A Thought for Food | The Dinner Special podcast

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.

131: Dan Whalen: Mashing Up Flavours and Cuisines

July 13, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Food In My Beard

Dan’s blog, The Food In My Beard, is his recipe playground where he cooks anything and everything, and enjoys mashing up flavors and cuisines that aren’t normally paired together. Since starting his website in 2008, he has published over 1,000 recipes. Dan’s first cookbook Stuffed came out in 2014, and he’s got another one coming on the way. Dan has been featured in publications such as Saveur, Bon Appetit, Serious Eats, and Fine Cooking just to name a few.

I am so excited to have Dan Whalen of The Food In My Beard with me on the show today.

(*All photos below are Dan’s.)

On Doing Improv and How it Helps His Work:

When my first book came out, I did a few appearances for it and I felt like, they went okay, but it’s not like I’m getting new fans from it. And I asked my literary agent what can I do to be better at this kind of stuff? Because you can’t just practice it. You can’t just go on TV and keep practicing it. And even if you did, it’s not enough and it would be too slow to get better. So I started taking improv, she suggested I take improv classes. I’ve been doing improv now for two years. And I do it pretty much at least once a week, if not more. I feel like even two years later, every time I get on a stage for improv, it helps me when I go on camera.

Because I’m an expert at cooking, and I know exactly what I’m talking about. But when I go on stage for improv, there’s no words, there’s no planning. I’m not an expert, and I just have to go up there and wing it. So if nothing else, it has helped me just be so confident when I’m going in front people for cooking because I have a plan. I know what I’m going to say, and even if something goes wrong, I know what I’m doing, and I can I can wing it and I can fix it.

On His Recipe Mash Ups:

The more recent one that was pretty awesome was I’d put tacos, instead of a taco shell, I used a grilled cheese as a taco. And that was a big recipe for me. That did really well. It was on BuzzFeed, it was on Mashable, went around on all the websites, and that was a fun one to do. But also one of my favorites is I did a stroganoff burger, so I don’t know if you’ve seen the ramen burger that was pretty popular with the noodles as the bun. I did that kind of thing but used egg noodles as the bun for the burger and then put sour cream, mushrooms, onion sauce on top of it.

I’ve had a few rough failures in my day, I guess. One of the fast food pizza companies had commercials for a bread bowl filled with pasta, and this was…I lived in Bermuda, actually, when I started my blog. I spent a couple of years there after college working in computer science there. And I was looking at this, and I’m like, “This looks like something I would make on my website, and I couldn’t get it because I was in Bermuda. There were no fast food chains there. So I tried to make their bread bowl of pasta. But instead of par-cooking the bowl, which I’m assuming is what they do, I tried to make the bowl just of raw dough, and fill it with pasta, almost like making a pizza. I slid off the pizza peel into the oven and the bowl basically fell down, and all the pasta just spilled into the oven everywhere.

On His Sources of Inspiration:

I have a handful of things I do. I love when I get inspired by pop culture. I love when I come up with a recipe or copy a recipe from a TV show. An example of that was I used Orange Is the New Black last season, the main character’s brother had mentioned he was doing liquid nitrogen ice cream, which I immediately got a million texts, because I do liquid nitrogen ice cream all the time, and he one-off just mentioned that he made a BLT ice cream. So I was like, “Oh, great. I’ll make a BLT ice cream. Why not?” It sounds like something I would make anyways.

But I like to do music recipes. One of my favorite musicians is Courtney Barnett, and she has a song where she talks about being a gardener, and she grows all these vegetables, so I made a salad out of the vegetables that she grows.

Other than that, blogs, being immersed in the food culture anyway, so I see food in front of me at all times every day. I live in Boston and we have a great restaurant scene here. I go to restaurants as much as I can, try the new stuff that chefs are doing.

And then one that probably isn’t as popular among other bloggers is I can sit on my couch while I’m doing work with Diners, Drive-in and Dives on TV. And I half pay attention to my work, and half pay attention to that, and I have my notebook next to me, and I’m just like, “Yes, I’m going to make this, I’m going to make this, I’m going to make all this stuff,” because the places he goes to are very…especially the newer seasons, these are cool, modern places that are doing fun, unique, a lot of fusion mash-up stuff that is my style.

