In Episode 7 of “Three Ingredients,” we talk about what separates restaurant chefs from home cooks. Is it training? Obsession? A drive for perfection? Or something less tangible? One secret: Nancy says she's never thought of herself as a chef. We ask why. 

We also have a discussion about open kitchens in restaurants, including Nancy’s experiences cooking before an audience of diners at Spago and her own mozzarella bar at Mozza, as well as the time Laurie first realized the kitchen watches back.

Plus, do you plate your takeout food or eat it right out of the container? Laurie, Nancy and Ruth have three different answers to this question.

Then Ruth and Nancy go head to head on Basque cheesecake recipes — Nancy’s favorite method from Pasjoli chef Dave Beran is a bit more complicated than Ruth’s stir-and-bake technique — and Laurie tries to keep the peace. 

Next, we turn to a classic dessert — carrot cake. It’s one of the baking favorites that Nancy tried to perfect in her new cookbook “The Cookie That Changed My Life.” Her recipe may change the way you make carrot cake. Is it revolutionary? It’s certainly not the usual recipe. Paying subscribers to “Three Ingredients” will soon get a copy of the recipe sent to their inboxes. But even if you’re just here to listen, we’ve got a delicious conversation for you.

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Ruth Reichl is author of the Substack newsletter La Briffe and 11 books, including “The Paris Novel,” which publishes in April. She was editor in chief of Gourmet Magazine and the restaurant critic of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Nancy Silverton leads the Mozza Restaurant Group and is author of nine cookbooks. Laurie Ochoa is general manager of L.A. Times Food and one of the writers of the paper’s Tasting Notes newsletter. She was executive editor of Gourmet when Ruth led the magazine, editor in chief of the L.A. Weekly and co-author of “Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery.” For more about “Three Ingredients,” see our Welcome Page.

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