From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy

Listen now | Talking to the 'New World Sourdough' author about going from blogging to cookbook, TV, and podcast projects.

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When I was considering who to bring on for these four weeks of sponsored, public interviews, I had the idea that I wanted to talk only to folks who develop recipes for public consumption to get a deeper understanding of how this work is done. Nigella Lawson was an obvious fit, because she not only creates wildly successful recipes but is simply a glorious writer’s writer; Paola Velez was perfect because she’s expertly and accessibly translating the pastry chef’s technique toolbox for a broad audience.

And, of course, I thought of the New York Times’ Melissa Clark, who’s worked on many cookbooks both on her own—including Dinner in French—and with chefs—such as a favorite of mine, Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course—and written recipes that become people’s family staples, as well as others that go viral for the wrong reasons. On top of recipe work, she’s a journalist who’s reported on sustainability in food—how does it all fit together, and how do the flavors and geography of her lifelong home of Brooklyn color it all?

We talked about all of this and more. Listen above, or read below.

This episode of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy is brought to you by Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide by Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras from Workman Publishing. Tour each continent through the book’s encyclopedic entries on some of the world’s most interesting foods and places. Did you know that in Puerto Rico, the rice that sticks to the bottom of the pot is called “pegao” and it takes years of practice to make it well? Learn about this and more in Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide, on sale now.

Alicia: Melissa, thank you so much for being here.

Melissa: Thanks for having me. [Laughter.] I'm so excited to talk to you. I really am a fan.

Alicia: Oh, well, mutual.

But can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Melissa: I grew up in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, New York. And we ate a lot of different things. My parents were big foodies. They were Julia Child disciples in the ’70s, so we ate a lot of French food. 

I mean, we took advantage of Brooklyn. Even back then, Brooklyn was just a—it was a melting pot. There was so much that you could eat. And so, we did. We ate Jewish food, ’cause I grew up Jewish. We ate bagels and lox. We ate appetizing sour pickles, Russian food from Brighton Beach. There was Brooklyn Chinatown, which was just happening and we ate—we went there all the time. And also to Manhattan Chinatown, and we got dim sum; [it] was a big part of my childhood. We went for dim sum at least once or twice a month, at eight o'clock in the morning, ’cause you had to get there early to get the good stuff. You didn't want the chicken feet to be gone. 

We ate Di Fara’s pizza. A lot of Italian food also was part of my upbringing. My mother grew up on a block in Brooklyn that was Jewish on one side and Italian on the other. And so, that was a big part of her childhood. And so, she brought that into my childhood as well. 

We ate Caribbean food. Brooklyn also, around where I grew up in Flatbush, had a, has a still growing Caribbean population. And that was a huge part. I always had a lot of Caribbean babysitters when I was a kid, [who] would come meet me after school. They would cook just these wonderful spicy dishes that I remember. An amazing coconut patty. Just these coconut, little sugary pastries that I loved. 

Gosh, so what else did I eat? I mean, I would try anything. I mean, I remember trying sushi when I was 12. And it was not a thing back then, because this was a long time ago. And it was like, ‘Oh, wow! Uni with quail egg.’ And it was delicious.

Alicia: I love that. 

It's so interesting to hear how much food was in your childhood, how important it was. When did you make the choice for food to be kind of the focus of your life, your career?

Melissa: Well, I always knew I wanted to be a writer. That came first. That came at a young age, I wrote stories. For a while, I thought I was gonna write about history. I mean, I just had these obsessions. I would want to write about the thing I was obsessed with. 

But the thing that kept coming back was food. And no matter how I tried to tell a story, my central metaphor was food. It was my lens. It was the way I interpreted everything in the world. I mean, I think a lot of food writers of my age will say, ‘We found M. F. K. Fisher.’ We're like, ‘Oh, there is a path!’ And that happened to me. 

I mean, I remember reading The Gastronomical Me. And I thought, ‘Well, wow, this woman is taking food seriously,’ in a way that wasn't just recipe writing, although there was recipe writing in that. There was culture and emotion, human emotion and connection. And that was the part that really interested me. I love reading novels. I read a lot of 19th century novels. And I love the way that—I mean, I love to understand the connection between people. And to me, so much of that happens at the table. And so much of that happens around food.

Alicia: And how did you kind of make it happen? Especially because you do occupy a space where you do journalism. You do food writing. But you're also doing recipes, which is the kind of, I guess, the classic food writer model. But how did that come about for you? 

Melissa: I was really lucky. So much of life is chance, right? Who you know and where you are. 

And so, it was who I knew and where I was. And I was lucky enough to work as an assistant for a man named Rick Flaste, who was, at that point, the science editor of the New York Times. He edited the science section, but he was also doing some stuff with the food. There was a new section that he was developing called “Dining In/Dining Out.” And I was his assistant. 

I helped him write a cookbook. He was working on Pierre Franey’s cookbook. Pierre Franey used to have a column in the Times called the “60-Minute Gourmet.” And Rick was working with Pierre, and I helped him edit the recipes and do all the—I helped him with the testing. I helped him just, with the research. And through that connection, I was able to learn about how to put together a cookbook. But I was also able to look—have a foot in at the Times, which, of course, is invaluable. I had my first article then. And now, going since.

Alicia: [Laughs.] You've worked on so many cookbooks, both with chefs and as the author yourself. What is your process for working on a cookbook versus working as a staff writer? What is your workflow like when you're working on a book?

Melissa: They're really different. And sometimes it's hard to juggle it all, because you get in one mind-set. And it's like, ‘Ok, I'm in cookbook mode, but I have to interview a bunch of people. And I’ve got to get on the phone.’ And so, the hardest thing for me is balancing my time and getting everything done. 

I'm a keeper of lists to try to remember. I have kitchen days, and I have writing days. And that's how I balance it. I mean, and it's not just cookbooks. It's developing my recipes for my column, and developing other recipes for the paper. And so, on my kitchen days, I try not to distract myself with the journalism stuff. 

And on writing days, that's when I'm on the phone. That's what I'm calling my sources. That's when I'm actually sitting down and making myself write, which is as we all know, the hardest thing. And I just try to divide and conquer, keep the days separate. So that's how the workflow goes. 

But I do find myself using—I mean, my brain goes back and forth, right? So it's as I'm thinking when I'm talking to sources, maybe I'm also thinking about—maybe something they say will trigger something about a recipe, and I'll come up with an idea. And when I'm in the kitchen cooking, my mind is buzzing. And maybe I'm thinking about an article that I'm writing at the same time.

Alicia: Well, how do you keep inspired in recipe development? That's a question I'm asking everyone, because I think I'm wondering if—how do you keep it going for so long? [Laughs.]

Melissa: I mean, I just want to eat everything. I want to try everything. And so, if I'm lucky enough—the pandemic’s, I have to say it was hard during the pandemic to get inspiration, ’cause I wasn't out and about the way I like to be. It was just me in my kitchen and my family. And so, I read a lot. I mean, I always read a lot.

I mean, I get inspired from all kinds of things. So going out in the world and eating at restaurants and eating people's food is a big part of it, and trying different things. If I see something on a menu that I've never had before, that's the dish I'm going to order. ‘Ok, I have to try this.’ Even if it doesn't necessarily appeal to me, but it's the thing I haven't had. And maybe I’ll like it. And I actually have a pretty broad palate. I like a lot of things. 

Yeah, yeah. So there's that. And then, reading. Just, I'll read menus, I love to read menus. I read books, of course. Whenever there's a food scene in a novel, I'm like, ‘Oh, well, what did they eat? How did they prepare that?’ 

I just read Romola, which is George Eliot, about—it takes place in 16th-century Florence. [Editor’s note: Melissa emailed right after the interview to say it’s actually the 15th century.] So Renaissance Florence. There's not a lot of food in that book. But there was one scene, and I'm like, ‘Well, how did they do the pheasant?’ And so, then I have to go down the research whole, which is super fun for me.

Alicia: What are some of the lessons that you've learned in doing cookbooks with restaurant chefs that maybe make that flow into your work for home cooks? Basically, what can home cooks learn from the work you've done with restaurants and chefs?

Melissa: At the beginning of my career, that was a huge focus for me. Right now, I don't write cookbooks with chefs. I haven't done that since I went on staff in 2012, because it's a conflict of interest at the Times. 

I miss it. I miss writing about those chefs, because I learned so much. And, I mean, it's like you're entering someone else's entire world. It's not just their dishes. It's their whole world. And that kind of connection is so valuable. You're spending months with them. And it's not just what they cook in the restaurant, but what their mother cooked, right? And what they grew up eating, and all of those influences. And it's all there in their perspective. 

The thing that I learned that I treasure the most, is it really—I learned that every chef does it differently. And that, I think a lot of us—I mean, not anymore. This is changing, thank God. But certainly when I was coming up in the food writing world, there was this idea that there was one kind of technique. How you chop an onion, and this is how you do the garlic. And that was the thing you had to learn. 

But that's not what chefs do. They all do it differently. Some chefs like to chop onions one way and some like to chop another way and slice—sometimes, they slice root to stem. And sometimes, they slice across and get half moons. And they have reasons for it. It's not random. I mean, sometimes their reasons aren’t good reasons. But they have their reasons, and it's understanding why they do it that way. 

And then, so it gives me license, first of all, to feel I can have my own way to do it in the kitchen. And that is the one thing I try to get across to people. And so, I try to take what chefs do, and then translate it and show what they do and also give home cooks license to do it their way. 

I have a lot of emails from people who say, who would want to change it, and they're worried. And I just want people to cook the way it tastes good to them. And any way that I can show them the reasons behind things and explain it, then that's—if I can help someone get something delicious to serve to themselves and their loved ones? That makes me happy. And that's the aim. Learning from chefs is one way that I can help that.

Alicia: Well, one realm of cooking that people are especially afraid of is baking. And I wanted to ask, ’cause it's one of my favorite cookbooks of all time, The Last Course with Claudia Fleming, that you worked on with her. How did that come about? What was that? And were you surprised that it kind of had a cult classic status?

Melissa: Yeah, totally. 

I mean, it was the book that was gonna take off, right? But I wasn't surprised, just because Claudia is a genius. And I feel like her recipes are so smart. And she's just smart. 

And I got that cookbook, because we used to have a column in the New York Times, when it was a dining section, that was called “The Chef.” And this was so perfect for me, because I love—this is what I love to do. I would work with a chef and it was a recipe. So, it was eight weeks. And you wrote in their voice about the recipe, and then you gave the recipe and you would test it. 

And I worked with Claudia. And she and I just hit it off. We were just like soul mates. We love so much of the same things. We became good friends. And she was working on a book. And she had another writer kind of, who—they were working on this book together. But luckily, the other writer was kind of busy with her stuff. And I got in there. I was like, ‘Well, Sophie can't do it. Can I do it? I really want to do it.’ It just worked out. 

And Claudia was a taskmaster in a very good way. With most chefs, I go, I work in their kitchen, and then I go home and I test a recipe, right? But Claudia made me bring in everything I tested to her to try. So I remember I was taking the subway to Gramercy Tavern with my pots de creme and my—and that was great. And plus, it was so fun to work with her. And sometimes, she would come to my house and test too. But we did so much of it hands-on. 

But that has informed the way I write cookbooks. Because right now, when I do my cookbooks, I make sure if I have recipe testers, then they do it in my house. And I got that from Claudia, because I can really see what one person thinks tastes right isn't necessarily what I'm looking for. Not to say it's wrong, ’cause it's not wrong. I'm trying to give my vision. And of course, when I was working with chefs, I was trying to help them get their vision across. And then you at home, do what you want with it. But you have a sense of what it's supposed to be—or, not what it’s supposed to be. But what I had in mind.

Alicia: Of course, yeah. 

And you do write recipes for such a huge audience, which I think seems to me very daunting [laughs] to do. Have you seen your kind of recipe development work change over time? What have been the changes you've made to your own approach? And have there been changes you've adapted to kind of happening in the culture, in the world? How have you changed over time?

Melissa: Oh, God, I'm changing all the time. Yeah, I mean, you can't stand still. And people change, and tastes change. Tastes change a lot. I look at some of my old recipes and I'm like, ‘What was I thinking? I wouldn’t make that now.’ And it's important to change with the times. 

So, I used to write recipes. And I would have my—one of my best friend's voices in my head. My friend, Robin. I’d always say she was my muse, because she's a really great cook but not confident. And so, a lot of what I did was in trying to instill confidence in the way I wrote recipes. And I still do that. 

But I think I also maybe took a little bit too much for granted. I assumed a knowledge that not everybody has. So I've tried to become, without being didactic about it, but just giving it a little more visual cues, a little more—

And a lot of the way that I keep changing the way I write recipes is I read the notes on the New York Times recipes. Every recipe that I publish, I read the notes, because I want to understand what works for people and what doesn't. What they misunderstood and what I didn’t make—

And if they misunderstood it, it's my fault for not making it clear enough. I mean, sometimes. Sometimes it's just, they read it wrong. But you know what I mean? I have to try to understand where my audience is at. And it's like, ‘How do you know your audience? The people who write to you, and then through these notes.’

So, I'm constantly changing what I'm doing and recalibrating, and figuring out the best way to get the exact color of onion across. What do I mean? What is brown caramelized? Lightly golden? What does that mean? And how do I get there? And how do I help people get it to the exact right point? And when do they add salt? 

And another thing I just started really doing is putting in points in the recipe where you taste, ”cause people have to be reminded. I mean, I don't. I have my fingers in everything all the time. But I think people have to be reminded to taste. And then, do you like it? Do you not? If not, here's what to add. And so, that's another way that I'm constantly changing.

Alicia: And you've also done some reporting on sustainable seafood. And how have you made adjustments to your recipe work to give people kind of an eye toward eating more sustainably, if you have? 

Melissa: Oh, I have. Absolutely. I think about that a lot. I don't do beef recipes that much anymore. Very rarely, or lamb. So, I don't eat that. As I'm trying to change my diet, I eat a lot less meat. Actually, I have a cookbook coming out in March where every single recipe has a vegan or vegetarian variation, except for ones like pork chops. That one. Gonna make that recipe. 

But who would do that? I did, because that's how I want to eat. That's how I think a lot of people want to eat, and I want to help people—I want to help flexitarians move a little bit more toward the veg if I can. 

And in terms of sustainability, and also seafood, I try not to do salmon recipes. It's hard to get really—I mean, you can get sustainable salmon. There's a crisis with our oceans right now. I'm desperately trying to get seafood lovers to eat more shellfish, more bivalves because that is actually a sustainable option. I write about that a lot. And it's funny. You have the small number of people who really love their bivalves, and then the larger number of people who are a little bit freaked out by it. So, I'm just trying to nudge people in that direction. 

And it all reflects the things I really care—I mean, I really think the environment is our number-one impending crisis. And we can help. Food writers can help. We can make a difference. Maybe it's not a huge difference. But I know that the work I do can be important in that way. And I'm trying to make sure that—in a gentle way, not a preachy way, absolutely. I want people to have fun in the kitchen, right? So that's kind of where I'm trying to just push it a little bit.

Alicia: Well, I love bivalves, so. [Laughs.] Even though I'm a vegetarian. Yeah, I eat oysters and mussels and everything. And it's hard to explain to people that. But it's like, well, not only do they not have a nervous system, they are a very sustainable choice that goes completely along with the idea of eating for the environment and eating sustainably. And obviously, they're so good for you too, which is a bonus. [Laughs.] 

Melissa: I guess I didn't think that you did. And I'm happy to hear that, because I feel labels about the way people are eating. Vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian. I just feel it has to be flexible. It has to be, work for—also for your body. Some people can't, need a certain amount of protein or meat or a different way. And you just need to pay attention to the environment, pay attention to your body. And then also, enjoy everything.

Alicia: [Laughs.] 

Well, yeah, I was a strict vegan for a while and I didn't eat any of that. And then oysters really opened me up to getting back to that and making it part of my diet. And yesterday, I was at a restaurant here in San Juan where they were serving a lionfish ceviche because the lionfish is invasive.

Melissa: Invasive! Yeah, you gotta eat that. Exactly! And that kind of eating is so important and amazing. And yay for that restaurant for having it on their menu. Not salmon and tuna. 

Alicia: Exactly, no.

It's really cool, ’cause they're also—they're educating everyone who comes in about the lionfish that are destroying the reefs and why you should eat it. Of course, for me, I'm still like not—it's hard for me to eat something that has eyeballs. [Laughs.] No, but I'm super happy to see that and hope to see more of it. But yeah, it's interesting. 

To the same kind of notion, so many people really swear by your recipes, repeat your recipes over and over. It's very popular to talk about your recipes on Twitter. [Laughter.] How do you create a recipe that—this is, I guess a silly question—but, that works, that people go back to. I know you probably can't think of it that way. When you're doing it, you have to think of it in the moment as just a job, a recipe, doing the best thing. But what do you think makes your recipes so repeatable for folks?

Melissa: Well, I mean, you never know what recipe is going to hit. You don't know what the recipe is that people are gonna really love. ’Cause you just don't. It's when someone asks one of my editors, ‘Well, how do you write a best-selling book?’ Well, if we knew which book was going to be a bestseller, we’d do it all the time. You just don't know what the world—timing is so important. 

But what I do know, what I do have in my control is I can test the heck out of my recipes. And I do. I test and I test. And that's all you can do as a food writer, as a recipe writer is just make sure your recipes work and then take care when you're writing the language. 

I know that my weak point is making sure all the ingredients get in. If I have a list of like 10 spices, I'll leave one out in the description. Ahhhh! So I try to have someone back read for me. I mean, my editors at the Times are amazing. They do all the back reading. For cookbooks, I always make sure that I have a kickass copy editor who's working with me who understands that I have this problem with a lot of ingredients, and sometimes they don't make it. 

So know your weak points, compensate for them. But then to make sure that the recipe itself is rock solid. And again, like I was saying before, I keep retrying to rewrite the way or rethink the way I tell the directions. I write the direction so that it gets stronger and stronger, and people can understand and can have success.

Alicia: And I mean, on the other side of that is when a recipe goes viral because people think it's silly. [Laughs.] Seis leches cake. But obviously I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But how do you kind of—do you think about it? Do you respond to it? When a recipe goes viral for the wrong reasons, what—how do you respond to that?

Melissa: Yeah.

I mean, it's funny. Well, so green pea guacamole was the first one. And that one wasn't even my recipe. I just reported on it. It was Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s recipe. I was totally surprised at the backlash, and I didn't realize the Times had—the way they had tweeted it, maybe, was, you know. That recipe really showed was, that was a cusp of this changing moment where people were like, ‘You know what, stop messing with our food.’ And I understand.

No one owns a recipe. I don't own a recipe. All recipes, whether they're classics or not, you're allowed to do what you want because you're eating the food. However, as a food writer, I have a responsibility to tell the story. 

I think the problem with the seis leche cake was a couple of things. First of all, the photo was not the most attractive photo. And that was the original backlash. 

And maybe I didn't tell the story well enough. That was my fault. Maybe I didn't tell the story of what trends such as cake was well enough, that when I adapted it, it had more narrative sense. And so, that was my bad. But that is my responsibility, is if I'm going to take an authentic recipe—and authentic. What's authentic? 

If I'm going to take a recipe that is, that people are passionate about and is dear to their culture, and I'm going to have my spin on it, I need to make sure to pay enough respect to what it is and what it, how I am deviating from it so that it's a teaching moment and it's done with love and respect. And if I fail, then ok. Then I fail. And then you just move on. 

I don't get that upset about it. I also see it as changing culture. And we're part of that. And I mean, when people attack me personally, yeah, ok. And that just happens on Twitter. I kind of hate Twitter. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] It sucks.

Melissa: Pretty much. [Laughter.] I must say, Instagram people are much nicer. 

