Alton Brown | The Dinner Special podcast

118: Hannah Messinger: How Cooking is an Exercise in Patience

April 13, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Nothing but Delicious

Hannah graduated from Boston University with a photojournalism degree and started her blog Nothing but Delicious out of boredom. She had spent some time away from writing and photography, but through her blog, has learned many lessons like that she indeed wants to be a writer and that cooking is an exercise in patience.

I am so happy to have Hannah Messinger of Nothing but Delicious here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Hannah’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

I had been reading fashion blogs for awhile. My favorite one is called Sea of Shoes, and they had linked to a blog called, La Tartine Gourmande. Which I’m sure I sound like a redneck. I’m from Tennessee. I’m really sorry. But I had this office job where I was just on the computer all day and talking to people on the phone, so I could look at whatever on the screen.

I ended up reading the entire blog, start to finish, like a book just because, I mean, what else was I going to do? I can’t sit still. I didn’t realize that food blogs were a thing. I didn’t realize they could be a cool thing. Back in the day when you thought of a blog, it was kind of a dorky thing, right? I was just blown away by her images of her recipes and the way she wrote. And I felt like it could be, if nothing else for me, good practice just to write and to photograph things.

Nothing else has brought me so much fun work. It’s not lucrative work. But I mean, my first job, I got from Twitter shooting a brand new chocolate company here, brand new then, not brand new now, called Olive & Sinclair. The owner is a real-life Willy Wonka, and he always just gives me a box with $200 worth of chocolate in it. It’s so much fun.

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

When I was maybe three years old, my yaya – that’s Greek for grandmother – gave me a teeny tiny baking set for Christmas. It’s probably the best gift I’ve ever received, to this day. She was a really great hostess and I have very fond memories of going to her house on every holiday and just Sunday afternoons. And everything she made was so intriguing. From Chex Mix to Jello salad, because it was the ’80s, to prime rib. Everything was perfect.

My mom, every Easter, makes lamb and manestra. Which is not the right name for it, it’s just what my family calls it, I learned recently.

It’s lamb baked on a rack so that the juices drip down. And then you put cherry tomatoes under it and they roast in the juices and let their own juices out. And at the end, you throw in orzo and it cooks in all the tomato and lamb juice. And you serve it all together on a plate with lots of lemon and herbs and feta cheese. And she also makes spanakopita with filo dough. I wasn’t even allowed to touch the filo until I was 18. But now she lets me do it, and it’s really fun.

On Her Food Heroes:

I think everyone in the blogging world. I learned almost everything I know from Alton Brown, as opposed to going to culinary school or anything like that. The book, Ratio, by Michael Ruhlman, was really life changing.

I also love this book called, An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace, which is by Tamar Adler, but it’s modeled on the book, How to Cook a Wolf, by MFK Fisher. It talks about toppling meals. That if you have steamed broccoli for dinner one night, the next day at lunch you make quick pickled broccoli stem salad. And things like that. Meals that make sense, that merge into one another. And that really changed the way I cook.

On Cooking as an Exercise in Patience:

It takes time and there’s no way around that. If you mess up a recipe, a lot of times the store is closed, you’re out of ingredients, you’re out of money to buy new ingredients. You really have to wait until next week, if you’re a home cook, to try it again. And that can seem like such a long time for an impatient person like me. I feel like that’s an everyday challenge for me, not only cooking but things take time, and cooking has conditioned me, I think, to deal with that in my life.

I did a kinfolk dinner maybe three years ago in Chattanooga. It was all about infusion. And I had made a chai pots de creme. Which, in all my recipe tests, the cream broke because ginger is pretty acidic but it’s a necessary flavor in the process.

So I struggled to figure out how to get it in there. And then when I finally figured it out, I was baking them off at my parents’ place which…they were renting a really old condo at the time. And I put them in the oven and I thought, “This is it. I’ve finally got it.” And I swear, the oven door exploded. And I sat down in the middle of the glass and cried.

On a Dish She Finds Challenging and Requires Patience:

I struggle with custard pies. I mean, we all do. They’re very temperamental. I lose one to slumping or sogginess every now and then like everyone. But I try not to let that get me down.

I’m going to use custard pies as an example, because I just talked about it. And my advice would be just to take baby steps. If you can make each separate component by itself and succeed without combining them, which is to say you can roll out the dough and you can bake it in little rounds. You can make lemon curd, put it on top, top it with strawberries and a little whipped cream or something. Then you know you can do it next time and you feel good going into it. Just that you know what each thing is supposed to be like and that you’ve done it successfully.

My mom always says, “Take the next right step,” which sounds so frustrating when you have a really big and daunting task in front of you. It sounds like being told to think small. But small steps snowball. And that’s the only way you can get anywhere. You can’t do step nine before you’ve done step two. I get really mad at her every time she tells me that, but then I’m like, “Okay, wait, this has always been good advice.”

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Obviously, I watch Mind of a Chef and Chef’s Table. And Great British Bake Off. Who doesn’t love that? But recently, my favorite is called, I’ll Have What Phil’s Having, on PBS with Phil Rosenthal. It’s so, so, so funny.

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

I’m assuming everyone knows about Molly Yeh. Everyone loves Molly Yeh. She’s so funny and so sweet. I’m just a super huge, major fan girl of Lady and Pups. I like her brutal honesty. I like that she has a series called, The Shit I Eat When By Myself. I mean, it’s embarrassing stuff that I eat shit like that when I’m by myself, too. And I’m like, “Yes! Yes, she’s so cool!” My favorite one, it’s like flaming Cheetos in a grilled cheese with arugula and gouda. It’s beautiful.

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

My favorites right now…do you follow Chef Jacques La Merde? It’s really some of the best satire our generation has ever seen. And then there’s another one called Kimi Swimmy. And I saw her via Munchies on Vice. And they say that she kills octopus with her bare teeth.

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

It’s not very unusual but I have this marble rolling pin that I bought at a thrift store years ago for $10. And two or three years ago, I was in this real freak accident with this semi that ran over my Subaru, and the only things I pulled out of the car, besides myself, were my dog, my camera, and my marble rolling pin. It’s been through a lot with me, so I’m a little attached to it.

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

I’m actually in the process of learning to like shrimp. I know everyone loves shrimp but I just never have. Actually, the restaurant group I work for has a restaurant called, Little Octopus, and the chef there makes shrimp ceviche. That’s really the first time I’ve ever felt like “Okay, I can do this.” I make myself try shrimp a minimum of three times a year, and I’m really glad I did because this was the first time I thought I could get somewhere with it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Probably my favorite cookbook right now, and maybe always, is Donna Hay’s, Seasons. It’s just photographed beautifully. The recipes are simple. They’re seasonal. They’re just beautiful. And then because I make pie a lot, I refer to The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Cookbook all the time. It’s really like the pie Bible. You can’t go wrong with a recipe from Four & Twenty Blackbirds.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love the album called, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot from the band Wilco. I don’t know, I have a lot of moods while I cook. I go up and down and everywhere in between. And it has a good range of songs that I feel like accompany that.

On Keeping Posted with Hannah:

Definitely Instagram. And my handle is HMMessinger.

105: Elizabeth LaBau: Making Candy and a Sweet Food Career

January 13, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

SugarHero

Elizabeth is a baker, photographer, writer, taste tester and chief sugar officer of SugarHero.com which she started in 2011. Elizabeth went to culinary school after college to learn about baking and patisserie, and worked for years in a number of Los Angeles restaurants and bakeries. She now makes her living developing candy and dessert recipes, writing for websites and writing cookbooks. Her first cookbook, The Sweet Book of Candy Making was published in 2012, and she writes for the About.com candy site and is a contributor to Better Homes and Gardens.

I am so pumped to have Elizabeth LaBau of SugarHero here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Elizabeth’s.)

On Discovering Her Passion for Baking:

My parents actually think it’s funny that I do this for a living because I would make a bee-line out of the kitchen whenever my mom wanted help. You would see the cartoon puff of smoke from Wile E. Coyote whenever she wanted me to do anything. So they still think it’s a little funny that this is my chosen career. But after college, I got married. I was working in a really boring office job. And I would just always be reading food blogs instead of working because that was how great of an employee I was, and I would print out recipes from these blogs and make them at home.

And so it was really the necessity of being out on my own, and having to cook, and then having all this extra time to really delve into the world of food writing and food blogs. They can have more adventurous or fun recipes than maybe your standard cookbook that I grew up cooking from. It really opened my eyes to all these people who were playing with food and making some fun things. Most of the blogs I liked reading were desserts because I have a huge sweet tooth.

