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Gabe’s Journal 001

March 1, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Gabe's Journal 001 The Dinner Special podcast

Hi Everyone!

I just wanted to post a quick video to share a couple of super exciting things with you!

We’re six episodes in!

Thanks to my amazing first six food hero guests, the podcast has been downloaded over 350 times in the last week, with listeners from all over the world – from here in Canada and the US, the United Kingdom, to all the way in Australia, Cambodia, Iran, India and Hong Kong.

I’m overwhelmed by the support. So, really, thank you.

I was so nervous this last week to let my food hero guests know that The Dinner Special podcast was live and website was up. My head was swirling with thoughts like: What would they think? Would they like it? What if they think it’s horrible? Then what?

But, I was so relieved when I started getting emails congratulating me and really nice comments like, “This podcast is exactly the kind of food podcast I love.”

“I’m really excited to see my episode so I can share it with everyone!”

“I’m rekindling my love of podcasts thanks to you!”

So nice. Thank you.

I’m sharing all this not to brag, but really to say thanks to my first six food hero guests: Claire Thomas of The Kitchy Kitchen, chefs Cyrus Todiwala and Tony Singh of The Incredible Spice Men, Jordan Reid of Ramshackle Glam, Elena Rosemond-Hoerr of Biscuits and Such, Eva Kosmas Flores of Adventures in Cooking, and Nicole Dula of Dula Notes.

Thank you so much for sharing your stories, tips and excitement for cooking and food!

Of course, I want to thank YOU too for listening! Wherever you’re listening from.

There are some awesome food hero guests coming up this week, so make sure to catch their episodes. The easiest way is to subscribe to The Dinner Special on iTunes, it can be a bit confusing so I wrote a step-by-step how-to HERE (scroll to the bottom of the page).

Also, if you enjoy the show, please rate and review The Dinner Special podcast on iTunes. This will help share the show with as many people as possible. Again, I’ve posted a how-to HERE (scroll to the bottom of the page).

Thank you for an awesome first week! Talk soon!

Filed Under: Gabe's Journal Tagged With: Adventures in Cooking, Biscuits and Such, Claire Thomas, Cyrus Todiwala, Dula Notes, Elena Rosemond-Hoerr, Eva Kosmas Flores, Jordan Reid, Nicole Dula, Ramshackle Glam, The Incredible Spice Men, The Kitchy Kitchen, Tony Singh

Lazy Day with The Kitchy Kitchen, The Incredible Spice Men and Ramshackle Glam

February 28, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Lazy Day with Claire Thomas of The Kitchy Kitchen, The Incredible Spice Men, and Jordan Reid of Ramshackle Glam on The Dinner Special podcast share their favorite things

 

Lazy Day with Claire Thomas of The Kitchy Kitchen, The Incredible Spice Men, and Jordan Reid of Ramshackle Glam on The Dinner Special podcast share their favorite things

Lazy Day is a weekly series for those quiet evenings or relaxed Sunday mornings where you finally have a break from the busy-ness of the week to collect your thoughts.

Each week, I gather together some of my food hero guests’ favourite things to make it easier for you.

Whether it’s a cookbook mentioned on the podcast, TV shows they tune into, notable goodies to YouTube or Google, or awesome food blogs to follow, you’ll find many of the things mentioned on their episodes here.

The information super highway (do people still use this term?) is such a HUGE place, and for me, sometimes I don’t even know where to start looking. I hope this series gives you a good jumping off point.

Claire Thomas, The Kitchy Kitchen

Claire Thomas of The Kitchy Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast

In case you missed Claire’s episode, you can find show highlights and listen to it HERE. You can also catch her World Ending, Last Meal YouTube video HERE.

