Alice Waters | The Dinner Special podcast

133: Danielle: Gardening and Feasting from the Seasons

July 27, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Rooting The Sun

Danielle is always dreaming up ways to feast from the season and celebrate the garden. A Virginian turned Californian turned Midwesterner, her blog, Rooting The Sun, is where Danielle shares her approach to cooking, food, and gardening.

I am so happy to have Danielle of Rooting The Sun on the show today.

(*All photos below are Danielle’s.)

On Discovering Her Passion for Gardening and Growing Food:

I started growing food about four years ago. My mother had always experimented with vegetable gardens. One year, I actually just thought to myself, “Man, I really love eggplants — and I still do — but wouldn’t it be cool to just do it myself?” So I did. I just got my hands dirty. And that year, the deer ate all of it. We did not get any eggplant.

But that was pretty much the beginning. From there, the gardens have gotten bigger and bigger. I’ve been in and out of some commercial gardening aspects here and there. But mostly we do personal cultivation on a large scale. I just call it the yard farm.

Gardening has really helped me define food in a light I feel really treasured to be able to see it in. We’ve been able to use it as a definition of the seasons, where food at its peak always tastes the freshest. So it’s great to incorporate what we have into what we eat. We’re not doing it for survival, but it’s been a great and delicious learning experience.

On Crops That are Easier for Beginners:

I would definitely say that if you like to eat salad, then go ahead and grow it. Leaf lettuce is super easy to grow, and you can benefit from that all season long. Also, I think zucchini comes to mind. Once you get a zucchini plant started, it doesn’t stop. It’s a plant that your neighbors will benefit from, too. Also, radishes, tomatoes, and herbs, they’re all good choices as well.

On Crops Beginners May Want to Avoid:

If you’re just beginning, I would probably stay away from both artichokes and asparagus. Artichokes are not impossible. We’ve actually done them a few different seasons in a couple of different places, but they have a very specific growing need that can be hard to fulfill depending on where you are. And then asparagus as well, if you’ve been nomadic like I have, then it can take up to three years to yield a crop. So you have to stay put to get asparagus. It’s a waiting game, but once they get started, you’ll be able to benefit from it for years.

On Gardening for City Dwellers:

This is really good, because currently, our setup is an urban area. And it always feels really amazing to exchange conversation with our neighbors, just to actually reiterate that you really don’t need a lot of space to be able to grow your own food. Even in a large city, you could potentially do a garden completely in containers, and get really good results. And almost anything can be cultivated in a pot. But standouts are probably tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, peas. And you can even do root crops like carrots. I’ve done beets before. It was kind of crazy, but it worked.

On Some Resources for Gardening and Growing Your Own Food:

As far as books go, there is definitely a wealth of very informed literature, like bible-esque books on gardening and vegetable gardening. I thrifted a book entitled, Crockett’s Victory Garden recently. It’s from the 1970s. I think he was actually a PBS show. But he goes month by month in his book as far as what vegetables to do each month of the year. I really like books that are laid out like that. As far as online, I really like Gayla’s blog You Grow Girl. She has an amazing source of knowledge on her website. And I also like Andrea’s blog Dishing Up the Dirt. She is a huge inspiration.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t really watch many cooking shows, but I’ve been watching a lot of Jacques Pepin on PBS.

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

For food blogs, I really love Orangette, I love The Yellow House, I love Lottie + Doof, 101 Cookbooks, Kale & Caramel, Chocolate + Marrow, Will Frolic for Food. Of those, they’re all very awesome for reading as well. It’s really hard to pick because I love everyone so much, but I really adore the recipes on With Food + Love and Heartbeet Kitchen as well.

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

On Instagram, I love following Brooklyn Supper. Her food is really great. I love Dolly and Oatmeal. I also love Sasha from Tending the Table, she has the prettiest photography.

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

I’ll probably go with treasured and that would be a spice rack that I gained from my grandmother. I love it because it makes me think of her cooking but also because I love spices. I think they’re everything.