That’s really where it started. It was just being out on my own in my own kitchen and finally playing with food instead of just making something my mom told me to make for dinner.

On Her Culinary School Experience:

I went in the evenings after work. I kept working while I was going to school. So it took longer, and it was a little hard to balance both things, but it was absolutely the right thing because I wasn’t committed to a culinary career. It was more like, “Well, we’ll see how I like it, and if I don’t end up wanting to do anything with it, at least, I’ll have some more skills.”

My primary teacher was someone who worked with Sherry Yard with various Wolfgang Puck restaurants. So she was really knowledgeable, and she really did a great job of breaking down the science of baking. Not just teaching us skills but really the theory behind it. So I found everything fascinating. I loved everything. I took everything we did in class, and I’d do it again at home on weekends trying to make it better, and I actually started a prototype food blog. It’s no longer existent, but it would just all be pictures of stuff that I learned in school.

It was so fun. I absolutely loved it. I actually get a lot of questions about going to culinary school, and in general, I don’t really recommend it unless you go to one that’s affordable for you. I think they are so expensive now. But the one I went to was pretty reasonably priced, and it wasn’t a huge financial burden. In that case, I absolutely recommend it because it was a blast.

On Working in Restaurants:

The first place I worked was a bakery in Los Angeles called Sweet Lady Jane which is still around. It’s an LA institution. It’s a very, very high quality bakery. And that’s really where I feel like I got my culinary education because there is the theory you learn, and then there is what actually happens in a kitchen, and I feel really lucky that I worked there. I worked there for about a year. I feel so lucky that that’s where I started because I just learned everything that I missed in culinary school. I learned how people actually do things in the real world.

I learnt to work fast and to work clean and to work in a tiny little space because you don’t have a whole bench of your own in the kitchen usually like you do in culinary school. It was a great bakery. They make everything from scratch which is very, very rare in bakeries, which is another thing I learned. I learned production work, high volume, fast-paced production work, and I also learned some cake decorating. So it was a little bit of everything. And it was really the best place I ever could have started. And then from there, I was able to find different places that would teach me different things.

On Deciding to Start Her Freelance Career and SugarHero.com:

It was really gradual. A few years after I started working in kitchens, I was at a job where I didn’t have full hours, and I was looking for something to supplement my income. And I on a whim applied for a job at About.com and ended up getting it.

I would just do that in the evenings and on the weekends, and as that took off, I was able to devote more time to it. And it was really over the course of about five years, I would work on About more, and then I would take on maybe a few other little projects. Eventually, I started my own blog, and then as I switched on, I would try to find a job that would be part-time where I would work maybe three days a week, so I could devote more time to my freelance stuff.

I didn’t end up going fully freelance until about four and a half years ago. By that time, I had been doing writing on the side for about five years. So it was nothing I ever planned. I didn’t know food writing was a thing in college. I didn’t know that was a career people had. People didn’t make money on the Internet when I was in college. It just really gradually developed, and I found that I really loved it.

On Her Book, The Sweet Book of Candy Making:

I was super pregnant when I wrote it. It was so stressful. I actually got contacted by the publisher, their acquisitions editor had been looking for someone to write a candy book. So it was really just being on the Internet in the right place, at the right time. I think she found me through the About site, and then she also got a recommendation from another person who had written a candy cookbook.

So it fell into my lap which I feel very lucky about because I know it’s not always easy to get a book. And it happened really fast. It was, I think, written in five months while, again, very pregnant. And actually, our apartment had a flood during that time, and we had to move out part of the time and live in a hotel with no kitchen.

So it is truly a labor of love. And I am hoping to write another one. I have an idea. I have an agent. It just has been a matter of carving out the time. But the book was really intended to be a one-stop shop for people who want to learn about candy making. So it has some basic recipes and then some more creative ones. But really, if you don’t know much about candy making, it’s intended to be your guide to getting started. That was the whole point, and I hope that’s what people take from it.

On Candy Making:

I think everyone thinks that about candy because you need a thermometer. It’s like as soon as you put a piece of equipment into the mix, they are like, “Oh no. This is too much. I’m going to buy a Snickers bar. I’m out,” and there are candies that are harder, but I think so many candies really are very approachable.

If you want to start making candies, start with truffles. You need cream, and you need chocolate, and that is literally all you need. And you don’t need a thermometer, and you need a whisk maybe, but everyone has one.

I think there are ways to ease into it before you’re having to pull taffy. You don’t have to start at the top. Start with something really approachable with a microwave fudge recipe. There are definitely things you can do to ease into it.

On Resources for Learning More About Candy Making:

Yes, so actually, I have a favorite candy book that I recommend to everyone. It’s by Peter Greweling. It’s called Chocolates and Confections, and there’s actually two versions. There’s a pro-version and a Chocolates and Confections At Home. He is an instructor at the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, and it’s like the encyclopedia of candy.

It’s so thorough. There’s a million in process pictures. He goes over everything from basics to really complex layered candies. It’s so smart, and it’s a little bit scientific if you’re interested in that, but it doesn’t have to be. You can skip all the science and just get to the recipes. It’s such a great resource. The home version is maybe a little more what home cooks might want, but it’s such a great book.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I watch hardly any. The ones when I do catch them, I actually really am old school. I like Alton Brown. I think he’s great.

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

I almost always read dessert blogs that these are all going to be sweet focused. I love Sprinkle Bakes. I think Heather is a genius. I really like The Sugar Hit. It’s so fun. Cleobuttera, she’s in Egypt hence the name. She just has the most gorgeous photos. I like The Cake Blog. They have a lot of contributors, so it’s like a compilation website, but they do really fun stuff. And then 10th kitchen, who I know, you’ve interviewed her. She is just the funniest, and I want to be her best friend.

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

I’m actually just learning how to use Snapchat. I had a 20-year-old teach me how because I’m an old person. I’m still figuring that out.

I follow The Actor’s Diet, Lynn Chen. She does some food and then some LA stuff that I like. I follow Hey Natalie Jean who has chickens. She’s great. On Instagram, again The Sugar Hit just has the most fun, explosive pictures ever. She really makes me happy.

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

Oh, gosh. I have a marble rolling pin from my grandmother that I got when she passed away. And that’s really special for me. I don’t actually use it but it’s just laying in the kitchen, so I can always think of her when I see it.

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

Lavender and flower flavors. I used to be, “Ehh,” and now I throw rosewater on everything and lavender and violet. It’s a sickness.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

There is a chain in Los Angeles called Lemonade. It does fresh salads and sandwiches. They have a cookbook that I actually love. They got me to eat Brussel sprouts all the time. It’s life- changing. The Lemonade Cookbook, I really like. For desserts, I have a really charming one called, The Bungalow Heavens Cookies cookbook. And it’s all cookie recipes from Pasadena which is where I used to live. Oh, and I just love the Barefoot Contessa. I think she’s awesome. I want to visit her house and have her cook for me. So I have a lot of her books.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Actually, I listen to my iPod all the time when I’m in the kitchen because otherwise, it’s really boring. I listen to Vampire Weekend a lot. I really like Kishi Bashi. I don’t know if you know him, but he’s a violinist who also sings, and he does some really amazing stuff. So I’d say Vampire Weekend and Kishi Bashi always get me in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Elizabeth:

SugarHero.com, and I am on Facebook. Instagram. If you have questions about candy making or baking, send me an email. I try to respond generally promptly.

074: Aaron Clark: How to Make Every Bite Count

September 7, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Feed The Pan

Aaron is completely obsessed with food. On his blog, Feed The Pan, his goal is to inspire us to learn about food and help us find enjoyment in cooking and entertaining, and to encourage us to make every bite count.

I am so excited to have Aaron Clark of Feed The Pan here on the show today.

(*All images below are Aaron’s.)

On What He Isn’t:

I like to set to set my expectations for my readers beforehand. I want people to know that when they come to my blog, they’re not going to see blow your mind photography, poetic writing necessarily right away, but those are things I’m working on. I think it’s important to set those expectations because I want people to really get at the meat, if you will, no pun intended there, of the blog and really understand what it’s about, and that is uncommon techniques and ingredients.

On His Blog:

It really came down to the evolution of my culinary experience. I started in college really watching a lot of late night Good Eats. I’d flip on Good Eats to relax, and Alton Brown really taught me the finer tuning techniques of cooking that my parents didn’t at home. They would cook with me and that’s really where the base started, but they didn’t explain to me why these things were happening and why they would do them.