But I also can take the criticism, and I can say, ‘You know what? I am learning from that moment. And I'll do it better. I'll really try to do it better next time. But that said, I will continue to change recipes that people love. Because I don't think there is one way to do something. There's as many right ways as there are cooks.’

And I mean, ok, let's just say something Jewish from my culture, like a challah. Or bagel. Let's talk about rainbow bagels. To me, it's like, ‘Alright. Really?’ I might personally think that that is the dumbest thing in the world. But you know what? If people think it's cool, and—it's, I also think it's okay. I personally can, maybe say, raise an eyebrow. But I can also say, ‘You know what, that's—it's out there. And that's ok, too.’

Alicia: You're so, so, so deeply tied to New York. And how do you think that has affected your work and your writing and everything?

Melissa: Ok, so Brooklyn—So, I mean, I grew up here. My family's here, and they're really important to me. 

I mean, I love travel. And I think it's really important to see other places and talk to as many people as you can from other cultures and understand. And I regret that I didn't, haven't lived in more places. 

I really, I really do regret that actually. I mean, I lived in France for a year, when I went to school. I had to go junior year abroad. But I haven't lived anywhere. I mean, I haven't even lived in America in the kind of place where you drive to a mall, right? [Laughs.] That’s not my experience, right? I barely drive. In a way, I have a very small life, ’cause it—

But luckily, New York City, if you’re gonna be here, it’s a good place to have a small life. ’Cause it's a big place. And there are so many people who you can connect with. And there are so many different—I mean, for me, it's like food, food, food. And there's so many—but there's also ideas. There’s so many ideas right here, right? And if I want to learn about something, I can. 

But I do regret. I mean, it is one of my big regrets. And it's something that I hope to change. I mean, my daughter is 13 right now. And the last thing I'm going to do is move her right before high school. That is just not—but my husband and I talk about it. Maybe when she goes to college, maybe that'll be a time for us to live somewhere else. He would like that, I think. 

Then I think about climate change all the time. And I think ‘Well, where is the place that we would go?’ But these are the conversations that I have in my head, I have with my husband. I don't know. I don't know. I do wish that when I was younger, I had done what you had done and just like, ‘You know what, I need to get out’ and gotten out. But I didn't. So, I went to Barnard. I went to Columbia. I just stayed.

Alicia: No, I went to Fordham. Yeah. I was on a track to never leave. And then, all of a sudden—[Laughs.]

Melissa: Good for you for getting out while you could, seriously.

It's what I would tell people to do. If anyone asked me that, I’d be like, ‘Yeah, just go.’ I hope my daughter goes—I hope she goes somewhere. I don't know where she wants to go to college, but I hope it's somewhere different.

Alicia: Yeah. Right. 

But at the same time, like you were saying, it's the best place to be, to do what you do. You have access to everything and everyone, and that's—and that shapes, obviously, how you write recipes. 

And it is interesting to think about that, how broad an audience you have, but you—and you talking about like, ‘Oh, you don't drive to the mall.’ You don't have that experience. But still, you're able to communicate with the people who have to do that, who are driving to a huge supermarket and that sort of thing. Which is interesting. 

I mean, does that factor into how you write recipes? Considering how much access people have to ingredients?

Melissa: Yeah, for sure. I think about that a lot. I mean, I really, that's part of what I get from the notes. 

But people have access to so many things right now, just like me. But think about it. 10 years ago, when we didn't-and we weren't mail. We weren't having things sent to us left and right. And I was very aware back then of what people could get and what they couldn't get. And as things started to become more present in stores, I would start to incorporate them into my recipes. 

But I always try, careful to give substitutions. I don't want you to be driving all around looking for an ingredient for dinner. It's like ‘No, get what you have and then figure out how to use it in the best possible way.’ So I'm sensitive to that, even though that wasn't my experience. 

I mean, yeah, I'm really lucky. I can go—I can within a one mile radius of my house, or maybe two miles and run within running distance. ’Cause sometimes I’ll go running for ingredients. I’ll put my running shoes on and like, ‘Oh, I need malt syrup, and I can get it in a mile.’ And I'll run and get it. That's fun. Yeah, that's sort of the quest of finding the ingredient.

Or I'll need something. I’ll need avocado leaves for something, if I'm making something Mexican. I have to run to Sunset Park, and then I'll get, and then I'm in this whole other place. Then, I’ll spend an hour in the market looking at everything, bringing everything home. But not everybody is able to do that. And I know that I'm lucky. And I also know that is not the universal experience. So if I write about it, I need to write about it in a very particular way so that it doesn't assume anything about anyone. Which I think, is in general, a good thing to do. 

Alicia: Yeah, it's a very good thing. [Laughs.]

Well, for you is cooking a political act? 

Melissa: Oh God, yeah. I mean, we talked about sustainability and the environment. It's completely tied up with politics right now. And what can we do? What can we do to change this? And that is what-—so, it's a political act when I cook. It's a political act when I write about it. It's not obviously political, but I'm working to make a change. I really care about it. 

I want people to cook fresh foods. I don't want them to buy, support the corporate giant. I want them to buy fresh foods and cook something delicious and feed their family. And that is political. And the smallest differences that we can make add up.

Alicia: Well, thank you so, so much for taking the time today. This was great.

Melissa: Thanks for having me. I wish I got to talk to you about you more.

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Listen now | Talking to the New York Times staff writer and prolific cookbook author about creativity, learning from chefs, and how to test a recipe so it becomes classic.

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Pastry chef Paola Velez has been doing the work for a really long time. She’s blown up in the last few years for her work in pastry kitchens at D.C. restaurants like Maydan, Compass Rose, Kith/Kin, and more, as well as co-founding the massive fund-raising initiative Bakers Against Racism, gaining attention, awards, and accolades from Food & Wine, Esquire, and the James Beard Foundation. But here, we were able to talk about how she got a foothold in the industry, the “pink dungeon” of the pastry kitchen, and how she’s now navigating a huge audience and its expectations.

We discussed her Bronx upbringing, experience in culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu, and how she approaches accessibility in recipes for her online cooking show “Pastries with Paola.” Listen above, or read below.

This episode of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy is brought to you by Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide by Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras from Workman Publishing. Tour each continent through the book’s encyclopedic entries on some of the world’s most interesting foods and places. Did you know that spam was illegal in South Korea until the 1980s? Learn about this and more in Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide, on sale now.

Alicia: Hi, Paola. Thank you so much for taking the time today.

Paola: Hi, thank you for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Paola: So I grew up both in the Dominican Republic and in New York City. I'm a first-generation American Dominican. So my parents spent three months out of the year in the Dominican Republic, so I had a connection with my grandmother. And then the rest of the year, they went through all of New York City exploring places like Chinatown, Little Italy, K-Town and Flushing. I mean, there's also Chinatown in Flushing as well. And so forth. Maybe I grew up eating more pierogis than your average American kid. But I think my parents made sure that they kind of instilled a love of food, so that I would have a love of people as well. So they kind of made sure that they kind of disintegrated those divisions that we have through food.

Alicia: When did you know that you wanted to pursue cooking professionally?

Paola: When I had an existential life crisis in high school, and—Yeah. Oh, go ahead. 

Alicia: You go, you go. I'm fascinated to hear what happened.

Paola: Oh, no, I didn't know that I had anxiety and depression, stuff like that. ’Cause for Latino or children of immigrants, they pretty much tell us that we're okay. ’Cause, I mean, they're too busy to really understand and know. 

So when I wanted to pursue a career in art, which was not the career they wanted me to have in the first place. They wanted me to be an engineer, or lawyer or a doctor, or a teacher. They would have settled for a teacher. But I wanted to pursue art. I was like, ‘If I'm going to be successful in the arts sphere, I might have to pass away for somebody to notice me.’ And I was like, ‘This is so morbid. I'm having an existential life crisis.’ And I just went to culinary school instead. From one art to the other art. Equally unpaid. 

Alicia: Did you go to CIA? Which culinary school did you go to?

Paola: Le Cordon Bleu, actually.

Alicia: Oh, cool. Cool. 

And so, what was that like? Why did you decide pastry over savory cooking?

Paola: I didn’t. I'm actually a savory chef, classically trained. And then I self-taught myself how to do all my pastry work. 

Alicia: That's amazing. And what made you move from what your training was in classic savory cooking toward pastry?

Paola: Well, I had two modules in culinary school. They gave me one look up and down. And my counselor, I guess, that’s—maybe, I don’t know—she was like, ‘Uhhh yeah, you're not going to survive in pastry. You're never going to get a job. So you might as well just learn culinary. See if you can get hired as a prep cook or something.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, cool. Thank you so much for the inspirational talk. Now I'm thousands, thousands of dollars in debt, and I will never get hired.’ But she wasn't wrong. That's the crazy part about it, is when I went—

And I couldn't find jobs in Orlando, so I moved back to New York. And I didn't have the greatest time. They would tell me I would have all the qualifications to be promoted to do these things, to be a sous chef, but I just didn't fit the bill. I was too little or too soft spoken or not commanding enough. I wasn’t a bro, and I never had any intention of becoming a bro. I just was a wallflower within the industry. 

And you know, I still do. I'm freezing right now. But I have soft and small cold hands that are great for pastry work. So they would put me in the pink dungeon, what we’d call it back then. And back then, it was like 2008, 2009 so it wasn't like a lot of desserts were coming out of the kitchen in the first place. Maybe you would have a wonton-wrapped fried banana with whipped cream. They're like, ‘Mwwah, delicious! A la tarte!’

I found my husband. Well, back then, he wasn't my husband. But I was like, ‘Damn, I want to date this dude. But I'm always working until three, four in the morning.’ And for a long time, he would come and pick me up, and he would make sure that we had dates after my long shifts. He was a college student, went to CCNY, both undergrad and graduate school. And throughout his whole education, he was just watching me work, you know? I was like, ‘Damn. I mean, if I really want to be with this guy, he's gonna get tired of picking me up at three or four in the morning once he gets a real job.’

So I switched into pastry. I asked chef Jacques Torres like, ‘Can you just take me in? I've done all of this work. A lot of the chefs, they don't really want to hire me to be like a CDC or executive sous. I'd be junior sous at best.’ Once, I got a sous chef job. That was fun, but it was a union job and I maxed out of the hours and the union didn't want to take me as well. 

So Jacques was like, ‘What school did you go to?’ And I was like, ‘I could give you my résumé. I can do this.’ And he's like, ‘What school did you go to?’ ‘Le Cordon Bleu.’ He's like, ‘When can you start?’ I was basically like, ‘You’re serious? For real? You don't care about what I know?’ He's like, ‘No.’

So that opportunity kind of was a real blessing in disguise because—one, he’s Mr. Chocolate. For the kids nowadays who are Gen-Zers who are probably listening to this. That's Mr. Nailed it. If you don't know, now you know. Sorry, Jacques. I don’t watch the show. [Laughter.] But he kind of taught me everything. And I realized I had lightning in a bottle with this situation. I was with one of the best pastry chefs in New York, and he introduced me to the whole world of Food and Wine and Food Network and all of that stuff that I never even had an idea of what it was. 

Literally in culinary school, I—my joke was, they were like, ‘What are you gonna do with your culinary degree?’ And I was like, ‘Become a housewife.’ You know what I mean? And they're like, ‘Why are you here?’ And I'm like, ‘I'm not sure if I'm ever going to make it out. My counselor told me that I’m never gonna get a job, you know?’ 

Yeah, anyways. I digress. I'm sorry. I went on a tangent.

Alicia: No, that was great. [Laughs.] I can't believe your guidance counselor told you that. That's horrifying. 

You grew up in New York City. And you moved to D.C. In D.C., it seems like that's where you've really blown up as a pastry chef. And I wanted to ask what it was like moving to a different city. I feel like New Yorkers are very provincial sometimes, very attached to New York. I'm from Long Island, but I lived in New York for a long time. And yeah, what was the experience like of moving to D.C.?

Paola: For all intents and purposes, I had just reached what some folks would have considered a really big milestone in my career. I was promoted to pastry sous chef with Jacques Torres. It took four months. And then he was like, ‘You are very nice and very special and you're hardworking. And I don't understand how you haven't been promoted before.’ So he gave me a promotion. I was the youngest sous chef in his company.

But my husband got a government job. And when you grow up as children of immigrants, you—we don't have choices like that, when you have the opportunity to have stability and long-term success. And Hector, my husband, had sacrificed so much during his undergrad and graduate programs, that why wouldn’t I sacrifice for him? So I just kind of told Jacques and Hasty, I was like, ‘I'm so sorry. I gotta go.’ They were like, ‘You kidding me,’ you know? ‘Who’s gonna help us?’ I was like, ‘God, I don't know,’ you know what I mean?

But I went. And I actually didn't have a great time in D.C. At first, I didn't get jobs that paid more than $13 an hour. And that was for years. I would apply for chef jobs, and they would see me walk through the door and tell me, ‘The position has been filled,’ and sort of—I would go back online. The position was still available. 

It's kind of hard, because I present, speaking wise, in a very different tone. I don't always sound like I'm from the Bronx. I didn’t use slang. But my voice is very passive. But everything else about me is not very passive. I'm not like your typical Latina. I'm not somebody that's just like on NBC or Telemundo. You know what I mean? I never got the opportunity here. And I had worked at jobs that just weren't paying me a living wage. And I figured that maybe this was it. This was my life. 

And D.C. now has been very kind, but only because I kind of presented—at one of the job interviews, I was like, ‘Please don't turn me away. I can't go through another one of these processes.’ And back then I was going through probably one of the darkest times in my life. And I told the chef, I was like, ‘Please just look at my Instagram. Look at what I can do. Don't judge me by how I speak, or how I look or what you think I can bring to the table. Just see what I can actually bring to the table.’

And I had built up my Instagram profile as a portfolio as opposed to my meme collection, which I guess now it's a meme collection again, but—and I showed what I could do. And I was like, ‘If you give me the opportunity, I'll represent your company. And I will make sure that I work diligently and I'm creative, and we can work together in tandem to get through and about, whatever. Whatever you can offer, I can take.’

And he hired me that day. I don't think that interview was going the right way in the first place. But he wrapped it up. He was like, ‘Ok, I'll call you for whatever.’ And I was like, ‘Please, just a second.’ But that’s the boldest I've ever been in my whole life. And until that point, I have not—the loud voice that you see now. I was very shy back then. 

And that job, I took the bull by the horns basically. And I was like, ‘Let's do this.’ I think I made like, 194, 197 desserts that year. And I tried to tailor it specifically for the Mid-Atlantic within Greek and Italian cuisine, infusing Latinx or Latine flavors. 

So a lot of people assume that my success has been overnight. And it's not. [Laughs.] It hasn't been. I've been working in this industry since 15. And now, it's finally where somebody is like, ‘Oh, hey, good job.’ And I'm like, ‘Thanks! I'm so burnt out. I wanna go home.’

Alicia: I mean, that's the thing about success, is it really—your story will be cut off at the point at which people know who you are, [that] is when people will start to believe that you were born, basically. And it is hard. 

I was reading all about you. I was reading all the stories about you. And I don't think I was getting this picture that you're giving me right now about how much you worked until this point to get to where you are now. And now, you're a huge success. I do wish that more, there was more of that story.

But there's been so much focus on—as you mentioned before, you call the pastry kitchen ‘the pink dungeon.’ And pastry chefs do tend to be ignored. But you really have this innovative aesthetic. You have such a great personality that you bring through to social media and also to “Pastries With Paola.” But you've also gotten so much attention for Bakers Against Racism, for your Doña Dona project. When did you realize that you could use your pastry skills to help other people to raise money, and why was that important to you?

Paola: So for me, I think it goes back down to my mom teaching me values on how to give, how to exist, how to be a member of society. My mom really taught me if we had $3 to our name, that we would give away one. And she always did that because she was very community-minded. My grandmother was very community minded. My abuela would invite everyone from the neighborhood. And by neighborhood, I mean the town, because it’s not a big town. And if you were in need, or if you needed a moment to be with someone, if you felt alone, if you felt sad, if you were going through something, if you were celebrating something. It didn't matter if you just wanted to stop by, and you were passing through a cacao and you wanted to have a quick meal with us, a cup of coffee. She always had extra food to give.

My family grew up very poor, and we're still very humble people. But my mom's, especially with my grandparents, grew up with nothing. We had a well. We had a few trees in the back that would give us platano. And if we had some chickens, we would sell those eggs to the market, right? Instead of using it to feed them themselves, right? So that's the stories that I grew up with. 

But one thing that I never saw was my grandmother hoarding. Whatever she had, she would always give it away, you know? And she would tell me, ‘It will be replenished. If I give it, it will come back.’ So for me, very early on I knew I had to give. And giving was something that was a part of my family, a part of my—Well, my mom and me, I don't know if you go to my other family members if they would give. But I hope they are giving. If you're listening to this, give more if you're not giving. 

My mom grew up a single mom in the Bronx with me. She was just 30 when she had me. And she was alone. This was our first time in a country by herself. A biochemist who had to work in factories, work in the industry, in the culinary industry, never using her degree ever again. And yet she found time to give to the community, give to her neighbors, give to her friends, give, give, give. 

And when it was my turn, I was a broke New York line cook. And back then, I wasn't getting paid $13 an hour. The dream was to come to D.C. and get paid $13 an hour. I was getting paid $8, $7 an hour, most of the time $6, because a lot of people thought that they could get away with wage theft and not pay minimum wage. 

But regardless of that, I knew I had time. And my time and my resources were a currency. And I would bake in soup kitchens. I would cook. I would make packaged meals for kids in Williamsburg that were in daycares and pre-K and kindergarten. And those kids, they did not have food through the weekend, food for dinner. They had two square meals a day, but then they would go home and not eat. So I was doing programs where I was just packing food, delivering food out, cooking with the girls and teaching them a life skill on Tuesdays and Saturdays so that they perhaps would see me and be like, ‘Oh, I could do a trade. I don't have to be a genius, right?’ 

So when people see my activism work they’re like ‘Yeah, she just one day woke up and was like, ‘I'm gonna bake.’’ And I was like, Yeah, I wish. No. I was doing little fundraisers in Williamsburg way back in the day, just trying to buy feminine products for the girls that I was cooking in the community with. 

But I think there's a lot of power in food. For me at least, it's a way to kind of hold a time capsule of my grandmother who's no longer on Earth. And just, everything that she was able to teach me. I think I'm probably one of the only people in my family who actually knows her recipes, which is awe-inspiring and very scary at the same time. Because if something happens to me, that's it. My family lineage is done. [Laughs.] 

Alicia: Well, one thing I really love about your work, especially with your new Food & Wine series, is that—and now I understand more that you used to teach kids. And now, I understand. But you are so good at teaching people and making approachable things that people think are super complicated, like tempering chocolate or making homemade sprinkles. 

How do you do that? How do you translate the talents and skills of a restaurant pastry chef to the home cook, especially when people are so touchy about baking? So many people I'll talk to, and they're like, ‘I love to cook but I am a terrible baker.’ And they just are so afraid. How do you get people over that, and—because I think you do such a good job of translating these things that we think are complicated.

Paola: I think for the most part, I just want people to feel what I feel, right? I took two pastry classes in culinary school. You know what I mean? I got A's on them, but I'm not making a St. Honoré anytime soon. [Laughter.] But I don't know. My thing is in the kitchen, the kitchen is a place for all misfits, for all folks who are down and they need some help getting back up. So I don't expect CIA students to walk through the door, I really don't expect them to get into pastries. If anything, they get hoarded over to savory. 

So a lot of folks that are working with me aren't folks that are career professionals like I am, or folks that know all the techniques. But I have to figure out a way to make it easy, and make it easy for them so that I'm proud of them and that we're doing something beautiful together. And that, it's not a situation. If they're not doing these beautiful piping techniques, man, that's beautiful either way. Put it on the plate!

