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2017 Food Boss Summit

September 5, 2017 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Hi Everyone! Gabriel Soh here! Welcome to the Dinner Special podcast. I want to first apologize for being MIA. I know it’s been a while. Almost a year in fact, but it’s definitely been a process figuring out what to do and how to build on the 139 episodes. Thank you for sticking with me. You’re ah-mazing.

After toying with some ideas, I finally committed to one that I’d actually been thinking of and felt a true personal connection with for a looonng time. And in February, I decided to start telling people about it – like some of my Dinner Special podcast food heroes.

Everyone was super encouraging and so the work began!

Now you’re probably like, soooo what’s this awesome idea that you’ve been working on for the past 7 months?

Well, here goes, it’s an online conference that explores food gig opportunities and careers that can be started on a shoestring budget, to help explore greater creativity, feel more fulfilled, and earn (extra) income. And it’s called, the Food Boss Summit.

So this online conference is something really personal for me.

Over ten years ago, I worked my butt off through culinary school and graduated at the top of my class. Immediately afterwards, I started working at an acclaimed restaurant here in Vancouver, Canada. I felt on top of the world!

But I quit after just one season. I’ll save you the gory details but just say that restaurant kitchens may not be for everyone. Without know about alternative food careers, I abandoned my passion for food to climb a not-so-fulfilling corporate ladder. Don’t get me wrong, it paid the bills, and help me start and build my life as a grown-up, and it was comfortable. But something was always missing…

Two years ago, I started this podcast, The Dinner Special. It was through interviewing over 100 of the world’s top food bloggers, cookbook authors, teachers and food entrepreneurs that I learned about all the awesome passion projects, businesses, careers and gigs out there food lovers are chasing. Many of which can be started from home, on the side, and with a shoestring budget. This is what inspired me to put together the Food Boss Summit.

For anyone listening who doesn’t feel like you fit in working in commercial kitchens, if you’re feeling stuck in your 9-5 job, or maybe you’re a stay-at-home parent looking to start your own path. I totally get it. I’ve been there.

I get that you don’t have a ton of free time and your responsibilities suck a lot of your energy, which is why I’ve tried to make the Food Boss Summit as easy to follow as possible.

I’ve reached out to Mentor speakers who inspire me! They’re entrepreneurs who are “running their own race”, following their passion for food, and genuinely wanting to support you with their lessons learned, practical advice, and encouragement.

I spoke with 19 of them earlier this year and put together powerful interviews with tons of actionable tips and honest advice. It’s like 19 personal mentoring sessions streamed directly to you from September 19 to the 23rd. And I’m super pumped for you to watch it.

A little bit about the Food Boss Summit format, it’s 19 pre-recorded Mentor sessions. Each day, between September 19-23, 3 or 4 interviews will go live, and you will be able to watch each for 48 hours from the comfort of your own home. To have access you need to grab your free ticket at foodbosssummit.com. And that’s it! I will send you the links directly to your inbox, September 19-23, with each days’ new sessions.

Because you’re awesome, when you claim your free ticket, I’ll also forward you the 2017 Food Boss Summit Playbook. Where you’ll meet the speakers, learn more about their sessions, and they’ll share with you 19 simple actions you can take today for starting your dream food gig.

So now that you know about why I put together the Summit and what to expect, you’re probably wondering who these Mentors are! Well, they’re food writers, stylists, and photographers, pop-up and supper club hosts, specialty caterers, food product crafters, food media pros, workshop teachers, food tour leaders, and so much more…

Mentors range from being leaders in their industry for decades and having worked with Jamie Oliver and Donna Hay, there’s a 2-time James Beard Award winner, mentors who’ve been featured in Food & Wine, SAVEUR and the New York Times.

They are people who left successful careers outside of food to pursue something more fulfilling, and those who worked in the front-of-house of restaurants, and kitchens of Michelin-starred restaurants.

It’s a big range including Mentors who are newly committed to their gigs who are 1 or 2 years in… my goal was to bring together mentors from different industries to help you explore what their careers and businesses are like and Mentors at varying levels in their careers so things aren’t daunting and intimidating for anyone just starting out, and yet those with bustling careers already can also learn and gain valuable, practical guidance.

If you want to check out the complete list of Mentors, their sessions and the Summit schedule, it’s at foodbosssummit.com.

The Food Boss Summit is something I wish existed before I abandoned my food career. I wish I stumbled on something like this while I was working my corporate job.

I feel like I wasted so much time away from what I truly wanted to pursue, and I’m hoping that if you have even just the tiniest hint of wanting to start a food gig or follow a career in food that you’ll check out the Food Boss Summit.

I dare you to go grab your free ticket at foodbosssummit.com!

And if you have friends, family or coworkers who are food obsessed and dream of a creative, fulfilling food career, be sure to let them know about the Food Boss Summit, and make them star September 19-23 on their calendars!

If you’re on the fence, I get it, you can find more information on the website or hit me up anytime at foodbosssummit[at]gmail[dot]com if you have any questions.

That’s it!

Thanks so much for listening to me ramble on. It’s something super personal for me and I’m really excited (and a bit nervous) about putting it out there, but I really hope the Food Boss Summit will helpful for anyone wanting to explore greater creativity, feel more fulfilled, and earn (extra) income from their passion for food.

See you there!

Gabriel

139: Erin Gleeson: The Art of Hosting Gatherings

November 10, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Forest Feast Gatherings cookbook

I am so happy to welcome Erin Gleeson of The Forest Feast here to the show today. Erin is the author, illustrator and photographer of the New York Times best-selling cookbook The Forest Feast and of course she has her popular blog called The Forest Feast, as well. Earlier this year she released The Forest Feast for Kids which is an adaptation of the first book, for kids to learn to cook from.

Erin’s latest book The Forest Feast Gatherings, which just recently hit store shelves, centers around the art of entertaining.

Erin’s work has been featured in the New York Times, The Kitchen, Food52, Bon Appétit and Saveur, just to mention a few.

On Her Latest Cookbook, The Forest Feast Gatherings:

The whole book is set up in menus. So, it’s like, if you’re having six to eight people over, here are, four or five or six things that you could make that kinda go together. It might be seasonal and that you could make in a few hours before people are coming. That’s the idea.

I think my biggest advice is that you don’t have to do everything yourself and it doesn’t have to be perfect. I try to share as many shortcuts and ideas for making it easier. I think, perhaps, my biggest advice is just to do it. Invite the people and then figure it out. Because it can be overwhelming. You have to clean your house first. You want it to be nice. There’s so much that goes into it. It can be overwhelming to have people come into your house. And then, making the food and everything. So, just try to make it as easy on yourself as possible and you can do that by asking people to bring things.