Alton Brown really kind of taught me how to cook, but then after college, I had a kitchen of my own when I moved out to my first apartment, and I was able to start collecting tools and ingredients and have a good pantry. And I really found that I really liked to entertain. So from there, “how do I entertain better?” Well, learn how to cook better and really work with people, especially other cooks on how to improve a technique.

That evolved into, okay, maybe I should just start an Instagram page and start taking pictures of my food because the first thing you do is look at it. I want it to be a little bit better looking on the plate so that it pleased the eyes and the palate. And then a good friend of ours suggested I start a food blog, and it kind of all ran from there.

On an Interesting Ingredient He Enjoys Cooking With:

I thought about this a lot today, actually, when I was preparing lunch. Anchovy paste. It’s subtle. You don’t always taste that it’s anchovy paste, but offers a kind of savoriness, and umami if you will, to the food you’re preparing, whether you put together a pasta salad or put it into a spice paste that you rub on a chicken or a steak before you grill it. It’s got to be one of my favorites.

You typically get the same results from buying it in a tube from a store. Typically, it’s a product of Spain. If you go to any specialty or international grocery, you’ll usually find it there.

On a Cooking Technique We Have to Try:

I think if it’s in your budget pick up an immersion circulator. Sous vide is the type of cooking where you submerge food, vacuum seal food, or put food in a plastic bag in a water bath, and you can cook it to a very precise temperature for a very precise amount of time. I would say that’s something that everyone should try because it’s really convenient. If you’re not terribly comfortable in the kitchen with high heat applications or with grilling, it’s a great way to really cook expensive cuts of meat very precisely.

It comes out kind of gray and dull-looking, but what you can do is either throw it on the grill, a really hot grill or in a really hot cast iron pan for a few seconds on each side until you develop a nice crust. There’s charts and things all over the Internet so you can find the ideal temperature for different foods, including vegetables, meats, and everything in between.

You can season the food before you vacuum seal it or put it in your zip lock bag with olive oil. What I do with steaks is I put the traditional basting ingredients that you would do in a pan seared steak; thyme, garlic, and olive oil, and it comes out great. And then I throw it in a pan and sear it.

On How He Learned to Cook:

Definitely the Internet and late night television. That, in combination with my parents. At home, my mom was always a gardener and always had amazing produce she would bring to the table. And her idea of food was fresh, natural, and right off the plant, while my dad, being an engineer, he would always tinker with things. So if the crock pot broke, he would take it out to the garage into his workshop and fix it. So between his technique-based cooking and my mom’s ingredient-based cooking, I would say it really started from there. Then I got more curious and needed to understand the why. So the why really comes from, in my situation, watching a lot of Jacques Pepin on YouTube. If Jacques Pepin’s on YouTube in any capacity I’ve probably seen it. He’s the master of technique, and he really explains what to do in certain situations where you’re working with different ingredients.

I think my obsession really comes from working with other chefs as well, where you’re understanding what they’re doing based on what they’re showing you, hands-on action, and you’re getting a lot of knowledge through what their experiences are, and that’s my favorite way to learn.

On Making Every Bite Count:

What I found is that by putting a little bit of extra effort into anything you put in your mouth, through either just adding a little bit of seasoning or blending up some spices and finishing up with fat, really I want people to discover every ingredient for its best qualities. So if you’re going to roast a carrot, say, you make sure and season it correctly, use olive oil and salt. And then what a lot of people don’t really understand is there’s a difference between the kosher salt you would use to season something and a finishing salt. If you add this finishing salt at the end, it really brings out the carrot for what it is and that’s what I mean by make every bite count. Is to do it to its fullest and use what nature gave you at its highest capacity.

I’m a big fan of kosher salt for seasoning during cooking. I usually throw it in the pan with just about everything, even desserts. Sometimes I’ll use other salts for desserts that are a little bit finer than kosher salt. But kosher salt has a little bit of a bigger grain, while a finishing salt, say, Fleur de Sel, is probably the most common one. It’s not as firm and it’s a little bit less dense, so it has a little bit of a crunch to it without giving you too much of a salty flavor. What it does is enhance the flavor of the food rather than taste salty.

On Getting the Most out of Food Experiences:

I guess in cooking big meals and entertaining, it really came from the way that I approach everything from the start of the meal, when I go to purchase the ingredients, to the end when I’m serving the guests or bringing their plates out. So it’s really a culmination of my thought process from beginning to end.

I was trying to make beef stock one time, and I have a very hot stove. I used to before I replaced the one I have now. It was an electric stove top, and I forgot to put the grate at the bottom of my stock pot. I put the beef bones in and brought it to a roaring boil, left the room, and they ended up sticking to the bottom. And then I fell asleep and everything burnt. Everything was smoky in the house and I couldn’t get that burnt smell out for about a week. So it took me a little while, but ultimately, I think patience being that virtue, I tried it again in about a month, and it worked out well. So I felt defeated for a little while, but then it came around to be a good thing.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Jacques Pepin. Essential Pepin is probably my favorite show that he has done. I also watch
Fast Food My Way, and Jacques and Julia when they were together. It’s old and the resolution isn’t great, but those three are very high up there. Beyond that, Good Eats has always been my really sort of go-to.

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

Well, I have to throw this out to Elena Rosemond-Hoerr of Biscuits and Such. She’s a dear friend of my wife and mine, and she really is, a really strong motivation to get the food blog started. Her pictures and her writing are just incredible. And she’s an amazing cook. We see each other a few times a year, and we always throw it down in the kitchen, and her results are, oh man, mind blowing. Her biscuits are off the hook.

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

Instagram? I follow a guy called Creepy Chef. He’s a line cook out in California, and it reminded me of my days, my short-lived in the kitchen as a line cook. And he makes some really incredible dishes. I also follow Mind of a Chef.

ChefSteps is another one I follow a lot. They have a blog, an Instagram page, and they put together really, really cool, but very technology forward foods. And the pictures and the food staging that they present is really amazing.

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

Probably I would have to say my immersion circulator. It’s just really versatile, and I think anybody can use it from beginner to advanced, even though it’s a more pricey piece of equipment you would use in your kitchen. I’d recommend it if you like to cook, whether you just started or you are an expert chef, master chef, that this is probably an essential tool to have. And it’s quite unusual. People are really impressed when you pull it out.

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

Peas. Frozen peas, which I actually put in a lot of things. You can add those to a dish right at the end and because the surface area to mass ratio is really quite large, they cook very fast. You can put them in a meal with potatoes, with carrots, any other types of vegetable. Peas and carrots I know, kind of cliché, but actually that’s one thing I’ve really learned to like ‘cuz peas have a subtle saltiness to them that I really enjoy.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I really like David Chang’s Momofuku. What that does for me is really takes me outside of the traditional American realm. As diverse as it is already, but it gives you real insight into some of the techniques and ingredients that he uses in his kitchens in New York. He has several restaurants, and it really introduces me to a lot of the Japanese methods and ingredients. I’m a big fan of Japanese food, and this kind of helps me refine my own style in that type of cuisine.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I cook a lot to Andrew Bird. He’s a violinist and kind of a one-man orchestra. He has a plethora of music styles within his own band. And they take you from highs to lows, fast to slow, and he really picks me up in a pinch and helps me get motivated to cook.

On Keeping Posted with Aaron:

Always check my Facebook. That’s my go-to. Instagram, I always post my links under my pictures there. And between those two, you should be able to find me.

073: Joanne Ozug: Cooking From Scratch with Natural Ingredients

September 2, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Fifteen Spatulas

Joanne has a deep molecular interest in food. On her blog, and YouTube channel, she not only shares recipes using whole foods and natural ingredients, Joanne focuses on explaining the how’s and why’s of cooking and tries to encourage us to cook from scratch.

I am so happy to have Joanne Ozug of Fifteen Spatulas joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below are Joanne’s.)

On Her Blog:

It was about five years ago. I had a background in finance and business and economics, and I just hit this wall where I was like, “I am not liking this at all.” I just was really unhappy, and I really wanted to do something in food. I loved food probably since I was in the womb. I love food. And at the time I was living rural Georgia. My husband is in the Navy, and he was stationed in this really rural part in southern Georgia, like an hour from Honey Boo Boo, just to give you an idea of how rural it was. So there wasn’t a lot of food opportunity down there. So I decided to start the blog as something that could serve as an online resume or like some body of work where I could pour my recipes and stuff into while we were stationed down there, because we moved around a lot. I knew it was going to be somewhat temporary but just something for me to do. I had no idea what it would turn into but that’s how I started.

