanilla ice cream, with coffee ice cream, with chocolate ice cream. Maybe with some mint chocolate chip. I could have anything, right?

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

Dorie Greenspan:                  I am @doriegreenspan, D-O-R-I-E Greenspan. On Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram. And my website is doriegreenspan.com.

Suzy Chase:                  It's always a pleasure chatting with you and I'm so excited to see you tonight at the 92nd Street Y.

Dorie Greenspan:                  Oh good. Good, good, good, good, good. Thank you, Suzy.

Suzy Chase:                  Thank you for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.

                                                      Follow me on Instagram at Cookery by the Book. Twitter is @IAmSuzyChase and download your kitchen mixed tapes, music to cook by, on Spotify on Cookery by the Book and as always, subscribe at Apple Podcasts.

Israeli Soul: Easy, Essential, Delicious

By Michael Solomonov & Steven Cook

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.

Mike Solomonov:                  My name is Mike Solomonov, and I'm the co-owner and chef at Zahav restaurant. Steven Cook, my partner and I wrote Israeli Soul, the New Cookbook.

Suzy Chase:                  First off, congratulations. Israeli Soul was named one of the best cookbooks for Fall 2018, by New York Times Cooking. When you were researching this cookbook, did you really have 82 meals in eight days?

Mike Solomonov:                  A lot of bites. A lot of inspiration, but I mean I think that that's kind of how it goes when you're over there. Whenever I travel to Israel, that's usually what it is. My day is sort of dictated by the places I go and eat, you know?

Suzy Chase:                  How was that organized? Did you think about it when you got up that morning, or did you just get up and start walking?

Mike Solomonov:                  I'm away over there, because we were bringing photographer, producer, so on and so forth, we had to be a little bit more diligent about it, but a lot of it was like we have to go to these few places, we have to go to these new cities and not plan the rest of the trip around using those guidelines as work parameters for the entire trip.

Suzy Chase:                  As someone who basically grew up in Pittsburgh, describe exploring Israel through the lens of a chef.

Mike Solomonov:                  Well, I think that that was sort of the seed of the catalyst for opening Zahav, getting into Israeli food, or Israeli culture, by sort of food proxy. I think that when you ... There's something familiar enough about Israel, and obviously over the years became deeply personal, but going over there and experiencing what dining is, is fascinating. At the time that Zahav came to fruition, it was really unlike anything that was happening here. It was so many different cultures, so many different kinds of food represented on one table. I mean like figuratively, but also literally on one table. Through the lens of a diner, through the lens of a partially American or Europe classically trained chef, it's fascinating and life changing, and I thought that the more of that spirit, or that soul that we could bring back to the states, to Philly, to our community, the more excited people would get.

Suzy Chase:                  I just want to thank you for adding in substitution ideas in the cookbook. So often, I get bummed because it's hard to find a random spice, or ingredient, and then I give up, so this was great.

Mike Solomonov:                  I appreciate that. I mean, that's kind of what makes it accessible, you know?

Suzy Chase:                  One thing that surprised me about your goldi falafel recipe was it called for a carrot. Is carrot usually in falafel?

Mike Solomonov:                  I don't think so.

Suzy Chase:                  Because I've never detected carrots. What does the carrot do for the goldi falafel?

Mike Solomonov:                  Well, carrot is sweet, carrot is also bright and [inaudible 00:03:25] carrot hue, so it's got tumeric notes to it as well, so it goes really well with things like tumeric, it's delicious, it's really sweet, and it's adding a vegetable to tenderize the dried chickpeas.

Suzy Chase:                  What in your opinion is the most important Israeli dish?

Mike Solomonov:                  Most important Israeli dish would probably be sabich. It's fried eggplant, with tahini, hard boiled eggs, amba, and usually cabbage, cucumber, tomato, or some variation on those fresh chopped salads inside of a pita.

Suzy Chase:                  What's amba?

Mike Solomonov:                  Amba is a mango pickle that is related to Indian mango pickle, and it's under ripe mangos, fenugreek, sometimes mustard, garlic, that and it's sort of cured, fermented and canned into a paste.

Suzy Chase:                  Talk to me about Drew's Mountain Bread. This is a very flat bread, but is it crunchy? Or more soft like a pita?

Mike Solomonov:                  It's more soft like a pita. When it comes directly off the massage or the wok in our case, it's a little bit crunchy, but as it sits it softens.  You can use it to wrap things, it makes incredible wraps. It's sort of like the soft tortilla shell. But it also is perfect for like laying down on tables and scooping up food.

Suzy Chase:                  Now onto hummus. It's interesting that, I read in the book, Israelis don't make it at home often, how come?

Mike Solomonov:                  Oh, I mean I think there's just so many different places in Israel that you can get your hummus ... You know, people do make hummus at home, but there's just so many good places, and it requires tons of chickpeas, sometimes equipment, you know?

Suzy Chase:                  You have so many hummus toppings, what is your favorite way out of the cookbook, to top hummus?

Mike Solomonov:                  I'm sort of into the brussel sprout thing right now for the hummus. But, there's ... To me, hot chickpeas with a little bit of loose tahini inside of the hummus tahini is kind of the best way to eat it.

Suzy Chase:                  Why is store bought hummus so different than homemade hummus? It doesn't even taste the same.