On His Next Cookbook:

It’s all Tater Tot recipes. I have really cool stuff in there, like how to make your own tots, how to best utilize store bought tots, what the best types and flavors and brands are, but then more importantly, a ton of just unique ways to use them that aren’t just cook them and eat them. I have a Bibimbap, but with tots. I have shepherd’s pie but with tots. All sorts of different tot, like with nacho toppings on tots, poutine, everything. Everything you could imagine. There’s a whole dessert chapter. I have sweet potato tot pie, I have tot éclairs, everything, everything you’d want.

And I’ve been, actually, like as I make each recipe, I’ve been putting them on Snapchat. I love using Snapchat because it’s fun and in the moment. If I’m here cooking by myself, I’m bored. So it’s almost like I can share the moment with everyone immediately. And I’ve been getting such good feedback on all the different tot recipes. So I’m so excited for it to come out.

Snapchat along with all other social media stuff is T-F-I-M-B, which is the initials of The Food In My Beard. And I think it’s nice and easy, TFIMB.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

So I already said the one with Action Bronson that I can’t even really say, F, That’s Delicious. That’s one of my favorites. I like the weird stuff, so I don’t know if you’ve seen an old show on IFC called Food Party. It’s a combination of Pee Wee’s Playhouse and a cooking show and it’s just surreal and weird. And it’s not really a cooking show, but I just love it.

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

I follow a lot of my friends, so right now I like Macheesmo. I’ve always been friends with Nick and his blog is great. And I’ve been following on Instagram The Vulgar Chef, and he lives nearby, and we hang out sometimes. But his stuff, the writing is a little not for everyone, I guess. And I recently met, on a trip, The Cookie Rookie, Becky, and she’s great. She’s so fun and her pictures are stunning. Also in Boston, I like my friend Brian Samuels’ A Thought For Food. We’re potentially working together on a project coming out soon which I’m really excited about.

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

I love Snapchat. I am loving Eden Eats, her account is wonderful. And she has a show, I think, on cooking channel, but her Snapchat is just great. You just follow her around and she’s just having a great time everywhere she goes, and it’s a nice Snapchat account. I also like, again, my friends from Boston, I like Boston Pollen on Instagram. She’s a florist and her pictures are just stunning. Every picture is beautiful and amazing.

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

So being a food blogger, of course, the pictures are so important, right? I moved into this apartment, and in the backyard, there’s a table and it looks like the table that every blogger has in their dreams. It’s funny to say that the table looks like a kitchen tool, but it has made photography in this apartment so easy, especially now that it’s summer and I’m doing a lot of grilling. It just makes every photo pop.

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

I never was a big fan of eggplant. And I wouldn’t say I love it now, but I like it. I like it a lot, especially when it’s done right.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

My favorite cookbook ever is Pok Pok. I feel like that book has taught me so much, and it’s probably the book that I cook most out of by a mile.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I’m really into music so that’s a hard question for me. But right now, I can’t stop listening to Thao & the Get Down Stay Down. They just had an album that came out a few months ago and I saw them in concert. I’m just listening to all their albums in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Dan:

Definitely Snapchat and Instagram, so TFIMB which is the initials for The Food In My Beard.

081: Liren Baker: Passing Along Meaningful Foods

September 30, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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Kitchen Confidante

Liren is a mother of two and has lived in major food cities including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and now, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her blog, Kitchen Confidante, gives her the opportunity to express her creativity through photography, and of course, her recipes and the stories behind them.

I am so happy to have Liren Baker of Kitchen Confidante here on the show today.

(*All images below are Liren’s.)

On Her Blog:

I think that leading up to 2010, there were so many cooking experiences, from that first scrambled egg that you make when you’re like six or seven, leading up to it, and you just learn so much along the way, and there’s so many experiences that shape you as a person and as a cook. I was just constantly collecting and archiving recipes. I have this big binder of stuff. And I just felt like, you know what, when I started the blog, I was revisiting some of those, and also just taking all the life lessons that I had learned along the way, and started implementing it more into my cooking.