Because at the end of the day, if they're not happy working with me, if they're not happy and they don't feel valued, and—then it doesn't matter. My ego can take a bench, you know what I mean? I know how to do all these things, but not everybody is me. And that once I figured that out, I realized that I had to have the same grace that I have for the community when I give, it’s the same grace that I had to have for the pastry world when I teach. 

And then, also the same for home bakers I think that a lot of people, they're so afraid because so many people are like, ‘Baking is a science lesson that you can't mess up.’ And I'm like, ‘Man, man, you know how many times you’ve fried that chicken? That joint is messed up.’ You know what I'm saying?

So people have the same adaptability to make rice and make it bad and still eat it. Then, why not pastries? So I break it down in a way that's a little simple. I do feel a lot of people think that “Pastries With Paola” is a kids’ show. I'm sorry, I don't know how to change my voice. Maybe we'll put a voice module and we'll be like, ‘Hello, this is “Pastries With Paola.”’ Think that'll help adultify the content?

But it's just one of those things where I just want people to feel they can do some things for their friends, families. And all the stuff that I get tagged it's like, it's as if I were making it. And I think one thing that I love the most is that you can see in our—if you ever see the end of our videos, I don't gussy it up. I don't put it as if it were a restaurant quality, you're allowed to take a magazine spread photo shoot of the picture of this product, right? I'm like, ‘No, look, this joint look weird too!’ So eat things, have fun.

And I think that kind of gives people that breath of relief, right? Because pastry should be fun. You should use them to celebrate or to cope. And I hope more people can bake and more people start to approach baking, how do they share these recipes in a more tangible, realistic way? 

Also, I don't have 70 bowls in my kitchen. I don't know where these influencers are getting all these bowls from. I need to figure out how to do this in one bowl. I'm in a one-bedroom apartment. Now, that’s neither here or there.

Alicia: No, it's really funny. I was thinking that the other day, because some cookware company was like, ‘Hey, can we send you some pots and pans?’ I'm like, ‘No, because I don't have—I have pots and pans, and I don't need anymore. Where am I gonna put them? My kitchen extends into the living room.’ Like, ‘Yeah, thank you, but no.’ [Laughs.]

Paola: I have under my dining room table ’cause we have a little dining room table. I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to, because my apartment’s so small. But underneath it, it's Creuset pots, two kitchenettes. And I'm just like, ‘I have to stop saying yes to these things.’ They’re like, ‘Hey, do you want this pot and pan?’ And I’m like, ‘Whatever. Sure. Send it.’ And I'm like, ‘Why?’ I have one mouth.

But thank you, everybody who's ever sent me anything. Thank you so much. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, you’re a Food & Wine Best New Chef now, so I think there are—there will be more, I think, offers coming your way for that kind of thing. 

How was it? How was the experience of going? You were in Aspen? How was that experience?

Paola: I feel like I have always wanted to go to Aspen. And now that I've gone, I think that it's a great experience, like a checkmark. If I ever get to travel to Mars, I think I would go once and then be like, ‘Wow, I can't breathe over there. So I might as well stay on Earth.’ 

I'm about to be 31. And I'm too old to want to be in spaces that aren't for me. And I just, I don't know, especially after this global pandemic, I'm just trying to be doing things that make me happy and comfortable. And where I could see like-minded individuals, whether or not they look like me, together.

I will say that the class, we are very like-minded, my whole—even the 2020 class. Khushbu Shah did such a spectacular job at getting us all together, and grouping us together. I've interacted with Chevelle and Rina before, and in my class—I knew almost my whole class. And it was really fun to just kind of be together and experience this together, and know that perhaps if you've gone through something before, I can get—you can give me advice, and vice versa. 

And I think that a lot of the chefs beforehand weren't doing that, you know what I'm saying? They were all fighting each other. And a global pandemic really had to teach us like, ‘Ain't nobody fighting you. I don't care where you’ve been, if you succeed. I'm trying to succeed, and we can both do it at the same time.’ A garden is only beautiful when there's a multitude of flowers. 

But I think back in the day, it was just this competition. And I think that's why there's so many competition food shows, because it was just all about winning and the one person dominating them all. And now it's—I look at my class, and we want all of us to succeed and all of us to have the most successful time. And it's very jaring, because I've been in this industry since I was 15. So I know exactly what was going on 15 years ago. Well, more than that now.

I think it's an honor, but I think more so, less about me and more so about the opportunities that will happen for those that are coming after, right? I think that that's really the biggest part of it, right? I understand what it means for me, right? But maybe it'll be now this year, and then next year, it's over. And that's okay. But if somebody this year sees me and hires an Afro-Latina from the Bronx, maybe that person will have a chance at this, too.

Alicia: Yeah, my friend Paxx was a Best New Chef a few years ago. That was fun [laughs] going to the party.

But yeah, it's a lot of competition in food. I know the James Beard Foundation announced new rules today about the chef competition. And I mean, for me personally, I was a little bit like, ‘Well, why just no more competition? Why don't we just have, rethink this whole thing about someone being the best and that sort of thing?’ But we'll see what happens. [Laughs.]

Paola: Yeah.

I don’t think I'm the best in anything. My husband's always like, ‘Huh?’ I'm all right. I think, though, I'm the best when I'm with my team. And whatever it is, whether it's with Food & Wine, my team over there is really—we're all just in tandem. And whenever something is going on, whenever we need to do something or reach an audience, we talk about it. And I tell them, I'm like, ‘Look, I'm not putting something on a—the boiler. I'm gonna use a microwave, because who has that many bowls.’ Seriously. I want to know. I want to own a house in New York City, in D.C. has like 20 bowls. Make it make sense.

Alicia: No, I have to be more conscious of—I think I've tried to be. I've done a few recipes lately where it's, you just need a pan and a whisk and that's it. And so, I'm trying to be more conscious of that. 

Especially because moving to San Juan I didn't realize, and I should have realized, but having an oven isn't standard here. I’m lucky to have an oven. Now I'm like, ‘Oh boy. I have to rethink everything.’ [Laughs.] 

But I love—No, you go.

Paola: Yeah. My husband’s—No, go ahead. 

Oh, my husband's abuela, she uses the oven as storage. It’s always full of something. I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna bake you a cake.’ And then I turn everything on and she's like, ‘No, Paola, wait!’ And I'm like, ‘What’s in here? Why’s there a paper in here?’ You know what I mean?

Alicia: I love that you made tamarind jelly candy in one of your videos. And in that caption on Instagram, you talked about supporting your local market. But you bought a brand—we all know which brand—whose politics no one approves of anymore.

But I wanted to ask, because you're working with a lot of the tropical fruits. How do you approach sourcing ingredients in a way that balances accessibility and supporting the kind of companies and sourcing that we want to sort, support? [Laughs.]

Paola: Yeah.

So, what's funny is I have been going into—any new spices that I buy are either La Fe, or companies like—Oh, no, now I forget the name. Oh. They're really nice. They're made in New York.

Alicia: Burlap & Barrel? Oh, no. Loisa? 

Paola: Yeah, them. 

I've been making that shift. But even when I started protesting my use of that product which we will not name, I told people, I was like, ‘Don't throw it out. Use it?’ I don't know, actually. Because the baked adobo lasts a long time. 

But I was like, ‘Don't throw it out.’ Because food waste is a thing. And there's so many people even in the Bronx that don't have the money to buy sazón, let alone have access to—Which brand are they going to buy? It's just whatever brand’s on sale. 

But here in the DMV area, we have something similar with our kind of Salvadorian Guatemalan community, where it would be so detached from the actual reality of what our Latino immigrants are going through if I were just like, ‘Don't buy this. Protest that.’ Or I'm like, ‘Clean your cubby and start over.’ My mom wouldn't be able to do something like that when I was growing up. 

So when I walk into my local market—and I try to find all of my local Latino markets. And I go to H Mart, and I try very seldomly to go to the bigger name companies, because it's just something that I've done. And also, I can find better platanos where I—Yeah, if y'all are not in a region where there's a lot of Latinos, try your H Mart. They be having platanos in there, you know what I'm saying?

But I walked in for this shoot. And anytime that there's super specialty items, I just go and buy it myself. Because I know where to buy them for them actually, supporting these brands and these—the communities around me. And I went in. And to be honest, I had two packets. There was two packets of tamarind left, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what time of the year is it?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, it's the beginning of summer. They're making agua frescas. I didn't think.’

But it was two packets. One was the brand that we're not going to name. And then, another one was La Fe. And when we had our recipe tester make sure that the final recipe was done correctly—

Because what I might have on my notepad might not translate well to digital, right? So there's somebody that tests each and every version, just so that I feel comfortable. I could see the results of somebody that's not my hands, ’cause I could probably be like, ‘Yes, that's one!’ And then I'm like, Oops, that’s four.’ And then I miss steps two and three. And I'm thinking it's common sense, logical for the home baker to understand that you're going to put something like this and do this. But I don't always think that way. 

But she used the La Fe. And I was like, ‘No.’ Oh, my gosh. And I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ And we tried our best. We held it, and we tried to cover it. But right in those little sidelines, you could see it. And I was like, ‘Damn.’ 

But you know what, though? It's okay, because I still supported my local Latino market. And sometimes this is easier for them to buy. Or let's say, if that certain particular brand is going through a hard time because all of us are protesting, and they lower the rate of how to acquire this product? There is literally a owner that is making that decision, like ‘This is cheaper. And I can feed my children. I could put them through college if I do this.’

It's so complicated, because you can make these stands. But sometimes, the community that you're doing this can suffer and get impacted. Especially where it’s so many. There's not a lot here. It's not New York, you know?

Alicia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

No, no. Yeah, I live in San Juan, obviously. But I live in Old San Juan, and we don't have a good grocery store at all. And so, when I'm working on something and I'm using a lot of coconut milk, sometimes I end up using their coconut milk. And it's better than me getting a car and going to, out to—And going out, you have to make all these different complicated decisions every single day. 

One thing I wanted to ask you, because I'm just—you have such a great presence on Instagram. And you do a ton of AMAs with—And you're so engaged with your followers. And I'm like, ‘How does she do it? How does she have that energy and that—’

But what keeps you being so generous with your audience? And does it take a lot of energy?

Paola: Oh, yeah, it takes so much energy. It's very taxing, especially when, ’cause behind the scenes folks don't see all the mean stuff, you know? And sometimes I'm like, ‘Should I make a joke about this?’ But never mind, you know what I mean? I’m like, ‘Yeah, I don’t give you the time of day.’ 

But I think there's so many people that just haven't seen somebody like me in this space, you know? And I want them to remember that I'm not this figure in the sky. You didn't know my story. A lot of my followers do, because I just share it. I'm like, ‘Hey, man, when I said, ‘We going from the Bronx,’ I'm not joking. It's not a joke. It’s not a punchline.’ You know what I mean? I grew up in the Bronx. I grew up next door to the Stella D'oro factory before it was gone. 

I think I engage with them in that way. I try to make myself available to a point, ’cause I'm not always on. I'm not always doing them. I try to answer DMs and—comfortably. If it's uncomfortable, then I'm like, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ And maybe I might respond, like, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ And then they’re like, ‘I'm sorry, I didn't know.’

Somebody told someone, I won't name names so that nobody looks it up. So they were like, ‘Give Paola’s abuela a knuckle sandwich.’ And I was like, ‘My abuela’s dead. She might give you a knuckle sandwich. That’s the way it works.’ 

So, it's very interesting how to navigate this world. I don't know. I just do it. And then when I can't, I can't. I stopped doing Method Mondays ’cause I was just really exhausted. And I was running out of things to do. I mean, I had more things, but they were starting to get more complicated and more technique driven. And I was like, ‘Oh, wait a minute. [Laughs.] I need to slow my horses down before I burn out,’ you know?

And then, I've actually started to say no to recipes. A lot of people, they’re like, ‘Recipe!’ And I'm like, ‘No.’ So they're like, ‘Oh, brother, this guy stinks.’ [Laughter.] 

Alicia: Yeah. 

It's such a hard thing to navigate. I don't have as big an audience as you obviously. Even just with the small amount of people it's—the audacity that people have sometimes in what they say and making fake accounts or something just to call—speaking for me—to call me a b***h. And I'm like, ‘What? What did I do?’ And it's just really hard to navigate. 

And I think people aren't—like you said, if you tell people, ‘Hey, why are you doing that?’ And then they realize you're a person that they need to have better boundaries online. But a lot of people for some reason don't really understand that the corollary to real life from—

Paola: No, I don’t think so. 

And I don’t think they care, either. They want the escape. And for them, I’m this wunderkind. You know what I mean? I'm just 13 and I'm not 31. They’re saying I am this person that had everything given to them. 

So, I let them believe whatever it is that they want. I know my story. I know what I do. I know what it took to get here and the sacrifices that I had to face to get to where I am. So I find peace in all of that. 

Just because I go through a moment—if it's a really hard moment, I’ll pull that person to the side. I'll be like, ‘Yo, let's call each other. We need to have a talk.’ And they're like, ‘What?’ And I'm like, ‘No, I need to call you ’cause I think that what's going to happen next is going to turn into this rivalry or beef. And I don’t have time for it. So you're going to feel even more offended when I don't respond to you.’

So literally, I'll just be like, ‘Look. This is how it makes me feel. If you can, don't, you know what I mean? And if you do moving forward, understand you don’t have my blessing.’ And that's it. And a lot of stuff gets squashed. I think a lot of my beefs get avoided ’cause I am still very much so a middle-aged millennial, you know? [Laughter.] And I'll call somebody. I'll be like, ‘You need to get on the phone with me right now.’ Like, ‘Are you crazy?’ I'm like ‘Yeah. Come on. Let's talk before we start going on this rivalry. ’Cause I don't have the stamina to do that. I gotta answer questions.’

Alicia: That's great. I need some of that, because I can get—I've tried to temper it, but I can be a little nasty in my responses to people. And sometimes, it doesn't go well. So I need to learn a lesson from you. [Laughs.]

Paola: I just tell people what it is. I'm like, ‘This is what it is. This is how I feel. You're entitled to your feelings, and if you think I'm hot garbage, then I'm always gonna be hot garbage to you. But another man's trash is another man's treasure.’

Alicia: Right. [Laughs.]

Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Paola: Inherently, I don’t think so. I feel if, when I cook white rice to pair with my rice and beans, that's not a political statement. 

But also when you start thinking about it, like yeah, maybe it is. How do we get rice to the Dominican Republic, to Latin America, to all of the Caribbean nations that are of the diaspora? How did we do that? It's a fine line between sustenance and ljust history, right? Because rice has a history doesn't make it left-leaning or right-leaning. 

But I think that if we stop shying away from what food means to our cultures. And like I said earlier, for me, it's a time capsule, all my recipes. Everything that I do is setting up the stage for those that are coming after me, right? So while obviously me baking a pie isn't me raging against the machine or baking against the machine, which is what I like to say, which is so funny, because this is how I say it when I'm typing. I'm like, ‘Baking against the machine.’ And I don't mean—it's super ironic. But people understand. I hope they do. Baker's if you're listening to this, I still love you. 

But I think that there are so many things that are political about food, access to food, access to capital to make food is very political. What is deemed appropriate to eat and not appropriate to eat. I personally can't go around saying that I like to eat a certain type of fruit, because of the connotations that are implicitly implied for people that look like me, right? It’s just insane. But this is the reality that we live in. 

I think for me, my trade, how I manipulate foods into a political act in baking or raising funds or doing what I do with Bakers Against Racism is what I do, because I'm not a trust-fund kid. I don't have money. Still got my student loan. Sallie, if you want to cancel them, I'm here for you girl. Cancel my student loans. 

But I don't think that it is one of those things where it's just super black and white. I think food is a gray area of happiness and sadness and anger, of us being picked up and dropped off with, against our will. And now, I speak Spanish. Here, I'm saying it's just one of those things where I don't think that a lot of us understand the full scope of what food is. But I think historians in the future will use that, those recipes and food to track our people and track who we are and why we are the way that we are.

Alicia: Right. Thank you so much for your time today.

Paola: Thank you for having me.

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Listen now | Talking to the star pastry chef about narratives of success, ingredient accessibility, and creativity.

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Listen now | Talking to the cookbook author and TV show host about her upbringing, creativity, and being generous on social media.

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I was, of course, nervous to talk to Nigella Lawson, but I shouldn’t have been. Lawson is hilarious, warm, and down-to-earth despite all the success she’s had between 1998’s How to Eat and 2020’s Cook, Eat, Repeat.

After this conversation, I would tell everyone: She is one of us! A writer, worried about coming up with new ideas like we all are. As I readied this transcript for publication, I was cracking up at some parts and feeling absolutely affirmed by others. Lawson is just wildly generous, and I was wildly lucky to get to talk to her about everything from her upbringing to how she’s cooking these days to how she continues to be creative. And I’m so happy I get to share it with everyone. Listen above, or read below.

This episode of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy is brought to you by Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide by Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras from Workman Publishing. Tour each continent through the book’s encyclopedic entries on some of the world’s most interesting foods and places. Did you know that in Iowa there’s a Seed Savers Exchange where over 20,000 plant varieties that might otherwise be lost are stored on a 890-acre organic farm? Learn about this and more in Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide, on sale now.

Alicia: Hi, Nigella. Thank you so much for being here. 

Nigella: Well, it's a real pleasure to be here. 

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Nigella: Well, I grew up in London, really central London. And obviously, it was a long time ago. I was born in 1960. I do remember the Kings Road in the ’60s, when it was all happening. 

Now, we were a very food-focused household. My mother was a wonderful cook. I mean, never from books. I think she had two books. Very instinctive, but—and really just doing things by what they tasted like, and as far as I was aware, not technique in any particular way. I get my sort of impatience, I think, from her. And sometimes that's useful in the kitchen, actually, but sometimes not at all. 

Now, she cooked slightly differently. When I was a child, a lot of my friends would—they'd be eating kind of, much more, I suppose, what people abroad would think of as English foods—quite plain. And if it was pasta, it was what we call spag bol. We don't even do it the proper way. In Italian spag bol, spaghetti bolognaise. In a way that would make an Italian weep.

My mother actually had learned, had—it's quite, rather interesting. When she was a child, they had an Italian—her mother, not terribly maternal; always had to get lots of people in between her and the children. Yeah, her grandmother got various people. And there was one, Antonia, who was an Italian au pair, as much as that existed in the time. So my mother was cooking spaghetti aglio e olio and things with real flavor. But what really made the difference was that it was considered among people who felt they were respectable—not that I don’t, I don't think my mother thought that about herself—but respectable. And it wasn't done to talk about food a lot now, so you didn't really mention it, whereas it was very much the subject about what we were eating and so forth. 

But the thing that is quite strange now is that I didn't really eat as a child. I really dreaded mealtimes. It was old-fashioned even when I was a child. But what would happen is I didn't eat, and if you didn't eat, it was like being—it was very Victorian. If you didn't eat, you had to sit at the table until you finished. And if you still didn't finish it, at the next meal, you would be given your cold plate. It's a miracle I love food so much. 

But of course, my parents who had been children in the war; they had grown up with rationing and really no food in the shops. So I can see why, for them, it was a waste. And I have inherited that thing about waste, as well. But I really didn't like it. I didn't like eating.

But my mother didn’t believe—she got us in the kitchen. Well, in a sexist way. My brother, who's older, never had to be in the kitchen, but—because that was how they were then. But I had a sister 16 months younger, and we really would help in a way that children don't help now, because it wasn't to amuse us. We would help cook when we—when I was six, and she was five, and we'd stand on a rickety chair. 

We had this thing called the New World Range, which was this big gas cooker. And we'd have to stir things. We'd make mayonnaise. So my mother, being very impatient, one of us would whisk egg yolks, the other one would be pouring the oil. And if you got the pouring job, it was terrifying. But it meant that I didn't know I had learned to cook, but I did. So she didn't give lessons or say why, but I saw what she did. And I've always cooked.

