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117: Hannah Kirshner: Studying Food Through Work

April 6, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Hannah Kirshner of Sweets and Bitters on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.
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Hannah Kirshner of Sweets & Bitters on The Dinner Special podcast talking about studying food through work.

Sweets & Bitters

Hannah is the founder and editor of Sweets & Bitters, a blog and series of printed mini-cookbooks offering a beautiful and practical vision of everyday pleasure. Each volume features fun recipes with helpful tips, and sets the scene with photo essays.

Hannah grew up on a small farm in Washington State, and continued to study food by working her way through a number of varied food roles: from harvesting herbs on an organic farm to developing recipes for publications. She is happiest when her creative and culinary interests overlap.

On A Dish that is Special to Her:

Hannah Kirshner of Sweets and Bitters on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her special dish.

Since I’m just back from my time in Japan, I’m thinking about Japanese food a lot. I had a little apartment there, and I would cook every day. I would go shop. There was a produce market and a butcher right next to my apartment on my street. It was so fun to go each day and get fresh things from them, and try and cook.

But I didn’t get to learn recipes as much as I wanted to. I’d imagined that I would be cooking with grandmas and getting behind the scenes in restaurants. And it took two months just to get to the point where I had those relationships. So maybe next time I go back, I’ll get to do that. But mostly, I was just cooking classic Japanese comfort dishes, or things that I already knew. I definitely had to shift the way that I cooked to suit the type of kitchen ingredients I had there.

One of my favorite things to cook for myself is Oyakodon, which is the rice bowl with chicken and egg. It roughly translates to mother and child bowl, which I just think is delightful.

First of all, let me just describe the whole dish for anybody that doesn’t know. It’s chicken thigh, usually, like the dark meat of chicken, and egg, and some negi, which is the Japanese green onion. It’s like a scallion, in between a scallion and a leek. It’s thicker than a scallion and a little sweeter. But you can easily use scallion too. So you’ve got the chicken, the egg, the negi, and sort of a sweet sauce, with sake, mirin, soy sauce, and dashi, the Japanese kelp and fish stock. And it’s over rice, so it’s just sweet and salty and savory, and it’s over rice. And it’s really easy and fast to make.

I would just crisp the skin of the chicken first, under the broiler, because that was my little change to it, because I love crisp chicken skin. And then, meanwhile make the sauce — dashi, mirin, soy sauce, and sake, and just get the balance of the sauce to taste right. And really, it can be to taste, a little sugar in there too. Then, add the chicken to that, cut it up into little bite-sized pieces, because you’re going to eat it with chopsticks, and then put that in the sauce. And then when it’s almost done, add the negi or a scallion. Then you beat a couple of eggs with a little bit more dashi, and just pour that into the pan, and let it almost cook, and just slide the whole thing onto a big bowl of rice.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I actually don’t watch any, I don’t have television.

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

As far as blogs, I really love David Lebovitz, he mostly writes about baking, and cooking in his little kitchen in Paris. And he’s so funny, and witty, and his recipes are really, really reliable. Also, the New York Times cooking site I use a lot. I really love the recipes form the New York Times.

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

Instagram is the only one that I really use. And farm animals, flowers, and food are the only things I want to feed my feed. Saipua, I don’t know if I’m saying their name right either, but it’s a florist from Brooklyn, and they actually moved upstate, and have a farm. I really love following them.

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

Just back from Japan, I actually purchased an iron nabe, big cooking pot, which made my luggage really heavy. But it’s hand hammered iron with a cedar lid, and it makes the kitchen smell like Japan every time I cook in it.

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

I think I still dislike all the things I’ve always disliked. There’s only a few. I don’t like peanut butter.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I really like the classics like, Joy of Cooking and Fannie Farmer. I like, How to Cook Everything. And then again, David Lebovitz, and Dorie Greenspan for baking, they’re two of my favorites.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

There are some funny old jazz song like, Everybody Eats When They Come to my House.

On Keeping Posted with Hannah:

Hannah Kirshner of Sweets and Bitters on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.

Mostly I use Instagram, though I’m on Twitter and Facebook.

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: David Lebovitz, Dorie Greenspan, Fannie Farmer, Food Blog, Food Writer, Hannah Kirshner, How to Cook Everything, Japan, Joy of Cooking, mini-Cookbooks, New York Times cooking, Sweets & Bitters

115: Lilian: Inspiration from Old-School Food and Philosophy

March 23, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Lilian of Chinese Grandma on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.
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Lilian of Chinese Grandma on The Dinner Special podcast talking about being inspired by old-school food and philosophy.

Chinese Grandma

Lilian is not a Chinese grandma. Rather she’s a mother of four who believes in old-school food and philosophy inspired by her Chinese grandmas. Her heart is in home cooking, which she describes as uncomplicated, healthful, and satisfying food you can live on, and thinks food should be fresh, comforting, and nourishing. Apart from her food, Lilian shares personal stories about being an adult and discoveries that inspire her. Her blog, Chinese Grandma, was a finalist in the 2014 SAVEUR Best Food Blog Award for Best Family Cooking Blog.

I’m so excited to have Lilian of Chinese Grandma here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Lilian’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

Lilian of Chinese Grandma on The Dinner Special podcast talking about starting her food blog.

The funny thing is, well, I have four kids and when I started the blog five years ago, almost six years ago, my fourth child was nine months old or something like that. And it was a little crazy, of course, and we were living in Ohio, which was a temporary thing. And I’m from California, and all the kids were born here. I need some space that’s just mine, and I really wanted to write and I kept thinking, “I’m going to write a book someday.” And then I thought, “I have four kids, who am I kidding? I’m never going to have time to write a book.” I just want to do something that’s doable. And I thought, “If I can just get this thing started, I can keep up with it.”