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

Onions, which is actually, I think, a story of revenge because I use them every day and constantly. And I think that I might actually be more allergic to them than most people. I’m timed out for, like, at least 20 minutes after I’ve cut onions.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

As far as a few cookbooks, I love Local Flavors by Deborah Madison. I think it has really awesome seasonal recipes and she uses vegetables in a really unique way. I also love The Art of Simple Food I and II, by Alice Waters.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I don’t think I have a particular song or album in mind, but recently, I have a really big soft spot for Steely Dan. And pretty much every other kind of music and song in the universe. I really love music.

On Keeping Posted with Danielle:

I think that the best way would probably be Instagram. I use that social media platform the most out of all of them.

049: Julia Gartland: Being Self-Taught and Going Gluten-Free

June 15, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Sassy Kitchen

Julia is a self-taught cook and baker, photographer, food stylist and recipe developer. On her blog, Sassy Kitchen, she shares gluten-free seasonal recipes and is always on the lookout for the best gluten-free version of everything. Sassy Kitchen was a finalist in the 2014 Saveur Blog Awards for Best Special Diets Blog and is a finalist again in 2015 for Best Photography.

I am so happy to have Julia Gartland of Sassy Kitchen here on the show today.

(*All images below are Julia’s.)

On Her Interest in Cooking and Food:

I liked to always cook and bake as a kid, I think it wasn’t anything too crazy but I loved having independence, being able to do that. I got more seriously into food later when I had health and digestive problems and I had to find a way to feed myself.

I found out I was gluten intolerant and decided to go vegan at the same time, so my options were very limited and I felt kind of inspired by those restrictions. It gave me the opportunity to try so many new foods and stuff.

I was always into food. I liked eating really healthy. I was raised in California. I loved hippy food and Mexican and I was always really into it, but it took a turn when it became more about health.

I don’t know if I had any real cooking mentors in my early days. I definitely think I was inspired by the issues that I had with western medicine. I remember the first time I went to a western doctor with all of my issues and I had all these PDF printouts of everything I’d been eating. He didn’t even want to look at it and just said, “Here’s some medication. You have IBS,” and sent me on my way.

I just felt like there’s something bigger going on than this. I totally believe that food is an opportunity to heal yourself and that was what got me into it in a really real way.

On Learning to Cook:

I was definitely forced to learn to cook it a new way because of my dietary issues. But through that, I really fell in love with food and I wanted to be completely absorbed in it. That’s a really good way to learn anything.

I find such inspiration from cookbooks and food blogs. Like finding someone who’s really committed to a certain way of cooking, whether it’s a cultural or otherwise, someone like Ottolenghi who has a very specific sense of food that’s so seductive and wonderful but it’s also really easy when you’re really into it.

Obviously, most of us are trying to feed ourselves. I feel like a lot of home cooks are super worried. How do you cook it? What do you do with it? They forget the aspect of play, it should be fun. It’s also not that hard.

I think generally not taking yourself so seriously. It’s okay if you make something that’s a disaster although it probably won’t be. Don’t be afraid, try new things, read cookbooks, follow recipes, pay attention and cook as much as you can.

I’m a fan of things like give yourself parameters on certain nights. Have a taco Tuesday, so you’re like, “I know I’m making tacos tonight” and you can just decide what kind of taco and then that can be the fun aspect.

On Kitchen Experiments Not Going as Planned:

I have a really good infamous one.

The first time I decided I was going to cook a whole fish was for a pescetarian Thanksgiving that I was hosting. Martha and Ina are scowling at me right now because it’s the cardinal rule of hosting to never test a new recipe. But I decided to do it and I took the fish out. It’s perfectly cooked but I had no idea how to de-bone it. I was like, “I can’t serve this to people,” and I literally just left it on the stove top and I was like, “Sorry, guys. We’re actually not having fish tonight.” And I just went on.

I was just like, “Well, I guess it’s just vegetarian, so sorry about that.”

I mean, with gluten-free baking, there’s so many. It’s just like too many to know but it always happens. It happens to everyone.

On Some Go-To Resources for Learning to Cook and Bake:

When I first started cooking and baking, I was vegan and gluten-free so my sources were super specific. But in general, I think I would recommend sources like Bon Appetite, Epicurious, The Kitchn, and Food52. They seem to have really good articles that demystify cooking and they go over actual techniques in a way that teaches you the fundamentals.