On Her YouTube Channel:

Since the beginning of Fifteen Spatulas, I’ve always done step-by-step photos, because when I started there wasn’t a lot of that and you’d see a picture of a recipe and it’s like, “That’s great, but how does it look in the middle?” So I focused on step-by-step photos and then there were some recipes where the photos, it almost wasn’t enough. It would have been better explained if I could do it in a video. So I started dabbling a little bit in video, and it’s interesting because when I first started on YouTube, it was just kind of a hosting platform to post videos on my blog. But I discovered that there was a separate different community on YouTube, so again, like the story of how I started, is a little bit different from how it is now and how it evolved. Originally, I just wanted to give people a little bit more information visually on how to make the recipes.

On Her Process for Her Videos:

It’s interesting because even YouTube and my blog, they like different foods. I’m still making food from scratch on both places, but they like different kinds of recipes. So for my YouTube, again I have that list where I write out some ideas and then I’ll refine them further, and I’ll start story boarding them and planning them out. Most of the stuff now I try to storyboard and script. I didn’t use to but it helps to do that. And so from there I’ll go ahead and I’ll film all the close-ups and then the wide shots and then edit, and then put it up. It’s not too bad actually. I’ve got it down to the steps to get me to the end.

The thing that’s tough for me about the blog is the writing part. I will bang out the photos, the recipe, everything will already be set to go, and the last part that I leave for the end is always the writing. It’s the hardest part for me. For a video, you kind of script a little bit but it’s not fully scripted, you’re just talking. So I feel like that’s not as hard for me.

Video requires a lot more work but you have that writing part always like, “What do I say? How do I be witty on the Internet?”

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

That definitely started later. I think early on from a young age, you’re like food is delicious! I love food. But you start making it, I remember I think some time in middle school, I started watching Food Network, and I feel like that’s really where my curiosity for the how’s and why’s of food really started. Because there’s some really amazing people on there. Like Alton Brown is one of my favorite people in food ever, and he’s the god of cooking technique and how-to’s. So that’s kind of where it started.

I feel like if you know certain concepts, then you can stray away from recipes. And just cook based on what you find at the grocery store that’s interesting. There’s just a freedom that comes with knowing those basic things, where you can truly become a cook on your own instead of making recipes. There’s nothing wrong with that to start, of course, but that’s why I love it so much, is you can just play around a lot more when you know the rules of the road.

On Cooking From Scratch with Whole Foods and Natural Ingredients:

I ate so much junky processed foods when I was younger. The turning point for me was my freshman year in college. I was so sick. I was throwing up every night, going to the hospital, sometimes I had to have an endoscopy and seeing these GI doctors, and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong and why I was throwing up every day. I was not bulimic or any of that stuff, it was uncontrolled, I just felt so sick. And my GI doctor thought that maybe I should try making my own food. So he wrote me a letter to get out of the school meal plan.

It was just so processed and gross, so I started cooking just in my college dorm room from scratch, just with wholesome real ingredients, real food, and I wasn’t sick anymore. The thing that’s crazy about that is there have been times where I’ve gone to potlucks where I knew there was processed food, like when people are saying, “I made three boxes of mashed potatoes.” I’m like, “Boxes of mashed potatoes? Mashed potatoes don’t come in boxes.” My husband and I both would get sick after we eat that.

So it’s just a reminder of that at least for my body, and I won’t speak for everyone, but for my body, I need to eat food where I know what’s in it and it’s wholesome real food.

It’s so funny because I think cooking from scratch can be laborious, if you make, beef bourguignon or something. But there are so many recipes from scratch that are quick and easy, and totally delicious. I feel like it’s just totally a stigma that exists for whatever reason for some people until they find out or, they’re shown by someone that, “Hey, that’s actually not hard at all.”

I’m not trying to knock on some of these products, but the pre-packaged pancake mix, for instance. I’d see someone make that and think, “You still have to add the eggs and the milk!” I have a great pancake recipe on my website called, 100% whole wheat pancakes, and I think it’s like five ingredients. People go absolutely crazy for them. They’re so easy.

On Some Resources For Learning to Cook from Scratch:

One publication I love that people probably already know about, but I really love America’s Test Kitchen and Cooks Illustrated. I love that they test things, like they’re science heavy behind the food, but they try to keep it relatively simple.

Probably my favorite YouTube channel right now is my friend, Gemma. Her channel is called, Gemma’s Bigger Bolder Baking. She’s a pastry chef from Ireland. She lives in California now. But she just has the most extravagant, ridiculous desserts, like totally out of control, but that’s how I think it should be. They’re just outrageous, but everyone can make them. They’re from scratch. They’re just gorgeous. My friend Alyssia from Mind Over Munch does a kind of healthier spin on some everyday foods, I really like that. I mean there’s so many, like SORTEDfood even. It’s four English guys and they just make food. It’s tons of banter and good eats and it’s a lot of fun.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I love Barefoot Contessa, and I love The Pioneer Woman show, Good Eats even though I don’t know if that’s on.

I love The Best Thing I Ever Ate, I love that show. Oh my gosh, I’ve gone to so many of those places they recommend to get what they love. I love Chopped too, even though it’s terrifying.

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

Some of my favorites are thelittlekitchen.net, Love and Olive Oil, that one is awesome. It’s my friend Lindsay. A farmgirl’s dabbles. I love Serious Eats, it’s not really a blog but a site, I love them.

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

I’m not on Pinterest much to be totally honest. I’m not a Pinterest person. I’m not having food people coming to mind, because Instagram I love following fashion people like Wendy’s Lookbook. Yeah, Wendy’s Lookbook comes to mind instantly.

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

I have this amazing, beautiful bowl that my best friend’s parents got for my wedding. It’s just a fruit bowl and I put onions, or bananas, whatever in there. And it just feels special because it’s for our wedding and I keep it out all the time, it’s really personal.

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

Cilantro. Oh, my gosh. I don’t know what on earth happened. I hated cilantro for so long. Now, I want it in everything.

I think I ate out at a couple of places and I’m like, “This has cilantro in it, but you know I feel like it’s doing some good here.” And it just kind of crept its way into my heart.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Okay, this is not really a cookbook. It’s more of a reference, but the Flavor Bible is the best cooking related book ever. You just go in and you’re like, “Hmm, I have some mangoes. Let’s see what pairs well with mangoes.” And it will tell you all the flavor affinities. What else do I love? I love Thomas Keller’s books too, I have a bunch of his.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Arctic Monkeys band, they have a lot of albums.

On Keeping Posted with Joanne:

I would say my Instagram or my Facebook. Those are my two favorites, so I tend to be on them a lot.

055: Liz Harris: Turning Food into Her Career

July 1, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Floating Kitchen

Liz is a cook, photographer, and writer. And on her blog, Floating Kitchen, she explores and shares seasonally inspired recipes that are sometimes healthy and sometimes indulgent, but always fun and delicious.

I am so psyched to have Liz Harris of Floating Kitchen here on the show today.

(*All images below are Liz’s.)

On Her Career Before Food:

Before I started blogging, I was actually a research scientist. I went all the way in school. My undergraduate focus was biology, and then I went on to get my PhD in Biochemistry. That was five years of training, post undergrad degree.

Then I went and did a post-doctoral fellowship in Cancer Biology. That was another four years of training. I spent about thirteen years working towards becoming a research scientist, and then I was working in that field. It just wasn’t clicking for me anymore so I made a drastic change in my life.

Making the change was very hard, mentally, because I had committed so much time and you feel compelled to continue on this path.

I still love science. I find it really interesting. I love reading about it in my free time. I liked actually doing it, but at the end of the day, the lifestyle that I had created for myself around this career wasn’t very healthy for me anymore, and so I needed to change that.

On Her Introduction to Cooking:

My family is pretty into food. I come from a line of great cooks. My grandmother, my great aunts, my mom is a big cook as well. I was always just in the kitchen or around the kitchen with them. So I was always very interested in it. My family also owns a farm and a wholesale distribution business in New Hampshire, so food is just something that we think about a lot and have always been really interested in. It’s just what we do.

My great auntie, Dot. She was probably the best cook in the family. She also was always very patient with me and she let me help her. She didn’t get mad if you messed up or anything. Because I’m sure I messed up a lot when I was little. I owe a lot of my cooking abilities to her.

On Turning Her Hobby into Her Career:

About five years ago is when I really started doing it. It was still a hobby at that time, but I started being a lot more serious about cooking every day for myself, cooking for friends, having people over.