My book is set up in these menus where you could assign one dish to each person. But also, you don’t have to make everything. Like, say, you were gonna use one of these menus. You could just make the main course. Just make one thing and then buy some salad and stuff to go with it. The Jewish high Holiday just passed. Rosh Hashanah is a big one for us and we had 20 people over for dinner on a weekday a couple weeks ago. And that’s, like, maybe the biggest sit down dinner party we’ve ever had. We hardly have room in our house for that. We have, like, a little cabin. We had to move furniture. But I was working that day. I have a two-year old, I’m seven months pregnant. It’s like I knew that I couldn’t go too overboard with this dinner. And so, I went to Whole Foods and I bought containers from the deli of kale salad and a grain salad and some roasted vegetables and some roasted potatoes. And then, all I had to make was the main course. I had people bring drinks, and I had people bring desserts. And for an appetizer I put out bowls of nuts and olives and got one nice, big block of cheese and a bunch of grapes. So, I think that you can shop more than cook, especially for things like appetizers and desserts. You can really make it easier on yourself that way.

If it seems overwhelming, just choose one thing to make yourself and either buy or delegate the rest.

On Setting the Mood For a Get-Together:

Sometimes it’s fun to have a theme but I definitely don’t think that you need one. Sometimes it can be helpful in planning the menu, if you want a seasonal theme or, of course, like a holiday theme or something like that, it can help you figure out what you want to serve or if you have time to do flowers on the table. Maybe you want them to be fall colored, or something like that. That can be extra fun stuff but you definitely don’t need a theme.

I would just go with music that’s not too loud. I often try to choose music that doesn’t have a lot of words, so that you can talk over it. So, something more instrumental. My husband and I always disagree on what music to play. He wants, like, Beastie Boys and I want Frank Sinatra but we usually settle on something in the middle ground. Lately we’ve been doing some reggae which is really fun and kind of upbeat but also kinda mellow. But bluegrass, I think, is always fun and often instrumental and is sort of chill but a little bit upbeat. I always love old jazz for a dinner party, with candles. Blossom Dearie is one of my favorites. I just stream music, usually, on Amazon Prime.

On Deciding on What to Serve for a Dinner Party:

I always try to go in terms of courses. If it’s a sit-down dinner, I try to do a main course, a salad and a side. And I usually do vegetarian. So, those three things and then I usually buy a dessert. If I have time, I’ll bake it. But buy a dessert, buy a nice loaf of bread and then we usually just offer beer and wine.

If you have like two people over, it’s fun to make a fun cocktail, like a Manhattan or something like that. We have a little bar where we keep booze and bitters and mixing glasses. And if you have just a couple of people you can do that.

If you have a couple more people, I often make things in a pitcher. Like in the Gatherings book, I have a lot of punches and pitcher cocktail ideas that you can make a batch of and people can help themselves. But, in terms of what to serve, seasonal can often play into it.

If it’s fall, like right now, we’re doing a lot of squash and kale. End of summer we do a lot of tomatoes and zucchini. I try to think about what’s in the markets right now. At the Farmer’s Market we get this weekly farm box and I often need to use it up. So, that will dictate what goes in the food. But I don’t think there are any specific rules.

I often think about color. Like, I want to have a variety of color and texture, like something crunchy, something smooth. But I think just a main and a couple of sides plus a loaf of bread is great.

On Bar Style Serving Menus:

I have a couple of different bar ideas. One is a creamy polenta bar. Polenta cooks in less than 10 minutes. So, it’s really easy to make a big pot of it after everyone’s arrived. Just sneak away for a few minutes and make it. And then you can just put it on a table or a bar with lots of toppings that you’ve prepped ahead, like Marinara sauce, Feta cheese, some fresh herbs, some Parmesan cheese. I love cheese. I think you can tell.

Another idea is a rice noodle bar, which is great for people if they have gluten-free, gluten allergy or sensitivity. But also, these kinds of bar styles serving menus offer people with dietary restrictions the option to create their own bowl. Polenta is also gluten-free, so that’s a good one. But, I always do try to ask people in an e-mail ahead of time when I’m inviting them, or after they said they can come, I say, “Okay, do you have any allergies or food sensitivities?” And so, I try to plan my menu around that too.

On What Hosting Means to Her:

But I think the whole point of hosting is really to get people together, and get people talking, and get to know people better. When people come over to your house, rather than meeting you in a restaurant, it’s a totally different view into your world and your family and your space. It helps people understand you in a different way. I know I love going to other people’s houses and it helps me to understand them and build a closer friendship or relationship. People are often scared to do it or hesitant to do it because it does feel overwhelming sometimes but I think as much as you can, just try to have people over, even in small groups. I think it’s important for relationship building and for community building. It’s good.

On What’s Next:

I’m not working on another book currently, but I do have a couple ideas floating in my head so maybe at some point I’ll do another book. But my next project which is actually launching next week, I’m so excited, is an online shop. So, I’m gonna start an e-commerce site as part of theforestfeast.com and I’m going to be selling my own products.

I have these three books plus my publisher has created a whole line of stationery and gift items like a journal, notebooks, and these really beautiful watercolor notecards and some placemats that I created. So, it’s all with a combination of my watercolor and photography, several different products. So, I’m going to start with about 10 items and add items little by little over the coming months.

I really see it as a place to be creative. I’m always making things for my own home with my artwork printed on textiles. I print a lot of my photos on fabric and I’ve upholster some furniture, I made clothing, I made throw pillows, and made artwork for the walls. So, I have a lot of fun making home decor items that are inspired by watercolor and photography. And so, I’m excited to transition out into actual products.

I’m sort of in talks with doing a line of linens that another company would produce, table cloths and fabric napkins with my watercolor designs on them. And I would love to do dishes at some point. So, I’m really brainstorming fun products that you could use for entertaining, or just to make you happy around your home a little bit and bring more art into your home.

On How to Get Our Hands on The Forest Feast Gatherings:

It’s available, almost everywhere books are sold. The easiest place is perhaps my online shop, but it’s also at Anthropology stores and most local bookstores, Barnes&Noble, all the independent bookstores, a lot of them have it. You can also just go to theforestfeast.com/cookbook and I list a bunch of places where you can buy it online.

138: Alanna Taylor-Tobin: Behind the Pages of Alternative Baker

September 7, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Alternative Baker cookbook

I am so excited to welcome Alanna Taylor-Tobin of The Bojon Gourmet back to the show today. The last time we talked was over a year ago. And Alanna has been busy working on a bunch of awesome stuff. One thing in particular is her cookbook called, Alternative Baker: Reinventing Dessert with Gluten-Free Grains and Flours. I’m super psyched to have her here today to chat about her labour of love. And to learn about the process of putting her book together.

(*All photos below are Alanna’s.)

On Her Cookbook, Alternative Baker:

I really wanted to write a cookbook about rustic fruit desserts because that’s my favorite way to cook. It’s like using what’s in season and how do you take those perfectly ripe peaches and make them even better than they are on their own? And I’m gluten sensitive so I’ve been playing with different flours for the last decade or so. I think actually the thing that made me really want to write this book was my gluten-free pie dough, which I’m really proud of. It’s so delicious. I just wanted to really highlight that in the book. And how you can create these great flavours and textures from these alternative flours. The publisher was really excited about the alternative flours aspect of it so we sort of put the two together and we came up with this concept of alternative grains and flours, but also seasonal fruits and vegetables. It makes for this really vibrant, colourful, fun cookbook.