We were going home to California for the summer, and I’d gotten this email from Stanford’s Continuing Education Program. And they have this great writing program. I’ve taken a class or two in the past. So they had this class on blogging, and the goal by end is to launch your blog. And we were going to be home for seven weeks, and it was a six-week course right in that slot. And I thought, “Okay, sign me up.” And I got it going that summer, and that was the beginning of it. And it’s been great.

On Sharing Her Personal Stories on Chinese Grandma:

Lilian of Chinese Grandma on The Dinner Special podcast talking about sharing her personal stories on her blog

I do share some really personal things. When my dad died, I wrote about it. And I write about getting older a lot. I write about parenting, because I just feel like being a new parent is so nerve-wracking. This is why the first kid is always the experimental child. You never feel like you know what you’re doing. And then the other kids have more relaxed parents, because you’ve been around, and you’re more of a veteran. I just feel like I really have always felt that if we can share our stories, that life gets easier for all of us, and I think that for the blog, it’s about the food and the stuff I’ve tried that I know works and I can count on.

The life stuff and the family stuff, I don’t write about stuff when I’m in it, but then afterwards, when I’ve had time to reflect, I think, “Okay I learned something from that.” And I want to share it. When you’re young, you always feel anxious and nervous about what’s ahead, and also just always striving. And then older people, like our grandmas, they have this sense of peace. I just feel like I’m a little of that now. So what I’ve learned now, I’m going to try and share with other people.

On Learning How to Cook:

Lilian of Chinese Grandma on The Dinner Special podcast talking about learning how to cook.

My mom is an amazing cook. Chinese food is, of course, her focus. She came from China. And that is always a little intimidating to me. My mom, she makes amazing pot stickers, because she’s from northern China. And she and my dad were a great team. My dad would roll the dough, and my mom would make the filling. I would try to make them, really bad ones. You could always tell which ones were mine, but that kind of stuff was fun. But to me, my mom is just so great. Everything she did was very time consuming and intricate.

And I learned from messing around by myself. I’d check out other cookbooks in the library. And then I’ve learned from friends too. I had this friend from Italy when I was in college, and when I went to Italy to visit and just saw that whole food world, that was amazing too, and just the simplicity of it really appealed to me. Whereas I love to make things my mom makes, but it always pales, because my mom is this very seasoned pro. I think everyone with their grandmas knows, they don’t write down recipes. And when you replicate it, it’s never quite the same, even though I have tried to capture some of that in recipes on the blog.

But as a Californian, growing up here, and the whole produce thing, I really go for simple. And I really go for great ingredients, and not doing so much to it, and just enjoying the perfection of nature in a way.

On Her Idea of Chinese Grandma Cooking:

Lilian of Chinese Grandma on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her idea of Chinese grandma cooking.

It’s funny, because my dad’s mom lived with us. She was a very independent person. She always cooked on her own, cooked her own food, she didn’t eat with us. She wanted to do her thing. She grew stuff. And I have no idea what she cooked, actually, because she had a little kitchen that’s set up back in her room behind the garage, and she did her thing. So I guess my idea of Chinese grandma cooking really does come from my mom, and I think her dumplings are the main thing. It’s about to be Chinese New Year. She’s going to make them. She puts little treasures inside. It tells your fortune for the year. And those are incredible. To me, that’s just the ultimate food from my childhood.

On Wisdom From Her Chinese Grandmas:

They are Depression era grandparents. They are just so super resourceful. They never needed anything, and they just got by. And I think that anti-materialism is so ingrained in me. It’s my dad too. He was an engineer, and he was like MacGyver. You need something? He’s going to make it out of whatever scraps he has. And I think that is, especially in this modern age, and I have indulgences that I love too, but to know that you don’t really need any of it, I just think it’s so powerful.

Also, to know that you are creative, and you can make something, and you can fashion something, whether it’s dinner out of the random scraps in your fridge, or fixing something that’s broken. I just think that to know that we have that creative power, that industriousness and that resourcefulness, that to me, is really a fundamental part of not just who I am, but I hope to pass that on to my kids. Because I think to know that you can be independent and make stuff happen is great.

On Being a Parent to Four Children and How it Changed the Way She Cooks:

Lilian of Chinese Grandma on The Dinner Special podcast talking about being a parent to four children.

Yes, my kids actually now, my oldest is 14, and my next oldest is 12, and even my 7-year-old, they love food and they’re open to all kinds of stuff. But for years, I had a lot of white food, plain pasta, stuff for the kids. And so I would make stuff for us, but then you’d have these dumbed-down version for my picky ones. I feel like we all have our right to our preferences. And taste buds do change. All of us who are adults know that.

I think I’m not into forcing anybody to do anything. I do try to appeal to their better nature. So they’ve always been great fruit eaters and a little mixed on the vegetables. But I feel like as long as you’re getting natural, good, fresh food, I’m not going to stress if you aren’t eating broccoli. It’s okay. But one thing is the kids do like food simple, and I do try and keep it simple. And sometimes we eat pancakes for dinner.

You can’t be the parent following a kid around with a spoon, and making deals for one more bite, the kid doesn’t have a good relationship to food. You need to let them make their choices.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I actually don’t watch any, because I’m not a TV person. So I totally don’t watch any, although my kids did love to watch Barefoot Contessa, that was on quite a bit. I actually bought my first kid, when he was like your kid’s age, maybe a little older, but I bought him the series of Barefoot Contessa, because he loved it so much. It was next to Sesame Street.