A few of them have a lot of articles about cooking without a recipe and stuff like that. It teaches you how to cook on the fly. I just think those are really helpful resources for sure.

On Starting Her Blog:

When I first went gluten-free, the best and most helpful sources were definitely food blogs. That was where I was finding all of my recipes and information. They were such a godsend at the time and through the process of changing my diet and trying new things, I craved to have the same platform to share my experiences.

I went to school for photography. I went to Parsons in New York. I was not shooting food or even still life at the time. Food or food photography was not on my radar at all, in any professional way. But through doing the blog and loving it as much as I did, I found people were really responding to that work.

The first time I ever showed food work in a class at school, the guest teacher offered me a job shooting for a magazine. So I thought maybe I should pursue this a little further.

I started in photography but I will say food photography is completely different. I was not immediately good at it. I had to work. It’s a total learning curve and it’s a lot harder than it looks I will say.

On Gluten-Free Foods:

Well, I’m sure everyone’s heard of it by now. It’s a big buzz word since it’s on every product now, even hummus, which has always been gluten-free says gluten-free on it. But it’s technically the elastic protein in wheat, it’s what makes pizza and croissant so lovely and it can also be in all of these other products like soy sauce and dressings, which it doesn’t necessarily need to be there.

That’s when I think it gets tricky for people and they don’t understand what it is. But there’s also a huge variety of gluten-free grains and products to choose from. I just saw the other day a quinoa kale puff popcorn product.

Now is the time to be gluten-free because there’s just everything. Rice is gluten-free, all rice products are gluten-free. A lot of people don’t know that. I get asked that all the time.

When in doubt, a piece of meat is always going to be gluten-free unless it’s battered. It’s like there’s a certain aspect of logic to it, but it is tricky for sure.

I do feel a lot better than I used to. Eating this way definitely suits me. I have some moments where I’m reminded of all the pain and discomfort I used to feel all the time. So I’m definitely happiest when my diet’s pretty strict and pure. That being said, it’s still not perfect. I don’t feel absolutely amazing and energized every single day, but it’s constantly evolving with what I feel best eating.

On Gluten-Free Ingredients:

There are so many, especially with the baking. I’m obsessed with gluten-free baking flours.

My favorites of all time are definitely sorghum flour, which I discovered super early on. Brown rice flour, almond flour, buckwheat flour, garbanzo bean flour, anything like that. There are so many.

Even cornmeal, things that you wouldn’t think of as being gluten-free are so amazing to cook and bake with. And then things maybe you wouldn’t have heard of are things that you use kind of to mimic gluten like xanthan gum and potato starch and tapioca flour.

But they’re so fun. Even if you’re not gluten-free, baking with buckwheat or something like that, it’s just a new thing you wouldn’t maybe go towards.

Buckwheat is this dark grayish tint and it’s very beautiful when you bake with it. And I love almond flour. I buy five pound bags of it off of Amazon. I use it very quickly. I love anything with almond flour. It’s super good and they all have a very lovely different flavor.

On Some Good Gluten-Free Cooking and Baking Resources:

I love La Tartine Gourmande and Cannelle et Vanille are both really amazing sources of inspiration. I highly recommend both of their books, especially Small Plates and Sweet Treats by Aran Goyoaga. She’s a trained pastry chef and she has this amazing Basque influence on all her recipes. They’re super great.

Also, Bojon Gourmet. She’s another ex-pastry chef and she has a ton of super great gluten-free recipes as well.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Well I don’t really watch any shows besides Ina obviously, but I need to stop name dropping.

But I’m the biggest podcast person, I love America’s Test Kitchen. I’ve such a soft spot for them and I feel like no one gets how great they are. I love Splendid Table and Heritage Radio Network and Good Food on KCRW, and obviously, The Dinner Special as well.

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

I am in love with Amy Chaplin. I recently got her book and went through like a food renaissance ’cause her recipes are just so lovely. I so recommend her and her blog is amazing.

And you know, I keep coming back to Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks. She’s still so relevant and amazing and I’m always inspired by her essence. She’s living my dream life.