I don't like being forced. I didn't enjoy the state of childhood, at all. You have no autonomy, really, as a child. And you certainly didn't then. And so, once I was a bit older, and I could cook for myself and choose what I ate, then I really loved it. 

And I loved it with my grandmother. I'd go there every Friday in the morning. I mean, when there wasn’t school. Or after school, we’d go shopping together. We'd cook certain things. And it felt much more collaborative and that I had some say in what we were going to do. And I was an odd child. I adored brains and spinach. 

So we never had sweet things. My father didn't have a sweet tooth, so that was that. It was very old fashioned. We weren't actually allowed to eat with him in the evening, or anytime—until we were about eight. It was a bit ‘children should be seen and not heard, and preferably not either.’ But the weekends, we'd have lunch together. And it was always great tension, because I'm very clumsy. And that would drive my mother mad. I’d knock something over, or be like that. And that thing of, that tension of sort of fitting in with people wasn't really what I was good at. 

Alicia: Well, it's interesting, because you started your career then as a journalist. And you didn't move into, toward food until a bit late. What made you want to be a journalist? And how did that segue into food? How does journalism, that background, influence? 

Nigella: I wasn't a reporter. My first job was in publishing, because I loved reading. And then I realized, ‘Oh, this isn't about reading. This is a business.’ I mean, I know everything is. It wasn't really for me, and I started reviewing books for various periodicals and that sort of thing. And I liked it more. 

So when I started in journalism, it was in arts journalism. I was in the arts pages. I did something which they thought was ridiculous. I had a contract with The Sunday Times, which is pretty rare. And I was young. I think I was 23 when I went there. I mean, I know it was a different time and there were many more people on staff there. But nevertheless. I was deputy literary editor at The Sunday Times, and I was 26, which was great. But then by the time I was 27, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I'm being paid to worry, not to think.’ I didn't like that. And I just thought, ‘No.’ 

It was then I traded it in for a writing contract. So I wrote about books and arts, interviewing people. I wasn't good at that. But anyway. I mean, I found it difficult. I found it difficult. And then I became a columnist, an op-ed columnist, which, in a way, is a bit like cooking, isn't it? Because if you're reviewing a book—and I did review restaurants, too—if you're reviewing a book, you have a sort of something there to return to. Or a film. I've done about everything in journalism. Only pages I haven't written for are business pages. I’ve even written on sport. One piece only. 

The thing of when you're writing a column, you're weaving an idea. And all you have to go on is that paragraph will lead to the next one. But it's just your thoughts, and you're creating something. You're making something for someone to read and sort of either savor or disagree with. In this country, most columns are written for people to disagree with. 

I suppose what's happened is that when I had to write a column and think about what I was going to say, or indeed what subject I was going to choose, I would often make soup or something because I found chopping—I mean, I always cooked. My friends were journalists and editors. And then they kind of said, ‘Well, you should do this or you should write this.’ And I didn't really pay an awful lot of attention. 

My husband, my late husband, John Diamond, he said to me once, ‘You know, you're very confident about your views in food. If we go out to a restaurant, you will say things like, ‘That needed more salt,’ or ‘I wouldn't put that with that,’ or ‘This is great wine.’ You should write a book. And you should write a book about how you make your decisions, and call it ‘how to eat.’’ And I thought, ‘John, that is the stupidest idea I've ever heard.’ 

It's an awful thing to say, but it's almost like a wound. And then, because I had these sort of intellectual pretensions; I wanted to be something that people would respect me for. I never wanted fame; I knew well enough that that sort of thing isn't actually what it looks like. I thought, ‘I want to be respected by people I respect.’ That's all I ask in my work. 

But then after a while, I kind of played with the idea of my—I didn't actually know the book was going to have recipes. I hadn't thought through—that sort of came more as I started writing. And I felt I found my voice in a way, doing that. It was an accident. But I think so many things in life that are important are our accidents. I have to say I'm categorically not a planner.

Alicia: I also am not a planner at all. And I truly believe that accidents are the best way to learn things. [Laughs.]

I mean, it's interesting that you say that you didn't intentionally write about food because you wanted to be taken seriously as an intellectual. Do you feel that—

Nigella: I’m now slightly giving a rather shamefaced explanation. I didn't express it to myself like that back then. But I do remember when people said to me, writer friends of mine, because I worked on the books pages and I read all the time, a lot of my friends were novelists and writers. And I remember one of them, someone who'd won God knows how many prizes saying to me, ‘I see you've got a book out this autumn.’ And I was embarrassed. ‘Oh, no, no, it's just a food book.’ 

I'm now embarrassed that I felt embarrassment. And I think I felt as a woman, I didn't necessarily want to be, ‘Oh yeah, of course, she's writing about food.’ That felt sensitive for me. 

Alicia: Right.

Do you feel that food writing is still seen as some sort of lesser form of writing?

Nigella: Not generally. And those who do think it, I really don't—I wouldn't ever think about them. So I don't think that, no. I don't at all. And I don't think other people do, and I didn't at the time. 

I mean, of course it depends. There's various forms. But I also think when you write about food, you're not writing just about food. Now, you expressly or not often, but even when you're just touching on other subjects, it’s still very much not about it. I mean, I could never be interested in either reading a book or writing a book, especially never writing a book, that was just: the recipes, formula. Just that, to me, doesn't give me anything. Doesn't make me understand why someone wants me to cook that or why they cook it in their kitchen. 

Alicia: Right. And you—No, no, no. You go. 

Nigella: And I think I felt—Hmm? I told you I talk. I also interrupt myself, so don't take it badly I interrupt you. 

What I did feel at the time, is that cooking was entirely dominated by professional chefs. And that's sort of great, but I thought it was actually intimidating people often more than it encouraged. And I wanted to write about cooking from the perspective of someone who is not dexterous, who hasn't had any training, who doesn't have technique, but cooks and enjoys cooking and enjoys eating. So I did know, that was the only thing that made me feel, ‘Yes, maybe I should do this.’ 

I think people had the idea often at that time, not everyone and not everywhere, but very much predominantly. There was a man who would be on television or writing a book where they would—everyone would clap as they chopped a carrot with virtuoso speed, every slice the same, and every—and plating things in a particular way, as if the ideal was that you would cook like a restaurant or eat like a restaurant at home. 

And that seemed to me so wrong and so disrespectful of what I think cooking is. And I admire chefs enormously. I'm enormously grateful not to be one. I think having to do that sort of work, in the end, doesn't actually require sort of constant spontaneity and creativity. People think chefs are more creative than home cooks. But you're forced into being more creative as a home cook, because you have to make do with what you've got. And also because you don't have to be consistent. I think the consistency required of a professional is both admirable and soul-destroying.

Alicia: Right. [Laughs.]

How does being a writer compare to being on TV? I feel that when I've seen TV and food TV, and I've talked to friends about this, when we were growing up, it's—it was this comforting aspiration, maybe kind of a respite from more chaotic situations at home or in life. But it's so different. Your books and your TV are—not that they're so different, but it just feel a bit more—your writing is so different. 

Nigella: Yeah. 

Well, I think what it is is that my language is much the same. But there are so many other things that you're focusing on on TV. 

Wait. I don't know about the word aspirational. But I think there must be an aspect of that. But I think it's often used in a way to belittle people who want to watch something and see something being made that they might not cook at home. I mean, I think I like it. I tell people they can cook. I have a rule that there have to be a set number of recipes you don't even have to look up the recipes. You can go, ‘I'm going to do that.’

But I think what's interesting for me, and I don't know how much it sort of ties in with what you're saying, which is, when you write a book, you are really both in the past and in the future. I'm in the past, in a sense, because I'm remembering meals I've made. Now, I might talk about the present. You're drawing on memories, both from what, why you do that food, but the memories of having eaten it. And for the reader, it's possibly something in the future. 

And the thing about TV, which is you're just there in the present. And people can watch it and see it. And I think that actually is why a lot of people respond. The food is comforting for people. But I think like sport, which is often happening in the now, the seeing something that's happening now is perhaps something that makes people feel a bit alive at the same time rather than just kind of losing themself in some sort of dreamy kitchenscape. 

Now, the way my TV programs are shot, is more like a movie. We're very slow, for a start; I take a week for an episode. Minimum. One camera, and everything is lit. So in a way, it's a beautiful background. You don't have kitchen paper out. You don't have your washing-up gloves there. And in that sense, it is aspirational. But the food is there, and people can see how it's being cooked. 

There was an article today. I'd have to look it up. But someone's saying that she finds the programs helpful because even though she can't afford a lot of the ingredients that she sees people cook with, she gets an idea of what will go with what and how to build on that. People can see that. And I think people do feel confident when they've seen it. And perhaps it plays into this idea that everyone has, ‘Oh, I wish I had a granny who cooked and I sat in her kitchen watching her.’ And it is slightly that idea as well watching someone cook that is comforting. 

What you have more freedom to do in a book—you have freedom for a lot of things—is to make more connections and to go off on little ways that you can take that idea to another recipe or it—show all the different, talk about variations. It's too confusing on a program for that. People then lose their way in the recipe. So I like that.

And of course, I like both ways, which is when I write a book, it's just me really. Particularly the one I wrote during lockdown. And then the publishers do enter in when you hand it in and all goes; it's all less precious then. You're desperate to get it out there. But it's a bit of a loss as well. So it's one thing in your head. Then it's a disappointment, because what, what's on the screen isn't quite what was in your head. And then you like, ‘What's on the screen?’ But then it goes out. And I mean, it's important. It's incredibly important. 

Whereas TV is much more collaborative from the beginning. I am very controlling. I have an opinion about everything. So I wouldn't even let a bowl on set without my say so. In fact, I denuded my kitchen and sent everything in. We talk about the recipes. I've worked with the same director for 20 years or more. And crew. It's a very nice, small crew that we've grown up together. I was quite old when I started, but certainly, with our children. They were all babies. Now, they're grown up. 

And that actually, if you spend a lot of your time working alone, is actually lovely as well. I’m not sure I could do that all the time. And I don't do TV as much as many people in my position. I would never do it two years running, for a start.

Alicia: Right, right, right. 

No, it's interesting, because thinking about my own experience learning how to cook, I feel like I learned how to eat from my mom and my grandmother. But I never had so much of an interest in the kitchen. And then I learned how to cook from watching TV. [Laughs.]

Nigella: But then learning how to eat is the most important. That's why my first book is called, ‘How to Eat.’ No, because your palate leads you. Doesn't it? So I think that is the easier way round. And if you're not really interested, you're never really gonna cook.

Alicia: Right. No, exactly. 

But it's funny, because I also watched all these shows growing up, learned the movements and that sort of thing from TV. And then I thought that I had to, if I really cared about food, I had to move into doing things in a more restaurant, chef, technical way, and started reading all of those cookbooks. And I think the combination of all of it ends up being something good, but it's addressing—Yes. [Laughs.]

Nigella: But there are things you take from chefs. Having all your ingredients ready before you start is helpful. The one thing I think is quite enviable is that when they train, they do everything so many times, it just becomes part of their bloodstream. And that’s what I feel that, in a way, I had lots of years of cooking without realizing I was cooking. And then I started writing about it. 

It's very hard because, as you know, cooking is, should be very fluid, and a recipe, to some extent, argues against the spontaneity and anarchy of cooking. Controlled anarchy. I try to give room to that. But obviously, people who haven't spent a long time, doesn't help just saying to do this. You've got to give more of a structure. So it's always that balance as it is in life, generally, how much structure to have and how much sort of just going with the flow you want. 

Alicia: Right, of course.

Well, you mentioned before reading about someone writing that she couldn't necessarily afford everything she sees on a TV food Network. But I think in all your work, you emphasize kind of where quality can be found or should be found, and maybe where to go to the specialty shop versus not go to the end. And that's something that I think in American cookbooks, because I do see—Nigel Slater does this as well. So I think I see it more maybe with British writers, but American food writers don't really talk about where to get things. [Laughs.]

Nigella: It is difficult. I think I did more of that, until fairly recently, right? There are so many people campaigning for, ‘This has to be this, has to be that.’ I'm very mindful that I'm in a very privileged position. If I get a chicken, right, I know where it's come from. I know that. But it costs 14 pounds. And most people can't afford that. 

And so, now I don't say, ‘Organic, and it has to be from this and that.’ Because I feel people know. And when you get incredibly good ingredients, you don't really need to do anything. I think I want to encourage people to think of it in terms of the ingredients and what tastes they're hoping to get out and out of it. And a good chicken, you can—you get more meals out of, for example, because you get soup or-

There are certain practices I don't want to—I don't like intensely reared meat. I don't want unsustainable fish. And I don't want vegetables where they’ve got no flavor, and they've just been bought to get a lot of water in them and people working in really wrong conditions. 

That's really all food. You'd never eat a caper again, right? But when you think about how capers are picked, and so forth. So, it is problematic. So I kind of want to encourage rather than admonish. I don't want to make people feel bad about not getting this and not getting that. And especially because, for people who are not terribly experienced or confident, and they're on a tighter budget than I am, if it doesn't work like that, they can't afford the waste. I mean, I use anything as I work, too. I don't believe in waste. 

So there really is a balance, I think, to be struck between—’cause some things really do make a difference. And also, I often feel I have to say, ‘Please don't always think the supermarket is the cheapest option,’ which people do think. And also if you’re feeding just yourself, it's much better to go to small shops there. Mind you, buy small quantity. And there's so much wasted food, because the supermarkets here sell in such much bigger packets. And they don't care if you're wasting it. They want you to buy food that's more than you need. 

And I value relationships very much in all my life. I work with the same people. The person I get my vegetables from, although I don't live near there anymore, I mean, we were both young when at the beginning. And I liked that. And I like to have a conversation about—I mean, I often don't go in my phone. And I like a conversation about how I'm gonna cook something, or what's good and what they think is good. 

I'm a Londoner, and I'm in central London, but I—we all need a bit of village life, even if that's just how you buy your carrots. But I don’t own a car, so I don't go shopping in the big wide world very often. But I know them and they do deliveries, or I'll say, ‘I'll give you some cake if you drop that round.’ I think it's important. But I also feel that sometimes you also want to say to people, ‘Look, buy this-’ 

So I have a rule, which I hope I haven't broken too often, which is I will never—I never will send someone to get an ingredient that's unfamiliar if I don't give them plenty of other recipes or ideas for how to use it. And the same often with some alcohol. In my first book, I was talking about marsala an awful lot. So I have many recipes for it. Because in a restaurant, you might use several bottles a night on one dish, but you don't do that in a home. 

So I think every ingredient has to earn its place. Both in terms of taste, no point to throw lots of things on it just for the sake of it. You can go shopping, even if it's something that costs very little. Shopping is often the hardest part of cooking. People are busy when they find time to go shopping. So you don't want to keep sending them out of the shops. 

Alicia: Right. Of course.

And I wanted to ask, too, about how—you do read so many younger and—but, just other writers. You're very generous to writers as well as just anyone on social media. I wanted to know what motivated you to be so available, and to—How do you kind of keep that up?

Nigella: Well, I'll talk about books a bit first. When I started writing about food for Vogue, British Vogue for a while in 1996, sort of. Maybe ’95. I don't know. At that stage, Nigel Slater was writing for Harper's Bazaar. We called that Harpers & Queen here then. So in other words, the sort of, you could say, rival publication. Although I knew from journalism, that's not how journalists see it—they're on the same side as other journalists. And Nigel wrote me the most wonderful letter after my first column. And it was so generous. And I really thought then, ‘God, he’s elegant and generous,’ and I don't want—that is so important. 

A lot of chefs, when I first went on TV, were very, ‘She shouldn't be here.’ And I just thought, ‘You're just making yourself look insecure.’ And there's room for everyone, providing they've got something to say and do—

I suppose I feel talent is always to be really valued and cherished; it's not everywhere. There are a lot of people doing things, but real talent, people—and people with a voice that maybe need to be encouraged. But whether it's old talent, I'm so happy to write about Anna Del Conte, who is 96, or Claudia Roden, who's in her 80s and just had a book out, ’cause they've done wonderful work. But new people I do like is—

Look, we're all going to be knocked off our perch at some stage. Nothing goes on forever. I would rather—you want talented people there. I think to be competitive is such an odd thing. Because I think if you're competitive, you must be doing something so generic that you think someone else can step up and do it. You have a voice. You do what you do. And of course, people might get tired of listening to it. But it's fine. That seems entirely fair. I don't mind that. 

But I think really, reading a good book or tasting something wonderful, it's transporting. And you want other people to have the experience, that you want to tell them about it. When I write about a book, I'm not trying to be nice to the writer. I mean, obviously, I know it will help. But I think there can be other people there who might not have known about this will now read it or do something. It's nice for them. Your duty is always to readers. So that's important. 

I got much more active on Twitter during lockdown, because there wasn’t so much going on. I was writing books. I desperately needed to get away from it often. Before that I would only sort of reply about my recipes. And then I thought, ‘Well, people want to know.’ And I always feel not qualified to talk generally about it, because it—but then I thought, ‘Well, people want to know, if they want to know or need you things on how to do it.’ I just said, ‘Well, this is what I would do.’

I began to like the feeling of a community, I suppose. And people can be funny. It kind of lifts your mood. And I often find that as I'm writing, ‘Oh, that looks lovely or that looks wonderful,’ I have a smile on my face as I do it. I'm actually having a conversation in my head. And because I'm having a smile on my face, it's good for me, too. 

Relationships have to be reciprocal, actually in life where—however they are. I mean, I need to feel I'm being addressed as a person. I can't be addressed as if I'm a trick pony or because I'm on telly. It doesn't interest me. As long as I'm a person and I can be a person and respond as a person, I enjoy it. 

I find it easier than real life goings-on over that, because one I'm not good at sound. I love the quietness. And also, I don't know, the requests on your time are more modest. I can feel very overwhelmed by the world, and I do feel overwhelmed by Twitter if I get too behind. But if I'm doing an hour—and I get up so early—so if I do an hour early and then a bit later, I actually do quite enjoy it. Then I'm in a quiet place, haven’t got anything going on and I like that. 

But I can find that thing of not—in real life, I sometimes find it hard to separate other people's needs from mine and my desire to give them what they want. Favors, requests, and also just in terms of doing things. And I'd rather just be in a quiet place. And I read the other day that introverts often do like that. But I don’t know whether I'm an introvert anymore.

Alicia: Well, how do you keep creative over so—over all this time, and all these books, and all these recipes, and all these shows, how do you remain creative and productive? Do you have practices in place? Or do you kind of—is it just, it's there?

Nigella: And after every book, I'm in a complete despair. Not with my first one, because I hatched the second one even though it was meant to be a one-off. I'm in complete despair. And I think that's it. Never again. Both because it's a pretty anxiety-provoking process. And also, because I feel completely cleaned out. And actually, I find it harder, the more books I've done, because every time I think, ‘Oh, that would be good.’ Then I realize I've done that recipe. And I don't ever want us to do recipes for the sake of it. So I never know. 

Now, there's so much promo. See, normally, there's TV. After that, takes a while. And then there's promo. I can only get ideas by cooking in real life. Cooking for people. And I haven't done a lot of that. Because even though things are supposedly back to normal, it's not. I don't want people inside. And I don't go out. I don’t go to restaurants unless it's outside, which is not very often. There’s about one I go to. And I haven't traveled.

The well is empty, and it's staying empty for a bit longer than normal. Because you need to taste other people's food, whether it's other people that you know, or whether it's other people you don't know in places that you don't know. 

I always get in a complete state, that I'll never have another idea. Because I don't think you have ideas by thinking; I think you have ideas by doing mostly. I get some ideas, and I'm always jotting down ideas, recipes in the middle of the night. But it's really by doing it. 

And I cook for myself a lot. So I have some ideas on that. But I, like everyone else, it's—they're nearly always made out of leftovers and everything. So it's quite hard to turn it into a recipe because it's using some oil that I fried some onions in because that—and I've got that bit leftover from something else, which would be complicated otherwise.