In October, it will be two years since the initial e-mail exchange. I started working on the book actually right when we had talked the last time in January of 2015 but it was brand new and I hadn’t told anyone about it yet. I had eight months for the recipes and manuscripts and then an additional month for the photographs after that. And then it was tying up things and doing editing. Then it’s been at the printer being printed.

So it will be almost two years from start to finish.

On Creating a Cookbook for All Skill Levels:

I didn’t really think about that at first. The thing that really made that become important to me was when I started sending my recipes out to testers. I ended up with I think 60 or 80 recipe testers, just volunteers or friends or readers. I really wanted to get each recipe tested by at least two different people because gluten-free baking is so finicky. And so I just really wanted to make sure at least two people could make each recipes before they went into print and went out to the masses.

When the testers started making these recipes I really realized like, this isn’t just a hypothetical person who I don’t know, who’s anonymous and who buys the book years in the future. This is my teacher from pastry school making this or this is an old friend of mine, this is a reader who I have a nice rapport with. I want to make this recipe really easy for them and make it as good as possible, and as streamlined as possible. I realized I was already asking a lot for people to go find these obscure flours to use and also seasonal produce that maybe was not in season or was hard to find. So I started to try to simplify things.

On an Instant Household Classic for a Beginner:

I have a few recipes. And actually, I have a full section in the book that lists the simpler recipes or the more complex ones. If you’re a flour child, F-L-O-U-R, then you can make these simpler recipes that don’t use many flours or these easy to find flours. Up to you. If you’re a grainiac then you can make these crazy recipes with more obscure flours. And so one recipe is a brownie recipe that is adopted from Alice Medrich who’s the goddess of baking, gluten-free baking and alternative flour baking. And her brownie recipe is just…it’s amazing. You whip the eggs with the sugar so you get the light and airy, but they’re really dense and fudgy, and chocolate-y at the same time. But it’s totally easy to make and you can use pretty much any flour in there. There’s so much chocolate and eggs to stick it together. The ones in my book have chestnut flour in them. It makes an extra earthy, rich brownie with this delicious buttery texture.

On Probably the Most Challenging Recipe in the Cookbook:

There is one recipe. I think it’s probably the most challenging recipe in the book. And it’s not necessarily hard to make. But it’s just sort of a pain in the butt. And it’s this trifle… When you make a chiffon cake, just add like a citrus flavor in the chiffon cake… And the chiffon cake is like, it’s just really easy to make. It just takes a little bit of technique that you have to whip the egg whites and then fold them into the batter so you have to know how to do that. And then you make a Zabaglione… Zabaglione is such an annoying dessert because first you have eight egg yolks and what are you going to do with those egg whites. That’s annoying just to begin with. And you put sugar and I put Lillet Blanc in it. It’s that aperitif…It’s a wine base that has these citrus, honey flavors in it. So delicious. So you put that with the egg yolks and then sugar. And you put it in a hot water bath. You have to whisk it and you have… You’re sweating and there’s steam coming up from the pot and it’s burning you, you have to just keep whipping and whipping, mixing by hand with the whisk until it get’s really frothy. And then you have to chill it. Then you have to fold heavy cream into it. It’s such a pain to make it but it’s just like nothing else. It’s just this super silky, fluffy, light sort of custard that is layered with the chiffon cake and soaked with more citrus juice and more Lillet, and then layered with winter citrus fruits, like oranges and grapefruits and tangerines. It’s this amazing really impressive looking dessert. But it’s really a pain to make.

On a Surprising Challenge That was Different From Blogging:

The thing that snuck up on me was that when I’m photographing for my blog, first of all, I do those process shots. And so I get to warm up…you don’t just go sprint out the door. You stretch and you start slowly and work up to it. When shooting for my blog, I realized shooting these process shots was kind of a warm up to get the final beauty shots at the end. And then with the book, it was only the finished shot. It kind of surprised me how much it helps me when I’m shooting for my blog to have this warm up period to the beauty shot. Also, just being creative under pressure was really hard for me.

With my blog, it’s free content, it doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect. But, with the book, it kind of put the fear in me. First of all, there was this intense deadline – all these other people are waiting on. For my blog if don’t post one week it doesn’t matter really. No one’s mad at me. For the book they had this deadline and I had to try to be creative and really think on my feet and just come up with interesting shots. At first I felt paralyzed. Because it was just so different and it just felt really difficult.

On If We Can Expect More Cookbooks in the Future:

I think I’m crazy enough to do this thing again. I don’t have kids but I would imagine, your first kid, is like you have no idea what you are doing.

It would be nice to do a second book to apply all of those things first of all. But also I love the whole process, making all these recipes that all fit together. For the blog, I do that to some extent on the blog, but it’s not the same as like having it all together in a book and pulling all these different influences and flavors and everything and having it all come together into a book. That was really satisfying and I’d love to do that again.

On How to Get our Hands on Alternative Baker:

Well it comes out September 13th. And it can be preordered through anywhere. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your local bookstore, Books-a-Million, any retailers of books you can preorder it. And if you want to find out more about the book you can go to alternativebaker.com and that’s my cookbook page. I talk all about the book there.

A Message from Me

August 31, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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A Message from Gabriel

Hey everyone! It’s Gabriel Soh, your host here on The Dinner Special podcast for the past 137 episodes. Today is a little bit different. I won’t be chatting with a super awesome food hero guest, instead, it’ll just be me!

First of all, thank you for listening and for carving out some time to be with me and my guests over the past year and a half. Whether you’re a new listener who’s just recently discovered the show or a subscriber who’s caught each and every single conversation, it truly means a great deal.

With that said, when I started putting together this show, I knew that I would be inspired by amazing food. That was the whole point – to help busy home cooks explore what to make for dinner and find their zest for cooking. But as the show evolved, we talked about different approaches towards cooking and baking, learned about the flavours of different cultures, and about the unique tastes of my passionate guests and the places they call home. I feel so incredibly lucky that my guests were so open to share how food has shaped their stories.

Over the past 3500 or so minutes of recorded conversations, The Dinner Special podcast, at least once a week, has taken a similar structure – profiling incredibly talented food heroes, learning about a dish that is special to them, and of course The Pressure Cooker. It’s been such a fun run so far.

Now, as much as I enjoy producing and hosting The Dinner Special podcast as it is, I feel like it’s time for a change. Especially now with Snapchat, Instagram stories, and Facebook LIVE, we can get a peek behind the voices of our favorite food blogs from our food heroes themselves! Which is so cool! What an awesome age we live in.

So what does this mean for The Dinner Special podcast? To be honest, I don’t know yet. I love podcasting. I love the food blogging community. I love helping to tell stories of inspiring people whose spirits are lifted by food. And that I get to talk with people from around the world? And have people like you, listening from places I’ve only dreamed of one day visiting? This experience has been so rewarding and such a personal joy.