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

Well, I’m huge into Instagram. That’s my favorite thing. So on and Instagram, I recently followed the chicks from Broad City who are super fun.

I’ve mostly been loving non-food ones lately, like Sight Unseen and Academy of New York. And Niche is a great one where they just post quotes from creative artists and all that stuff. And Official Sean Penn, which is just funny and great.

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

I love everything in my kitchen.

I’m constantly trying to get rid of stuff because I live in New York and that’s just the life, but I love everything in my kitchen. My favorite things are probably . . . my boyfriend has gotten me ceramics as gifts over the years. That was one of the first things he ever bought me and they’re definitely my treasured pieces.

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

Capers and olives I hated until I was probably 20 years old, but now, I almost always have them in my fridge. I love them.

I think I was not into that brininess and then I went to Spain with my family and they served green olives on every table like it’s bread. I kept trying, thinking if I keep trying it, maybe something will click and it did. So keep trying!

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I love anything by Nigel Slater, Alice Waters, The Canal House Cookbooks. And as I mentioned before, Amy Chaplin and I love Mimi Thorisson’s new book.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

It’s gotta be something on the up-side.

There’s always music in my house. My boyfriend’s a musician. He’s constantly manning the record player. But for cooking, I think Elvis Costello always puts me in a good mood.

On Keeping Posted on Julia:

On my blog, Sassy-Kitchen.com and Sassy Kitchen on all handles I guess. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, I’m on it all.

039: Amelia Morris: Failure, Success and Fearlessness in the Kitchen

May 22, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Bon Appétempt

Amelia’s blog has evolved as her cooking and life has changed over the years, and her readers have been along for every step of the journey. An essay Amelia wrote about her kitchen visit with her grandma won Best Culinary Essay in Saveur’s 2011 Food Blog Awards. In 2012, Bon Appétempt won in Saveur’s Best Humor Blog category. Amelia recently released her book, Bon Appet é mpt: A Coming-of-Age Story (with Recipes!).

I am so excited to have Amelia Morris of Bon Appétempt here on the show today.

On How Her Blog Started:

It really started as an accident. I was house sitting for my friend, and they have a beautiful house, and I got the idea that I could have people over for Christmas day brunch, and I decided to make this cake from the cover of a Bon Appétit. I’d never made a cake from scratch before, and it was this towering chocolate peppermint cake. But I thought I could do it. I gave myself multiple days to do everything ahead of time, and I basically did do it except as I was putting the icing on the cake. The whole thing started to slide, and it fell over.

My husband and I had been taking pictures of the whole thing because we were so impressed that I was making this gigantic cake. So then we had pictures of the rise and fall.

Afterwards, I just kept looking at the pictures and I just kept thinking there needs to be a food blog where it’s like the home-cooked version versus the magazine version. I just thought I was the perfect candidate because I didn’t know how to cook and I thought, every time, each post would be a disaster. I know it will be really funny.

This was six years ago. At first, I really wanted to make fun of the perfection and food magazines and just how fake it was. My intention was to mix it up but it could be funny.

On Her Sense of Fearlessness in the Kitchen:

I’m afraid of a lot of things and there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t tried. I don’t know if I’m afraid, but I don’t want to maybe make such a giant mess.

When I first started the blog, I wasn’t afraid of making mistakes because, A: I thought it would be funnier if I made mistakes, and B: my self esteem wasn’t tied to the kitchen. If I messed up, it didn’t injure me in any way as opposed to my other endeavors where it hurt when I failed.

I did redo the original cake that started it all and made it successfully. It was beautiful, so that felt pretty good.

I tried to make a Martha Stewart bread wreath, and it’s basically bread in the shape of a wreath. And it was an epic failure. We have a video of it on the blog, and I broke a pan in the oven. Because when you bake it, you’re supposed to have a pan of water underneath.

That pan of water broke, and so the water started gushing out into the oven. And basically, the wreath still turned out; it was an edible piece of bread and everything.

I’m always surprised with Martha Stewart’s recipes like that where you just have pay such attention to detail to get it even close to what Martha Stewart has in her magazine.