I think I’m greedy, and I do—I'm always thinking about what I'm going to eat. So, that helps. But I don't honestly know, actually. Who knows? It's always frightening. And I'm still in that phase. I've got a few things on the back burner. But I think it will take longer. But I'm thinking about ideas and I putter about doing a bit of cooking. That's always good, even if it's just every day. Two things, two-ingredient foods.

Alicia: Right.

Well, I was read—this isn't related to cooking, but I was reading—you had a conversation in The Guardian with the filmmaker Mark Cousins about kind of visual things which seem to, that would seem different from your work, but I know everything is connected. You said that when you don't like having your photograph taken—and now you were saying you're an introvert. So now I understand. And I wanted to know how being a public person has changed for you over the years if it has. How have you dealt with that?

Nigella: Yeah.

I mean, when I was talking to Mark, we had to—we were there for hours doing that. So, it was quite a lot. When I said about me feeling an object when I had my photograph taken, it's—it was also in this sense that without thought, you're just a lump of meat. And you're aware of being looked at. But because I'm not scripted when I do my TV, what's going on in my head is, ‘How do I describe that? How do I explain that?’ So I kind of lose self-consciousness in a way. Not always. 

It was much easier when I started, because there was no social media. And I think that does make life hard on people. It can get ugly out there, I think, which is why I value my little nice patch of it where people aren't trying to make other people look stupid, and if they do, if anyone's rude to anyone else, you know, I just block them generally. 

Look. I think what was made very much is I was 40 when I made my first food series, which is a lot easier than being in your 20s. I was going through a really difficult time in my life. My husband was terminally ill. And actually, how people reacted to me and all that, so wasn't on my radar particularly. I was surprised by their take on me, but I couldn't sort of dwell on it. It's always hard, but you have an innocence at the beginning because you don't see yours—you haven't had anyone's reaction.

Being scrutinized is difficult, right? But also I'm a very nosy person, so if I'm outside a restaurant, so much—I stare at everyone else. I stare at people walking past. So I'm not really in a position to mind. And I don't mind. 

I find this thing of everyone imputing a motive to someone else, it seems to me these days, it's always a malign motive, that the idea that someone makes a mistake, or also that you're just doing something, because you said it, that it isn't because you think this about yourself, or you think that. But TV does make a difference to how people look at you. 

When I started—so I did journalism and radio, and I wouldn't do TV. I wouldn't do TV, I thought, I want to exist in my words, not in my image. And I resisted it for quite a long time. But I felt sufficiently sort of interested to explain what I thought about food and to cook it, and I didn't really have that emotion. Now I'd say, I've gone back to being fairly relaxed about it in the sense that it seems such a waste of energy to be worrying about it. 

But having said that—I don't like having my photograph taken. Sometimes going out does feel very challenging for me. I mean, I always feel like I am—television glamorizes you. You got a makeup artist removing all your flaws; you've got lighting there to make you look better. And in real life, I’m messy. I still have my makeup on. And I’m the age I am. You just feel like people gotta go, ‘Yeah, what does she look like?’ But when I took my kids to school I’d think, it's nice for everyone to think, ‘Oh, no, she doesn't look as good in real life.’ So, that’s all right.

I don’t want to feel a bit nervous. But then as long as you concentrate on how other people are feeling, you don't on yourself. My mother, who used to say, ‘I don't know why you're so shy. No one's interested in you anyway.’ Which, when I was 15, felt a bit brutal. But actually, now I know that yes, 15-year-olds are so self-absorbed and think that everyone's looking at them and talking about them. And no one is. Everyone's self-obsessed. They're thinking about themselves. They're not thinking about you. 

So you learn that as you get older. She used to say, ‘It's more important to charm than to be charmed, then reach out.’ In other words, no, it's more important to let people be charmed and let them charm, rather than you don't have to be the show. 

But listen, and I like people. I don't like conversations in which people respond to me as if I’m something from the television and not a person. That doesn't happen that often. I think that's very isolating. And so, I do like people, I say, I was very introverted as a child. And I then thought I had a complete change of character. And I do find people for a while, that I found it stimulating and energy-giving. And now I find it often quite tiring after a while, but think it's hard, but not as hard as if it happened when I was young. 

I think being young when you're forming your relationship with yourself and who you are is so changeable. I know it can change at any stage, but I think it's probably much easier to feel you have to be a certain way because you're not entirely sure what you feel or what you think. And so, I think you've got to go back into sort of who you are and in the same way as keep that with you when you're with others and sort of let them be themselves. I think that is actually quite important. Not always possible, because sometimes it is all just too much. 

And we have a very—what do you say—boisterous tabloid press who really just want to list your many flaws and what's wrong, and particularly with women and what they look like. ‘You're too thin, you're too fat. You got lines when you frown. Oh, you haven't got lines when you frown.’ So you sort of never read. I thought I would be very oversensitive. But I find it so easy not to read things. Or not to bother really. It's an odd thing. 

Alicia: Yeah. 

Well, what are you cooking lately for yourself? 

Nigella: Oh, what have I been cooking? I feel very aware that you're vegan, so I feel bad. 

Alicia: No, no, no, I'm not. Vegetarian. 

Nigella: I cook quite a bit of fish. I find it beautiful. And when I'm by myself, I quite like cooking fish in—and neither my children eat fish, so I do it when I'm by myself. And I enjoy that. But really what I like is sort of cooking, when I’m cooking from leftovers. Rummaging about and seeing what I've got.

I suppose in the summer I do, I eat salads a lot. I mean, I think you call it red chicory nonstop. I get through a lot of that. And there are so many different ways of eating it, adding to it. And often that thing of just mixing, sort of mixing things together. 

Otherwise, I'm trying to think. When you're asked, it's so difficult. Very hard to answer. I was trying to remember what I ate last night, but I think I was so exhausted I just had a Campari soda and some salt and vinegar potato chips. But I'd had a proper lunch. I had smoked mackerel for lunch, and I—with a cucumber salad and some red chicory, horseradish, that kind of thing. And so, I didn't need anything that much. It was a busy day. And I cut my head because I'm so clumsy, I somehow managed to get a saucepan lid landing sideways on the top of my head. So I just thought, ‘I'm going to bed now.’

But chickpeas, I cook a lot. I'm a great chickpea person because, again, whether you're making pasta, or soup, or a salad or mushing them up and turning them into a sort of something stodgy on eat with a spoon and fork. I like that. I get in slight phases with things, I feel. But I don't feel I've—’cause I don't go out. And I don't see something suddenly in a shop or something, which I will. I don't know, I've become a bit—I don't get inspired that way. 

But so, I'm trying to think. Yeah, that's basically—I've been practicing with a few different recipes, some cake things, which I sometimes quite like. And they're always takers for that. I can give it to anyone.

Alicia: No, and that's the good thing about testing baking recipes. [Laughs.] You can get rid of it. 

Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Nigella: Well, everything is to an extent. For me, it's political in a sense of belonging in the world, first and foremost. And as an urban person, I feel it's a way of feeling grounded. And you're connected. There are people who've planted those potatoes and other people who then have picked them and then the person you get them from and it's—there's a kind of a chain. And then the person you feed them to. And I think it's quite important to think in those terms of things being continual and we need everyone. And there’s a lot that goes into making our food, cooking the least of it.

When I started this thing of women meant not meant to have a particular appetite and always meant to be on a diet. And I think I thought that was quite important, that women were always saying, ‘I shouldn't be eating this’ and that sort of thing. My mother had an eating disorder. I knew a bit about that, and how pernicious it can be. So I think I feel that that's important, not to make apologies for eating. 

And also, I feel very strongly that, I know as I get older, I get more and more woo-woo. I do feel that it's important to be grateful if you have food, and I think that that whole guilt thing is also so you don't enjoy it, and that seems a terrible waste of possible pleasure, but also, that we’re lucky to have it. So I think it's quite important in that, in those senses.

I'm aware that my cooking, probably, is reprehensible in many ways from the perspective of deeper concerns. Now, I suppose that's why I don't like waste, apart from that's how I was brought up. But I mean, the amount of things I have in the smallest—it used to drive me mad when my mother did that. It was like Russian dolls. Every day, they go into the smaller bowl, the same leftovers. And I now look at, and I have quarter cups of things and everything is in there. But I think, yeah, that is important. That is important to me. But also, it's so much more satisfying as a cook. 

Alicia: Right, right. Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time today to chat. 

Nigella: Oh, I feel I’ve been hopeless. I've just been hopeless. 

Alicia: No, you've been wonderful. You've been wonderful. I feel that way after every interview. I'm like, ‘This was awful and terrible and useless.’ And then when I go back, I'm like, ‘Oh, actually, it was not so bad.’ [Laughs.]

Nigella: I know. It’s very hard doing anything, isn't it?

Alicia: It's hard. [Laughter.]

Nigella: That's why live things can be tremendously liberating. Because it’s done, it’s gone out there. You'll never see it. All that anxiety we pile on ourselves. Some of it is helpful. A lot of it isn't. 

Alicia: Well, thank you. Thank you again. 

Nigella: Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

I met Rachel Signer years ago while we were both freelancers living in Brooklyn. We were at a press dinner for a restaurant called Gristmill, which I just checked on: It’s now sadly closed. We’ve kept up with each other’s careers ever since on social media, and I’m so thrilled to see her memoir—ˆYou Had Me at Pét-Nat, a beautiful and enthralling work that enacts Signer’s restlessness and eventual homecoming—in the world and discuss her life in Australia, where she’s making wine, raising her daughter on a farm, and continuing to show the world the significance of natural wine.

We discuss how she defines natural wine, leaving New York City, how she maintains such vivid memories to write from, and more. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Rachel. Thank you so much for being here.

Rachel: Hey, Alicia. Yeah, thanks. Happy to be here. 

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? 

Rachel: Yeah, I love this question. 

I grew up in Arlington, Virginia. And a typical weekday dinner was a dish called salmon patties. And the salmon came in a can. And I think it was probably lightly floured and seasoned, and shaped and then kind of fried in a pan and served alongside peas or broccoli. And I loved it. I definitely really liked that dinner. And I imagine for my parents it was good, because it probably took like 12 minutes to make. And my mother grew vegetables. And I remember in the summer there being a lot of corn, corn on the cob. I remember there being tomatoes, and all of those summer veggies. 

And also very important—sorry, I have a cold. Very important meals were around Jewish holidays. So we would have a beef brisket, which I'm pretty sure would have been a Passover dish. Because you don't eat flour around that week, so you tend to have a roast meat. My mom would braise it with Heineken. It had to be Heineken. And she would sip half a can as she cooked. And then kugel, which is an egg noodle pudding. That happens around the New Year.  

I also was a vegetarian from ages 12 to 20, which was, honestly, sort of a random decision. I only started reading all of the kind of literature, like Diet for a [Small] Planet, after I'd made the decision. So I don't quite know where it came from. I was not a very model vegetarian. I subsisted on granola bars, bagels with cream, and quesadillas for a long time. That’s what I ate.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Yeah. I love that. 

And then you came to natural wine eventually. And I'm going to jump a lot. And I'm sure we'll work our way backwards. But I wanted to ask, how do you define natural wine? Because I think it's important to have how you think of it first before we talk about your life, your book, because it is such a huge part of everything, and—including the memoir. 

Rachel: Yeah, I'd love to get into it.

There's never enough that can be said about what it is because it’s still not a legally defined term. However, that is slowly changing. France has introduced a category called vin méthode nature, in which they—I think they visit the winery, and they analyze the wines to make sure they meet the definition. And we might see more of that in the future. 

But yeah, it needs to be from an organically farmed vineyard. And I'll put that first and foremost, ’cause nothing else matters if the grapes are coming from poisoned farming. So no, herbicides, fungicides. And those are really the main things. Pesticides as well. So organic farmers will use copper and sulfur and lots of plant-based treatments to manage grape vines. And grape vines do need a lot of spraying and a lot of management.

Then we're talking about wine made with very minimal intervention. And a lot of wine drinkers will be surprised to know that stuff is added to wine, because since it's not considered a food, it's not required to list any of those additives on the label. So if you walk into a winemaking store, there's a whole section of stuff that makes your wine taste a certain way. 

Before that, there's packaged yeast. And there's nothing evil about adding packaged yeast. It's an altered way to make a wine. And once you start with an altered way, you've interrupted the natural process, and you're going to need to keep adding stuff. So no yeast, no flavorints, no added wood chips, no mega purple. No fining and filtration. So, you're just getting the grapes. 

Quite a lot of people we consider natural winemakers do add small amounts of CO2, sulfur dioxide, commonly known as sulfites, or sulfur, a very hotly debated word and topic. And personally I would say when you're getting past 30 parts per million sulfites added, we're not really—I'm not sure it's a winemaker who really cares about being natural. However, I still celebrate biodynamic farming, so if they're adding 60 parts per million sulfites, I'm not so mad.

I'll just add, Alicia, that, especially in the past couple of years, I've really come to think about the idea of being anti-capitalistic as something part of making natural wine, to an extent.

Alicia: Well, can you talk more about that?

Rachel: Yeah. And I think it's definitely in theory, because I don't know when there will ever be something that measures if you're anti-capitalistic. But natural wine is definitely a culture based around personalities and relationships, and kind of passing on what it was like when you visited this winemaker. 

Yeah, I mean, if a wine is made as part of a big corporate thing and LVMH is the owner of that winery, I'm not interested. Even if they farmed organically, I'm just not because where's the spirit? I want something where the winemaker touched the bottles and touched the wine. 

And even very small, natural winemakers do have someone full-time helping in the cellar. So I'm not under the illusion that there's one person doing everything-everything. That's not the case for us, either, where we make wine. But yeah, I want it to be a small operation because that is more caring for individuals. 

And there was a case last year, a winemaker in Puglia that was in the news a lot really showed us what can happen. I mean, that's a massive operation. From the beginning, everyone—a lot of people suspected something was not right, which turned out to be true. 

And I think all of that is very tricky. You really have to ask someone selling you the wine for as much information as possible. How are you going to know all that stuff? It’s hard.

Alicia: Yeah. 

No. And I love that because I think that we have to talk about, in food and beverage, when someone is scaling up and is readily available, it's always a red flag. It's always a red flag for something to be always abundant, always available in every store. We know that the alcohol we see in every single bodega is not going to be necessarily the best made, the most caring for the environment, the most caring for the labor that went into it. 

And that's what I love—I love that about natural wine is that it's so specific, and it's so maker-driven, and it's so place-driven. I got that too from your memoir, which is called You Had Me at Pet-Nat, which follows you from being a waitress and journalist in Brooklyn to a writer and now a winemaker in South Australia. How has delving into this world affected you as a writer and how has being a winemaker affected you as a writer? How has this influenced you and your work?

Rachel: It has helped me so much in understanding the year-long cycle of winemaking. I mean, as a journalist living in a city, you're—generally, you're invited by some kind of regional association. They buy your flight. And you have the privilege of spending seven days in a region seeing a very selected group of winemakers, and you just don't get the full story. 

And I've really benefited from doing it myself and seeing other people throughout the year and what they struggle with and the challenges that they face and the choices they make and their attitudes and what—you see it as this delicious wine and this blend, whatever. And from their point of view, that wine started out as a disaster because kangaroos attacked that patch. The grapes were so hard to pick. And then they decided this. They decided that, and then finally got blended with this because they didn't know what to do. And then suddenly, it was good. 

And that backstory is really important in terms of what questions I ask people and how I choose to write about them. I think I write about winemaking less and less, and I write more and more about lifestyle and the choices people make, which influence, ultimately, their wines. So it's helped me immensely. It's a really good thing to be, to have your—even if you just had one hand involved in a project, I think it would really help writers definitely.

Alicia: Right, for sure.

The memoir is—in its detail about the wines you've drank over the years—is just stunning that there's so much detail. I was like, ‘Have you kept tasting notes and diaries over this time?’ And how did you re-create those memories in such a specific and vivid way?

Rachel: Yeah, I'm looking at this spot on my desk right now. Because when I moved to Australia, that spot was stacked high with notebooks going back to 2014, when I first went to Burgundy. So almost seven years of journals. And I refused to throw them out, because I was—even then I was like, ‘Maybe I'll use this for something.’ And eventually, I was like, ‘I'm gonna write a book.’

Yeah, I've kept pretty intense notes about all the wines and all the winemakers, and to some extent, personal notes as well in a separate journal. I really recommend that. Have one journal for your personal stuff, and then one for your professional. And I filled in some things with emails, going back to emails with friends and family, like, ‘When did we go here? And when did we go there?’ Photos on my iPhone to re-create things. Yeah, ’cause that's really important. 

And in terms of the chapter at Domaine Mosse, where I worked hardest, I basically just spent every night writing in my journal there for like 45 minutes. And I think because it was such a vivid experience also, scenes from that—I mean, I remember those two weeks more vividly than I remember half of my childhood. It's just so vital to me right now. 

Alicia: I've lost a lot of journals. I have all of my teenage and childhood journals in the garage at my—the house where I grew up. But I lost a journal from a very important time. And I am still really upset about it. I'm so concerned. It was very thorough notes that I'm like, ‘How am I going to ever re-create this?’ I guess I just won’t. The writing of things does make it more concrete in your mind, anyway. You really do inscribe it on your mind, which is something.

But I was so impressed and actually inspired by those tasting notes. Because I always have this idea that I'm going to be that person who takes extensive notes on things, and then I'm like, ‘I am just not.’ I have pictures of everything I've eaten and drank for the last six years, though, on my phone. So, that's useful. I pay Apple a lot of money for the storage. 

But another thing I loved about your memoir is that you don't shy away from describing hangovers, but they're very neutral. You don't talk about being hungover in, like, a self-loathing or self-critical way. It's kind of just like, ‘This is an effect of living this life, doing this job, drinking these wines.’ And I've read, I'm sure you've read people talk about how you don't get hangovers from natural wine, which is funny. 

And so, why was it important to you to just to document those effects and not shy away from those side effects of being in this world?

Rachel: Yeah, I think it was important for the personal aspect of my memoir. I mean, as you know, I'm kind of using natural wine in a way to document a personal transformation. I changed a lot in the past few years, and I went to some pretty dark places. And I think when you're in that place, alcohol, no matter what kind, can be a form of self-harm. 

And to say that that doesn't exist in the natural wine world is just ridiculous. There's lots of overconsumption and partying. And I've had some amazing times drinking Magnums until 3 a.m. 

But yeah, I think it can be a form of a lack of self-care and self-harm. And so, I think I documented that because that's where I was. And yeah, I thought that I was going to be living the dream. And I wanted it to look on social media like I was living the dream. But I was not. 

And yeah, I guess a bit more broadly speaking, the idea that natural wine doesn't give you a hangover can have some relevance because I think if you drink a few glasses of natural wine compared to a few glasses of wine from a supermarket, you will probably notice that you feel better. And I've heard that from so, so, so, so, so many people. But when we're talking about someone that drinks natural wine on a regular basis, yeah, they're gonna go out on a Friday and drink a whole bunch of wine. And they're gonna have a hangover the next day. It’s the alcohol that does that. 

Alicia: Yeah. 

No, it's funny because we've only really—natural wine has only just arrived in Puerto Rico. And so, we've been going a little overboard for sure. So it was funny to read. It's not funny—yeah, as you say, it is a dark description of the time. But at the same time, it's like, ‘Oh.’ It was actually, for me, reassuring in that I was like, ‘Oh, right. Even though I've been told in this wellness way that natural wine isn't supposed to have the same effects, it's like, ‘No, actually, overindulgence of all kinds has the same effect.’’

And you have a real love for Paris that's so well-documented in the book. You're now in Australia. I also left New York in the last couple of years. How has being outside of the U.S. and specifically New York City affected your work, do you think? Not just as being a winemaker, but just that perspective of being outside of a place that—I think once you get out of New York, you realize that it's very parochial and a bit shut off from reality in the world. I don't know if you feel that way. How have things changed for you since you left New York?