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

Well, either ones of people that are just so amazing that everybody knows like Smitten Kitchen and David Lebovitz. And also the ones of people that I have met, like when I went to the SAVEUR event a couple of years ago, Molly Yeh from My Name is Yeh, she’s amazing, and Cynthia from Two Red Bowls. Her photography is so, so great. Josh from Culinary Bro-Down is really the funniest person on earth. I love him, even though…Actually, we’re talking about, he’s this UCLA kid and I’m this mom of four. So its Chinese Grandma, and he’s like, “Oh, so you’re a grandma?” And I said, “No, Josh. I’m not a grandma.” I tried not to make him feel bad, but, of course, I felt pretty ancient. But he is hilarious, and I love him, so all kinds of great people. Naz Deravian who writes Bottom of the Pot who was on your show, and Emma who was also on, My Darling Lemon Thyme. When you know the people, it’s also even more fun to see their work and read their work.

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

Yes, gosh, Cynthia is amazing, her photography from Two Red Bowls. Valentina, who was also on your show from Hortus Natural Cuisine, her photography is gorgeous. I do love seeing people’s photography even though it makes me feel a little bad about my own. But of course, Instagram is all about the joy in photography, so I love that.

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

My brother and sister-in-law had given me this Jiffy Pop, and it’s got the little crank handle. And it’s genius. With the air popper, you have to melt the butter and put all that on, and it never gets distributed evenly. With the Jiffy Pop, because you pop the popcorn in oil, you really don’t need to add anything, except salt.

I also love it because I make kettle corn, and if you use a regular pot, it is prone to scorching, because the sugar scorches the bottom. But if you use the Jiffy Pop, and you’re stirring, it doesn’t scorch, and you get this perfect kettle corn, and that’s so awesome to make in three seconds at home. My kids love it.

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

Anchovies. I don’t even know if I even ate anchovies as a kid, but you’re always scared of them on pizza. But as an adult, I love anchovies. And if I can get Caesar salad with anchovies, I love it. Anchovies are awesome. I like to sneak them in my pasta sauce when nobody is looking. I love them.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Okay, The River Café, they’ve got two books. I think they are called it, Italian Easy and Italian Two Easy. But Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers started this restaurant in London decades ago. It’s like Chez Panisse here. So many people, Jamie Oliver, I think worked at The River Café and all kinds of people have come out of it, just like all kinds of amazing chefs have come out of the Chez Panisse kitchen here. And it’s Ruth Roger and Rose Gray, neither of them were trained chefs, but they had a passion for ingredients and technique. They were hyper intense, but they have these cookbooks that are so accessible.

They have recipes that are mozzarella, arugula, balsamic, and figs. And that’s the recipe. It’s just put these flavors together. It’s going to be awesome. And I just think that those cookbooks, like Barefoot Contessa, I love her. I love her because she was a caterer. And I don’t tend to love the chef cookbooks, because they’re not geared toward the home cook. I love the people that are all about accessibility with food. Barefoot Contessa, she had a catering operation, and all this stuff is tried and true. It always works. I love the stuff that I can count on.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I have this play list on my iPod, and depending on what mood I’m in when I’m cooking, and also who’s around, so I’ve got a chill mix which is awesome. I like to grove out when I’m cooking, because it’s very meditative. And then I’ve got a dance mix, because I love to dance. And if I’m feeling a little like I want to really rock out in the kitchen. And then if no one’s around, which is rare, I listen to Missy Elliott. That’s awesome. I love that.

On Keeping Posted with Lilian:

Lilian of Chinese Grandma on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.

I’m on Facebook, so I put all my posts there. And Instagram, I am not great, but I’m on it. And Twitter, I don’t tweet a ton. But anyway, I love keeping up with people through all these sources.

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Barefoot Contessa, Bottom of the Pot, Chez Panisse, Chinese Grandma, Culinary Bro-Down, David Lebovitz, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Hortus Cuisine, Jamie Oliver, Lilian, MacGyver, Missy Elliott, My Darling Lemon Thyme, My Name is Yeh, Parent, Rose Gray, Ruth Rogers, Smitten Kitchen, The River Cafe, Two Red Bowls

088: Liz Rueven: Celebrating Jewish Food and Holidays

October 26, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me on The Dinner Special podcast.
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Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me The Dinner Special podcast talking about celebrating Jewish food and Holidays

Kosher Like Me

Liz keeps a Kosher kitchen at home and food truly excites her. She is always on the lookout for great restaurants, farmers markets, food festivals, and passionate food innovators. Liz spends much of her time researching and exploring extraordinary dining and food events. And today, we’re going to chat about the Jewish holidays and, of course, the food that surrounds them.

I am so happy to have Liz Rueven, editor and chief eater of Kosher Like Me, here today.

(*All photos below are Liz’s.)

On the Five Jewish Holidays Starting the Fall:

Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Rosh HaShanah.

So, we begin with Rosh Hashanah, which literally means, the head of the New Year and it’s the Jewish New Year. We eat foods that are symbolic of new beginnings and good luck. So we often eat sweet things. There’s an association most people know between apples and honey. Apples are an early fall fruit, and the honey is really part of the beginning of most meals where we dip the apple in honey, and we wish everyone a sweet New Year. A lot of the other foods are really about, bountiful, full wishes, for example, pomegranates.

Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Rosh HaShanah.

