This Is TASTE

Samah Dada is the brainpower behind Dada Eats, a recipe blog that has blossomed into a plant-based lifestyle brand. We got to know Samah a few years back at a TASTE Podcast taping at Books Are Magic, and we have been following her career as she’s grown from Today Show production assistant to author of Dada Eats: Love to Cook It. In this interview, we talk about her recipes for chocolate chip cookie pie and the “best dal ever” (controversial!) while diving into her understated and, we'd say, highly seasoned take on plant-based cooking. Samah’s vibe is fun and approachable, and the lack of meat and dairy in her recipes is sorta less emphasized. We also talk about the challenge of baking with avocado and her time working food TV.

Additional reading:

Buy the book: Dada Eats: Love to Cook It

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Our guest today needs little introduction—but if you didn’t grow up watching cooking on television over the past 20 years, here’s the deal. Jamie Oliver pioneered a form of food television that brought cameras into the home in a way not previously seen. When the Naked Chef debuted on BBC Two in the UK and the Food Network in the United States in 1999, home cooking on TV was a stand-and-stir affair. Here, a young and floppy Oliver was cooking real food from a cool East London flat, talking viewers through the relative simplicity of making dinner. Oliver has gone on to write numerous cookbooks (selling 50 million in the UK alone) and create food TV that expanded beyond cooking, producing documentaries about the sugar industry and school lunches that transitioned his work from dude food evangelist to heartier activism. 

Oliver was a joy to have on the program, and we talk about the early days of his television career, working at the River Café with the legends Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray, and a pressing question: Blur vs. Oasis (while discussing bassist turned cheese maker Alex James). We also learn about his latest book, Together: Memorable Meals Made Easy. 

Additional reading and viewing:

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The truly unique food worldview of chef and entrepreneur Lucas Sin is shaped by a Hong Kong upbringing, a US education, and a deep love for culinary history, which we talk about in this entertaining interview with one of the food world’s rising stars. We also discuss his love of the Midwest—Michigan in particular—and how his work at his restaurants, Junzi and Nice Day, is partially based on a drive to “reeducate” Americans about Chinese American food, which represents over 45,000 independent mom-and-pop restaurants around the country. And if you haven’t followed Lucas on Instagram, you are missing out.

Also on this episode, cohosts Anna Hezel and Matt Rodbard talk about cooking the whole fish! There are many techniques being presented in the recent crop of cookbooks released this fall. They debunk some of the myths about the difficulty of cooking the whole fish (it needn’t be hard), and they each share some of their fondest memories of cooking whole fish at home and enjoying it around the world.

Additional reading:

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Archestratus is Paige Lipari’s Greenpoint, Brooklyn, café and cookbook store. For over six years, the store—stacked neatly with copies of new and used titles, as well as dusty magazines and long-forgotten reference materials, with a stellar Sicilian restaurant attached—has become one of New York City’s go-to spots for exceptionally curated book browsing paired with molten arancini. In this episode, we speak with Lipari about how one of the country’s finest cookbook stores survived the pandemic—and eventually grew, with a recent expansion. We also talk about many of her favorite fall cookbooks, just in time for the holiday book buying season. Have you picked up a title today? Archestratus will have what you are looking for.

Also on the show, we speak with Cathy Erway. She’s a journalist, podcast hosting legend, and TASTE columnist. We talk about some of her recent work, including stories about sugar, sesame oil, and chile powder. We also discuss her recent cookbook collaboration, and the process of collaborating on cookbooks with chefs more broadly.

Additional reading:

Visit Archestratus online at: archestrat.us/

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Vallery Lomas is a former Washington, DC, lawyer, a current New York City food writer and restaurant chronicler, and the author of a wonderful new cookbook, Life Is What You Bake It. Vallery also competed on—and won— season 3 of The Great American Baking Show. In this interview, we talk a little bit about her season of the show, which unfortunately never aired because of many allegations made against one of the judges. We also tackle some of the baking world’s biggest questions—we’re talking cookie vs. brownie and mint vs. white chocolate.

Also on the show, cohosts Anna Hezel and Matt Rodbard talk about one of the greatest culinary achievements in the history of food (at least to one of the hosts): ranch dressing. They discuss what defines ranch, the beauty of ranch on pizza, and how ranch may need a little PR. Well, here is some PR!