Rachel: Yeah, I just think broadening your perspective and living abroad is so important. I don't know if all Americans realize how myopic the viewpoint from within the States can be. I am sure that quite a lot of people do realize that. 

But it's been really good to actually just be able to see the world from a broader standpoint. I mean, Australia is such a bizarre kind of place in the world. For us, Japan is more of a neighbor. We have different benchmarks and different relationships with the world here. Southeast Asia is very close. So, it's been really interesting. 

I think I just needed to leave New York. And I mean, I've seen a lot of people move upstate as well. New York is so hard if you're not from money. How long can you go on accumulating credit card debt and living in sub-optimal situations and not being able to fully—and I did offer myself some things. I went to the bath houses in the East Village once a month during winter. I used to go to a Chinese body worker on the Lower East Side. I tried, I tried. But it's really hard when you're not making the big bucks. 

But I gained so much. Being there and taking fiction writing workshops and journalism workshops and meeting people going to literary magazine events, I took that all with me. And it's just here. It's just with me. And now I get to enjoy other perspectives, people that have grown up in other places and learn about their lives. I feel pretty good about the decision. 

The pandemic has been incredibly hard. I haven't been to the States in 2018, haven't seen my family or my friends. I didn't mean to have such a clean break. I wasn’t trying to abandon ship. And we've been back to New York. It was like four days. Went to The Four Horsemen, went to Roberta's, saw a handful of people. And that was it. That's not how I imagined it. So it has been really hard in some ways, too.

Alicia: Yeah.

No, like we were saying before we started recording, that it's interesting that you have to leave New York especially when maybe your life up till moving there was—well, I grew up on Long Island, so it's a different—but is guided toward this, and you think that it's an achievement in and of itself to be there. And you have to make the most of it, and if you're not happy then that's a personal failing of some kind when it's really the city making it so unlivable for people who aren't doing six figures, and now probably honestly like more than that. [Laughs.] High six figures. 

And it is interesting to, for me personally, too, to have the success that I wanted. But I had to leave New York for that. But I didn't even know that I had to do that. It just was reality. The universe pushed me out, and then that was when anything good actually started to happen for me. 

But it's wild that that is the reality, because I do love New York. I wish it worked. [Laughs.] 

Rachel: Oh, I know. Exactly. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] 

But similarly, you write a lot in the book about the pains of being a freelancer, which I obviously know well, and that mainstream media wasn't interested in work about natural wines. I wanted to ask, how has that changed in recent years? Is self-publishing still the best route for good writing on natural wine?

Rachel: Hmm. Probably still.

I mean, there's, there's The Wine Zine based in New York, which is this really cool publication. To be honest, I've never gotten my hands on a copy. But I think it's widely available in the States. Punch Drink, Punch magazine has been doing a little bit of coverage on natural wine over the years. And that's a nice viewpoint. And I have seen some increased interest in mainstream and in smaller publications. It does seem to kind of reiterate some of the same topics. 

I mean, the thing that Pipette has always done is that—which no mainstream publication will ever do—is just profiles of natural winemakers. And these are people who are important if you definitely love and care about natural wine. And so a mainstream publication would not assume that about their audiences, whereas I can assume that about my readership. 

I don't know. I guess for me what's been more interesting is just seeing in the past year and a half the well and true diversification of voices and topics, finally. It’s great. It's really, really great. I'm like, ‘Wow, so many more interesting articles are coming out, interesting people kind of being elevated.’ And I'd love to just see more of that. 

And, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what will be filling kind of the space now that Pipette is going to stop publishing regularly. But I'd love to say something else come up.

Alicia: Yeah.

Why did you make that decision to stop publishing right now?

Rachel: The amount of admin and kind of computer work involved has just become hard with being a mother.

And I'm looking out the window at the farm. ’Cause we planted vineyards in the past two years. We have 6,000 baby vines, and we work them basically by hand. And I make wine. I would like to maybe slightly, possibly slightly increase. I mean, I make less than 3,000 bottles. It's all done by hand. 

And, yeah, I'd like for our daughter to be more a part of our lives on the farm. Yeah, I don't think I can justify the time spent in front of the computer, especially now that it's slightly less fun, ’cause I can't fly to Paris and go around Europe for two months visiting winemakers, which was kind of the original idea for the mag. 

It just feels right. I mean, 10 issues was great, that accomplishment. And I've loved working with all the people involved. Just because something seems like a success doesn't mean you have to keep going. I might do an encore edition one day. I'm very interested in doing a podcast. I love having conversations like this. It’s much more rewarding, actually. 

Alicia: Yeah, then doing admin work. [Laughs.]

I think that's why I decided to do—I needed to figure out something for paid subscribers. And I was like, ‘Well, I can just talk to people. That seems sweet.’ [Laughs.] And it's not as hard as you think it is to do a podcast at all. 

And I think that would actually be really great. I know there are wine podca—That's a niche that you still are one of the few people that could fill. But yeah, it's funny. Pipette was being sold here in San Juan. I don't know if you know that. There's a cafe that was selling the magazine. 

Rachel: Yeah, yeah. Café—Is it Cafe Regina?

Alicia: Café Regina. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was like, ‘That's so funny.’ Just something that ended up in this tiny city, which is so cool. 

But I wanted to ask what are the biggest misconceptions you see about natural wine that are still talking points, because I—even as a casual reader of this kind of stuff, I'm like, I feel there's still like a lot of narratives that are wrong. [Laughs.] I don't know. 

Rachel: Ok.

I hear the idea that you can't find it anywhere, or it's too niche. And like, ‘Oh, but it's not in just regular restaurants, right?’ It's this niche thing. I think we can partly blame this mentality of if you know, you know. And we're all guilty of that to some extent in the natural wine world, because there are some bottles where it's if you know, you know. ‘A guy makes 300 bottles of this in a tiny shed in the mountains of the Rhone Valley. And it's amazing. And you wouldn't like it anyway.’ And the attitude just comes up a lot. 

But I have seen so many companies really just do the opposite in recent years, and really push to educate and share and actually distribute natural wine to places where it did not exist. So one example is a company called MYSA, M-Y-S-A. And they're in the U.S. just distributing amazing natural wine, and they do lots of education on their Instagram posts. 

And yeah, the proliferation of small businesses selling Pipette in small towns around the world has really shown me that it is everywhere. And it is a force. 

Yeah, I'm curious if you had any other misconceptions in mind.

Alicia: No, no, no. I'm probably thinking of maybe past thing. 

I think maybe that's actually exactly the misconception that has prevailed, which is that it's just people in Brooklyn guzzling orange wine. And it's not a thing anywhere else. It's not something that's interesting to the regular person. It's not something that's interesting to older people, that it is—just occupies a very niche space, that a lot of it is bad or flawed, and that sort of thing. 

I liked in your memoir, you talk about enjoying things that might seem off or wrong to other people, just finding the beauty in any piece of it. I think that if we change—it's the problem of the narratives of food and drink, generally, I think, is to think that there is a right—Something is correct, or there is one correct thing. And anything that deviates from that is incorrect or something.

Rachel: Well, it's a big problem with vegetables and produce. That's a really big problem. But with wine, yeah, you reminded me that there's the misconception that it will go bad and spoil and rot because it doesn't have preservatives. Sulfur dioxide is a preservative. 

And I'll just touch briefly upon that. It's not true. You do find volatile acidity, which is sort of a vinegar sort of flavor in some wines, but that happens from fermentation. That happens from day one. And it does not mean that the wine has gone bad. It's not spoile. And natural wine ages phenomenally. It just needs to be in a refrigerated condition, like 55 degrees Celsius. Sorry, we can work out later what that is in Fahrenheit. So, I've had natural wines that are like 10 years old. Basically, no sulfites added. Stunning, pristine. 

And so, yeah, I do talk a lot about flaws and where they come from in winemaking from my experience making wine in the book. I'm always happy to talk kind of more about that, because it's a very complicated topic. 

But my takeaway is if you want to support people that make wine organically in this very beautiful, artisanal way without chemicals, then you might occasionally get a wine that tastes a little wild, because it has a little bit of volatile acidity. But we don't want chemicals on our prop—chemicals on our farm. Our daughter can walk around the winery and play with stuff. And I don't have to worry she's gonna put her hand into some chemicals. We don't have them at all.

Alicia: [Laughs.] And for you, how do you define abundance?

Rachel: Ok, I love this question. 

Abundance is such an interesting word, and—because I think it hits upon a problem of being human, which is this persistent idea that we lack something. It's a very, very fundamental part of being human. 

We grow food. We make wine. If the climate crisis ended capitalism as we know it tomorrow, we'd probably be able to sort of be self-sufficient with all the things people around us that make other things. And at the same time, I would absolutely miss—I would miss so much. And I do right now.

A lot of the book is about a friendship with someone who is in Paris who I haven't seen in years. I feel abundance is having that person who can come over and just make ravioli with you on a Tuesday afternoon, and drink wine and go to the market and eat oysters on a Thursday morning. That is abundance, having that person in your life. So, I think it's always a bit, very human of us, that no matter how much we have, we can feel a lack. And I think accepting that is something important to work on for me.

Alicia: For sure. Yeah. 

The pandemic has been hard in Australia. How has it been for you?

Rachel: It's surreal, not being allowed to leave. I don't know if people outside Australia fully understand that we are not able to leave. You have to get permission to leave and they're denying it to most people. And then if you do leave, it's almost impossible to get back. Very, very, very hard to get back. Very expensive, two weeks of hotel quarantine. 

Australia provides Medicare. It provides a high minimum wage. Certain things are provided. And so like, there's this kind of relationship with the state where when they tell people what to do, it's kind of expect—it's a totally different concept of what the state is. And I guess the American in me just hates it. 

But at the same time, would we have gone abroad with a one year old baby who’s, that’s vulnerable? Or would we go abroad, now that she's not vaccinated but we are? Yeah, I mean, we probably would given data around kids, which I've listened to on every podcast available and read about in every scientific paper available.

The pandemic has been hard everywhere, but I've never felt so isolated. As a new mother in a country I've only lived in for a few years, which is literally an island at the end of the world. I've never felt so isolated. 

It's hard not to be able to go to the States for my book release. It sucks. I'm hoping that I'll get feedback from people that will be sort of, lift my mood a little bit, that people would be kind of sharing their experiences of reading the book and reaching out. I would love that. I read basically all messages in some form. So I'd be thrilled. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, what do you have planned for the launch, at least virtually? 

Rachel: At this point, I'm still researching that. Your podcast will be part of that. I'll probably do some kind of online tasting. So yeah, I will be sure to share any update on that on my Instagram, which is @rachsig. 

And I also have a newsletter. It's just like a monthly-ish thing. And you can sign up. There's a link in my Instagram profile. I recommend natural wine and books. I read a lot. I read literary fiction and non-fiction. So for people who care about things other than wine and food, I'm your person. I don't know. Yeah, I talk about what I'm reading or stuff that I'm listening to. Sometimes I talk about music. It's a bit of everything. Yeah, I talk about the magazine, obviously, of course, too.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Wonderful. 

Well, thank you so much for taking this time so early in the day. [Laughs.] 

Rachel: Yeah, it was great to talk with you. Yeah. Awesome to connect. Thanks so much.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

I burst into the Zoom with Andrew Janjigian—a writer and the baker behind the newsletter Wordloaf—as though he were an old friend, telling him about my drama with the dentist that was happening that day and explaining precisely how much I was already sweating despite the early hour of our interview. There are some people whose energy, even virtually, I just like and how I express this like is, frankly, by extravagantly complaining in the hopes of amusing the other person. This is all to say: Andrew is very smart and cool, and I was excited to talk to him.

He has done so many things in his life, and it is all wildly impressive. He’s worked as an organic chemist, got a master’s in biology with a focus on fungi, and then ended up at America’s Test Kitchen, where he was the resident bread expert. That led, eventually, to Wordloaf, where he makes sourdough approachable. We discussed it all. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Andrew, how are you?

Andrew: I am very well. How are you?

Alicia: I'm good. Thank you so much for being here.

Andrew: Sure. It's great to be here.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Andrew: Sure. Ok. 

So, I grew up in a Boston suburb. And I live in Cambridge now, so basically in Boston. And what I ate was—I come from a big Armenian family, and Armenians are pretty serious about their food and their cooking. A gathering of any two or more Armenians is basically an excuse for a feast. And holidays and parties are sort of studies in excess. 

So there was a lot of food and a lot of cooking and recipes between my mother and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles. And so, I was exposed to kind of people who love to cook pretty early on. 

And beyond the Armenian stuff, my mother is a very good cook. And she was pretty adventurous, sort of, as interested in experimentation and research as anyone, and I think that's where I started having the same sort of tendencies. I grew up in the era where it was sort of where cooking shows were all on PBS, and Julia Child, if you didn't know how to cook and all those sorts of things. It was a time when food culture was just starting to become mainstream. And my mother was a part of that. 

I think that kind of sums it up. Boston was not particularly interesting in terms of food at the time. It's definitely improved since then.

Alicia: [Laughs.] How has it improved? What's changed in Boston?

Andrew: Well, I think it's mostly that the culture has grown to support the presence of just more interesting restaurants. I mean, I'm sure there were plenty of restaurants in, within cultural enclaves. But when I was growing up, you didn't know about them. There probably were fewer then, simply because there wasn't the support. 

But I think Boston is kind of a provincial place, or has been. And I think people are finally waking up to the, sort of the importance of foods from other cultures. And so, those restaurants are finally getting the due that they deserve. And so, it's definitely better. I mean, I lived in New York for a long time. And so I still kind of gripe about how much better it could be. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, you've explained your career trajectory to me before when I've interviewed you. But can you explain how you ended up in food?

Andrew: Sure. Yeah. 

I mean, I started out in it, and then came back to it. But the whole trajectory is really kind of convoluted. And I'm sort of somebody who has always had a lot of interests, and I kind of never do anything halfway. And so that sort of leads me to follow paths far away from one thing and come back to them. 

So I started out working in restaurants during—a little bit in high school, but in college in New York City as a way to have pocket money to pay the bills. And then in summers, where I was paying my own rent and things like that. 

I was a waiter working front of the house in a couple places. There was a chef at one particular restaurant who sort of took a liking to me and understood my interest in cooking. And he said, ‘Would you be interested in working in the kitchen?’ And he let me, kind of, with no—without real proof that I could do anything, to work garde manger. It was a small restaurant, and so I immediately just jumped in, do it. And then, never went back to waiting tables after that, because it was really much more my thing. 

And I did that for a few years and eventually worked my way up. For the longest time, I worked at a place in the West Village called the Universal Grill, which was a great place to work. It was a really tiny little restaurant. It was very unique in every way. It prided itself on, or at least thinking itself, as the gayest restaurant in New York City. Or the gayest restaurant in the world, I forget what their tagline was. But it was very a kind of a hub of a lot of gay cultural activity. 

And it was just a fun place to work, especially since the—while the food, it was important that the food be of a certain caliber, the owners didn't really want to have anything to do with that. So they left the few of us in the kitchen to our own devices to kind of come up with recipes and be creative. And it was small enough that if I was cooking, I was the only person—eventually I worked my way up to sous chef. And if I was there, I was in charge of the menu for the night. And so, it gave me a lot of creativity. That was kind of where I forged my skills. 

And then, I stayed in restaurants for a little bit longer after that. I moved back to Boston. But I kind of found sort of other interests pushing in against that one. And I eventually decided I want to go back to school. I had studied literature and film in college, and—but was, sort of caught the science bug. And so, I decided that I was going to be—I wanted to be a doctor. It seems kind of crazy now, I thought that. 

So I go back to school, do pre-med courses. I hadn’t particularly done any of those kinds of classes in college. And I started out in chemistry and found that I had this kind of acuity for it. I found it really interesting. 

And while I was doing some of these courses, I kind of talked my way into an internship at a pharmaceutical company here in Cambridge. And that internship ended up getting renewed several times. And eventually, it just became a full-time job. And I sort of dropped the pre-med idea in favor of just kind of becoming an organic chemist. Organic chemistry is basically cooking, at least in the practical aspects of it. It's just like cooking. You have a recipe, put a bunch of stuff in a container, you heat it up, and it transforms into something else. And I'd always been good at recipes and good cooking. So it's sort of like it was an easy shift for me.

And I did that for 12 years, ’cause it was—working for a corporation, it paid well. And I enjoyed it most of the time. And then while I was there, I caught another bug and this was in the study of mycology and mushrooms. And one of the benefits of working there was that they paid for higher education. And so I was able to get a master's degree—or most of it, I didn't finish it until after I left there. But in biology, it was a study of fungi and in, called mushroom cultivation and foraging and things like that. 

That's where I was when, just by coincidence. I met somebody, a friend of a partner of my brother-in-law who worked at America's Test Kitchen and shared my crazy resume, my story of how I—what I'd done all these years. And they go, ‘You'd be the perfect candidate for a job at America's Test Kitchen.’ They love people with all those kinds of backgrounds, and also the sort of skill set was perfect for it. So I applied and I took a massive pay cut. And the rest is history. And I was there for about the same, about 11 years, up until last year.

Alicia: When did bread become the focus?

Andrew: So it's funny because I was thinking about this in—I worked in two bakeries in high school, and it didn't register as a thing that I was at all interested in. And during college, I went—I spent a semester in Paris. I'm sure I ate lots of good bread. But somehow, the idea that I was surrounded by all these amazing bakeries just never, never even occurred to me to think about it. While I was there, I was kind of more interested in spending time in movie theaters and art museums. 

And so, I didn't come to bread until very late in the game. And the thing that kind of sparked that was probably—this is probably true for many people—was the no-knead bread. I think I made it right after the article came out in ’09. It both kind of sparked the idea that good bread can be had at home, and that actually, maybe, at home, homemade bread is better than you can get, at least from bakeries at the time. Or just the fact that you're pulling it hot from the oven yourself means you're getting it at the peak of its freshness. 

I quickly was like, ‘Oh, I think I need to dig into this more deeply.’ The fundamentals, the foundation had been there all along. Because the thing that I, that brought me to cooking in the first place when I was a kid, before I started working in restaurants, was pizza; I was obsessed with pizza. I think the first cookbook and kitchen tool I ever personally owned was a pizza pan and a book that my mother gave me as a birthday present. And so, that had been something that all throughout my life since that moment, I've been tinkering with my own recipes. 

And Cook's Illustrated started in ’93. So that was as I was—during college. I think I subscribed to it from the beginning at that point. And so, I understood that iterative testing process for recipe development. And I did a lot of that with my pizza recipe over the years. 

And so, I sort of laid the groundwork for where I ended up. After no-knead bread, I started digging into recipes and taking classes. And that was really where I kind of fell hard for it. 

But yeah, that—Sorry, go on.

Alicia: No, no.

But yeah, how did you come to your kind of current approach to it? 

Andrew: Well, so there's a lot of aspects to it. I think that no-knead bread itself is something I came to realize is just, I don't know. It's weird to find something so basic that you didn't realize you could be in love with when you ate it all the time. And maybe it's just because I never had good bread, but I'm sure I did. But there's so many things about it that I love about it it's hard to even narrow it down. 

I think one of them is simply that bread bakers are kind of, they're really great people. The people who work in the industry and the teachers I've had, they're just really—they're really generous and they're fun to be around. And so when I was a student of it, at the beginning of my time, I just was like, ‘Oh, these are my people’ in a way. And their passion for it kind of quickly became my own. 

But in terms of the bread itself, and what—one of the many things I love about it, one of them is just like that it's, unlike any other kind of cooking, it's a relationship. It's a dynamic thing that is never complete. You never perfect a technique. Sometimes it works amazingly, and sometimes it doesn't. And you have to kind of constantly bring yourself back to the-

I mean, it's a living organism. And if you're not paying close attention to it, if you're not kind of adjusting to it, then it kind of resists being what you want it to be. And so, you need to kind of bring yourself down to its level—up to its level, I should say.