Claire's Cookbook:The Kitchy Kitchen cookbook
One of Claire's Favorite Magazines:Gastronomica Magazine
A Food Show She Enjoys: No Reservations
Some Food Blogs We Have to Know About:Joy the Baker
Whitney A.
A Cozy Kitchen
People To Follow on Pinterest:
Bonnie Tsang
Jenni Kayne
People to Follow on Instagram:Nectar and Stone
Compartes Chocolate
Cookbooks That Make Her Life Better:The Joy of Cooking
A Shaker Cookbook: Not by Bread Alone

Chefs Cyrus Todiwala and Tony Singh, The Incredible Spice Men

The Incredible Spice Men talk about the idea for their TV show.

Catch episode highlights and listen to The Incredible Spice Men on The Dinner Special podcast HERE. If you missed their World Ending, Last Meal, it’s on YouTube HERE.

The Incredible Spice Men Cookbook:The Incredible Spice Men cookbook
TV Shows They Enjoy:Saturday Kitchen
MasterChef
Diners Drive-Ins and Dives
Movies They Would Watch Together: Airplane!
Blazing Saddles
Some Cookbooks That Make Their Lives Better:La Technique
La Methode
Parsi Food and Customs
Music They Think Pairs Well With Their Cookbook: Space Odyssey soundtrack
The Muppets soundtrack
The Jungle Book soundtrack

Jordan Reid, Ramshackle Glam

Jordan Reid of Ramshackle Glam on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to make cooking more fun if home cooking feels like a chore.

Jordan’s podcast episode and show highlights can be found HERE. You can also view her World Ending, Last Meal on The Dinner Special YouTube channel HERE.

Jordan's Book:Ramshackle Glam: The New Mom's Haphazard Guide To (Almost) Having It All
A Food Blog We Have to Know About:Always Order Dessert
Someone Jordan Follows on Pinterest That Makes Her Happy:Cup of Jo
A Few Cookbooks That Make Jordan's Life Better:Jamie Oliver's FIRST book
Mario Batali's cookbooks

I hope this first Lazy Day post was interesting and helpful!

I would love to get your feedback in the comments below. What else might be interesting in helping to navigate the HUGE Internet to enrich your culinary journey?

Don’t forget to subscribe to The Dinner Special podcast on iTunes HERE, so you don’t miss a single episode every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

I’m really looking forward to hearing from you!

Gabriel

Filed Under: Lazy Day Tagged With: Chef Cyrus Todiwala, Chef Tony Singh, Claire Thomas, Jordan Reid, Lazy Day, Ramshackle Glam, The Incredible Spice Men, The Kitchy Kitchen

001: Claire Thomas: What To NEVER Bring To A Dinner Party

February 20, 2015 by Gabriel

Claire Thomas of The Kitchy Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast
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Claire Thomas of The Kitchy Kitchen on What to never bring to a dinner party.

The Kitchy Kitchen

I am super excited to have the amazing, the awesome Claire Thomas here as my special guest today.

She is doing a lot of really cool stuff. Apart from her website The Kitchy Kitchen, Claire also has a cookbook called The Kitchy Kitchen. She has a television series called Food For Thought with Claire Thomas, and in my opinion, she is rockin’ it.

She is truly on a mission to help us home cooks amp up our everyday dinner routines.

On Her Interest in Food History:

Claire Thomas of The Kitchy Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast

I fell across food history. I read this article. It’s in one of my favorite magazines called Gastronomica. It was an article about how Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper is neither kosher nor Aramaic. It misses it on both accounts, and I thought that was so funny because the Passover meal is kind of a set script. Everyone knows what that is. It seemed sort of a weird place to take artistic license.

As I read the article, it talked about how he actually just put his favorite food in the painting, which is eel with orange slices, which I thought does not sound Italian. He’s Florentinian, so I expected pasta or something like that.

Then it occurred to me that he probably didn’t have pasta. They definitely didn’t have tomatoes. They did not have corn. They didn’t have so many of the things we think about as being integral to the Italian canon of cuisine.

So it sent me on this weird journey of, “What was Italian cuisine before the Age of Exploration?” Just really weird, nerdy side projects.