That’s when people started suggesting to me, too, “Hey, you’re really good at this. Have you ever thought about having a blog or doing something with it?” And I was like, “No. Computers hate me. I would never have a blog. I can’t even do email!” That just seemed really out of reach for me.

I was spending so much time on my career, so it was like, “No way I could do that on the side.” So that’s when I really started getting into it. Around 2012 or 2013 is when I made this choice to leave my career as being a scientist, and that was the obvious thing to do, is to pursue something in cooking.

I think whenever you make a really big drastic change like that, there is a fine balance between courage and sheer stupidity. You just have to say, “Alright, I don’t know what’s going to happen and I’m just going to do it and go for it.”

My parents obviously were really supportive. I didn’t feel like I was going to be letting them down. I also was giving up a paycheck and all these other practical things. They were encouraging me and telling me that it would be okay. It gave me the guts to do it.

I’m just a really determined person. Once I get something in my head, it does not escape my head until I do something about it. So I just decided to do it and now here I am.

When I first left science, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was mulling around for a few months, figuring it out.

I actually simultaneously started my blog and started working in restaurants. I had never had a restaurant job before in my whole life, so that was a really fun and eye-opening experience. So I started on those two paths; I had the blogging and I had the restaurant work. After doing both those simultaneously for about a year, I decided that I just wanted to pursue the blogging for now. Restaurant work is hard. I mean, it was fun but it’s a lot of work for not a lot of gain. And my blog was picking up and was growing, and I decided to put all of my energy into that.

On the Type of Cooking that’s Most Natural:

I think the savory dishes come more naturally to me. I’ve developed a style where I just like to throw things together. I cook mostly vegetarian food and it’s just easy to roast up a bunch of vegetables and make some grains, make a quick dressing. That is definitely more my everyday style. Although I do love the baking.

I think the enjoyment I get out of the baking is not the actual doing it but it’s the sharing it. Because that’s the stuff that’s easy to share, and that’s why I loved cooking to start with. I loved bringing people food or inviting people over.

Cookies and brownies are something I would take to work all the time, or bring to my neighbor’s house. So I like that aspect of the baking. But in terms of the following the instructions, I can do it and I’m great at it, but I just prefer to not have to think that much about it. Which is funny because being a scientist, all you’re doing is thinking about instructions all the time.

On Where She Finds Inspiration for Her Blog:

Mostly from other bloggers.

I read an enormous number of blogs. I have like 400 blogs on my feed. It’s insane. Because people are just doing so much great stuff, so I love just seeing what everyone else is doing.

I’m really inspired by cooking with the seasons. That’s something that’s important to me. Growing up in a family that has a farm, I’ve always been aware of that and try to follow that as much as possible. It’s better for your wallet and the environment. It’s good for your body. It tastes better when you buy food that’s in season. I love going to the local markets and looking for things that look great, and bringing them home and making something from them.

On Things Not Going As Planned in the Kitchen:

I feel like at this point, I’m pretty knowledgeable of what is going to work together, what flavors will go together, and what techniques are going to work.

I guess the only things for me, that it’s not actually the cooking part, it’s always something else that happens. I remember I made this huge tray of eclairs and they were glazed. And I dropped them and they went glazed side down on the rug, with dog hair stuck in them. It’s that kind of stuff.

I will finish a whole thing and then I’ll have some klutzy moment at the end and ruin everything, which is very unfortunate. But those things happen to me more than actually with the cooking part.

In the beginning, when I was in graduate school and during my fellowship when I was learning to cook, I was very strict about following recipes. I had to have a recipe or I couldn’t make something. Because I didn’t have that awareness of what things went together. But now that I have been cooking for so many years, it’s easy for me, just something that I’ve picked up.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I do like to watch the Barefoot Contessa.

A show I used to love to watch that’s not on anymore is Alton Brown’s Good Eats. Of course, that’s like a science-y cooking show, so you know I’m going to love that one. I don’t really watch any food competition shows because they kind of stress me out. I get nervous for the contestants.

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

From the 400 that I follow, let’s see. One blog that I love is called Local Haven. Her name is Ashely, and she has really great photography and really authentic, unfussy recipes that just feel good when I’m on her site and look at her photos. So I think everyone should check out Local Haven.

I also really love Foodie Crush by Heidi. Heidi has great recipes and great photography, but I think the thing that I appreciate most about her site is that she spends a lot of time talking about other bloggers and other blogger’s recipes. It’s really refreshing in a job where you talk about yourself all the time. I mean, that’s really what we have to do, is promote yourself. So it’s so nice to see somebody who is talking about other bloggers so much. I’ve been introduced to a lot of new sites through her blog. So I think that’s a good one everyone should check out.

And I love How Sweet It Is by Jessica. Her stuff is just so over the top and fun, and it just makes you feel good when you read it.

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

On Instagram, I love Sweet Paul Magazine. He has a lot of not just food pictures, it’s food and crafts and gardening. All the photos are really bright and fun and whimsical. He has a great feed.

I also love, on Instagram, all the meta-sites, like Food 52 and The Kitchn. Great photography, great recipes, and again, they reshare a lot of stuff from the community. So it’s been a great way to connect and find new Instagram accounts and new food bloggers.

On Twitter, I love Sarah from The Sugar Hit. She is just hilarious. She has really funny tweets. I definitely recommend people checking her out.

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

I guess the thing that would be the most treasured, is I do have recipes from my great aunt. She was the one that was sort of the biggest cook in our family. And all the recipes from my grandparents and other family members, and I think those are probably the most treasured things, just having those cards with the stains on them and the handwritten notes. It’s just really fun. You feel like you’re cooking with them when you’re using them.

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

This is a tough question because I used to dislike everything. I was that kid that only ate grilled cheese, chicken, and peanut butter and jelly for like twenty years. So it’s very surprising now that I will eat everything.

I think one of the main things is tomatoes. I used to hate tomatoes, raw tomatoes. I didn’t like tomato sauce. I would wipe the sauce off of my spaghetti, which horrified my parents. But now, I love fresh tomatoes. I love making sauces.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I really like Vibrant Food by Kimberly Hasselbrink. It’s really colorful. I want to eat everything when I flip through the pages. It’s just a spectacular book that I think everybody should own.

I love Joy the Baker. She’s one of my favorite bloggers. I love Homemade Decadence, again, really fun and whimsical, and of course, totally makes you hungry when you’re looking at it.

I also love all the Ottolenghi books. I don’t cook from them that often, because all the recipes are really involved, but just such a great source of inspiration and great photography as well.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I really like something upbeat when I’m cooking, like Stevie Wonder or Taylor Swift. Anything with a good beat deserves to be in my kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Liz:

The best way, the first way is my blog, of course, floatingkitchen.net. I post new recipes two to three times a week. So you can check me out there. Instagram is my favorite, so that’s a fun place. I love connecting with people on Instagram.

053: Abby Thompson: Veganism and Vegan Baking

June 24, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

The Frosted Vegan

On The Frosted Vegan Abby showcases recipes that show that even if you’re eating a plant-based diet, you can still enjoy delicious desserts, and that it doesn’t have to be a hassle.

I am so pumped to have Abby Thompson of The Frosted Vegan here on the show today.

(*All images below are Abby’s.)

On Growing Up in a Home Where Food Was Enjoyed and Shared:

It was obviously awesome and delicious. In our house my mom was either making brownies on the weekend or my dad was making cookies after school, stuff like that. It just became a part of how I grew up, and when I moved away and started on my own that kind of fell off because mom and dad weren’t making them for me.

I loved baking, but I didn’t keep up with it. And especially when I turned vegan it became a little bit harder. I didn’t know if I would be able to keep up with all the baking and stuff like that. So, I just integrated it into my life and realized it was something that was part of my childhood and part of who I was.

It shaped how I looked at food, and treats were always an everyday thing. For some people they didn’t grow up with that, but for me it was just always something that was there.

On Being in the Kitchen:

This is kind of a weird story to remember, like baking and cooking, but I remember in middle school I did not make show choir. And I was so sad, but I was like, “I just need to make a pie.” So, I made a pie and I remember from then on it was like baking kind of solves everything. It feels awesome, I do it, and then I get a slice of pie at the end. So, it was great! It just started evolving from that.

I discovered in high school, you know, boys really like when you bring them cookies, or everyone is your friend if you bring them cakes! So, when I figured that out and I enjoyed it at the same time, it just started, like I said, becoming part of my everyday life.