Pomegranates have many, many seeds. I know that you read my post and my recipe for pomegranate and honey glazed chicken on one of my favorite websites, a website I contribute to, called The Nosher. Pomegranates have like millions of gazillions of seeds, they’re very difficult to dislodge, as you know, because I gave a little technique that I borrowed from a fellow blogger, a blogger friend of mine. But, the pomegranate is so plentiful in the fruit that we use it as a symbolic food, wishing that all of the good omens and good wishes will be as plentiful as the number of seeds in that fruit.

Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Rosh HaShanah.

There are many other foods associated with Rosh Hashanah but, 10 days after that we go on to Yom Kippur, which is the most solemn day in the year, and there’s no food. So we fast for what turns out to be about 26/27 hours. But at the end of that fast, of course, there’s a feast, like in every culture after a fast. There are many traditional foods, that I don’t know are really symbolic, but we just tend to eat them. Different cultures eat different things, my background is Eastern European, I would say the most quintessential thing that we eat is a noodle pudding or kugel.

Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Yom Kippur.

On my blog, every year, I post a different recipe for noodle kugel. I have a very traditional one, and then last year I posted one with lemon and ricotta cheese. This year we’re posting a recipe for a noodle pudding or kugel with apple and fennel. It’s a great thing to eat because it’s very satisfying, and it’s very comforting, and it’s very filling. That’s what happens at the end of the fast.

And then, right after that, we have a harvest festival called Sukkot, and people erect temporary structures outside, and people who are really observant, live in those, eat all three meals in those, and sleep in those. They’re called a sukkah, and when, for those of us who don’t eat every meal in them, we often try to eat dinner in them.

Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Sukkot.

Invariably, it’s cold and rainy, all of a sudden the weather shifts in the northeast at that time, probably in Vancouver, too. And so the focus is really, not only on the harvest foods, but I always focus on the warming foods, so I start to integrate warming spices and dishes like soups and casseroles. It’s usually when I take out my slow cooker also. So this year, we’ll be posting a butternut squash soup, that should be really delicious. Butternut squash grows in the northeast at this time of year and it’s a great thing to just throw in the slow cooker and just have simmering.

Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Sukkot.

If you’re eating outside in your sukkah, you’re going to want something like that and warm foods. All of the sudden we shift from the salads to things like that.

Then, we have the next holiday, which is a celebration of the laws that were given to us in Sinai, and it’s called Simchat Torah, which really means the joy of Torah, which are the laws. And in general, people do stuffed foods for this holiday. Things that imply full bounty, so that there’s a lot of joy. And then, we end the five holidays with Hanukkah, which is always focused on oil, which we never really eat very much of.

Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Simchat Torah.

We fry things, donuts, potato latkes, all variations of things fried in celebration of the miracle that occurred, historically, when a vessel of oil that was supposed to last only a few days, lasted a whole week. Which, was enough time to produce more oil. So the oil thing gets really big, and what’s really fun is making lots of different kinds of pancakes, wheat pancakes, potato pancakes, sweet potato pancakes, zucchini, or apple, all sorts of pancakes, deep-fried, so for those of us who are more health conscious, it’s like a time of year where we say, “What the heck, we’re eating fried, it’s Hanukkah.”

Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Chanukah.

So, that’s the five holidays.

On Starting Kosher Like Me:

My home is strictly Kosher, and when we’re away from our home, we do exactly what my grandparents did. My grandparents were immigrants from Poland, they came to the lower east side of New York City, and they found that there were a lot of choices of things to eat. They just started eating fish and vegetarian when they were away from their Kosher home. Today, we have so many great choices of vegetarian and vegan restaurants that it’s really almost effortless. In those days, people would have a side order of string beans, because that was what was available if you didn’t want to eat chicken, or meat, or whatever was offered in a restaurant, so it’s completely different today.

My intention was really to be a resource for people who honor the rules like I do, because when I travel, I do a lot of research. Friends would say, “If I’m going to Aspen, where should I eat? Where do they have a lot of vegetarian choices?” But what’s happened is, I write so much about vegetarian and vegan, because I write so much about what I do outside of my kitchen, that I have a much broader base of followers than I ever expected. I have vegetarian, vegan, Jewish, not Jewish, Muslim, all sorts of people who are also just interested in healthy food. Because I really only eat and only write about things that are happening seasonally anyway. It’s a trend and people really are interested in it. For us, it’s just the way we always eat.

On the Best Part of Being Editor and Chief Eater of Kosher Like Me:

Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me on The Dinner Special podcast talking about the best part of being the chief eater at Kosher Like Me.

I would say I love meeting with creative people who are either, small producers, for example, honey makers, who have small backyard apiaries, or people who are making inventive products like my friends at the Gefilteria in Brooklyn, who have revived the old tradition of making gefilte fish and they’re making it sustainable, interesting, healthy, hip again. I really love meeting with the makers and the farmers. I do a lot of work at farms, especially trying to support my Connecticut agricultural scene. I love meeting the farmers, and the growers, and the makers. I like that better than eating in restaurants and writing food reviews, actually.

When I started writing four or five years ago, the approach to reinventing traditional Jewish foods was not as vibrant as it is now. For example, I’m part of a kosher food bloggers network, and that’s what we call ourselves, The Kosher Food Bloggers Network, and we are all across the country, and there was so much interesting rethinking of traditional foods. Four or five years ago, it wasn’t as energetic or vibrant a community or a scene. I would say that has been a big and wonderful exciting surprise.

Whitney and Amy, from Jewhungry and What Jew Wanna Eat, as you know, I co-authored a book with them. Those are my friends. What was really exciting was that we brought such different perspectives to it, Amy coming from Connecticut originally but living in Austin, Texas, has a completely different view of things than I do here. Whitney was in Miami, she has since moved to LA, so now her view has changed again, but she was a southern girl. I have these roots deep in the New York area and there was one other, there were four of us who wrote the book, and we called the book, Four Bloggers Dish.