As I try to figure things out, as hard as it is for me to say, and after a ton of back and forth, I’ve decided to put The Dinner Special podcast on pause – AFTER next week’s episode.

Maybe you can help me out with your ideas? What do you think would make a good show? I’d love to hear from you. Hit me up at: thedinnerspecial@gmail.com.

So after next week, I won’t be putting out a newly scheduled episode every week. Although, I do hope to drop in from time to time with a new episode, if you’ll have me. Maybe it’ll be a profile of an insanely talented food hero, maybe it’ll be something totally out of the box. So if you’re not already a subscriber and you want to be sure to catch any new episodes, please subscribe. All information on subscribing can be found at www.thedinnerspecial.com.

As for me, during this pause, I’ll also be taking some time to focus on a project that I’m very excited about. And I hope to be sharing it with you all soon.

Now, even though this is not the end of The Dinner Special podcast, I’d like to give a huge shoutout to all the guests who’ve taken the time to be on show. Thank you for being so kind and generous to me. And, I also want to thank every single one of you who has downloaded and listened to the show. You are the inspiration behind this project. And, again, if you have any thoughts on what you’d like to listen to, I’d love to hear from you.

You can find the many ways to keep in touch and to contact me at thedinnerspecial.com.

That’s it! Bye for now.

PS: As mentioned, I DO have an episode for you next week. It’s not a food hero profile and there is no Pressure Cooker, but it might be a glimpse of what future episodes may be like. Let me know what you think!

137: Yigal Schleifer: Guided by Stories of Unsung Food Heroes

August 24, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Culinary Backstreets

Yigal co-founded the blog Istanbul Eats with Ansel Mullins to bring us the best undiscovered local eateries you might not always find on your own. The blog has grown and evolved into Culinary Backstreets, which tells the stories of a city’s foodways, giving equal measure to the culinary side as the human element to gain a deeper understanding of the city and its daily life.

Over the years, Yigal has worked for the New York Post, New York Times, and Vanity Fair. Istanbul Eats was a winner in the 2012 SAVEUR Blog Awards, and Culinary Backstreets has earned a Certificate of Excellence from TripAdvisor.

I am so excited to have Yigal Schleifer of Istanbul Eats and Culinary Backstreets with me here on the show today.

(*All photos below belong to Culinary Backstreets.)

On Their Blog Istanbul Eats:

We were both living in Istanbul. We’re both Americans. Ansel’s from Chicago, I was living in New York before coming to Istanbul. We both got there around the time, 2002. And got to know each other through mutual friends fairly early on, and I think both shared a love for what makes Istanbul so special, which is it has all these great little backstreet places to eat. Just fun little ‘hole in the walls’ or ‘mom and pop shops’, or just places that have been around for generations, centuries. Very traditional nice spots that serve great food and are often hard to find, unless you’re kind of wandering the streets almost aimlessly.

I think in many ways we bonded over that. We were sitting over lunch one day, I think this was around, let’s say, 2009, and we were both complaining to each other about this article that just appeared in the travel section of a major American newspaper, and it was one of those articles saying, “If you’ve got a couple of days in Istanbul, here’s what you should do and where you should eat.”

The food suggestions, we thought, were just atrocious. At least in our minds. They were very typical suggestions, and just the kind of things that leave people feeling like, “There’s really no great food in Istanbul.” I mean, we kept hearing this. People are like, “I’ve come to Istanbul and I didn’t have a great food experience.” And to us, that was hard to believe. How could anyone possibly not have an incredible food experience in Istanbul?

We thought, “You know what? It’d be nice if there was something that highlighted these great spots that we love.” So thus was born the idea for the blog Istanbul Eats, initially just each one of us writing about these places that we had grown to love over the years there, and more or less more humble places. Not the high-end of the spectrum, but calling them the low-end is not so fair either because there are some high culinary achievements happening in some very humble places.

So we started with the blog and it really took off. It was kind of hard to imagine but at that time there was really nothing, not even in Turkish, that was doing what we were doing, which is kind of just writing about these humble, authentic places. And about a year after doing the blog, we had enough material for a book, so we did a guidebook, which is in English, but there’s also a Turkish version and a Greek version.

And then we also had the idea of… It was suggested to us by somebody who does this in Rome, which is to start doing food walks, culinary tours. We thought about how we would like to do that and really decided that you can really tell the story of the city through food, and we were doing it through our reviews in one way, but doing these walks would be another way to do it.

We came up with an initial route. We now, at this point, all these years later, we have maybe closer to 7 different routes in Istanbul. But the idea was really to create a kind of narrative-driven food tour. So instead of just stuffing your face and going from one place to another and eating good food but without maybe much thought as to what all the food is about, we decided to really find ways to tell the story of Istanbul, of different neighborhoods, especially places that most tourists don’t get to, through food.

Initially our first walk was through an area of the old city of Istanbul where most tourists don’t get to, and really understand the history of how food drives the rhythms of daily life in Istanbul.

So that’s how Istanbul Eats got started. I think it filled the void that was there. I think being expats, or outsiders, allowed us to, let’s say, venture into neighborhoods that maybe because of whatever cultural divisions you have in Turkey, certain people wouldn’t go to that neighborhood. Maybe it’s too religious over there, or it’s too this, or it’s too that. Those rules didn’t really apply to us because we were foreigners. So we were able to go wherever we wanted and eat wherever we wanted and write about these places. It took off, and we were really gratified to see the response.

On Starting Culinary Backstreets:

Istanbul Eats started in 2009, and about a year later started doing food tours. And while we were doing that, we were thinking it would be interesting to try this model in other places. We also saw people who had come to Istanbul and used our book, and had been on our walks who said, “Hey, you guys should think about doing this where I live, this would be really cool”. So, in 2012, the idea of Culinary Backstreets came into our head, which is the idea of trying to do this in other places. In 2012 we launched a website, and initially, we were along with Istanbul, we were also in Athens, and Barcelona, and Shanghai, Mexico City, and then we had it in Rio.

And really the idea was we used that same model, find a local person to write for us about great local places to eat, really to celebrate these kind of unsung heroes, people perpetuating culinary traditions, or doing interesting things with old traditions in new ways. And then we also do these experiential activities, the food tours, to really give people a chance to really get on the ground and have a more guided experience. So we’re really gratified to see that that also got a very nice response, and since then, we’ve gotten into a few other places. We’re now in Tokyo, and Lisbon, and PRC, and Georgia.

We’re really trying to make our mark in cities that we think have a great culinary tradition, great culinary culture, great food culture. That have an interesting story to tell beyond the food itself, but that the food helps tell the stories. So a city with some kind of interesting backstory and that the food really helps you unlock the mysteries of that city. And also places that are kind of hard to navigate on your own, for whatever reason. If it’s the language, culture, or even geography. Istanbul is such a hard place to sometimes navigate because the streets are kind of winding, and you just never really know where you are. It’s nice to have that guidance.