I’ve always had a huge sweet tooth, and for some reason cooking doesn’t come easily to me. I have to have a recipe, I’m not just improvising dinner or anything like that. When I do it turns out not so great, so my fiance prefers I don’t improvise. But, it’s always been baking, I can kind of make up a muffin recipe and it’s no problem. I know that’s a little bit harder because baking is a little more scientific and exact, but for me it has just always come naturally. I can feel when it’s right, when it’s going to come out okay. It doesn’t always work, but most of the time it works.

On Veganism:

A vegan diet generally means you’re not consuming any animal products. So, not only no meat, no fish, no dairy, so cheese, eggs, that kind of thing are out.

You can go from one extreme to the other.

Some people just stop at cheese and eggs. Others avoid all gelatin because gelatin has animal-dried products. Fish sauces and a lot of Thai dishes, stuff like that. Then, it expands into a vegan lifestyle so some people choose not to consume leather goods or have anything with animal-dried products. It’s a sliding scale of what extreme you want to go to. And then, on the other side of it, I kind of try to also approach it with a plant-based diet, so that’s also avoiding excessive oils, super-fatty products.

Some of the vegan products out there are not necessarily healthy, they’re vegan, doesn’t mean they’re healthy. So, it really depends on what extreme you’re on or what part of the scale you’re on. It means something different for everyone.

On Becoming Vegan:

I went vegan about three years ago.

I always grew up in a household where cheese is on everything, we had chicken, fish, all that kind of stuff. But, I had never been a huge meat eater, I never really liked it.

I was starting to slowly phase out the meat in my diet just because it didn’t really matter to me. Then, my dad actually went cold turkey vegan about three years ago. He watched Forks Over Knives, which is a documentary, and he just decided that he wanted to make a change. He wasn’t really feeling great, wanted to feel a lot better, and eat a lot better. Nothing had ever really stuck for him. So, he did that and then I was still living at home at the time so it was kind of a natural thing to follow along with it.

When I moved away from home I just kept following it because I realized I felt a lot better. My body just felt better when I didn’t eat certain foods, and I’ve just slowly gone more vegan over the years.

The meat part wasn’t as hard, but the dairy is hard. A lot of stuff like grilled cheese or things with cheese in them, you have to figure out what works if you want to use vegan cheese or cheese at all, stuff like that. I’m still figuring it out.

I’m sure it will be a lifelong journey to figure out what works and what tastes the best, to me. That’s what I like about it though because it doesn’t feel very stagnant. I’m always finding something new. It’s awesome what people are doing with vegan food now.

On Baking Vegan and Her Blog:

I originally started it because when I moved away my dad was still wanting to make all the baked goods that I grew up making, but he didn’t want to necessarily include all the vegan butters, or oils, and extra stuff like that. He wasn’t really sure how to approach it, so I wanted to start figuring it out, not only for him but myself, too.

It just progressed from wanting to share those recipes and figuring out, “Hey, maybe other people are looking for these, so I’ll just start a blog!” I kind of just had to figure out what egg replacements work, or what kind of oil replacements, or can I get rid of the oil? Stuff like that.

It’s really relearning because up until I went vegan, I was making croissants from scratch, and things with a lot of eggs in them, and I loved it, but then trying to relearn what’s going to work in place of those things was a challenge.

On the Biggest Misconception of Baking Vegan:

I think the biggest one is that it’s going to be gross. I know some of the commercially made vegan, baked goods I’ve had have not been great. They’ve come out dry, or too oily, or it’s just not the same.

I really want to make it so that if you give someone a cookie and they eat it, they’re not like, “Oh, is this vegan? I can tell.” I want it to be, “Oh, this a cookie and it’s great. I had no idea.” So, I think it’s fighting that misconception that things are automatically going to be disgusting because they’re vegan.

Coconut oil, more people are becoming familiar with it, but that’s a big one that I use a lot, especially in place of butter or different oils. I know it’s more of an up and coming ingredient, but I use that quite a bit.

Ground flax seed, I had never used until I started baking vegan and that, when you combine it with water and let it sit for a little bit, it becomes sort of a gel and makes a really good egg substitute in a lot of things.

Those are two of the main ones that I hadn’t really heard of. I try avoid using weird things or things that are hard to find because I know not everyone lives super close to Whole Foods or anything like that. So, those are my two main ones that I use quite a bit.

Then, just using high quality flours or agave nectar and stuff like that just helps substitute for some of those common ingredients.

One of the first food blogs that I followed that helped a lot was, Oh She Glows. She’s really well known, she has everything from cooking to baking. She goes more in-depth into some of the things when she makes vegan baked goods and it has helped quite a bit.

Dairyfreebaking.com. Dairy free might still include a few eggs, but more milk substitute, stuff like that, she goes into that. I’ve had her site come up a lot when I’ve looked for different things.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t watch a ton of cooking shows, but when she’s on, Giada De Laurentiis. I watch her, I think she’s pretty inspiring.

Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, usually late at night it makes me really hungry so my fiance and I watch that quite a bit on a weekend night. Alton Brown shows when they were on, and I think those are the main ones.

I like Chopped too. It makes me think, “I can do anything in the kitchen!”

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

The First Mess, Laura writes that one and she’s awesome and totally inspiring. Vegan food that just, if you have it, again, you wouldn’t really know it’s vegan. She has an awesome writing style and I absolutely love it. I love her.

Cookie and Kate, she does amazing stuff with seasonal produce, and whenever I get my produce of the week, I know that she always has something that I can do anything with.

Cake Over Steak, Sara is awesome, I know she’s been on your podcast. And I love that she’s doing something different with using illustrations. I know she’s starting to do photography, but she does illustration and they’re awesome and amazing, so I love her things as well.

Then, let’s do one more, Joy the Baker, oh my gosh. She’s one of the first blogs I ever read. I would love to be the Joy the Baker of vegan baking.

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

Floating Kitchen, Liz over at Floating Kitchen, she lives on the east coast and she posts really awesome pictures. She lives by the beach and takes her dogs on walks and stuff like that. When it’s snowing here or really crappy, it’s cool to see her pictures of that.

Laura, again, of The First Mess, she does a lot of gardening and I love when she posts pictures of pulling radishes, or carrots, or anything like that. I think her dad does weekly deliveries to her, berries and things that he grows. So, I love seeing those things because it’s really cool. I think those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

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

My most treasured one at the moment is my Vitamix blender. I just got it about six months ago, and I use it almost every day, all the time. I’ve always wanted one so I’m glad I finally sprung for it.

Then another one is, it’s a measuring cup, which sounds weird, but it’s a tin measuring cup that my grandmother passed down to me. She grew up baking with it, I think it was her grandmother’s, and it’s really cool to use it. It’s super functional, and I love using it because I know it’s been passed down through baking generations in our family.

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

Tomatoes. I use to not eat tomatoes in anything. I hated them. I hated chunks of them in anything, and I still wouldn’t like, eat one whole like some people do. But I’ve discovered that really good tomatoes, like fresh, summer tomatoes are amazing, and I love it now!

Then spinach too, I used to hate spinach. I grew my own spinach a couple years ago, and I loved it. So, I think the freshness really makes a difference.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

The Bountiful cookbook which is by the White on Rice Couple, Todd and Diane, is awesome. Again, really focused on seasonal produce. They grow a lot of their own stuff, and it’s made it so much better because I’ll get something from the grocery store and think, “I don’t really know what to do with this. I’m going to look at this cookbook.” They have something amazing, very accessible, very easy, love their cookbook.

I have a baking cookbook from Williams Sonoma that I got several years ago that doesn’t have any vegan baking recipes in it, but it’s a super solid foundation for if I need a good jumping off point for a cake recipe or anything like that. I know that it’s going to be reliable, and even if I tinker with it with all my weird vegan stuff, it will probably come out or make a good foundation.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

So, I’m a big fan of Pandora and I’ve really been into the song Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars. I think that song makes me say, “Okay, I can do this. Let’s get some cooking done. I am ready to go.”

On Keeping Posted with Abby:

I would say probably Instagram and Facebook. Those are the two biggest ones I am probably most active on.

028: Phi Tran: How Limitations are Good When Cooking

April 20, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Princess Tofu

Princess Tofu is a phenomenal source of inspiration if you are looking for comforting food with an Asian and Parisian flare, that just so happens to be vegetarian. Her photography throughout the blog is warm and her words are inviting.

I am so happy to have Phi Tran from Princess Tofu here with me today.

On Her Blog:

I have always been a passionate eater and I’m almost always hungry of course, so I think it was a nice way to work on my writing skills but also have this creative outlet that I have full control over.