The other person who contributed was Sarah Lasry, and she comes from a much more observant background. She brought a whole different perspective, and she was the one who kept saying, “I think we need more meat in this book guys,” and the three of us are like, “I don’t know.” It was great, yeah, you’ve met some of the cream of the crop.

On Her Passion for Food:

Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her passion for food.

I went back recently and I read my first blog post, which was in 2011, and I wrote about my grandfather. My grandfather was a traditional Jewish baker, and he came from Poland, he had three or four years as a young teen, as an apprentice, where he was sent away from his family, and he learned how to bake bread. When he came to this country, he baked bread and lots of other things, and I grew up with my grandparents coming to my home every Sunday. He would bring things like the most delicious rye bread, and onion rolls, and challah, and jelly donuts. So, he was one of my inspirations, but I have to say that my grandmother was a brilliant baker in her own right.

So it was just interesting that even though he would bring stuff home from the bakery, she baked also. The reason she baked, this really blew me away when I really thought about it, is because so many members of my family had food allergies, so she baked at home in order to avoid using eggs and dairy. She was a vegan baker. She was born at the end of the 1800s and she developed all of these recipes, never wrote them down, she couldn’t read, she couldn’t write, she was illiterate. But she developed all of these recipes, and it turns out, as I thought about it, they were vegan.

It’s just crazy because half my cousins and my sister were allergic to eggs and dairy. So, I would say my grandparents are my greatest inspiration.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Well, there’s a new show about to launch, that I really am very excited about, it’s called Holy and Hungry, and it’s with Sherri Shepherd, and she goes to lots of different people who cook with an eye towards their religious background. She interviews people with Hindu perspectives and beliefs, and Muslim perspectives, and Orthodox Jewish perspectives, she goes to Christian cooks who are making foods from the Bible.

This show to me is super exciting, you have to look for it, it’s called Holy and Hungry. To me, that’s the most exciting.

I love Chopped, of course, because I really can’t get over the kinds of ingredients that they throw at these poor contestants. I really admire them for being so responsive and clever and being able to keep their wits about them. I would just have a total meltdown but, that’s why they’re competing. The opposite of that is Ina Garten because she’s so soothing and you want to be in her buttery arms, and they’re very, not her arms, but the food is so buttery. So I would say those would be three shows that I do love.

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

Well, I don’t know if you read The Kitchn, I really love The Kitchn, my daughter, who’s in her 20s, turned me on to it. It’s just such a huge resource. It covers so much and I love her how-tos, how to make a Caesar salad, how to handle winter squashes. I love what she does in that blog. I know she’s got a whole team.

I read and contribute to a blog called The Nosher, and so to nosh means to snack, so The Nosher really covers a ton of Jewish food trends, and edited by someone named Shannon Sarna, so her voice is very prominent in there, she’s like a master challah baker, she does all sorts of crazy and wacky challah recipes.

But of equal importance, she solicits posts from kosher and Jewish food bloggers who have very different perspectives on things. So there’s this great overview of what people are doing across the country and I love that. There’s a blog called, May I Have That Recipe, and it’s two sisters, I think they’re in Philly, and they write vegetarian, and vegan, and kosher, and their recipes are really inventive, and I’ve met them through my bloggers network. I really love what they’re doing. They’re smaller so props to them. They have a big readership, they really do. You can hear their voices in there, it’s really beautiful, and they act like such sisters, really fun.

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

Okay. My favorite feed on Instagram is called, MyGarbage.

When you look at this, to me, it is the most beautiful feed on Instagram. He, I think it’s a he, shoots his rectangular, white, garbage pail with all of the scraps from a dish that he’s made, but he arranges them. They look incredibly gorgeous, and I think for me, there’s a little message about food waste, which is that we could be reducing and we could be reusing, well not reusing the waste, but using it differently because he doesn’t even post his recipes, he just posts the ingredients which you see in the garbage pail. All of his photos are identically set up. And it’s very rhythmic and interesting to see them.

I love, love, love him. I love David Lebovitz, who is in Paris. He’s got a very funny voice, and he writes all about baking and cooking as an American in Paris, and he’s a brilliant photographer, and he’s very funny. There’s another person from Philly, and her feed is called Food In Jars, and it’s all about her preserving, and conserving, and putting up ingredients that she loves, and I just find it fascinating to see what she’s doing. Food In Jars, it’s great.

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

Well, I have a beautiful collection of ceramic handmade, plates, platters, bowls. I’m a really big sucker for big platters, big bowls. When I travel, I buy these things, which are really, really inconvenient and difficult to carry back. But I don’t care, I just feel like I’m bringing back the soul of an artist. I just get stuff, if you saw my kitchen right now, I have piles of tomatoes on a platter, and I have all sorts of things piled, like pears here in Connecticut in a big, deep, gorgeous hand-thrown ceramic bowl, so I would say, those are my most precious items.

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

I don’t know, there aren’t that many things that I’ve really converted to liking. I like most things, the one thing I don’t like and I haven’t gotten to like it at all is smoky profiles. I just feel like I’m licking an ashtray. I have no interest in that at all. So if people gift me smoky salts, whoever is around is really lucky because I’ll pass them on right away. So I can’t say that I started to like something that I didn’t like, I would just say that’s what I don’t like.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, by training, I’m an art historian, so I think that I really love to read food history. I took a fantastic class at the New School in New York City, the teacher was Andrew Smith, and he wrote an encyclopedic book called, The Oxford Companion to American Eating and Drinking. If it’s 4th of July, or I’m thinking about, I don’t know, avocados or something, whatever it is, I might turn to his book first and see what he has to say about it.