I do a lot of overnight recipes, in the fridge overnight or on the counter. Every time I come downstairs from my bedroom and see what's happening in the kitchen, it's a little mini Christmas morning. I'm so excited to see what I, what it's managed to do for me in the interim. So there's just a lot of little joys in it. Yeah.

Alicia: And you left your longtime post at America's Test Kitchen to focus on your newsletter as well as freelance. And you recently wrote about competing recipe style guides, which I thought was really interesting, because—for myriad reasons. One, that I develop recipes. Two, that I was a copy editor.

How has that transition been for you into working for so many different places plus yourself? Because I know that it is very difficult. [Laughs.]

Andrew: Yeah, that's been one of the many challenges of doing this, all solo. As I said, I came to America’s Test Kitchen as a cook and a science person, and not as a journalist. I had no training in journalism. And so, the style guide wasn't even something—I mean, I'm sure I had MLA or whatever in college, but I didn't know that it was a thing. 

And so when I learned how America's Test Kitchen did their thing, I didn't think, ‘Oh, that's their style guide.’ I just thought that's how everybody does it. And I absorbed that over time. But then after leaving, I realized, ‘Oh, this isn't how everybody is doing it. It’s just one idiosyncratic approach to it. And other places do it differently.’ 

And that makes sense. Every place has a different kind of needs and a different audience to cater to. But it's maddening to have to—it’s like having to speak a different language every time you do, pick up the phone to speak to somebody else. And it's really hard to adjust. But it is what it is. I wish we could have like an International Congress of Recipe’s style guides and just kind of come up with one thing. Yeah. 

Alicia: No, it's funny, because I wrote about salt today and how I'm going to try and not use Diamond Crystal anymore. It was so funny.

Andrew: The Cargill thing?

Alicia: The Cargill thing [laughs], where I found out that it's owned by Cargill since 1997. I had like literally no idea. That's never the point of anything anyone's talking about when they're talking about salt and which one to use. It's always about what's accessible and the volume, and  it's never—

I also want this standard recipe conference, because I want the salt issue to be resolved. Because The L.A. Times is like, ‘Ok, we're only going to use Diamond Crystal.’ And then The Washington Post is like, ‘We're only going to use fine sea salt.’ But how many salts do you expect a regular person to have in their kitchen? I don't know, and I think it needs to be resolved. I'm just really horrified that people have always been like, ‘Diamond Crystal is the best’ and no one's ever said that they're owned by Cargill.

Andrew: Yeah, that was news to me until I think you probably retweeted somebody a couple of days ago, and it never occurred to me. I mean, somebody down to make a bespoke salt that had the exact same weight to volume ratio and is as, just as good in terms of the way it sprinkles or whatever? And then we can stop using it. 

I was a kosher salt, Diamond kosher salt person until maybe that also sort of swayed me in the other direction. But I do think that it's annoying as hell that kosher salt comes in these two different volume to weight ratios. And I think I'm now in the sea salt’s better camp because sea salt is sea salt is sea salt.  

Alicia: Exactly. 

Yeah, no, apparently there's a Norwegian kosher salt that is the same as Diamond Crystal. You're not getting a 10-pound, 5-pound box of it. So that's the issue here, is how much—yeah, how much you're getting, how much bang for your buck, which I guess is why Diamond Crystal really owned the game for so long. [Laughs.] And continues to! I don't think I'm going to change the way chefs act. But at least I can let people, more people know that Cargill owns this and to make their own choices now. 

Andrew: Yeah.

Well, the other thing is that's kind of a very niche question, but like the bigger question’s metric versus imperial and weight to volume and baking recipes and that stuff is just maddening. 

So you asked about my own style and what that was like. I feel like a style guide should always be logical and clear. It should also teach people something. To give people options is to not encourage them to pick one over the other. And so I decided I'm getting rid of volume measurements, because I think it forces people to do something that eventually they'll come to see is easier.

Alicia: Right. 

No, and I agree. I hate volume recipes. I mean, the only thing for me is that, to keep batteries in my scale. [Laughs.] It's remembering whether it's double A or triple A when I go to the store. That's my struggle. 

But I wanted to ask how you're maintaining creativity and balance between the work you're doing for other people and for your newsletter, because people ask me all the time. And for me, I think it's kind of obvious, most of the time, what's for the newsletter and what isn't. Speaking, again, of the salt piece, I know how I could expand the salt piece and make it really a lot better and 3000 words and a lot more effecting, but I'm not going to do that for my weekly blog. 

But, yeah, so basically, how do you balance those things that you're doing?

Andrew: Well, I think I'm sort of in a similar camp with that. It took me a while to figure out that that was what it was, but I use it as a sort of a scratch pad for whatever's on my mind. And I don't necessarily feel like things need to be kind of resolved when I write about them there. 

And I think maybe from the outside—I hope this isn't the case—but maybe from the outside, it sort of seems very disjointed. One week, I'll be giving a recipe and the next week, I'll be talking about style guides. And so I hope that when you see the overall arc of things, you can see that I keep circling back to certain themes. 

But I find it very useful as a kind of idea-generating place. And I'm kind of grateful that people are willing to kind of follow along there. People pay to subscribe, and that seems like an amazing thing that people want to kind of hear me just think out loud.

Alicia: Right.

Yeah. And I like that aspect of newsletters. I think a lot of people don't really get that. Maybe because they don't do it; they don't understand the value of having to be consistently creative. And that it's not necessarily an ends in itself, but it's just a way of thinking. It's just a practice that you can have. That people will go along with it is really interesting. 

And have you found a real connection with your audience there?

Andrew: For sure. I've found that the fact of their presence in—I mean, I guess one nice thing about having a paid option is that if people are paying, they don't have to comment to show their appreciation for what you're doing.

I feel like the one thing that I've wanted to—Well, it's not the only thing, but one of the things I want to develop more of a sense of community. I feel it's probably on me to figure out a way to foster that more. Because there is some of it, but not as much as there perhaps could be, where people are not only commenting and interacting with me but also communicating with one another more. And maybe that's the question of starting open threads or encouraging questions where people get to weigh in. 

The hardest part, or a hard part, of doing the newsletter and being a full-time freelancer is just finding the time to implement all these different ideas I have for making it better. It's very slow.

Alicia: It's really slow. It's very hard. I want to open up to new, have other people contribute. But I have to make sure I'm fully available to do the best editing work and everything like that. 

I don't know. It's funny how Substack is, say, it’s all like, ‘Independent newsletters are the future, blah, blah, blah.’ It is, in a way, but at the same time, it's not sustainable at all to do without support. It's impossible to grow into the way that you might have a vision for without the support of a team. 

Andrew: Yeah, definitely. 

I can see so many places where it could be more than it is, and maybe it will be someday. But part of it's just a question of time. If I didn't have the freelance work, then I might be able to double the amount of stuff I do there. The problem is that I actually enjoy most of the, or nearly all of the freelance work I'm doing are things I'm interested in. So I'm happy to have it. Maybe there just needs to be more days in the week, although working more is not a good idea.

Alicia: No, no. 

Yeah, it's a hard balance. For me, the struggle right now is finishing my book, and then—and also doing a newsletter.

Andrew: Yeah, that I couldn't imagine. Although I have a book project that I need to get going on. So, I don’t want to talk about it much. But the idea of trying to juggle that seems impossible.

Alicia: It's hard. It's really hard. The newsletter, in a great way, it became my—the bulk of my income. But I didn't know that that was going to happen. Thank God it happened. And then I have to keep it up to write the book, because the advance was so shitty. [Laughs.] And I sold the book before my—literally weeks before my newsletter kind of popped off, I guess, last year? I don't know. So, it's constantly maintaining this balance in this kind of work where you're weighing the pros and cons of literally every small decision. 

But I remember when I quoted you about flour in a past newsletter, and you talked about ingredient sourcing and flour sourcing, it caused a little bit of controversy in the artisanal flower community. I talked to Roxana Jullapat about this recently while talking about Mother Grains-

Andrew: Which I loved.

Alicia: Yeah, yeah.

And we're all constantly trying to find this balance—or we're all, I think, people who try to care both about accessibility and taste and ecology, and trying to juggle all of these ideas at once. You have to think about what's good for your local ecosystem, and what's also realistic. 

And so, what are your thoughts on flour and accessibility right now?

Andrew: So, yeah, I got kind of yelled at by somebody, for use—[laughs] for using the term ‘fancy flour’ to refer to sort of fresh milled local, regional, flours, which I love and use all the time and, I think are important to—it's an important aspect to the industry to promote.

But it's only a piece of the story. There's so many issues with making that kind of thing accessible to everyone. It's very expensive. It's not accessible in terms of, most supermarkets don't carry anything like that. And mail order is definitely possible, but not only does that add to the cost but it adds to the carbon footprint of the thing. 

I try in the newsletter and elsewhere to encourage people to seek out those kinds of things if they're in their local economy, and to—I think a great deal of my audiences likely can't afford to spend as much as possible on flour, and maybe-

So I think the person that wasn't happy with that term was coming from that perspective is—and like, ‘You need to kind of almost force people who can afford to use better products and more sustainable, whatever.’ And so, I think that's a good thing. But I think it's important not to forget that there are people who can't afford that, and some of those people might not be part of my audience, but they—maybe I'm not attracting them, because if I'm kind of limiting myself to boutique ingredients. I kind of want to come at it from both sides. 

There's another aspect which is kind of related to that, which is that you—the thing about flours, flours that are kind of boutiques, is that each one needs to be—the recipe needs to be developed specifically for that flour. Whereas if you called for a commodity, or sort of a well-known flour, they're consistent across the—people can get King Arthur flour from one side of the country to the other, and it's going to behave the same way no matter where you get it. And so then, all of a sudden, the recipe becomes accessible to more people. 

And so, it's a challenge, because if you want to encourage those kinds of things, you need to teach people how to use them and how to how to adapt to them, in a way, like to say, ‘I don't know what your flour is going to be like, but here's what to look for and how to adjust if that's the case.’ 

But still, I mean, it's really important, because I think maybe flour’s one—I think Roxana said this, or maybe she was talking about sugar, but I think they're similar in that it's one of those unexamined monoliths in our food culture that we don't—we just think flour is just the thing you get. You buy some flour. Whatever, it doesn't matter. As opposed to thinking about how huge the industry is and how difficult it would be to dismantle that sort of thing and replace it with something that is more sustainable and equitable. 

I think we have to start somewhere. And talking about flous that are made from grains that are grown locally—I'm lucky to live in New England, which before it was the heartland, was the breadbasket of America. And so, good grain can be grown here, and more and more is being grown. And so, I have access to really great local flour, but not everyone does. 

Although I think there's probably opportunities to grow flours that can be adapted for whatever

environment you live in. I mean, there's some cool flours that grow in the desert, wheats that grow in the desert that are being built into flour. 

And actually, we might need more of them, because I haven't really delved too deep into it. But they're saying, this year has been really bad for droughts in the Midwest and Canada. I don't know if it's the end, or if it's just a blip and the kinds of things that we're gonna see more and more of over time. So it's a little scary to think, because if we can't grow—I mean, me being able to have, make my bread is important to me. But beyond that, access to something like flour going away is hard to fathom how damaging that would be to our economies and our lives.

Alicia: Yeah.

No, I think about that a lot, especially because living in Puerto Rico, I can get King Arthur, but I have to go to the special store and I have to pay way more than I would have paid in New York for it. And then it's funny, because I think if I tried to learn how to cook here, every recipe would be a nightmare because of the humidity and the—and so, because I already know how to cook, I'm—I know how to compensate for things. 

But I just want to see more recipes, I think, written—and I guess I should start doing this—for the gluten-free flours that are more locally produced like the cassava flour and the breadfruit flour and everything, and plantain flour even. Because, as we keep saying here, it's like, ‘Well, soon everyone will know what this is to live in the tropics.’ New York is subtropical now. 

And so yeah, it's just really interesting to think about and to kind of try to reframe—yeah, I use the local grain thing to question or whatever to think about, yeah, how we might make things in the future that are recognizable to us. 

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. 

I mean, it's just hard to imagine a world, or it's hard to imagine living in a world where something as fundamental as wheat or, were to go away. It's scary. And I love alternative flours, but you can't get a baguette out of cassava flour.

Alicia: Yeah, exactly. Thinking about life without a baguette is kind of depressing. [Laughs.] Yeah. That's what I'm gonna have for breakfast. I have some. Anyway. [Laughs.] Let me enjoy it while I have it. I’m not thinking about that. 

But through your newsletter, you're also kind of—you're teaching classes on Zoom. And we talked about the different styles of writing recipes. But just to write recipes down in a methodical manner is so difficult for me personally. What is your process for doing that? What tools have maybe helped you do that? How have you found your teaching voice, basically?

Andrew: So it's really interesting, because I'm deeply introverted. And so teaching is the farthest—especially in person—but in front of people, Zoom, or in a room full of them. But I actually have come to love it. And I never would have guessed that would be the case. 

I started teaching baking and cooking because I saw it as an opportunity to get to kind of hang out in spaces that I was just a consumer of where I wanted to—I wanted to be able to go to places like King Arthur and, on their dime instead of mine. And so I was like, ‘Ok, I'm just gonna see if they’ll let me teach something.’ But I quickly realized that actually, I really liked doing it. And so, I do it for its own sake now. 

It's challenging, but also it's a great tool for figuring out and kind of codifying what I know and what I don't know. If I have to develop it, I often will propose classes for things that I haven't quite finished figuring out but knowing that it'd be an opportunity to get it done. And so, there's something fun about jumping without a net into something like that. 

And so, in terms of a newsletter and the recipes, I think I've figured out how to teach, or learning how to teach. And in classes, I think I have converted some of that into how to write about it. But I'm still developing that a little bit more early on in the process. I feel I've been cycling through saying things and figuring out the best way to say something. I often talk about the same kinds of the same topics, how to work with a sourdough starter, or how to do techniques like folding and what not. And I'm never quite sure how to pass that along to somebody who, for whom it—they're naive to those concepts. But I've spent a lot of time thinking about that. 

And I feel like the thing that I think about most in sort of an abstract way is, how do you teach people to think like a baker does? It's not straightforward. I don't know if it's true for every skill, or, but I spend a lot of time thinking about, like, ‘What is it gonna flip the switch in somebody's head when they're doing a technique?’ It's not just straightforward, do this and get that result. It's more like, ‘Think like this, and you'll be able to figure out how to get that result.’ It's one step removed from the process. But I'm still trying to, still trying to get my head around that.

Alicia: Well, for you, is cooking a political act?

Andrew: Yes, it is. I feel like it's important to keep that in your mind when you're doing it. I think it's such an easy thing to forget that food and cooking have—it's such a fundamental thing. Is breathing a political act? It's almost the same, but—air is important, too. 

Food is so fundamental that it's just easy to forget that it has so much, so many implications in terms of—the flipside to eating is hunger, and maybe you're satisfying your own hunger but other people don't even have the option to satisfy it. Or equity in terms of who's making our food or who's growing, picking our fruits, and then all the impacts on climate and resources. And so, I feel I try to deliberately keep that in mind. I mean, it's not always there, but I just feel it's important not, never to forget that. It's part of a system that is not great and needs a lot of work. And I think that, especially if you're in the world of food and cooking, you can have an impact, a positive impact in that if you keep it in mind. 

Alicia: Right. 

Thank you so much for being here.

Andrew: Oh, it was my pleasure. I'm so happy to be here.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

I burst into the Zoom with Andrew Janjigian—a writer and the baker behind the newsletter Wordloaf—as though he were an old friend, telling him about my drama with the dentist that was happening that day and explaining precisely how much I was already sweating despite the early hour of our interview. There are some people whose energy, even virtually, I just like and how I express this like is, frankly, by extravagantly complaining in the hopes of amusing the other person. This is all to say: Andrew is very smart and cool, and I was excited to talk to him.

He has done so many things in his life, and it is all wildly impressive. He’s worked as an organic chemist, got a master’s in biology with a focus on fungi, and then ended up at America’s Test Kitchen, where he was the resident bread expert. That led, eventually, to Wordloaf, where he makes sourdough approachable. We discussed it all. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Andrew, how are you?

Andrew: I am very well. How are you?

Alicia: I'm good. Thank you so much for being here.

Andrew: Sure. It's great to be here.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Andrew: Sure. Ok. 

So, I grew up in a Boston suburb. And I live in Cambridge now, so basically in Boston. And what I ate was—I come from a big Armenian family, and Armenians are pretty serious about their food and their cooking. A gathering of any two or more Armenians is basically an excuse for a feast. And holidays and parties are sort of studies in excess. 

So there was a lot of food and a lot of cooking and recipes between my mother and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles. And so, I was exposed to kind of people who love to cook pretty early on. 

And beyond the Armenian stuff, my mother is a very good cook. And she was pretty adventurous, sort of, as interested in experimentation and research as anyone, and I think that's where I started having the same sort of tendencies. I grew up in the era where it was sort of where cooking shows were all on PBS, and Julia Child, if you didn't know how to cook and all those sorts of things. It was a time when food culture was just starting to become mainstream. And my mother was a part of that. 

I think that kind of sums it up. Boston was not particularly interesting in terms of food at the time. It's definitely improved since then.

Alicia: [Laughs.] How has it improved? What's changed in Boston?

Andrew: Well, I think it's mostly that the culture has grown to support the presence of just more interesting restaurants. I mean, I'm sure there were plenty of restaurants in, within cultural enclaves. But when I was growing up, you didn't know about them. There probably were fewer then, simply because there wasn't the support. 

But I think Boston is kind of a provincial place, or has been. And I think people are finally waking up to the, sort of the importance of foods from other cultures. And so, those restaurants are finally getting the due that they deserve. And so, it's definitely better. I mean, I lived in New York for a long time. And so I still kind of gripe about how much better it could be. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, you've explained your career trajectory to me before when I've interviewed you. But can you explain how you ended up in food?

Andrew: Sure. Yeah. 

I mean, I started out in it, and then came back to it. But the whole trajectory is really kind of convoluted. And I'm sort of somebody who has always had a lot of interests, and I kind of never do anything halfway. And so that sort of leads me to follow paths far away from one thing and come back to them. 

So I started out working in restaurants during—a little bit in high school, but in college in New York City as a way to have pocket money to pay the bills. And then in summers, where I was paying my own rent and things like that. 

I was a waiter working front of the house in a couple places. There was a chef at one particular restaurant who sort of took a liking to me and understood my interest in cooking. And he said, ‘Would you be interested in working in the kitchen?’ And he let me, kind of, with no—without real proof that I could do anything, to work garde manger. It was a small restaurant, and so I immediately just jumped in, do it. And then, never went back to waiting tables after that, because it was really much more my thing. 

And I did that for a few years and eventually worked my way up. For the longest time, I worked at a place in the West Village called the Universal Grill, which was a great place to work. It was a really tiny little restaurant. It was very unique in every way. It prided itself on, or at least thinking itself, as the gayest restaurant in New York City. Or the gayest restaurant in the world, I forget what their tagline was. But it was very a kind of a hub of a lot of gay cultural activity. 

And it was just a fun place to work, especially since the—while the food, it was important that the food be of a certain caliber, the owners didn't really want to have anything to do with that. So they left the few of us in the kitchen to our own devices to kind of come up with recipes and be creative. And it was small enough that if I was cooking, I was the only person—eventually I worked my way up to sous chef. And if I was there, I was in charge of the menu for the night. And so, it gave me a lot of creativity. That was kind of where I forged my skills. 

And then, I stayed in restaurants for a little bit longer after that. I moved back to Boston. But I kind of found sort of other interests pushing in against that one. And I eventually decided I want to go back to school. I had studied literature and film in college, and—but was, sort of caught the science bug. And so, I decided that I was going to be—I wanted to be a doctor. It seems kind of crazy now, I thought that. 