So that’s Culinary Backstreets. The idea, again, it’s just like what we did in Istanbul, really tell the story of these cities through their food, and to really offer people a way to interact with that city and with its story, either through reading our reviews that we do, or taking one of our walks. We also offer something called the Eatinerary, which is our custom-made food and travel guide. We have an online questionnaire that people can fill out and tell us what all their different preferences are and what their passions are and what their cravings are. And then we come back with a several day guided document that serves as a kind of a food guide. So, setting up each day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and other things along the way that really take you through the city and its food.

That’s the Culinary Backstreets story. We’ve really been happy to see it grow, and the idea is to keep adding all these kind of interesting cities to the roster as we grow.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Well, this may sound very cliche, but lately it’s just been the British Baking Show. Sad to say I’m not a big TV guy. But that’s been what I’ve been watching with my kids, and they’re big fans.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

This is kind of a backhanded plug for Culinary Backstreets, but just to say that we recently did a week together with a website called Roads & Kingdoms. Roads & Kingdoms is not strictly a food blog, they’re kind of a culture and travel website that does great reportage and focuses on food, and we did a week with them about bars. Different bars that we really love, small little places, focusing, again, on the people…we call it “behind bars”, it’s the people, the bartenders. So we’re really happy to work with them. It’s a great site that I highly recommend, Roads & Kingdoms.

With Culinary Backstreets, what would you say is your personal favourite tour?

Well, one of our newest ones is in Georgia, the country not the state. It’s an amazing place, it’s an amazing country, it’s an amazing food culture that has an incredible wine culture. There’s something very raw and wild still about life in Georgia. The food is sort of like this mix of all kinds of different influences, yet you can’t quite put your finger on it… It’s totally unique in and of its own, and the walk that you do there takes you through this old market there that’s just an incredible hive of activity and through the city, and then ends up at this wonderful restaurant run by a group of younger Georgians who are recasting older traditions in a new light.

It’s just great, it’s an incredible introduction to, I think, a place that feels really different than a lot of what most people experience, be it European, or North American, or South American, or even Asian. It’s just a very interesting place.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

It’s not unusual, but I love it deeply, and it’s a mortar and pestle, wooden mortar and pestle, that, to tell the truth, I can’t remember where I got it. It’s possible that I got it in Jerusalem but it’s possible I got it in New York. It’s been with me for a long time now, and I can tell how long I’ve had it because the pestle is sort of worn down from all the grinding but I use it specifically for crushing garlic, it’s perfect for crushing garlic. I don’t know what it is, something about the wood against the wood, and the way it soaks up some of that aroma and the flavor. And just the warmth of the wood, it’s almost like a child of mine. I really love my mortar and pestle, and there were a few years where it was in storage just because we had been traveling, and being reunited with that piece of kitchen equipment is really special.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I hate to repeat myself, but let me go back to liver and just say that after spending several years in Turkey and encountering liver in all kinds of different forms, in some places it’s even eaten for breakfast, literally, it’s grilled in southeast Turkey in the morning, grilled up. So I’ll have to say liver again just because I’ve become such a liver fanatic.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

There’s one that to me is kind of like a Bible and it’s Paula Wolfert’s, Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean. Maybe it’s 20 years old or more, but it’s a fantastic cookbook that I just turn to all the time and has some fantastic recipes. There’s just something perfect about it to me, and I always go back to it, and it just really seems to cover the sweet spot for me in terms of this Eastern Mediterranean region, ranging from Greece over to Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and down through Egypt. It’s a great cookbook.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Probably The Wailers, as in Bob Marley and The Wailers, but before when they were just The Wailers. And it would be Catch a Fire, probably. I would have to say that’s something… That era… Wailers… Anything, actually, from that era I think really does it for me in the kitchen. Or anywhere else.

On Keeping Posted with Yigal:

Go to our Facebook page, we’re just Culinary Backstreets on Facebook, look us up. That’s probably the best way to stay up on what we’re doing. If you want, go to our website and sign up for our newsletter, we send out a weekly top stories of the week newsletter. But Facebook is the most comprehensive.

136: Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack: Passing On the Flavours of Mexico

August 17, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Muy Bueno

On her blog, Muy Bueno, Yvette shares her family stories and takes her readers on a journey through old-world northern Mexican cuisine, traditional south of the border home-style dishes, and Latin fusion recipes. Muy Bueno was a finalist in the Saveur Blog Awards in 2012 and 2014, and Yvette has published two cookbooks: Muy Bueno: Three Generations of Authentic Mexican Flavor and Latin Twist: Traditional and Modern Cocktails.

I am so thrilled to have Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack of Muy Bueno joining me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Yvette’s.)

On The Role Food Played in Her Home:

I grew up in El Paso, Texas, which so many people think, “Oh, you have Tex-Mex food,” but if you’ve ever been to El Paso, it’s pretty much Mexico. Our home is literally a mile away from the Juarez Mexico border. My grandmother came from Chihuahua, Mexico, when she was 10 years old. She’s passed away. She passed away when she was 98 years old, but my mom was a single parent and we lived next door to my grandma. So it was basically my mom and my grandma who raised me, and it was food all the time. It was either see my mom in the kitchen all the time or my grandma in the kitchen. And that was why I named “Muy Bueno” what it is because my grandma would always be in the kitchen, and just anytime any visitors would come, she would always say, “Siéntate a comer, esta muy bueno,” which means, “Sit down, come and eat, it’s very good.” And so every time I thought about my grandma and trying to come up with a blog name, that name just kept coming to me.

My grandma was just always in the kitchen and I was always in there with her. I just loved to sit there and watch her make homemade flour tortillas. And I just couldn’t wait to get home from school and just sit there and just listen to her stories. She would just tell me, you know, growing up in the ranch in Chihuahua, Mexico, and during the Mexican revolution, and crossing over to Texas with her family when she was only 10 years old, and just how scary it was. And the things that she experienced, I just found it fascinating. I could just hear her stories over and over and over again. I just loved sitting there and just watching her cook. And that was what I fell in love with.

Although, growing up, what’s so funny is seeing her in the kitchen, my mom always in the kitchen, that was where I did not want to be. I just felt like they were under appreciated and just always there. But as I became a mom, I realized that’s just your gift to your family. And that’s your showing your love to your family, and that’s when I fell in love with cooking, once I had my own children. But in my teens and college, I was like anti the kitchen, anti-cooking.

On Rediscovering the Kitchen:

Everybody would tease me, my family would, especially my brother. He’s seven years older than me and he still teases me, thinking, “Oh, you still don’t cook. You just play one on the Internet.” Because he would be the biggest one. My grandma, too, would say I’m never gonna find a man because I didn’t like the kitchen. It was just like a running family joke. But it’s not that I didn’t know how to cook. I just chose not to cook. My love in the kitchen was when I would entertain. I would love to have friends and family over, and that’s when I would get creative and have fun, when I knew I could cook for a crowd.

It was until I had children, I was like, “Okay, now I kinda have to cook.” So that’s when I started calling my mom and asking, “Okay, How do I make some of these recipes?” She never had it written down. I never bothered to write them down. I would just make them as she was telling me over the phone. And so that’s how I would learn some of the traditional dishes that I grew up with.