Mike Solomonov:                  I think that the store bought hummus usually has preservatives, like citric acid, which affect the flavor negatively. We like to serve hummus fresh, warm, very ... A little bit of lemon, but not ... pickled or preserved, you know? I think that when you have to ... there's things like fermentation, that gloats of acrid garlic flavor that you have to fight against when you're preserving or doing things store bought. So far nobody's quite figured it out yet.

Suzy Chase:                  You're right, it does taste acrid.

Mike Solomonov:                  I've scrutinized a lot of hummus in my day.

Suzy Chase:                  I be- ... Really?

Mike Solomonov:                  Uh-huh.  Yes.

Suzy Chase:                  Half of your family is from Bulgaria. Do you incorporate any of that cuisine into this cookbook?

Mike Solomonov:                  Well, Bulgaria and Ottoman or Balkan ... Balkan cuisine conquered by the Ottomans are a really big thing, so yeah, in many iterations it comes across like Bulgarian kabobs, and the bourekas, those things are very, very important to us. And those are Balkan and Bulgarian origins.

Suzy Chase:                  I know with Zahav and Federal Donuts cookbooks, you thought the digital cookbook could be the thing. Talk about your views on the physical versus digital cookbook.

Mike Solomonov:                  You know, I think that holding something in your hands and sharing it, and appreciating the luster of the pages and specifically Israeli Soul, I think the topography really just pops. It feels like three dimensional real. You want to scoop the food out with your hands, you know?

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah, this cookbook is so stunning, you could just sit it out as a coffee table book.

Mike Solomonov:                  That, too. I mean, I think it minimum, right?

Suzy Chase:                  What did Gil Marks and Joe Nathan teach you?

Mike Solomonov:                  I mean, that's a hard thing to say. Joe Nathan continues to teach me on a daily or weekly basis. I would say she is the leading expert in Jewish food, and in more of an anthropological way a sort of commentary on culture, and she is a walking encyclopedia. Her spirit is about inquiring, and about taking things apart, and about celebrating stories and culture, and family and recipes and food. Gil Marks was an incredible author and obviously well, well researched, and his books, especially the Encyclopedia of Jewish Cooking has had a huge impact on our lives.

Suzy Chase:                  Owning a restaurant group is impossible to navigate by yourself, and Steve Cook is your long-time business partner.

Mike Solomonov:                  Yes.

Suzy Chase:                  In terms of writing cookbooks, do your roles break down the same way as they do for your hospitality group?

Mike Solomonov:                  I do, I think that we've got ... Having a healthy partnership, and friendship, and sort of familial relationship and also maintaining sanity while growing a restaurant group from seven employees to over 200 over the course of a decade is not the easiest thing. Yeah, I'm not sure, it sort of changes every day, I think. You know, adapting, becoming resourceful, and balancing the needs of our team, and the needs of our guests, the juggling act that we do all the time, you know?

Suzy Chase:                  I was so bummed to see that Dizengoff closed at Chelsea Market, which is up the street from me. Are you going to open up another one in the city? Or no?

Mike Solomonov:                  I don't know. As of right now, we've got so much going on with Philly. We've got ... You know with the book coming out, we've got a couple new projects that we are working on, and I think that as of right now, we're kind of hanging out solo.

Suzy Chase:                  Okay, well, we'll have to come to you.

Mike Solomonov:                  You know, it's an hour and 20 minutes by train.

Suzy Chase:                  The other night, I made your recipes for a five minute hummus, chopped salad, lamb meatballs and chicken thigh schawarma. I made the two spice mixes, which I think they were key. Talk a little bit about the spice mix section in this cookbook.

Mike Solomonov:                  Well, again, we wanted to make this really accessible, and really easy for people. I think that that ... I think demystifying and showing people that it is literally as simple as between two spices, and applying them to certain ingredients, and then very simple cooking technique creates something sort of ethereal or something that represents this magic of the sum of all parts. I think that with cooking people get scared. Certainly with spices. But with a cuisine that isn't like Italian, or American-Italian they get freaked out. Our job, our livelihood is really based on that, of demystifying and sort of celebrating it, and guiding gently through what it takes to make dishes pop and sing.

Suzy Chase:                  Now, to my segment called, "My Last Meal." If you had to place an order for your last supper, what would it be?

Mike Solomonov:                  I think it would be Dim Sum.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh, so what kind of Dim Sum?

Mike Solomonov:                  There used to be a restaurant in Philly called Lakeside Chinese Deli. They made the most incredible taro rolls, and I would eat like ten of them, you know? But, I think when I'm not cooking Israeli food, I eat tons of Asian foods, and I don't really cook any Asian food whatsoever.

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

Mike Solomonov:                  Well, in Philly, you can catch me at Zahav. Social media you can catch me on Instagram at Mike Solomonov.

Suzy Chase:                  And your website?

Mike Solomonov:                  At ZahavRestaurant.com.

Suzy Chase:                  I love how you said this cookbook is full of recipes that you can make in your house or apartment with screaming children, in not a lot of time. I cannot thank you enough for coming on Cookery By the Book podcast.

Mike Solomonov:                  Thank you so much for having me, I'm really excited that you have the book. I'm excited to be on your podcast, and I'm very excited for you to come down to Philly and visit.

Suzy Chase:                  Subscribe in Apple podcasts, and while you're there please take a moment to rate and review Cookery By the Book. You can also follow me on Instagram at cookerybythebook, Twitter is !amSuzyChase, and download your Kitchen Mix Tapes, music to cook by on Spotify at Cookery By the Book. Thanks for listening.