Parallel to that, and right next to it on my shelf, is an encyclopedia, it’s called, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Foods, by someone who unfortunately has passed away. His name was Gil Marks, and he was a brilliant inspiration and researcher to his community, and so when a holiday comes up, I always look to him first, and I get an overview and a refresher. He covers everything, he covers the meaning of the holiday and the meaning of a food. And you can also just look into his book, just look up an ingredient, so it could be something like peaches. And he’ll talk about peaches, or he’ll at least lead you to a recipe for peaches. But beyond the history, I really loved The Forest Feast.

I love her work. I love these hand drawings and the simplicity of her recipes. It helps me to get out of my head and just keep it really simple. Also, I love Beatrice Peltre, La Tartine Gourmande, her photographs I think are among the most beautiful food photographs I’ve ever seen, and when I look at her work, her blog, or her book, which I have, that’s really awe inspiring.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, I really like hearing The Stones when I cook, The Rolling Stones. That’s real rock and roll and I’ll listen to anything The Stones have ever done and just be happy to play with that.

On Keeping Posted with Liz:

Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.

Well, a lot of my readers are still turning to Facebook. Everything is @KosherLikeMe. I post probably numerous times a day on Instagram, and you can subscribe to my blog and see what I’m up to each week.

 

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Andrew Smith, Chopped, David Lebovitz, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Food in Jars, Four Bloggers Dish, Gefilteria, Gil Marks, Hanukkah, Holy and Hungry, Ina Garten, Jewhungry, Kosher food, Kosher Like Me, La Tartine Gourmande, Liz Rueven, May I Have That Recipe, MyGarbage, New School in New York CIty, Rosh Hashanah, Sarah Lasry, Simchat Torah, Sinai, sukkah, Sukkot, The Forest Feast, The Kitchn, The Nosher, The Rolling Stones, What Jew Wanna Eat

086: Samantha Seneviratne: Cooking Up A Career in Baking and Food

October 19, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Samantha Seneviratne of Love Comma Cake on The Dinner Special podcast
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Samantha Seneviratne of Love Comma Cake on The Dinner Special podcast talking about cooking up a career in baking and food.

Love Comma Cake

Sam has been a food editor at Good Housekeeping, Fine Cooking, and Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food. Today, she’s a freelance recipe developer and food stylist and recently released her first cookbook called The New Sugar and Spice: A Recipe for Bolder Baking. She was also a Finalist in the 2015 Saveur Blog Awards for Best Baking and Desserts Blog.

I’m so psyched to have Samantha Seneviratne of Love Comma Cake here on the show today.

On Baking and Sweet Things:

I think I knew I was going to be a baker from when I was a really little kid. I told my family that I was going to be a baker and a librarian when I was five. I always loved dough and sugar and butter. I always loved working with those things. So as soon as I knew that people needed jobs to keep afloat, I realized that dough was probably the way I should go. So I think it’s in my blood.

I went to culinary school and I studied both savory and sweet, and I worked as a food editor at different food magazines. So in doing that, I pretty much have to do both sweet and savory, and these days I do some styling and recipe development both sweet and savory. I do both. I love doing the baked goods. That’s what I really want to do all the time.

On Finding Her Career in Food:

Well, it took me a long time to figure how I was going to do it. I went to college. I went to a liberal arts college, and I studied Latin American studies, and Spanish Literature, and then I got a job after school in public television, and then worked for a different non-profit. I had a bunch of other things that I was directing my life towards. Then, all of a sudden, I just realized what I really loved to do is cook, and that I should just go to culinary school and make it happen. But it took me a while to figure out how to do it because I’m not really a restaurant chef. I have great respect for restaurant chefs but that’s not what I do, and I knew that wouldn’t be my path. So it took me awhile to figure out exactly how I was going to make a living cooking. And magazine test kitchens were the place for me for awhile and that worked out well.

I had a friend who worked at the magazine, and she played on a soccer team with an editor at Gourmet magazine. So I told her I was interested in food and she said, “Well, why don’t you meet this guy. He’s a food editor at Gourmet.” And he took me on a tour of the gourmet test kitchen and showed me what he did, and I thought, “That looks like a good job. That looks like exactly where I should be.” So after that visit with him, I went to culinary school and that’s what I did.

On Her Food Heroes and What She’d Make for Them:

I mean the baking heroes like Dorie Greenspan and David Lebovitz, and there are so many, Rose Levy Beranbaum. There are so many baking stars, so many classics.

I’m really into fried dough. Lately, I’ve been really making donuts and just this morning we made apple fritters and funnel cake. I think fried dough is what I’m really feeling these days. It’s not good for you, but it’s fun to make.

The thing is the difference when you fry it and then eat it right out of the oil, toss it in sugar and then eat it. It’s a whole other ball game. It’s so much more delicious than anything you can ever buy because it’s a timing thing. So I’d probably make some fried dough of some kind.

On Her Blog:

I wanted to get more of an online presence that was just me. I was working at different magazines, and I love working in magazine test kitchens because you’re really part of a team, and you’re all creating this food in this vision and under this brand name.

I wanted to have a body of work that was mine, and that I could contribute to and that was 100% my voice. Just exactly what I wanted to make whenever I wanted to make it and so that’s what I did.

I just was craving a place where I can have complete control over everything I did. So that means any whim that I had I just was able to do it.