From concept through fruition, it could be anything. Sometimes, the inspiration comes from my family, and they say, “Hey, I’m really craving this thing that I tried.” Like for example, there was a salad my husband tried when he was traveling, and he was like “It was so good. Do you think you can make that?” And so I’ll think about it and that would start the ball rolling. You know, you start shopping for ingredients, see if it’s in season, if it will work with the time of year. And, like many bloggers, you just start testing the recipes and that can take a while. Then you photograph them, writing the content, and then, finally posting it on the blog. It doesn’t just stop there because you push it out there and share it with everybody, and hopefully, share it again later, maybe a year or two down the line.

On What’s Most Natural and Most Challenging about Blogging:

The most challenging thing about blogging, honestly, is not stopping. I think it’s hard. When you’re so passionate about something, you just really nerd out and that’s all you do. And then as it evolves and if it becomes, you know, a business, you don’t really take a break. And I think so for me, the challenge has always been, “Okay, I need to take a break.” Like I’m going to cook for the sake of cooking, and not necessarily feel like I have to photograph this, and spend the weekend enjoying my time with my family and enjoying the food, instead of worrying, “Oh my gosh, did I get the shot? Oh I need to set it up, nobody touch the food.” For me, that’s the biggest challenge.

The part that comes most naturally, I think it has to be the writing. I just write from the heart. I don’t necessarily stress over what I’m going to say. If it’s not flowing, I don’t stress about it. I table it. And I try not to put any pressure on myself there. But for me, I feel like that’s the smoothest part.

On Posts that Don’t Get As Much Love as Expected:

I think you can never predict what is going to be interesting or some people would call it viral. There are some dishes that I’ll put out there that I’m like “Okay, no one’s gonna care at all. Even if I like it, no one’s really going to care about it. I’m going to put it up there anyway,” and it just goes nuts. And that always surprises me. There are some things like there are certain cakes, for example, that I grew up eating, and I might expect that it’s going to do okay, and it just kinda flops.

I think that happens a lot in the beginning. You put all these amazing recipes out there that you’ve been dying to share and you don’t necessarily have the readership yet. So, I think lately, I’ve been kinda revisiting those old ones and putting them out again, redoing them and resharing them, and I’ve been surprised by a few of those too. So you just never know.

On Learning How to Cook:

I should start by saying my mom was not a good cook. She hated cooking. Baking was her thing, and she loved to bake. Every Saturday, we would bake together, or I would think I was baking with her, but she would bake and I would watch. And cooking, she hated. So, I really actually didn’t learn how to cook until later on. I was around 18 when she died. She had cancer, and so it was really just you learn out of necessity. I have a younger brother and sister and they’re eight and nine years apart. I’m older. And so, I felt this responsibility for my family to feed them, and as well as my dad. He wasn’t really that much of a cook either.

I spent that summer that she passed away trailing my aunts, because she spent that summer with us. And she would just cook for us because she knew that she needed to nourish us. So I just would pepper her with questions, and I knew I needed to write this down. So, it was my aunt who taught me how to cook. And a lot of the recipes that are of Filipino roots come from her. Because in my mind, she was the best cook on my mom’s side.

I was able to relive a lot of those family recipes slowly but surely. And so it was partially because I needed to feed my family, and also, because I wanted to finally learn. I think I realized around that time that, “Wow, you know what? I love this. Cooking is not so bad. Mom, what are you talking about?” And I was actually pretty good at it. So, that’s kind of how it all started for me.

On How Being a Parent Affects How She Cooks:

I will admit that I probably ate more junk food before I had kids. And when I say junk food, I mean like I would indulge in fast food once in a while, and now I really feel like I haven’t been to… Well, okay, Shake Shack doesn’t count or In-N-Out. But you know, I can’t tell you the last time I had fast food. So that also reflects in how I cook and I try to make it more wholesome. That said, what I feel is most important to them is to just pass along a lot of the foods that I grew up eating, so that hasn’t changed. I just think that maybe my approach to it has changed. Like maybe I’ll remove the skin off the chicken. I try to make it more healthy.

Growing up, my aunts were great cooks, and my cousins, all were pretty handy in the kitchen, and I didn’t feel like I was. But I will say that my kids like to experiment. So my son, we made pasta the other day, and he was just… I think it was more of the machine. He wanted to pass it through the roller. And so, once in awhile they do, but I’m kind of hoping that they’ll cook a little more with me.