Still to this day, when I make a dish that my grandma would make often, I just seriously feel her. I just know that she’s watching me and guiding me in the kitchen. So it’s really cool.

On Her Cookbook, Muy Bueno: Three Generations of Authentic Mexican Flavor:

That was really challenging when we tried to come up with our tagline or subheading. It’s like authentic could be very misleading, I guess. People could be very judgmental when it comes to any type of cuisine, whether it’s authentic or not authentic. Everybody’s definition of authenticity is very different. And when it comes to cooking, it depends on what region. I just came back from Oaxaca, Mexico, and there were so many dishes and ingredients that I have never heard of. So my chicken mole is completely different than a mole that’s made in Oaxaca, Mexico. That’s why we named it “authentic flavor.” We’re not claiming that it’s authentic Mexican, but that it’s authentic to us, and it’s the flavor of Mexico that we know and love.

I just posted a recipe not too long ago of this very authentic traditional dish called chiles en nogada. And it’s not a dish that we necessarily grew up with, but I researched it enough and learned how to make it to share it with my fans. And there’ll always be somebody who’s like, “No, this is not authentic, because an authentic chiles en nogada, you have to peel the walnuts.” And it’s like, sometimes, I skip steps to try and make it easy for the everyday cook. Who has a time to be peeling walnuts?

So just little things like that, I try to make dishes that are authentic in flavor, but are easier to make and maybe adding a spin where it’s a healthier dish or just making it more simple, but keeping those traditional and authentic flavors in there.

On Co-Writing a Second Cookbook, Latin Twist: Traditional & Modern Cocktails:

It was funny because you never know who you’re gonna meet. That’s what I love about blogging is it’s opened up so many new relationships that sitting in my old job in a cubicle, I would have never had the opportunity to meet. And Vianney is another Latina blogger who is from Texas. So we automatically had that connection, and I followed her blog, she followed my blog. And one event, we went with Nestle to go to California and be a part of a tamalada.

And that evening, we were both flying out and had a long delay at the LA airport. We’re like, “Let’s get some cocktails.” And so we started with one cocktail, and another cocktail. She has a great section in her blog that’s called Margarita Love. And so I kept telling her, “Vianney, you need to write a margarita cookbook, you know, margarita cocktail book.” She’s like, “Yeah, that’s my goal. I wanna do that.” I was like, “Well, let me know if you need help, and I can design it for you, or I can talk to the publisher that I worked with and see if they might be interested.” And she was like, “Okay, okay.”

And so then, after I was on the plane and we parted ways, I was thinking, “I need to do something with her. I don’t wanna steal her thunder with a margarita book, because I would love for her to still do that on her own, but we need to team up together and write a cocktail book, not only just of margaritas, and not only just of Mexican cocktails, but cocktails of Latin America and Spain. And so that’s how the idea started. I approached her saying, “How about we team up together and we write a cocktail book together and share both of our loves of these fun cocktails that usually end up being Latin-inspired.”

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I love anything with Giada or Rick Bayless or Pati Jinich. It’s not so much of the show, but more about who’s cooking and who captivates my attention.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I would say White on Rice Couple. I’ve just always loved their photography style and just their whole life in general. They have this gorgeous garden and these orchards. It just looks fabulous. I also love Matt Bites, Matt Armendariz. I just love that he’s a Latino. He seems like he would be a fun friend. I love his photography and his styling. He works with his partner who has an amazing eye for food styling. And just together, they do some magic. For me, it’s all about visuals and photography, and capturing the story with it. And so those blogs have always kept my interest.

I also love Foodiecrush. She has an amazing, a completely different sense of style, where I think it’s more modern and clean, and she also has a background in graphic design. So I love her clean space when it comes to styling food.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I follow a lot of yogis on Instagram. I just love yoga girl, and she just always has some inspirational messages. It’s just neat to see all these amazing yoga poses that she does in the middle of nowhere, or like super tropical, exotic amazing spaces. But I just love that she always has positive messages or inspiring quotes, always to her photos.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

That’s an easy one. It’s my grandmother’s rolling pin. After she passed away, my mom asked me what it was that I would love from my grandma, and I just wanted that rolling pin that she would make flour tortillas with every day. And so come to find out she had two rolling pins, and my sister asked for one too. So we each got a rolling pin. I think it’s kind of like a baton, like your turn. It’s time to continue that legacy and those traditions of food with your family.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I would say nopales, which are cactus petals. It’s not even so much that I didn’t love it. It’s just we didn’t really grow up eating them very often. When I saw them, it was more in a jar and they just looked slimy and they just didn’t appeal to me. And so it was not, until recently, where it’s like you can honestly get them fresh. I put them in a smoothie every morning or mix some scrambled eggs or just in a fresh salad, it’s just such a fun ingredient that I think it’s underrated and it needs to be used more often.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I love Rick Bayless. I love Pati Jinich. I also love Marcela Valladolid. Anything Mexican, I just love to, not only read the recipes, but read their history or learn how they make the recipes. It’s just interesting, because you can have a tres leches cake in all the books, and they’ll all be completely different. I love seeing the variety of the same Mexican dish and how it’s made by different Mexican chefs.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I would say any old Mexican music. There’s Paloma Blanca, which is a white dove. And there’s another one called De Colores. So they’re just two old Mexican songs, and it’s like I’m flooded back with feelings of my grandma, racing to go pump up the volume and sing. Now I sing those songs and turn up the volume for those songs, and just know that grandma is there watching me cook, singing with me.

On Keeping Posted with Yvette:

I think Instagram’s definitely my new love. That’s where I post the latest and greatest, also on Facebook. I’m not on Snapchat yet. I do have an account, but I haven’t caught on to the Snapchat wagon, which I’m sure I will soon. But yeah, for now, definitely Instagram on Muy Bueno Cooking. And on Facebook, it’s under Muy Bueno Cookbook.

135: Meredith Steele: From Stay-at-Home Mom to Food Entrepreneur

August 10, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Steele House Kitchen

Meredith left her job as a graphic designer to become a stay-at-home mom after her daughter was born. During this time, she created her blog In Sock Monkey Slippers, started her own recipe development company, and was a finalist in the 2013 SAVEUR Blog Awards. At the end of 2015, insockmonkeyslippers.com evolved into Steele House Kitchen, a space where Meredith shares moments of laughter, inspiration, and creativity around good, honest food.

I am so psyched to have Meredith Steele of Steele House Kitchen joining me on the show.

(*All photos below are Meredith’s.)

On Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom:

For many years, I was in advertising and graphic design, behind the scenes, and photo shoots, and everything. Everything was just fast paced. And then my husband and I became pregnant, and very excited, but things just kind of went wrong from day one. And Mia decided that she wanted to come out four months early, which left me kind of… Everything stopped. Your job stops, your life stops, and you end up just living in the hospital. So we did. I lived in the hospital for five months. She came home perfectly healthy; just smart, great kid. But she came home and had immune sensitivity. So she couldn’t be out in the world.