So I ended up just falling in love with food history.

I found it to be the closest thing to a time machine, because if you understand how people ate, you understand how they lived, their economy, their environment, the politics of the time. Some of the funniest and oldest laws on the book for major cities like Venice, for instance, are actually food-related, something people have seemed to be historically very persnickety about. So you get a great sense of, I guess, people’s personalities through history.

What I love about it too is it’s something inescapable about the human condition. We have to eat.

I love how it makes me feel connected to the past, and the people who lived in the past. Because a lot of times, we can think of them as figures in oil paintings with funny wigs, or that kind of thing. It’s cool to think of them as real people who had very strong opinions. Some of them like their food salty, some of them liked it spicy. That kind of thing.

On Starting The Kitchy Kitchen Blog:

Claire Thomas of The Kitchy Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about starting The Kitchy Kitchen blog

It’s so funny thinking about where my blog started and where it is now.

I started the blog as a little fun place to put my creativity. My job was kind of boring, and my mom saw I was struggling. At this point, I was really full-blown geeking out over food history and recipe testing. She said, “Why don’t you start a food blog?” Which wasn’t really a thing four years ago as much as it is now.

Being a nerd who didn’t understand how the Internet worked, I thought, “Oh, then okay, I have to prep everything. I have to have really great recipes and learn how to shoot.” I put all this pressure on myself not realizing that the Internet is like you’re a tree falling in the middle of a forest. You can fail in anonymity for very long, so it was great.

I learned how to shoot food photography by basically just picking up a camera and shooting it and staring at the picture and trying to figure out what was wrong with it. It was basically trial and error. My dad’s actually kind of an amateur photographer. He loves photography. It all came down to lighting. So we would have conversations about where the light was coming from and what exactly it was doing.

Then I started noticing food styling. I was able to basically quit my job that I had and become a full-time food stylist.

The blog was just pretty interesting. It started out very pretentious. If you go too far back, the food is kind of over-the-top. I think I was trying a little too hard. I was trying to appear very sophisticated, and it’s funny.

On Messing Up in the Kitchen:

s of The Kitchy Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talks about messing up in the kitchen

The opening line of my cookbook is “Have you cried yet?”

Literally. I’ve had my fair share of kitchen disasters, and still do. It’s funny. Like when I recipe test, most of the time, I’ve gotten it down to where I understand recipe structure really well at this point.

The one place that I’ve seen the most kitchen disasters is with attempts at gluten-free and vegan baking, because it’s just chemistry. It’s straight-up chemistry.

Do you guys have a BJ’s in Canada? It’s where I used to eat in middle school all the time. It’s like a pizza parlor.

They have a thing on the menu called the Pizookie. It’s a chocolate chip cookie that’s cooked in a pizza plate, and it’s gooey in the middle. They serve it with a scoop of ice cream on top. It’s wonderful.

I thought, “Oh, how cool would it be to do like a gluten-free, vegan version of that. Almost like a flourless chocolate cake, but a chocolate chip cookie.” I thought like, “Oh, this won’t be that hard.”

I had soup.

I had gluten-free, vegan, chocolate chip cookie soup the first three times I tried to make this thing. It just would not come together.

On What to (not) Bring for a Dinner Party:

Claire Thomas of The Kitchy Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about what not to bring to a dinner party.

What I tell people whenever they come to a party I’m throwing, they asks, “Oh, how should I do my event?” or whatever. I always tell them, “Don’t ever try something the first time at a party. It’s just Murphy’s Law. It’s not going to work ever.”

It’s this need to impress. We want to be fancy and cool in front of our friends. My aunt has this cookbook called Cooking For Compliments, which is amazing just because of the title. Because at least it’s open about it, cooking for those compliments.

I mean, honestly, if you want to cook for compliments, if you want to impress people when you go to a party, just bring the dessert, because people will love a mediocre dessert and will not forgive a mediocre salad. So you will never get a high-five like, “Oh my gosh, amazing salad!” That never happens at a dinner party.