So I go back to school, do pre-med courses. I hadn’t particularly done any of those kinds of classes in college. And I started out in chemistry and found that I had this kind of acuity for it. I found it really interesting. 

And while I was doing some of these courses, I kind of talked my way into an internship at a pharmaceutical company here in Cambridge. And that internship ended up getting renewed several times. And eventually, it just became a full-time job. And I sort of dropped the pre-med idea in favor of just kind of becoming an organic chemist. Organic chemistry is basically cooking, at least in the practical aspects of it. It's just like cooking. You have a recipe, put a bunch of stuff in a container, you heat it up, and it transforms into something else. And I'd always been good at recipes and good cooking. So it's sort of like it was an easy shift for me.

And I did that for 12 years, ’cause it was—working for a corporation, it paid well. And I enjoyed it most of the time. And then while I was there, I caught another bug and this was in the study of mycology and mushrooms. And one of the benefits of working there was that they paid for higher education. And so I was able to get a master's degree—or most of it, I didn't finish it until after I left there. But in biology, it was a study of fungi and in, called mushroom cultivation and foraging and things like that. 

That's where I was when, just by coincidence. I met somebody, a friend of a partner of my brother-in-law who worked at America's Test Kitchen and shared my crazy resume, my story of how I—what I'd done all these years. And they go, ‘You'd be the perfect candidate for a job at America's Test Kitchen.’ They love people with all those kinds of backgrounds, and also the sort of skill set was perfect for it. So I applied and I took a massive pay cut. And the rest is history. And I was there for about the same, about 11 years, up until last year.

Alicia: When did bread become the focus?

Andrew: So it's funny because I was thinking about this in—I worked in two bakeries in high school, and it didn't register as a thing that I was at all interested in. And during college, I went—I spent a semester in Paris. I'm sure I ate lots of good bread. But somehow, the idea that I was surrounded by all these amazing bakeries just never, never even occurred to me to think about it. While I was there, I was kind of more interested in spending time in movie theaters and art museums. 

And so, I didn't come to bread until very late in the game. And the thing that kind of sparked that was probably—this is probably true for many people—was the no-knead bread. I think I made it right after the article came out in ’09. It both kind of sparked the idea that good bread can be had at home, and that actually, maybe, at home, homemade bread is better than you can get, at least from bakeries at the time. Or just the fact that you're pulling it hot from the oven yourself means you're getting it at the peak of its freshness. 

I quickly was like, ‘Oh, I think I need to dig into this more deeply.’ The fundamentals, the foundation had been there all along. Because the thing that I, that brought me to cooking in the first place when I was a kid, before I started working in restaurants, was pizza; I was obsessed with pizza. I think the first cookbook and kitchen tool I ever personally owned was a pizza pan and a book that my mother gave me as a birthday present. And so, that had been something that all throughout my life since that moment, I've been tinkering with my own recipes. 

And Cook's Illustrated started in ’93. So that was as I was—during college. I think I subscribed to it from the beginning at that point. And so, I understood that iterative testing process for recipe development. And I did a lot of that with my pizza recipe over the years. 

And so, I sort of laid the groundwork for where I ended up. After no-knead bread, I started digging into recipes and taking classes. And that was really where I kind of fell hard for it. 

But yeah, that—Sorry, go on.

Alicia: No, no.

But yeah, how did you come to your kind of current approach to it? 

Andrew: Well, so there's a lot of aspects to it. I think that no-knead bread itself is something I came to realize is just, I don't know. It's weird to find something so basic that you didn't realize you could be in love with when you ate it all the time. And maybe it's just because I never had good bread, but I'm sure I did. But there's so many things about it that I love about it it's hard to even narrow it down. 

I think one of them is simply that bread bakers are kind of, they're really great people. The people who work in the industry and the teachers I've had, they're just really—they're really generous and they're fun to be around. And so when I was a student of it, at the beginning of my time, I just was like, ‘Oh, these are my people’ in a way. And their passion for it kind of quickly became my own. 

But in terms of the bread itself, and what—one of the many things I love about it, one of them is just like that it's, unlike any other kind of cooking, it's a relationship. It's a dynamic thing that is never complete. You never perfect a technique. Sometimes it works amazingly, and sometimes it doesn't. And you have to kind of constantly bring yourself back to the-

I mean, it's a living organism. And if you're not paying close attention to it, if you're not kind of adjusting to it, then it kind of resists being what you want it to be. And so, you need to kind of bring yourself down to its level—up to its level, I should say.

I do a lot of overnight recipes, in the fridge overnight or on the counter. Every time I come downstairs from my bedroom and see what's happening in the kitchen, it's a little mini Christmas morning. I'm so excited to see what I, what it's managed to do for me in the interim. So there's just a lot of little joys in it. Yeah.

Alicia: And you left your longtime post at America's Test Kitchen to focus on your newsletter as well as freelance. And you recently wrote about competing recipe style guides, which I thought was really interesting, because—for myriad reasons. One, that I develop recipes. Two, that I was a copy editor.

How has that transition been for you into working for so many different places plus yourself? Because I know that it is very difficult. [Laughs.]

Andrew: Yeah, that's been one of the many challenges of doing this, all solo. As I said, I came to America’s Test Kitchen as a cook and a science person, and not as a journalist. I had no training in journalism. And so, the style guide wasn't even something—I mean, I'm sure I had MLA or whatever in college, but I didn't know that it was a thing. 

And so when I learned how America's Test Kitchen did their thing, I didn't think, ‘Oh, that's their style guide.’ I just thought that's how everybody does it. And I absorbed that over time. But then after leaving, I realized, ‘Oh, this isn't how everybody is doing it. It’s just one idiosyncratic approach to it. And other places do it differently.’ 

And that makes sense. Every place has a different kind of needs and a different audience to cater to. But it's maddening to have to—it’s like having to speak a different language every time you do, pick up the phone to speak to somebody else. And it's really hard to adjust. But it is what it is. I wish we could have like an International Congress of Recipe’s style guides and just kind of come up with one thing. Yeah. 

Alicia: No, it's funny, because I wrote about salt today and how I'm going to try and not use Diamond Crystal anymore. It was so funny.

Andrew: The Cargill thing?

Alicia: The Cargill thing [laughs], where I found out that it's owned by Cargill since 1997. I had like literally no idea. That's never the point of anything anyone's talking about when they're talking about salt and which one to use. It's always about what's accessible and the volume, and  it's never—

I also want this standard recipe conference, because I want the salt issue to be resolved. Because The L.A. Times is like, ‘Ok, we're only going to use Diamond Crystal.’ And then The Washington Post is like, ‘We're only going to use fine sea salt.’ But how many salts do you expect a regular person to have in their kitchen? I don't know, and I think it needs to be resolved. I'm just really horrified that people have always been like, ‘Diamond Crystal is the best’ and no one's ever said that they're owned by Cargill.

Andrew: Yeah, that was news to me until I think you probably retweeted somebody a couple of days ago, and it never occurred to me. I mean, somebody down to make a bespoke salt that had the exact same weight to volume ratio and is as, just as good in terms of the way it sprinkles or whatever? And then we can stop using it. 

I was a kosher salt, Diamond kosher salt person until maybe that also sort of swayed me in the other direction. But I do think that it's annoying as hell that kosher salt comes in these two different volume to weight ratios. And I think I'm now in the sea salt’s better camp because sea salt is sea salt is sea salt.  

Alicia: Exactly. 

Yeah, no, apparently there's a Norwegian kosher salt that is the same as Diamond Crystal. You're not getting a 10-pound, 5-pound box of it. So that's the issue here, is how much—yeah, how much you're getting, how much bang for your buck, which I guess is why Diamond Crystal really owned the game for so long. [Laughs.] And continues to! I don't think I'm going to change the way chefs act. But at least I can let people, more people know that Cargill owns this and to make their own choices now. 

Andrew: Yeah.

Well, the other thing is that's kind of a very niche question, but like the bigger question’s metric versus imperial and weight to volume and baking recipes and that stuff is just maddening. 

So you asked about my own style and what that was like. I feel like a style guide should always be logical and clear. It should also teach people something. To give people options is to not encourage them to pick one over the other. And so I decided I'm getting rid of volume measurements, because I think it forces people to do something that eventually they'll come to see is easier.

Alicia: Right. 

No, and I agree. I hate volume recipes. I mean, the only thing for me is that, to keep batteries in my scale. [Laughs.] It's remembering whether it's double A or triple A when I go to the store. That's my struggle. 

But I wanted to ask how you're maintaining creativity and balance between the work you're doing for other people and for your newsletter, because people ask me all the time. And for me, I think it's kind of obvious, most of the time, what's for the newsletter and what isn't. Speaking, again, of the salt piece, I know how I could expand the salt piece and make it really a lot better and 3000 words and a lot more effecting, but I'm not going to do that for my weekly blog. 

But, yeah, so basically, how do you balance those things that you're doing?

Andrew: Well, I think I'm sort of in a similar camp with that. It took me a while to figure out that that was what it was, but I use it as a sort of a scratch pad for whatever's on my mind. And I don't necessarily feel like things need to be kind of resolved when I write about them there. 

And I think maybe from the outside—I hope this isn't the case—but maybe from the outside, it sort of seems very disjointed. One week, I'll be giving a recipe and the next week, I'll be talking about style guides. And so I hope that when you see the overall arc of things, you can see that I keep circling back to certain themes. 

But I find it very useful as a kind of idea-generating place. And I'm kind of grateful that people are willing to kind of follow along there. People pay to subscribe, and that seems like an amazing thing that people want to kind of hear me just think out loud.

Alicia: Right.

Yeah. And I like that aspect of newsletters. I think a lot of people don't really get that. Maybe because they don't do it; they don't understand the value of having to be consistently creative. And that it's not necessarily an ends in itself, but it's just a way of thinking. It's just a practice that you can have. That people will go along with it is really interesting. 

And have you found a real connection with your audience there?

Andrew: For sure. I've found that the fact of their presence in—I mean, I guess one nice thing about having a paid option is that if people are paying, they don't have to comment to show their appreciation for what you're doing.

I feel like the one thing that I've wanted to—Well, it's not the only thing, but one of the things I want to develop more of a sense of community. I feel it's probably on me to figure out a way to foster that more. Because there is some of it, but not as much as there perhaps could be, where people are not only commenting and interacting with me but also communicating with one another more. And maybe that's the question of starting open threads or encouraging questions where people get to weigh in. 

The hardest part, or a hard part, of doing the newsletter and being a full-time freelancer is just finding the time to implement all these different ideas I have for making it better. It's very slow.

Alicia: It's really slow. It's very hard. I want to open up to new, have other people contribute. But I have to make sure I'm fully available to do the best editing work and everything like that. 

I don't know. It's funny how Substack is, say, it’s all like, ‘Independent newsletters are the future, blah, blah, blah.’ It is, in a way, but at the same time, it's not sustainable at all to do without support. It's impossible to grow into the way that you might have a vision for without the support of a team. 

Andrew: Yeah, definitely. 

I can see so many places where it could be more than it is, and maybe it will be someday. But part of it's just a question of time. If I didn't have the freelance work, then I might be able to double the amount of stuff I do there. The problem is that I actually enjoy most of the, or nearly all of the freelance work I'm doing are things I'm interested in. So I'm happy to have it. Maybe there just needs to be more days in the week, although working more is not a good idea.

Alicia: No, no. 

Yeah, it's a hard balance. For me, the struggle right now is finishing my book, and then—and also doing a newsletter.

Andrew: Yeah, that I couldn't imagine. Although I have a book project that I need to get going on. So, I don’t want to talk about it much. But the idea of trying to juggle that seems impossible.

Alicia: It's hard. It's really hard. The newsletter, in a great way, it became my—the bulk of my income. But I didn't know that that was going to happen. Thank God it happened. And then I have to keep it up to write the book, because the advance was so shitty. [Laughs.] And I sold the book before my—literally weeks before my newsletter kind of popped off, I guess, last year? I don't know. So, it's constantly maintaining this balance in this kind of work where you're weighing the pros and cons of literally every small decision. 

But I remember when I quoted you about flour in a past newsletter, and you talked about ingredient sourcing and flour sourcing, it caused a little bit of controversy in the artisanal flower community. I talked to Roxana Jullapat about this recently while talking about Mother Grains-

Andrew: Which I loved.

Alicia: Yeah, yeah.

And we're all constantly trying to find this balance—or we're all, I think, people who try to care both about accessibility and taste and ecology, and trying to juggle all of these ideas at once. You have to think about what's good for your local ecosystem, and what's also realistic. 

And so, what are your thoughts on flour and accessibility right now?

Andrew: So, yeah, I got kind of yelled at by somebody, for use—[laughs] for using the term ‘fancy flour’ to refer to sort of fresh milled local, regional, flours, which I love and use all the time and, I think are important to—it's an important aspect to the industry to promote.

But it's only a piece of the story. There's so many issues with making that kind of thing accessible to everyone. It's very expensive. It's not accessible in terms of, most supermarkets don't carry anything like that. And mail order is definitely possible, but not only does that add to the cost but it adds to the carbon footprint of the thing. 

I try in the newsletter and elsewhere to encourage people to seek out those kinds of things if they're in their local economy, and to—I think a great deal of my audiences likely can't afford to spend as much as possible on flour, and maybe-

So I think the person that wasn't happy with that term was coming from that perspective is—and like, ‘You need to kind of almost force people who can afford to use better products and more sustainable, whatever.’ And so, I think that's a good thing. But I think it's important not to forget that there are people who can't afford that, and some of those people might not be part of my audience, but they—maybe I'm not attracting them, because if I'm kind of limiting myself to boutique ingredients. I kind of want to come at it from both sides. 

There's another aspect which is kind of related to that, which is that you—the thing about flours, flours that are kind of boutiques, is that each one needs to be—the recipe needs to be developed specifically for that flour. Whereas if you called for a commodity, or sort of a well-known flour, they're consistent across the—people can get King Arthur flour from one side of the country to the other, and it's going to behave the same way no matter where you get it. And so then, all of a sudden, the recipe becomes accessible to more people. 

And so, it's a challenge, because if you want to encourage those kinds of things, you need to teach people how to use them and how to how to adapt to them, in a way, like to say, ‘I don't know what your flour is going to be like, but here's what to look for and how to adjust if that's the case.’ 

But still, I mean, it's really important, because I think maybe flour’s one—I think Roxana said this, or maybe she was talking about sugar, but I think they're similar in that it's one of those unexamined monoliths in our food culture that we don't—we just think flour is just the thing you get. You buy some flour. Whatever, it doesn't matter. As opposed to thinking about how huge the industry is and how difficult it would be to dismantle that sort of thing and replace it with something that is more sustainable and equitable. 

I think we have to start somewhere. And talking about flous that are made from grains that are grown locally—I'm lucky to live in New England, which before it was the heartland, was the breadbasket of America. And so, good grain can be grown here, and more and more is being grown. And so, I have access to really great local flour, but not everyone does. 

Although I think there's probably opportunities to grow flours that can be adapted for whatever

environment you live in. I mean, there's some cool flours that grow in the desert, wheats that grow in the desert that are being built into flour. 

And actually, we might need more of them, because I haven't really delved too deep into it. But they're saying, this year has been really bad for droughts in the Midwest and Canada. I don't know if it's the end, or if it's just a blip and the kinds of things that we're gonna see more and more of over time. So it's a little scary to think, because if we can't grow—I mean, me being able to have, make my bread is important to me. But beyond that, access to something like flour going away is hard to fathom how damaging that would be to our economies and our lives.

Alicia: Yeah.

No, I think about that a lot, especially because living in Puerto Rico, I can get King Arthur, but I have to go to the special store and I have to pay way more than I would have paid in New York for it. And then it's funny, because I think if I tried to learn how to cook here, every recipe would be a nightmare because of the humidity and the—and so, because I already know how to cook, I'm—I know how to compensate for things. 

But I just want to see more recipes, I think, written—and I guess I should start doing this—for the gluten-free flours that are more locally produced like the cassava flour and the breadfruit flour and everything, and plantain flour even. Because, as we keep saying here, it's like, ‘Well, soon everyone will know what this is to live in the tropics.’ New York is subtropical now. 

And so yeah, it's just really interesting to think about and to kind of try to reframe—yeah, I use the local grain thing to question or whatever to think about, yeah, how we might make things in the future that are recognizable to us. 

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. 

I mean, it's just hard to imagine a world, or it's hard to imagine living in a world where something as fundamental as wheat or, were to go away. It's scary. And I love alternative flours, but you can't get a baguette out of cassava flour.

Alicia: Yeah, exactly. Thinking about life without a baguette is kind of depressing. [Laughs.] Yeah. That's what I'm gonna have for breakfast. I have some. Anyway. [Laughs.] Let me enjoy it while I have it. I’m not thinking about that. 

But through your newsletter, you're also kind of—you're teaching classes on Zoom. And we talked about the different styles of writing recipes. But just to write recipes down in a methodical manner is so difficult for me personally. What is your process for doing that? What tools have maybe helped you do that? How have you found your teaching voice, basically?

Andrew: So it's really interesting, because I'm deeply introverted. And so teaching is the farthest—especially in person—but in front of people, Zoom, or in a room full of them. But I actually have come to love it. And I never would have guessed that would be the case. 

I started teaching baking and cooking because I saw it as an opportunity to get to kind of hang out in spaces that I was just a consumer of where I wanted to—I wanted to be able to go to places like King Arthur and, on their dime instead of mine. And so I was like, ‘Ok, I'm just gonna see if they’ll let me teach something.’ But I quickly realized that actually, I really liked doing it. And so, I do it for its own sake now. 

It's challenging, but also it's a great tool for figuring out and kind of codifying what I know and what I don't know. If I have to develop it, I often will propose classes for things that I haven't quite finished figuring out but knowing that it'd be an opportunity to get it done. And so, there's something fun about jumping without a net into something like that. 

And so, in terms of a newsletter and the recipes, I think I've figured out how to teach, or learning how to teach. And in classes, I think I have converted some of that into how to write about it. But I'm still developing that a little bit more early on in the process. I feel I've been cycling through saying things and figuring out the best way to say something. I often talk about the same kinds of the same topics, how to work with a sourdough starter, or how to do techniques like folding and what not. And I'm never quite sure how to pass that along to somebody who, for whom it—they're naive to those concepts. But I've spent a lot of time thinking about that. 

And I feel like the thing that I think about most in sort of an abstract way is, how do you teach people to think like a baker does? It's not straightforward. I don't know if it's true for every skill, or, but I spend a lot of time thinking about, like, ‘What is it gonna flip the switch in somebody's head when they're doing a technique?’ It's not just straightforward, do this and get that result. It's more like, ‘Think like this, and you'll be able to figure out how to get that result.’ It's one step removed from the process. But I'm still trying to, still trying to get my head around that.

Alicia: Well, for you, is cooking a political act?

Andrew: Yes, it is. I feel like it's important to keep that in your mind when you're doing it. I think it's such an easy thing to forget that food and cooking have—it's such a fundamental thing. Is breathing a political act? It's almost the same, but—air is important, too. 

Food is so fundamental that it's just easy to forget that it has so much, so many implications in terms of—the flipside to eating is hunger, and maybe you're satisfying your own hunger but other people don't even have the option to satisfy it. Or equity in terms of who's making our food or who's growing, picking our fruits, and then all the impacts on climate and resources. And so, I feel I try to deliberately keep that in mind. I mean, it's not always there, but I just feel it's important not, never to forget that. It's part of a system that is not great and needs a lot of work. And I think that, especially if you're in the world of food and cooking, you can have an impact, a positive impact in that if you keep it in mind. 

Alicia: Right. 

Thank you so much for being here.

Andrew: Oh, it was my pleasure. I'm so happy to be here.

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