On How Busy Parents Can Make Cooking Fun Again:

I think to make it fun, you actually have to plan. That sounds terrible, because I think spontaneity is more fun. But when you have your day-to-day and you know that you have a limited amount of time to cook and get everybody fed and everybody’s getting hungry, you really do have to plan.

I know it’s very easy to fall into a rut. I fall into ruts all the time going food shopping. So when that happens, I tell my husband “Can you please go food shopping?” Because he will go and buy all the interesting things, and it’s almost like having a Chopped basket. So, something like that, just as simple as like, “Okay, pick a different protein that you normally wouldn’t try.” And then make it simple by doing easy marinades and doing a lot of the prep work in advance if you can. Don’t overwhelm yourself making long drawn-out recipes. Keep it simple.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

We don’t watch a lot of TV, but we do you watch Top Chef and does Tony Bourdain’s No Reservations count?

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

I was going to say A Thought for Food with Brian Samuels, but I think he’s been on your show so everyone knows about him now, right?

I feel like so many of the blogs out there are popular. So, Two Red Bowls is another one. I like her. I feel like she’s under the radar and Hummingbird High.

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

On YouTube, I used to follow HappySlip. Have you ever heard of her? She’s a Filipino American comedienne. She used to do little skits. She’s kind of tapered off because she started a family. But once in a while she’ll still post things on there. I think she’s hilarious because she captures all of those stereotypes so well.

On Instagram, I follow way too many people. My feed is just crazy and a lot of food bloggers. But I think the ones that surprised me the most are people who are really into food don’t necessarily have food blogs that I know of, because it’s not on their profiles, but beurrenoisette is one of them. There’s abisfarmhousekitchen. She’s up in Sonoma. She’s got a winery with her husband and I love seeing what she’s doing in the kitchen. She’s very adventurous. It’s exciting to see what other people are cooking who don’t necessarily have blogs. I find the engagement on Instagram is really fascinating there.

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

Other than that ratty old binder with my mom’s handwriting, I went through a phase where I was collecting vintage cake stands, like vintage pressed glass from the 1800s. So, I have a few of those, and it’s really weird. I just find them super precious and we’ve moved many times and I still can’t get rid of them. I don’t use them all the time except for special occasions like Thanksgiving. But yeah, it would be my binder and then those cake stands.

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

Oh, that’s easy. Cilantro. Growing up, I was like, “This is gross.” I would pick them out of the noodles and throw them away. Now, I’m just like eating it raw. I have to have cilantro in the house all the time, and I put it on almost too many things actually.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

There are some cookbooks that are surprises to me. I reviewed a cookbook last year called The Greenmarket Cookbook. That was a really nice surprise. There were so many stories behind all the farmers who sell their goods at Greenmarket. I loved reading the recipes that all the chefs back east would do with the food that they got at Greenmarket, that was a nice surprise.

I like cookbooks that surprise me. The other one was The Union Square Cafe Cookbook. My daughter bought it. She was doing a camp one summer and she went into the library. They were selling old books, and she’s like, “Oh mommy, I got you a present.” And I’m like “Oh, thanks!” It turned out to be an amazing cookbook. So, those things make me happy, when it’s a book that I just did not expect to wow me.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Jack Johnson, Making banana pancakes. When that’s on, it’s instant happy and I want to make pancakes. It’s great on a Saturday morning.

On Keeping Posted with Liren:

Well obviously, there’s my blog, kitchenconfidante.com. Instagram is probably one of the easiest, but pretty much on any social media, I’m kitchconfidante. I have to shorten it, there’s not enough characters. But Instagram’s probably the best way to find me.

052: Brian Samuels: Cooking and Enjoying Fish

June 22, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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A Thought for Food

Brian is a Boston-based food photographer, and on his blog, he shares a lot of vegetarian options, and considers his diet 98% pescetarian. A Thought for Food was started in 2009 and has been featured in Food and Wine, Food52 and Yahoo Food, just to name a few.

I am so happy to have Brian Samuels of A Thought for Food, here on the show today.

(*All images below are Brian’s.)