You could bring boxed brownies. I’m not kidding. If you bring boxed brownies, people will be like, “Oh, I love boxed brownies. Thank you so much. This is fantastic.” No one would be mad at you. Everyone would be totally happy about it.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

No Reservations

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

Joy the Baker, she’s a buddy of mine and she’s amazing.

Then Whitney A. My girlfriend, Whitney, is a sommelier and is amazing at putting together events and pairing wine and food. Those are definitely two of my favorites.

Also A Cozy Kitchen is another favorite. There are so many.

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

On Pinterest, I follow Bonnie Tsang. She has like a million followers. But she’s a photographer and she has so many great little pics. Also, Jenni Kayne. She’s a designer here in L.A. who I love. She’s so chic. She just picks beautiful, minimalist items.

Instagram, there are a few people I just followed that I thought were really, really special.

Nectar and Stone was one that I follow. She’s a patisserie person. She makes these just ridiculous, ridiculous confections. Then, I guess, also my friend, Jonathan from Compartes. He’s a chocolatier, and he always posts photos from his chocolate-making process.

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

I’d say for me, sriracha. Because, full disclosure, on weekday nights when I’m just lazy, my favorite dinner to make is scrambled eggs. I love eggs in general. I did scrambled eggs with a little bit of sweet soy sauce and whatever soft herbs I had. So basil, cilantro, green onion. Whatever I had, and then sriracha. That was it, and it was just the best thing. It was so good.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Butter.

Brown butter makes it much better.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

The Joy of Cooking is important in sort of an encyclopedic way. I mean, it doesn’t have that heart but it’s just such a great reference.

I collect vintage cookbooks. I have a couple dozen now. They’re so fun to me. The one that I actually cook out of the most though is called A Shaker Cookbook Not By Bread Alone. You can actually find it all over eBay. It is not a difficult vintage cookbook to find.

But vintage cookbooks have a habit of being poorly edited. A lot of times, the recipes haven’t been tested at all. A lot of times they’re presented in paragraph format, and they will actually say sometimes like, “You should know how to do this.” I was reading a recipe for a welsh rarebit, and they listed, “Cheese and toast. You should know how to make this.”

The Shaker cookbook is filled with amazing pie recipes.

It’s a great sort of anthropological look at the Shaker community and their approach to food. It has titles like Sister Amelia’s Strawberry Flummery, which I don’t know what that is, but it sounds magical.

It’s ridiculous sounding. But it’s fun. I love it, and I cook from it all the time. The recipes are really well edited. They’ve been tested a million times, and I’ve been very impressed.

If you’re going to start a vintage cookbook collection, that’s actually a pretty good one to start with.

Keep Posted on Claire:

Claire Thomas of The Kitchy Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with what she

Well, my YouTube channel. I post on my YouTube channel three times a week. If you guys are looking for things between showings of Food For Thought and between the blog, you can always find some fun, new content there. I do everything from quick little tips to full-blown recipes.

Then otherwise, Instagram. If you @ mention me, or say hello, I’ll say hi back. I follow a lot of my own followers. I love reaching out to you guys. Please find me out there.

Have Claire’s Special Dinner Dish Recipe Sent To You Now:

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    Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: A Cozy Kitchen, A Shaker Cookbook Not By Bread Alone, BJ's, Bonnie Tsang, Claire Thomas, Compartes, Cookbook Author, Cooking Show Host, Dinner Party, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Food For Thought, Gastronomica, Jenni Kayne, Joy the Baker, Nectar and Stone, No Reservations, Pizookie, The Joy of Cooking, The Kitchy Kitchen, Whitney A.

    Hello! I'm Gabriel Soh, home cook, food enthusiast and your host of The Dinner Special podcast.
    Everything here on The Dinner Special is an experiment, just like with cooking. Thank you for listening and being part of the adventure.

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