On Simple Rules of Thumb for Baking for Greater Success:

I think people are more scared of baking than they need to be. There’s a little more flexibility than people think there is. Things could vary slightly depending on how warm your butter is or something like that, but your disasters are rare, right? So measuring flour is important, temperatures are important. I think measuring flour is number one. Once you’ve learned how to measure flour, things are going to improve greatly, or get a scale, also, a really good way to go.

(On baking with cold eggs.) You can totally warm them up. There are little tricks like you can keep your eggs in some warm water and that’ll heat them up. Or you can even if you crack them into a bowl and then let them warm up that way. That also works. You can warm up your butter by pounding it with a rolling pin or sometimes I even microwave it on a low 20% power, 50% power, you can warm your butter up. Which a lot of people don’t recommend because it’s easy to go from cold butter to melted butter and then you’re kind of screwed. But you can do it. It works. But I think measuring flour is number one.

On Her Cookbook, The New Sugar and Spice:

It was a long process. I probably started a proposal for that book four years ago. It took me a long time to write the proposal. I wrote a proposal for a book I wasn’t that happy with, and then I scrapped it and then wrote a new proposal, and it took a long time to get the proposal in good shape. And then I shopped around with agents. Then she helped me work on the proposal and then we pitched the book. It’s a long process, but I always had the dream of writing cookbook. So just finding the book that felt right and it took me a long time to get there, and I think I did. I like it.

It’s basically a baking book and I use spices and the chapters of the books are all organized by spice. The general idea of the book is that I try to use a little less sugar. I don’t like overly sweet desserts, and I think that it’s easy to fall to that trap. I think sugar can be a crutch. So I try to develop recipes that were a little bit less sweet and used spices to amp up the flavor in a more complex and interesting way. That’s not to say they are low sugar or diet or anything like that, but they seem to me to be a little less sweet and a little more interesting.

I also wrote a lot of history. I got into researching the history of certain spices and how that related a little bit to my family history because my parents are from Sri Lanka. I started digging into the history of cinnamon, I realized that my great grandmother grew clove trees in her yard, and my great grandfather grew vanilla beans. And I learned that my family’s history was intertwined with spices in that fun way, so I wrote a lot about that.

I had fun writing the intros that were all about spice history and my family history and having really personal head notes about my parents, and my brother, and things like that. That felt unique, and fun, and special to me because, as a food editor for a magazine, you don’t ever get to just write about yourself or write about why you like something. You don’t get that opportunity very often and so I took it in the book.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t have cable television so I don’t watch anyone.

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

I have a lot of food blogs that I love. It’s going to be hard to list them. I love Brooklyn Supper, and I love Two Red Bowls. And I love The Fauxmartha. Those are three right now I’ll tell you that I love.

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

The only thing I do out of all those things is Instagram. So I would say, I think David Lebovitz is really funny and his Instagram account makes me laugh.

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

I have a little dowel that I got at a hardware store. I had them cut it down so it’s like a four-inch dowel. I don’t know what they’re for when you buy them at the hardware store, but I use it to roll out little pastries, and I love it. It’s the most useful tool in the world and it was a dollar.

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

I’m into anise seeds now and I didn’t think I was into it before. Actually the book, writing that book, I have a couple of recipes for anise seeds in a biscotti and in a pear tart, and I think they’re both delicious. I’ve really come around on anise seed.

I hate liquorice like so many people, but I didn’t realize that if you use anise seeds sparingly and if you pair it with something delicious, it can work in combination with other things. I just hadn’t figured that out yet, but I like it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Regan Daley’s In the Sweet Kitchen is one of my all-time favorite books in the whole world. I think that book is super smart. There’s a lot of information at the beginning. It’s a baking companion, and there are glossaries and flavor pairing charts and things like that, that make baking really easy and inspire you to do good things. And then the second half of the book is all these wonderful recipes. I think that book is genius. That book makes my life better.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Oh my gosh, anything. I just like Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and all those guys. That kind of music, I love it.

On Keeping Posted with Sam:

Samantha Seneviratne of Love Comma Cake on The Dinner Special podcast

Instagram probably. You can find me at @samanthaseneviratne, and you can follow me there or you can sign up to receive all updates on my blog Love Comma Cake.

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: 2015 Saveur Blog Awards, Baking, Beyonce, Brooklyn Supper, Cookbook Author, David Lebovitz, Dorie Greenspan, Fine Cooking, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Good Housekeeping, Gourmet magazine, In the Sweet Kitchen, Love Comma Cake, Magazine Editor, Martha Stewart, Regan Daley, Rose Levy Beranbaum, Samantha Seneviratne, Taylor Swift, The Fauxmartha, The New Sugar and Spice, Two Red Bowls

080: Jennifer Yu: Choosing Food, Photography, and Colorado

September 28, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

Jennifer Yu of Use Real Butter on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.
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Jennifer Yu of Use Real Butter on The Dinner Special podcast talking about choosing food, photography and Colorado.

Use Real Butter

In her past life, Jen was a NASA programmer, and today she is a freelance nature, food, portrait, and event photographer living and enjoying the outdoors in the Colorado Rockies. Her blog Use Real Butter is more of a directive for life and less about her cooking and baking though food is an integral part of her blog and her life.

I am so pumped to have Jennifer Yu of Use Real Butter joining me today.

(*All images below are Jen’s.)

On Blogging:

Jennifer Yu of Use Real Butter on The Dinner Special podcast talking about blogging.