I spend a lot of hours thinking about food and I go to the market really often. So more often than not I’m making lists of things that I want to try and make or cook or experiment with, but I don’t necessary have the time to do all of them.

When I do have time, it takes a lot longer just to think about the visual presentation of the concept, because you can’t eat the pictures online.

On Where Her Inspiration Comes From:

I think it’s a crazy mixture of everything I come in contact with. I do go to the market really often. I think that’s a nice point to start, but I think it’s a limiting point and it’s not necessarily always a creative juncture that you think of in terms of like what’s the seed for creativity.

Naturally, like you go to the market, you may see something that inspires you to make a dish but at the same it’s not like you have everything at your disposal. So I like the limits that the market places upon my recipes, but I get a lot of inspiration from cookbooks of restaurants that I think do a really good job of experimenting with flavors and textures and ingredients. From there I work around my skills and also the types of ingredients I have available at hand, because they have resources that I don’t have, obviously.

I think it’s always good to have limitations when you are exposing yourself to anything creative because it places you into a corner and it’s a nice corner. It’s a unique way of looking at the world.

I have certain limitations, other people have certain limitations, and they are very different and that’s why we make very different things to eat and look at.

I usually start my week on Sunday trips to the market and then my evenings just reading cookbooks and that marriage of those two things generate the rest of the things that I’m working on.

On Her Love of Food:

I think a lot of people like to eat so I don’t find that to be very unique, but I definitely got a lot more interested after graduating undergrad.

I’ve been cooking even before high school, but in high school I actually started watching a lot of the Food Network and realized that you can do a lot more to dinner than just hamburger helper.

There is a lot more that you can put onto your stove and treat yourself.

I took it upon myself to make Thanksgiving turkey one year as a high schooler and that was fascinating.

I did this salting method, ever since then, and I still think salting is better than the liquid brining. So I did that, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t cover my hands and I was rubbing this on herb and butter salt mixture under the skin of the turkey and it just burned viciously, but the turkey came out spectacular.

My hands recovered eventually, but ever since then I was like, “I can probably just cook a lot more interesting things if I did the right research and just put enough effort into it,” but then school started and I really didn’t have the time or energy to spend hours and hours in the kitchen making dinner. So afterwards, when I started my vegetarian diet, it gave me the impetus to do a lot of research into different types of ingredients and how you can cook them for an alternative diet.

On Cooking as a Vegetarian:

I don’t think it was necessarily re-learning skills. I think a lot of the concepts in cooking, if you break it down to the basics, are applicable to all sorts of palettes and diets. So I don’t think of it as a technique dilemma, but it did introduce me to a lot different types of ingredients that I never would have learned about, so cooking with whole grains and also diving into cuisines in a way that I wouldn’t normally do, and also re-focusing the plates so that you don’t focus on having a meat as the centerpiece. In that sense I’m really fascinated by pastas and then I definitely got into Japanese cooking a lot more once I moved to California. So those things are very vegetarian-friendly, but you don’t necessarily think to look at that until you have to cook for yourself.

On Making Cooking More Fun:

I think you should do it with someone who loves to cook.

I like cooking with other people. The other day I was hosting an event and I’ve never had so many people watch me make scones before. It was like reality television…

It was intimidating, but at some point you have to talk about what you are doing as you are doing it and that’s something that I’m not used to. It’s fascinating.

I think if you cook with somebody who likes to share their food and also their skills, I think it will make it a lot more fun. So it’s nice to do it with someone else every once in a while.

On Messing Up in the Kitchen:

I have messed up spectacularly before just doing stupid stuff. Once I was having this dinner and I had made a pomegranate salad dressing, but I also made some sort of red fruited syrup and so they both looked quite similar. So I go to make the salad and I just grabbed one of the jars and then I sent it out. I didn’t think about it until a little bit later but then I realized I served the salad with a syrup. Nobody said a single thing. That’s the other thing. If you have a performance whether it’s food or music and you mess up, just keep on rolling.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I used to watch a lot of Alton Brown.

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

I like Tasting Table. It gets pretty ridiculous over there, so you got to pay attention.

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

I haven’t been on them for a while. I follow a bunch of people on them, like thousands. You should just go and lose yourself.

What is something all home cooks should have in their pantry?

I love smoked paprika recently. That’s something that I’ve been using a lot and it’s really versatile and it just adds a little bit of flavor to everything.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Butter.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I have this vegetarian Japanese paperback book that I don’t even think is in print anymore. Manresa from last year was great. I’m still learning so much from that. I don’t necessarily use all the weirder ingredients that he uses but there is some really good information in there and beautiful photos. He also talks about menu writing and things like that and that’s really useful.

And then Denis Cotter. He’s a vegetarian chef in Ireland and if you are new to vegetarian that’s not where you should go, but maybe a year or two down the road, when you want to make a special dinner for someone who eats meat, I would say pick up one of his books and just go to town. It might take you hours and hours to execute something but it’s totally worth it and it’s all vegetarian, so you don’t have to like change anything. Just do it.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love cooking to music, so it depends on my mood, but there is this song by the Beach Boys called Vegetables that’s really cute.

Keep Posted on Phi:

Facebook, Instagram… I do a lot of cross posting. If you are following me on Twitter, sometimes I rant a lot.

012: Maria Siriano: How To Have Fun Baking and Her Top Baking Tip

March 13, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Sift and Whisk

Today we’re chatting about baking and for me the best part of any dinner, dessert.

Maria is a self-taught baker and dessert maker whose love of baking and sweet things shine through on her blog and in her photography.

I am so pumped to have Maria Siriano from Sift and Whisk here on the show.

On Starting Her Blog:

I used to work in textbook publishing and I actually started off as an intern, literally the day after I graduated college. So I was doing that for about a year and a half and they brought me on from intern to being a temp. The company went on a hiring freeze right before I was about to interview for a permanent job so that kind of sucked. I then was able to go freelance doing publishing stuff.

So I was at home doing textbook editing and I was baking all time because it’s stress relief for me.

In Ohio, which is where I live, we have cottage bakery laws so you can have a home-based bakery, sell stuff at farmers’ markets and that’s what I started doing. I did that for a year and half while I was editing.

Because I was selling stuff I had a website that I created for my bakery and I was doing a blog. So I would put some recipes on there of the stuff that I didn’t sell because I really only sold cookies and occasionally cupcakes but I really enjoyed the blog process and the photography process more than actually going to farmers’ markets and selling.

I was making the same thing every single day which didn’t really appeal to me. So I was like I want to experiment and try new stuff and take more pictures. I was really into photography in high school so then I kind of gradually shut down the home-based bakery and picked up full-time with the blogging.

It has been a little over two years now, it was two years in November and I love it. It is the best job anybody could ask for. Now that’s what I do entirely.

I want to share things with people.

I find that I get a lot more joy out of sharing with a broader audience than I do in a really niche market of just my hometown. So it’s a great way for me to connect with people.

On The Process of Blogging and What Comes Most Naturally:

I still don’t think that it comes naturally to me and whenever somebody compliments me on any of those things I’m like OK what do you want.

But it takes a lot of work and I can see improvement in myself. I’m still trying to improve everything I do because I have my own style of writing. I am an English major. I was really good at writing essays about literature, but I’m not a fiction type person and I always say I’m just such a narcissist and that’s why I can do a blog because I can just write about myself all day.

It’s like journaling. For me it is really cathartic, and I like to have a sense of humor about it and I hope that people appreciate that sense of humor. I hope that I don’t offend anybody ever. I am always worried about that.

Then the photography, I am obsessed with looking at other people’s photography. I always feel like I am almost there, and then somedays I’m just like this is just crap. I still struggle with it, and feeling like it’s good, but if somebody else looks at it and thinks it’s good, I’m over the moon.

But basically my blog is exactly how I talk but with less cursing because I try to keep it clean because maybe a fourteen year old will want a cookie recipe, and then I’ll feel really bad if their parents are like, “Oh, stop cursing.”

On Her Connection to Baking:

In my family growing up, we almost never cooked homemade meals. We did a lot of the frozen. We were like Stouffers‘ people. We did the lasagna. My mom made a couple different meals that she would do like homemade meatloaf, but homemade is in quotations because she would do the Hungry Man or whatever that is in the can.

Both my parents worked, and she was going to college when I was a kid so it was all very take out and boxed food and all that. Whereas my husband grew up in house where they cooked dinner every single night, they rarely went out to eat. So when we moved in together, I was like, “Oh my gosh, he is cooking me dinner every night. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.” But it took some getting used to. Because we never cooked in my family.