On How Becoming a Parent Changed the Way She Cooks:

Oh my gosh. Well, I feel like this changes a lot; because at the beginning, you’re just getting used to everything. And I feel like even though they sleep a lot at the beginning, I just wasn’t in my normal routine.

I used to see recipes, be inspired, go to the store, come back, cook it that night. And I feel like at the beginning, that was not really an option. And now, he’s so mobile that he won’t even… If I’m in the kitchen, he’s running to the back of the house and I have to go see what he’s up to and all that stuff. So it’s changed a lot. I really do much more simple things and I do a lot of stuff I know by heart.

I try and do a lot of stuff while he’s eating dinner. He usually eats around five, so I’ll try and do chopping and any sort of prep work that I can do while he’s contained and he sits. And then he goes to bed around seven and then I finish cooking once he’s in bed.

There are so many good things you can make with not a lot of ingredients. I feel like that’s my go-to thing. I mean, we eat a lot of pasta around here and I do a lot of shortcuts, I guess, like I find myself recently buying mushrooms that are already sliced and cleaned, which I never used to do because I always think the person doing it isn’t doing a good job of cleaning it. And now, I’m just like, “Oh, well.”

My mum would always buy a rotisserie chicken and have it in the fridge, and I would never do that. I would just do it myself. And just this week, I bought a rotisserie chicken and I made a chicken pot pie, a version of chicken pot pie, and then I just pulled the meat off of it.

The answer to the question is I’m still figuring out how to have shortcuts; what shortcuts to come up with.

On Her Videos:

Basically, my husband went to film school and the book goes over our mutual struggles to find creative satisfaction.

He wanted to be a filmmaker, still wants to be a filmmaker, writer, and we both had day jobs not doing anything remotely creative. I think I just got really inspired to do a cooking show by watching cooking shows and just watching how staged they are.

I just don’t really understand why everything needs to be so perfect in cooking shows. They’re all in full makeup and no aprons. So I was really inspired to do a cooking show that was more real and where it would show me cleaning up and stuff like that, and Matt was excited to try shooting again which he hasn’t done since college.

On Her Book, Bon Appétempt: A Coming-of-Age Story (with Recipes!)

The book is basically my life’s story, but it’s pretty much about growing up and trying and failing. And the way it came about matters because I went to grad school for an MFA in Writing. And my thesis was a novel and I continued working on it after school.

So I sent a novel to a bunch of agents, and one of them got back to me and was like, “Yeah, I’ll read your novel,” but she’s on my bio about my food blog and she was like, “I’m really interested in Bon Appétempt.” A long story short, she really wanted me to work on a food memoir. I guess I never really thought of doing a food memoir up until that point.

So I was excited about it. I was totally excited about it even though she wasn’t interested in my novel. I was kind of excited at the prospect of my writing career finally getting off the ground a little bit. And so I just jumped on the opportunity and I was like, “Totally, I’ll do a food memoir,” and I started putting together a book proposal.

I love my blog for many reasons and it’s great. But I think that there is this pressure to post. And for a while, I had a schedule. I would post every Sunday night. And I just think that the quality of writing would often suffer because I was just like, “I’ve got to get the post up. I’ve got to get the post up.” And with the book, I could really take my time and I didn’t feel a sense of urgency. I felt like I could talk about things that I didn’t feel were appropriate for the blog. I could start at the very beginning of my life as opposed to what’s going on right now.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Top Chef. That’s it. Final answer.

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

Well, you probably already know about Lottie and Doof. It’s one of my faves. I really like The Yellow House.

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

On Twitter, I like Andy Borowitz, and of course, USA Gymnastics.

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

Well, I have this magenta-colored skull. It’s small. It’s a scary-looking skull. His eyes are red glitter.

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

There was a point in my life where I said I didn’t like pasta, and now it’s something we eat three times a week.

I was a young woman constantly on a diet and I convinced myself that I didn’t like pasta.

I just wouldn’t let myself eat it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Anything by Nigel Slater, but probably The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love any sort of Van Morrison; that sort of realm of music.

On Keeping Posted on Amelia:

Probably Instagram, or I have a book, Bon Appétempt, and a Facebook page.