On Blogging:

I think to have a successful food blog, you have to be pretty dedicated. It’s very time consuming, so I think maybe not crazy is the right word exactly, but definitely devotion, passion, maybe a little obsessive. Maybe that’s a better term. That’s really why I think a lot of people who end up writing food blogs have that type of personality.

I would say the most challenging would be the writing of it. I don’t find myself to be a natural writer. I don’t easily sit down and the words flow out. There’s a lot of editing involved. And sometimes I’ll write and write and write, and then delete a huge amount of it. Then, sometimes, I’ll just delete the whole thing and start over again. It takes a while.

There are other times, though, where I sit down and it does flow out a little bit more and I feel like I do have something to say and then it’s a little easier to say it. But for me, the most fun and definitely challenging element, but still the most fun and easy in a way, would be photography. It’s something that I’ve always connected to, just being able to capture my own experiences through the lens.

Back in 2009, when I started the blog, it was, I guess, the start of when food blogs became really big. There were definitely the big ones, like, 101 Cookbooks, Smitten Kitchen, and a few other big ones. I read frequently and I was always creating the recipes and commenting on those posts.

I felt like I also had a story to tell about food, and I was throwing a lot of dinner parties with my husband, or my now husband. I wanted to share those recipes and I wasn’t necessarily expecting people to read the blog. I was just sending it out to family members and friends who asked for the recipes. But I just really felt like I had a passion for food, and it was a way for me to get that story out there.

On His Curiosity for Food and Cooking:

I think ever since I was little, I was always passionate about cooking and showed an interest in it. I remember growing up and my mom making dinner every night. She was very much into making home cooked meals. We had take-out once in a while, but for the most part, she really wanted to make things from scratch and educated us about food.

She worked with a lot of cookbooks herself, in terms of making dinners for us, making meals for us. I just always took interest. As soon as I smelled something, I was always by her side asking questions and wanting to know how she was doing things. And eventually, she had me help her out.

On Getting Into Food Photography:

I went to film school at Emerson College in Boston. And there, I focused on documentary film-making, and I really fell in love with being able to tell stories, especially through film, but about the real world, about real people and not necessarily scripted.

I ended up working for a documentary production company in Boston for three years. And that’s actually when I started the blog, was during that time.

I did see it as a way to combine my love for documenting, not necessarily through photography but just documenting my love for food, recipe development, playing around with recipes, and educating people about food, all that. So it wasn’t necessarily about the photography specifically at the time, but definitely about documenting it.

I was shooting originally, if you go back to old posts, not that I necessarily promote that, I was using a Canon PowerShot, just point and shoot. Taking pictures of the final dishes and maybe a few processed shots along the way. But I wasn’t using great equipment; I was still learning about techniques about how to photograph food. My passion for food photography developed because of that experimentation.

On Being (98%) Pescetarian:

A pescetarian is someone who eats vegetarian and fish. Red meat is out, poultry is out. Basically any land animals are out.

When I was 15, just for health reasons, I decided that I really wanted to cut out red meat from my diet. And I was still eating chicken and turkey, but I really wanted to cut out red meat from my diet. From there, I took out chicken as well. But I could never give up fish or dairy, because I’m just in love with those two things. And I think it allows me to be a little bit more adventurous in my eating, in terms of dining out and experiencing things.

For me, that’s such a huge part of my life, is not passing up the opportunity to try something. So the 98% is really where I will usually have a bite of something if we’re dining out somewhere and it’s really special.

My husband eats meat, so he’ll most likely get a meat dish when we’re dining out. I’ll sometimes have a bite of that. And I still think meat is delicious. He loves making smoked brisket and I’ll have a bite when he’s done, just to try it out. Because I usually help him out a little bit too. So I feel like if I’m doing it, I want to know what it tastes like.

For me, it’s really about where you’re sourcing your ingredients. I make sure that what we’re cooking is locally sourced if at all possible. And I’m knowing the farmers that we’re sourcing it from and all of that. We don’t do it often. I can justify it.

On Cooking Fish:

I think salmon is hard to mess up. It’s fatty.

It’s funny because a lot of people stay away from salmon because they don’t like fishy fish. I never get that because I love fish, and I love it whether or not it has a fishy taste to it. I’m okay with that.