The one thing that we did was bake. For a while we did a lot of boxed mix stuff like cakes like that. We weren’t really fancy about it or precise about it, but we did a lot of cookies, which is my first from scratch baking experience. We did molasses cookies which is a recipe I did on my blog and is still one of my favorite recipes because it is my family’s recipe.

I always want to learn how to cook so what I started doing a couple months ago up until the Holiday craziness set in, I was saying “I am cooking dinner every Wednesday night because I need to learn to cook.”

For awhile right after I got laid off at my publishing job, my parents were trying to kick me back some money so they were like, “Hey, come cook for us. Make freezer meals and we will pay you.” So I would cook everything for them and freeze it, and they’d give me a hundred bucks a week or something and I was like, “Thanks mom and dad.”

Everything I make always turns out really good if I follow the recipe but I can’t do what my husband does which is open the fridge and be like, “Oh, I will just throw all this stuff together and we have dinner.” I can’t do it.

On Baking Being More of a Science Than Cooking:

Whenever people are like I want to get into more baking, I am always like buy a scale. That is my number one advice is buy a kitchen scale. It’ll set you back 30 bucks and it’ll change everything.

My husband has had relative success baking with his kind of free-form method. There are certain things I think that you can do if you like dessert and want to make dessert but don’t want to do all the complicated stuff, and it gets a little what I call “semi-homemade with Sandra Lee.”

You can go to the store and you can buy pre-made pound cake. You can dice that and put some strawberries in it and some whipped cream and that’s really easy. You can just pour sugar or whatever and just toss everything together and that’s really easy to do. You don’t have to do a lot of measuring and things like that.

Even pie, if you don’t make your own crust, the filling you can guesstimate and if it’s not thick enough you add a little more corn starch or you bake it a little longer and it’s not so daunting, but there are certain things that I would stay away from.

Cookies can flop miserably if they aren’t very accurate and cakes, so I think that it just depends upon how desperately you want something.

On Things Not Going as Planned in the Kitchen:

I did a black forest pie for my husband and I got the wrong type of liqueur for the filling and I just ran all over town. I actually literally have the bowl of the first filling sitting on my counter top just sitting out right now because I’m like, “Maybe I can put this on French toast tomorrow morning.” I don’t know what to do with it.

There was one time I made, a couple years ago, and this didn’t even make it to the blog because I was so over it, but it was a lemon zucchini bread. It tasted like rubber. I don’t know what happened. It was so disgusting. I made two of them because I am always really hopeful that it’s going to turn out. Instead of paring back a recipe, I just go all in. So I had two of these loaves of rubber, and I just threw them in the trashcan because I will rage eat the bad stuff. I eat it because I am like, “I hate you so much.” I don’t understand it but that’s what I do.

I had that with macaroons. I made those literally ten times before I finally got one that was blog-worthy.

I was like, “I will go to the bakery down the street.” We have a really good French bakery down the street and they make amazing ones. I’m like, “Why do we even bother.”

On Getting an Idea to The Blog:

What I usually do is I start off with a seasonal ingredient and I do a lot research on that. If there is nothing seasonal then I go with chocolate, caramel, peanut butter, things like that, but I try to stick to seasonal because I am a big fruit person, and I know people are always like, “Make more chocolate.” And I’m like, “No.”

So I start off with finding something seasonal that I want to work with and then I have the book called The Flavor Bible. I will go through there and there’s a list of complementary ingredients and flavors and I will go through there and kind of get inspired by that.

Then I will just think of all the formats and I try to flesh out the categories equally so like pies, cakes, cookies, whatever, but I will say I tend to skew toward pie. I like pie. I will end up with so many pies and tarts that I am like, “Oh my gosh, I have to tone it down,” but I love making them. And then summer, ice cream, I’ll just do ice cream until my ears bleed.

And honestly, a lot of what I do is built off other people’s work because that is what’s great about making recipes is you can. A lot of the testing is done by other people for you so you can find a base or find something similar. Like the roasted plum, I knew somebody had done a roasted peach ice cream, so I said, “Okay, if she did it like this and used this method for peaches, I can do the same thing with plums,” and kind of build from there.

I always try my best to list my source because I’m not a genius. I can’t just make up scientific baking things in my mind.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

So this is embarrassing but I don’t have cable so I don’t watch a ton, but what I do have is some Alton Brown, Good Eats.

We actually have them downloaded and when we travel, we will put episodes on our iPad and watch those because they’re fantastic and full of science.

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

Everything.

I have a thousand in my feed. I am a huge fan of Serious Eats because again they do a lot of science so I love listening to all of that, reading all that.

Blogs, I love Bakers Royale, her photography is just ridiculous and I’m jealous. Also Half Baked Harvest, and my friend Sarah who does the Sugar Hit and my friend Elizabeth who does Sugar Hero.

Elizabeth does candy and she’s amazing because I cannot do candy to save my life.

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

Bonnie Tsang. I think she is the one that has the little daughter, and she is so cute and every time, she just posts really fun and brightly colored things. Every time I see a picture, it just makes my heart happy.

What is something all home cooks should have in their pantry?

All home cooks should have chocolate.

I can’t tell you how much you can make with chocolate but if you don’t have it, it kind of stinks.

So the great thing about chocolate is if you have it, you can just eat it. If you don’t want to just eat chocolate, you can make all kinds of stuff with it like pudding, whip that up really fast, or just add it to any other thing and it makes it better.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Butter. It is very simple for me. I go through so much butter it is not even funny. Every time I do a vegan recipe, I am like, “Where is the butter?”

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Oh my god, everything. I collect cookbooks so I just love everything. My favorite cookbook is the Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook because it is just such a great reference. If you want to riff on something, they’ve got such a great base recipes.

I also really love, this isn’t baking but, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution book. We cook a lot out of there, and since I’m not very good at cooking, it is really easy for me to follow. It’s got a revolutionary way of making rice that is just fantastic and lots of Indian food which I love.

I love all of the Baked cookbooks, Baked Bakery in New York. I get all of them as soon as they come out.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

This is really embarrassing, from West Side Story, the song, I want to live in America.

I am a big proponent of singing show tunes while I’m baking, it has such an up beat, it’s just very upbeat so it really gets me going and on track, and the solid beat of it makes me do everything in a timely fashion.

Keep Posted on Maria:

I’m best at updating Facebook. I’m terrible at Twitter, so yeah definitely follow me on Facebook because you will always see the new recipes. Any other things that are a little bit personal, and maybe kind of funny, is on Twitter, but I’m not regular about it.

On Starting Her Blog:

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

On Her Food Heroes:

On Cooking as an Exercise in Patience:

On a Dish She Finds Challenging and Requires Patience:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Hannah:

On Discovering Her Passion for Baking:

On Her Culinary School Experience:

On Working in Restaurants:

On Deciding to Start Her Freelance Career and SugarHero.com:

On Her Book, The Sweet Book of Candy Making:

On Candy Making:

On Resources for Learning More About Candy Making:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Elizabeth:

On What He Isn’t:

On His Blog:

On an Interesting Ingredient He Enjoys Cooking With:

On a Cooking Technique We Have to Try:

On How He Learned to Cook:

On Making Every Bite Count:

On Getting the Most out of Food Experiences:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Aaron:

On Her Blog:

On Her YouTube Channel:

On Her Process for Her Videos:

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

On Cooking From Scratch with Whole Foods and Natural Ingredients:

On Some Resources For Learning to Cook from Scratch:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Joanne:

On Her Career Before Food:

On Her Introduction to Cooking:

On Turning Her Hobby into Her Career:

On the Type of Cooking that’s Most Natural:

On Where She Finds Inspiration for Her Blog:

On Things Not Going As Planned in the Kitchen:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Liz:

On Growing Up in a Home Where Food Was Enjoyed and Shared:

On Being in the Kitchen:

On Veganism:

On Becoming Vegan:

On Baking Vegan and Her Blog:

On the Biggest Misconception of Baking Vegan:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Abby:

On Her Blog:

On Where Her Inspiration Comes From:

On Her Love of Food:

On Cooking as a Vegetarian:

On Making Cooking More Fun:

On Messing Up in the Kitchen:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Phi:

On Starting Her Blog:

On The Process of Blogging and What Comes Most Naturally:

On Her Connection to Baking:

On Baking Being More of a Science Than Cooking:

On Things Not Going as Planned in the Kitchen:

On Getting an Idea to The Blog:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Maria:

Have Maria’s Special Recipe Sent To You Now: