Cream of Caroline

John Birdsall joins the Cream to talk about his forthcoming biography of James Beard, The Man Who Ate Too Much. We talk about Beard’s take on casseroles, life in the Village, his irrepressible style and pursuit of pleasure, and how both Beard’s gay community and his closeted public persona shaped his life and work.

Writer and béchamel enthusiast Hannah Selinger and I get granular about the creamiest of mother sauces: how to make it, how you can screw it up (and fix it!), what wines to drink with it, and all the ways you can use it to make a simple, delicious dinner. We also talk about nostalgic 90s snack foods, growing up with magazine cuisine, and what and who is important to support in the food world right now.

Jarry editor and cookbook author Lukas Volger and I discuss queer food culture and representation, James Beard (aka the first daddy of American cooking), casseroles from our 80s childhoods, and his latest book, Start Simple: Eleven Everyday Ingredients for Countless Weeknight Meals.

Chef Chris Shepherd joins me to talk about how he changed his business model overnight from dine-in service to stocking HEB grocery stores with take-home meals, including king ranch casserole and wagyu burger helper. Chris is also the co-founder of Southern Smoke Foundation, an organization that’s providing direct relief to restaurant workers who have been laid off in the Covid-19 crisis. The need is great. For the last month, I’ve been working with Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation to raise funds, half of which we’re sending straight to Southern Smoke. This episode is at the intersection of some of the things I care about most: restaurants, the hospitality professionals who make them special, and, of course, casseroles.

Indulge me as I transform commercial curds into a hot and heavy cottage cheese dip, courtesy of a vintage James Beard recipe. Editor Joe Sevier joins the show to give us an education on cottage cheese brands, curd size, and other technical terms in the dairy category. And Leah Hammerman and I talk about cottage cheese’s fairest partner: nacho cheese Doritos. If you don’t know, now you know.

Right before New York City shut down this spring, Clay Williams joined me for a casserole lunch to talk about his work as a food photographer, his history with the James Beard Foundation, and Black Food Folks, a group he formed last year with Colleen Vincent to support and bring together people in the black food community.

Chef Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli of Don Angie make one of the most elegant casseroles in the land: rolled lasagna. They joined me on the Cream to talk about developing hit dishes, the casseroles of their childhoods, and their favorite restaurants in New York City. I also learned the secrets of their lasagna technique (take notes). I, in turn, serve them a veal cutlet and noodle casserole that’s unlikely to appear on the menu at Don Angie anytime soon.

Season 3 of the Cream will explore James Beard’s 1955 The Casserole Cookbook. Beard is one of the most important figures in American food history, and he believed that casseroles and their potential for creative improvisation elevated cooking to an art. This season, I’ll make Beard's old school, odd, and classic casseroles, starting with a stuffed beef heart, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

In an exclusive interview with Santa, we discuss how 2019’s biggest news stories have impacted his work, and he tells the Cream what snack-beverage combo he actually wants after shimmying down the chimney. Plus, Santa gives me the dirt on whether a few Cream regulars made the naughty or nice list this year ... and what the naughty list really means. We also preview my favorite holiday meal: Christmas breakfast with the Schramm Fam Ham Thing strata and Saucy Eggs.

Cheese, it’s what’s for dinner. Beth Ann Coulton joins the Cream from Murray’s Cheese, an 80-year-old New York institution. We talk about all things cheese: how to build a cheese board with character, the ideal casserole cheeses, what Swiss cheese really means (and how it gets its holes), and how to make two over-the-top, cheese-laden casseroles, perfect for the holiday season.