I think they’re getting that from the oils and the fats from the fish probably, and especially with salmon. But in terms of fish that’s hard to mess up, I think that salmon is really easy to work with. It also holds up when you add a lot of flavor to it, so you could do soy sauce, you could do a marinate with it and you’ll still have a really nice fish flavor with it.

I think that some other fish are more delicate obviously. White fish, you don’t want to mess around with that too much, so you have to be careful with that. I always think salmon is really easy to work with. I think sword fish as well. It holds up nicely. They’re both very meaty fish too.

I would not say I’m a pro at cooking fish at this point. I think I have learnt that overcooked fish is not merely as delicious as seared fish. And, so with salmon, I’m trying to make sure that the skin is crispy if it still has a skin on it. That it is cooked all the way through but not overdone. I think working with high heat is really key with fish because you just want that point where it just cooks all the way through and you’re not cooking any longer.

Starting off with high heat is really key. It really depends on the fish and what you’re doing with it and how you’re serving it. I also like to play around with other types of sea foods like scallops and shrimps and we’ll rotate that in our diet as well.

On Choosing Fish:

When I go to buy fish in the store I don’t necessarily care if it’s previously frozen or not, I really look at where it’s being sourced from. With anything I want to buy as local as possible. And coming from New England or, the Pacific Northwest, you can usually find local seafood in these areas but I know that people in the middle of the country struggle with that.

I’m really looking for stuff that, I can have a dialogue with the person at the fish counter and say, when did this come in? Where did it come from? Tell me about it? I think when it came in is usually a good sign of freshness, and yes, that’s pretty much my thought process behind it.

I think the frozen element really makes a difference because as soon as it hits the cold it’s obviously going to preserve it longer. It depends on the fish. Yes the previously frozen thing doesn’t bother me as much as the farmed versus wild caught. If it’s frozen and it tastes good then, great. I don’t think it matters either way necessarily. I don’t think it affects the flavor of it too much.

Here in New England I’ve had the luxury of being able to get fish that was caught that day and having it and there’s a deeper flavor in it. You’re tasting the ocean. It hasn’t lost that flavor. I think a fish that has probably been frozen, it sort of loses that depth.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Top Chef.

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

I think most people already know these sites but some of my favorites are Sprouted Kitchen and Happy Yolks is a favorite of mine as well, and Not Without Salt is one of my all times favorites. I think Ashley was on your show actually at one point.

Those are definitely some of my top three.

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

All those people definitely. Is it sad that West Elm makes me really happy when I see those pictures?

I’m a sucker for, we have a new house, I follow them just to see what they are posting about. So that always makes me happy. I would definitely say Ottolenghi’s Instagram feed always, I’m always unbored with that and Local Milk is a favorite as well.

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

This is a tough one. It’s funny, the weird one that popped into my head is an egg slicer. I don’t know why and I don’t think I have a connection to it really but it just popped into my head.

I don’t think it’s one of those things that people have but I actually use it fairly frequently. Whenever I want to do a big salad for one of my big weeknight meals. If I want a hearty salad. I always put hard boiled egg on it and it’s just an egg slicer. So I’m saying the egg slicer.

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

Mushrooms. I think would be the one. I was such an adventurous eater growing up but mushrooms, I was disgusted by and now I’m obsessed with them.

I think for the most part we always had it with chicken, in a chicken dish. Or it was on top of pizza. My sister loved it and I think I just hated it because she loved it so much. But I’m obsessed with it now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

For the most part I look at cookbooks for the pictures to give me inspiration. Recently, the ones would be definitely Plenty. All the Ottolenghi books, I’m always going back to them. Ashley’s book, Not Without Salt’s, Date Night In I’ve been going to too.

I think the same goes for magazines as well. I subscribe to a lot food magazines and usually I go through for the pictures. I love the new Sift magazine by King Arthur Flour. Great pictures and it just gets you thinking, because it’s so baking focused, it gets you thinking outside the box.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks or Norah Jones’s Come Away With Me. When I’m cooking, for the most part, I want that chill music with a glass of wine and it mellows me out.

On Keeping Posted with Brian:

Definitely through Instagram in terms of more day to day. It’s beyond just the food world. It’s also, I put up pictures of my dog, and where I am, and what’s going on in life. On Twitter as well. Those would be the top places. But I’m also on Facebook and all those wonderful sites.