We were imprisoned in our house for a year until her immune system could catch up with a regular baby and toddler at the time. So obviously, I had to leave my job. And you know, cooking has always been one of those things that I’ve just absolutely loved from the time I was little. It’s just always been in my life. It’s not that being a mom is boring. It’s the complete opposite, but I kept looking for something for me to do, just to have… So I can just take 30 minutes a day just to become myself again. I just went back to my passion which was cooking, and then also photography, which I’ve been doing ever since I was a teenager. So I realized that I wanted to cook for my daughter who was now able to eat foods, and she had very sensitive gastro problems because of prematurity.

Everything had to be very strict, and very pure, and no preservatives. Not even jarred baby food was good, because some had food coloring in it. She’s allergic to food coloring and just everything. So I just broke it down to basics and started making baby food. And I had the blog to let everyone know how she was doing in her transition from hospital to home.

And then all of a sudden, I was like, “Well, you know, we’ll just cook baby food. Let’s put this recipe,” because people were starting to ask for it. And then I had a baby food company come and say, “Could you start doing recipe development for our company?” This was crazy. Maybe this could be my next transition in life. It’s becoming a light-bulb moment. Let’s maybe try this out.

On Starting Her Company, MBS Recipe Development:

It really came in a time when my husband changed careers and decided he wanted to be a sommelier. So he wanted to go back to school, which left us with no income. I was already working for Disney at the time, doing recipe development for a few websites of theirs. I thought, “Well, you know, let’s pay more attention to the recipe development company. Let’s create a company, pay more attention to this. Put blogging on the sideline for right now, so I could basically pay the mortgage.”

And it worked, and it was something I really, really enjoy doing. So it’s really strange how blogging can take you other places than just a blog. It was just one company after one company. I started with Disney, then BBDO, which is a PR company, came and started working with a lot of their clients. And now, I work for pretty much almost all the major PR companies. I work with some small ones, too. PR companies are my most prevalent client, but, I also work for some local restaurants. A lot of editorial…I work with a lot of local magazines here, statewide magazines.

On Her Cookbook, Effortless Entertaining Cookbook:

I got a call one day from a publisher, and they just said, “We would really like to do a book with you.” I thought, “Okay. Am I ready for this?” I’m not really sure, and I said, “Well, what’s the timeline?” They said, “Well, you’ve got about four months.” I thought, “Oh, no. Sorry, go find yourself someone else because this isn’t going to work.” But I thought about it, and it was one of those very failsafe contracts where when you publish a book through a publishing house, they do, I wouldn’t say own the book, but they’re very responsible for the book. So if things fail, you kind of have a good padding to fail on. And I kept thinking, “Well, I know I want to write a book. Maybe this is the way to go,” just to get my feet wet and see if this is going to be safe.

I thought, “Okay, let’s just see how a cookbook is even written,” because I did not know the first thing about it. So they walked me through the process, and gave me a nice advance so I could leave work. And it’s been good so far. So we sat there and had a brainstorming session about what we were going to do, and I think it all just came along when I was in my office staring at racks of wine that my husband is hoarding for, you know, clients and everything. I thought how we entertain a lot. Like every weekend we’re trying to… I test recipes on our friends, he tests wine on our friends. So let’s write a book about that.

So we wrote a book about entertaining. How about we do it effortless? And I said, “Okay. Effortless Entertaining,” and that was the name of the book. It’s a collection of seasonal recipes that you can pull together ahead of time really simply or pull together in the last 20 minutes.

It’s available for pre-order now, and it’s called Effortless Entertaining Cookbook.

It was a fun book to create, because we had a lot of people come over and help me out with the photography and everything.

Another good thing about having my husband, you know, in the drink business was he was able to pair almost every recipe with wine or beer. So I think when you’re waiting for your party and you’re about to get in, you’re at the grocery store and you’re buying everything. You come to that wine aisle, and you’re like, “Oh, what I’m I going to serve? What’s cheapest or what’s the best?” It’s so confusing. And so he’s been able to provide a few options for everything, and make it easier.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Not that many. I totally missed the days of PBS, those cooking shows. If PBS is on rerun, I’d watch all those. I like America’s Test Kitchen. Sometimes I’ll just go with some old school Ina Garten. She’s pretty awesome, but I rarely watch cooking shows. I rarely have time to turn on the TV.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

A Thought For Food, Brian Samuels. That’s a great blog. I absolutely love it. Brian and I have been on a few media trips before. And the way he cooks is very fresh, and very creative. And some of his recipes really inspire me on, “Oh, that’s a great combination. I never even thought about that.” So definitely that one. I also…I don’t know if it’s really like a food blog but Serious Eats. I like that one a lot. There is a cocktail blog I’m really into right now, it’s more of a website called Punch. I enjoy reading and look forward to their post. It’s really informative. Those are the three right now that I read a lot.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I’m not on Facebook too much. Snapchat either. But I do love Instagram. So a lot of food stylists I follow on Instagram, I like Jamie Oliver’s account. I know that’s just really basic, but I worked for him for a little bit and their whole department is really fun to follow.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

My most favored item is my grandma’s strainer. It’s really cool. It was her grandmother’s. It’s like 1901. It’s this really punched metal thing that looks like it’s been beaten up. But it’s my most treasured thing. If that was not in my kitchen, I don’t think I could function. It’s huge. It’s like the size of a large wok. It’s amazingly that big.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Anchovies. I hated Anchovies as a kid, and I put them in everything now. Every salad dressing is gonna have anchovy in it. Sometimes I just…like pizza dough, like a flat bread. Put a little anchovy on it, and it’s just so good. It’s ridiculous, but like…and fish sauce. I didn’t like fish sauce and miso. Things like umami flavors that you can never even tell that they’re in a dish, but lend this nice blanket to kind of push up your flavor. So miso is definitely something that I did not like for a long time, but I’d put it in my chicken stock and it’s really nice. It brings a great flavor, and anchovies in my salad dressings.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

There is one I’ve enjoyed and I look through it a lot, because it’s a seasonal cookbook. I think pretty much any seasonal cookbook really makes my life easier, because I know I can just switch to that season because we do eat very seasonally here. But there’s one called The Farm.

The Farm, that makes my life a lot easier. It’s very simple recipes, and it’s such a great story. I love cookbooks that have good stories. April Bloomfield cookbooks are wonderful. And The Flavor Bible is my bible. It does not leave my desk. It is with me wherever I go. For those who don’t know, it is this compilation of flavor pairings, basically anything. Any food, any flavor, any season. Reads like a dictionary. You just pick it up, go to the food you want and see what will pair. I think I use it on a daily basis.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Everything, there is always music. Sometimes like I’ll have interns come in and they’re, you know…they put dance music on. I’m like, “Okay, it’s a dance day. Let’s do it.” But right now I’m listening to Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, a lot of him right now. That just makes me want to cook. It’s like outrageous, kind of soul and got a beat. It depends on what I’m cooking, too. If it’s in the winter and it’s like a slow risotto, I get some Nina Simone or some Miles Davis.