Additional reading:

Buy the book: Life Is What You Bake It   

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There are plenty of things we take for granted about walking into a grocery store: the fluorescent lights, the astoundingly inexpensive milk, the neatly stacked boxes of Nabisco cookies. But as Benjamin Lorr uncovers in his book The Secret Life of Groceries, there’s more than meets the eye. Lorr went undercover as a Whole Foods fishmonger, boarded a shrimp-fishing boat in Thailand, and rode along with a truck driver in a quest to understand some of the unseen economics and labor that fuel our everyday commodities. In this episode, we talk about supply chain disruptions, neighborhood grocery tastemakers, and the origins of Trader Joe’s.

Also on the show, Anna sits down with author and journalist Leah Koenig to discuss the burgeoning world of TikTok and Instagram foraging.

Additional reading:

Buy the book: The Secret Life of Groceries

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Our old friend and former TASTE columnist Priya Krishna has had a meteoric rise in food media, starting in the marketing department at Lucky Peach and going on to roles at Bon Appétit and, most recently, the New York Times, where she is a star reporter on the Food desk. In this interview, we talk about the new book she wrote with David Chang, Cooking at Home, and how they both set out to write a book that was original, opinionated, and clearly not the Momofuku Cookbook 2.0. We also talk about some of her recent stories at the New York Times, as well as in the pages of TASTE.

Also on the show, Anna Hezel speaks with Adam Erace, author of a recent hit story about the godfather sandwich, a mainstay in delis on the East Coast. We found out how the sandwich takes on many personalities—and was not necessarily inspired by the film that shares its name.

Additional reading:

Buy the book: Cooking at Home

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Jesse Szewczyk is a talented food stylist, recipe developer, and author of a new cookbook, Cookies: The New Classics. Were you hoping for some inspiration for your planned holiday cookie swap? He has some really creative takes on classic cookies, including Smoked Butter Chocolate Chunks and Cacio e Pepe Slice and Bakes. In this episode, we talk about his unique creative process, in which he comes up with the cookie name first and then backs into the actual recipe development—a bold move indeed. We discuss his former life as a corporate recipe developer, helping develop concepts for major fast food and QSR chains like Buffalo Wild Wings, Sizzler, and the granddaddy of them all, Taco Bell.

Also on the show, cohosts Anna Hezel and Matt Rodbard talk about some of their favorite cookbooks, both big and small, being released this fall. They discuss books about Chicago pizza, New York pizza, Southern baking, sustainable meat, and the latest from Dorie Greenspan and Sandor Katz.

Additional reading:

Buy the book: Cookies: The New Classics

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You may know him as the friendly face who joins Julia Child on-screen to cook crêpes Suzette with precision and to improvise with big hunks of pork in Julia & Jacques Cooking at Home. Or you may know him from one of the most viral omelet instructional videos of all time. But lately, the celebrated 85-year-old chef, TV personality, and author has been focusing on cooking what’s growing in his garden, painting chickens, and showing the internet how to prepare a meal on a tight budget. In this episode, Anna Hezel speaks to Jacques Pépin about some of these recent passions—and why nonstick pans are so key to making a perfect omelet.

Also on the show, Matt Rodbard catches up with Adam Reiner, the founder of the Restaurant Manifesto and the author of a recent TASTE story about the brilliant cookbook manuscript left behind by late pastry chef Gina DePalma.

Additional reading:

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We are BACK, and have some incredible interviews lined up on the freshly relaunched TASTE Podcast. One of those interviews is with Eric Kim. Eric has a signature style with his food writing and journalism, which has appeared frequently in the New York Times, Food52, and other publications. He blends a truly lyrical style of prose with deep reporting chops and a knack for simple and highly focused recipe development—a rare triple threat! In this conversation, Eric talks about some of his hit recipes in the Times, and he shares details about his forthcoming cookbook Korean American, out next March. We also talk about how crushing deadlines can sometimes inspire a genius recipe idea.

Also on the show, cohosts Anna Hezel and Matt Rodbard discuss what they’ve been up to for the past two years and how the TASTE Podcast is coming back bigger, bolder, and featuring 100 percent more ranch dressing.

Additional Eric Kim reading:

Preorder Eric's book: Korean American

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