On Keeping Posted with Meredith:

Instagram for sure, it’s just @meredithbondsteele.

134: Joumana Accad: Sharing a Taste of Beirut

August 3, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Taste of Beirut

Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, Joumana moved to the U.S. in 1979 and is a former school teacher, pastry chef, caterer and translator. She started her blog, Taste of Beirut, in 2009 to share a window into the Eastern Mediterranean where Lebanese food mixes with Turkish, Syrian, Persian, Iraqi, and Egyptian flavors. Joumana was a finalist in the 2012 SAVEUR Blog Awards, has shared over 1200 recipes on Taste of Beirut, and published a cookbook, Taste of Beirut. Today, she works both in the U.S. and in Lebanon as a food stylist, recipe developer, menu consultant, and a cooking instructor.

I am so excited to have Joumana Accad of Taste of Beirut with me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Joumana’s.)

On the Role Food Played While Growing Up in Beirut, Lebanon:

When you are born and brought up in one place, you don’t begin to realize how special it is until you move out of that environment into a completely different environment. And that’s what happened with me when I moved to the U.S. It suddenly dawned on me what the words fresh and local meant. For example, my grandmother who lived with us and she was in charge of feeding us, she would buy her fruits and her veggies every single day by lowering a straw basket and checking out the street vendors, and then even bargaining with them to do her marketing for the day. And then she would cook every single day, a fresh meal. And that’s something that when you live in a country like the United States or even in Europe, it’s something that you don’t have that luxury of time. I wanted, all of a sudden, being thrown in a new culture, you feel like you want to hang on to your roots and your heritage, but you don’t know quite how to do it. That was the impetus that got me started on the blog, wanting to blog about it.

I’ve always had an interest in cooking, it just was not encouraged when I was growing up. It was not something one would, at that time, encourage people. It was more like, “You need to go to college and learn something serious like law or business.” I had no interest in. But in the U.S., left to my own devices, whatever comes naturally is what you end up doing. To me, my interest in cooking was completely natural, and I did it on my own learning, sometimes calling home and getting tips. And it just gradually developed over the years. But I think the seed was there initially.

On Lebanese Cuisine:

It’s a simple cuisine with ingredients and techniques that recur for example. When you talk about Lebanese cuisine and dairy, you’re talking about yogurt. And I’m not talking about the sweetened yoghurt with the fruit at the bottom. I’m talking about the plain, a little bit sour yoghurt that is used for sauce. If you’re making a stew or a soup, that is used as a side dish. If you’re making a pilaf with rice or with bulgur, that would be the yoghurt. There’s a lot of legumes, chickpeas being one of them, beans, lentils, a heck of a lot of lentil dishes. Simple things like citrus, lemons, you’re always squeezing lemons either in a salad or on a soup or whatever.

It’s not a sophisticated cuisine. And once you’ve learned a few techniques… And now, there are some dishes that require some more sophisticated technique, but by and large, it’s a simple cuisine that anybody can learn and that anybody can make in less than 30 minutes.

On What a Typical Lebanese Meal Looks Like:

Well, for example, you would take, say, any kind of veggie that would be in season, say artichoke. If you have an artichoke, then you would make a stew with some artichoke. The stew would not have a whole lot of meat, it would have a few pieces of shank, maybe with some bone to give more flavor. And then at the end of that stew, to give it flavor, you always add a pesto which is basically you sizzle, in some olive oil, some cilantro and some garlic. You add that at the last minute for flavor.

We have lemon, we have tahini. Tahini is essential in a pantry. Tahini would be like the Lebanese or the Levantine equivalent of butter for the French. Because with Tahini, you make your hummus, you make your dressing for your salads, you make a lot of different veggies dressed with that tahini dressing. You boil them or steam them and you add that tahini dressing. You don’t use butter, you use tahini. And tahini is a paste that’s made out of sesame seeds. That’s about it.

On Her Cookbook:

So many people were telling me, “You ought to have a cookbook,” because I was getting such a good response from the blog and getting to be a guest on radio shows, and on television, and so on. I didn’t have to struggle really. I had a publisher who was interested, HCI, famous for publishing the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and they offered me that book deal, and I worked on it. And I basically wanted to include the core recipes that would exemplify Lebanese cuisine without going just crazy. So I just focused on that. And each recipe had a photo because I’m also the food photographer for the blog and cookbook.

I moved back to Lebanon since 2011 because I wanted to immerse myself in the cooking scene here, cook with local cooks. I thought that it would behoove me to have that experience under my belt, instead of sitting in Dallas writing about Lebanese cuisine by memory. It was a great experience, because I was able to spend half my time in the mountain and learn about country style cuisine, which is completely different from Beirut style cuisine, and cook with Lebanese cooks and learn from them some tips and techniques that I never would have had that exposure had I been still living in Texas.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Oh, gosh! That’s an easy one. I don’t watch any.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I used to subscribe to French food sites, it was called cook.com. It’s a paying site, but they have chefs, French chefs, and I learned a lot from it because I thought French chefs were very creative. And it was fun, interesting and fun. I also read a lot of blogs, and they’re usually in French from North African bloggers, because this is one cuisine I’m curious about and I don’t know much about. This is a very rich cuisine in terms of cultural history, variations, all these different tribes. It’s very interesting to me, so I’m learning. I like to learn more than just read a blog because it’s trendy or something.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I like Instagram. To me it’s the best medium, because it’s quick and easy, and yeah, it’s an instant gratification. I follow a lot of world famous photographers, for example.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I can tell you my treasured, because I would not be in any kitchen if I don’t have it, it’s my garlic mortar. It’s a special wooden mortar specifically for garlic. I refuse to use that garlic press thing. It has to be mashed, and so you have to pound the garlic with some salt or something to make it pasty.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Oh, easy, eggplant. I used to hide the eggplants when I was in school, in elementary school, in the pocket of my apron, so I wouldn’t have to eat it. Of course, I have changed 180 degrees as far as eggplant is concerned in my adult years.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I’m on a constant search for deepening my knowledge of Middle Eastern cuisine. So for example, if I read a cookbook, I want it to not just have a bunch of recipes. That, to me, is not interesting. I want to know the why and the history behind it, and all this. So for example, there’s some cookbooks on Persian Cuisine that I’m really enjoying, because they really go in depth on the history behind the dishes and interesting works like that.

Well, there’s, for example…her name is Margaret but she wrote a book on Persian Cuisine. There’s also Najmieh Batmanglij who also published some beautiful book on Persian cuisine, beautiful photography. Those are cultures that I’m interested in, that I want to learn more about, and the cookbook does the job. It delivers not just recipes, but the whole holistic thing of the culture.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, not classical. Classical makes me want to sleep. Anything from, let’s say, the late ‘70s onwards is good. My son introduced me to Linkin Park. And yeah, I’d go for Linkin Park. I’d go for something like from ‘80s, like Fleetwood Mac, I like this kind of stuff.

On Keeping Posted with Joumana:

Well, I’m pretty active on Instagram these days. So you just go on Taste of Beirut.