The first time I started blogging in 2004, I just began a LiveJournal blog, and it seemed that I had about a handful of friends who had LiveJournal blogs. So we just blogged personal stuff and commented on each other’s blog. It was, a dozen people at most, and it was very informal. It’s pretty private, and we were just goofing around. And the reason I started was because my sister had passed away in a car accident just earlier that year, and so I felt it was a good space for me to just get my feelings out and try and work it out in words. It was a little bit of therapy for me to get through that difficult period. And then I noticed over time, I started posting a lot of photos of my food. And so I would put dinner pictures on there, or if we went out to eat for a snack, I’d have a shaved ice on there.

After a while, I noticed there was a group called the Daring Bakers, which now is a huge, huge group. They’re the Daring Bakers and the Daring Cooks, and I think they comprise the Daring Kitchen now. But back then, they were 80 strong when I joined. It was just 80 people, and they would have a recipe designated to make for the next month, and everyone would make it and blog it on a given day. And we went around supporting one another and seeing how everybody had a different interpretation of the recipe as well as just a really nice community of people who liked to bake, people who enjoyed cooking, people who wanted to expand their skill. That’s why I decided to break off Use Real Butter because I wanted to be a part of that group, but I didn’t want all my baggage in with the recipes.

At the start, because the blog was a personal blog, it was all personal. All of my baggage was in there, and as I became more public, I think I’ve reined in what I’m sharing. It seems like I share a lot now, but actually, I don’t. I don’t share that much compared to what I used to. And it’s mostly because the more reach the blog has achieved, the more I am holding back because you get some odd readers who, I mean, there are some people, most of them are really well-intentioned and they just want to be your friend and they want to get to know you, and then others are a little less so. And so I withdrew a little bit to protect, not only myself, but also the people that I care about. But still, a lot of my friends know, like, “Oh, if you have dinner with Jen or if you go out to lunch with Jen, you’re going to show up on the Internet.”

On Her Passion for Food and Cooking:

Jennifer Yu of Use Real Butter on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her passion for food and cooking.

I think since I was a little kid, I really enjoyed it. It’s odd but I like washing fruit and cutting it up. I used to try and sell it out of my bedroom to my family members as they pass by in the hall, which was kind of odd because if you think about it, my parents bought the fruit and then they’d have to buy it again from me. But I guess I added that extra service of cleaning and cutting fruit.

My grandmother lived with us from pretty much when I was an infant until about when I was nine years old. And she is my mother’s mother, and she cooked so many wonderful things. She was a fantastic cook. Both my parents are fantastic cooks. So when we got together to cook Sunday dinner, I was always there watching. And it was like this big family affair, and they would make Chinese dumplings. And it was just kind of a regular thing every Sunday, and I really enjoyed it. And I think that had a big influence on me.

When I was growing up, I would cook very simple things, and I would experiment with baking because nobody in my family baked. So I can’t tell you how many batches of meringues I have tanked, how many cookies have come out rock hard. But I learned all that when I was little, and in my parent’s kitchen. Then when I went away to college, there were nights when our dorm didn’t provide food or food plans. It was on the weekends, they didn’t provide meals. And so the undergraduates were left to fend for themselves, and I thought, “Oh, I’m going to make X, Y, and Z that mom and dad made at home.”

I could never remember what it was that went into the recipes. I didn’t have recipes, so I just called them up and said, “Mom, how do you make this?” And you know Chinese parents, actually, I think anyone beyond a certain generation, they don’t do recipes. They are just, like, off the top of their head, “Oh, a little bit of soy sauce.” “How much is a little bit?” “I don’t know, you know, a little bit.” And that’s how I got my feet wet with Chinese cooking, and then it became my way of connecting back to my family and my cultural heritage, which I rejected for a long time as a little kid.

On Blogs She’s Followed Since the Beginning:

I think Smitten Kitchen, Deb Perelman’s blog, was one of my early favorites, and it’s still one of my favorites because her recipes are just really solid and reliable. I guess I feel that I like her taste as well. I think that makes a big difference. There are some bloggers, they have gorgeous blogs or whatever, but their style of food is just not my style. So yeah, Deb of Smitten Kitchen. White on Rice Couple, that’s Todd and Diane. We started out around the same time, and we were blog buddies. And then we met in person, and we’ve been good friends ever since. They have a great blog. I love their recipes, but even more, they’re very dear friends of mine.

On Things Not Going as Planned:

Jennifer Yu of Use Real Butter on The Dinner Special podcast talking about things not going as planned.

Things don’t go as planned, that happens a lot. That happens more than most people would probably think. But do I wish that I were back in science? No, I don’t. I really don’t. That’s something I was happy to move on from. My husband, he remained in science. He’s in astrophysics. And I really felt that we didn’t both need to be in academia. So it’s kind of a nice balance, I think, to have us doing different things. I keep track of what’s going on in his career, and he will sometimes ask me, “Well, there’s a graduate student. This is what the student wants to do. How should I advise?” And I’ll give my take on it, especially if it’s a female student because I think it’s good for male faculty to be more sensitive to female students, and he’s particularly good about that.

But yeah, I don’t miss it at all. I actually like what I do, and I think that’s good because it’s what I chose. It would be terrible if you say, “I choose to do this,” and then you’re like, “This sucks.” So I chose to do this. I’m really happy with it. I think I like managing my time. I work more hours as a freelancer than I did working nine to five in a science desk job. But it’s worth it to me. I like the freedom.

On the Food Culture in Colorado:

Jennifer Yu of Use Real Butter on The Dinner Special podcast talking about the food culture in Colorado.

It’s a pretty hip scene, I’d say. I think when we moved to Boulder, the first thing we noticed was kind of the sticker shock. Food is a little more expensive in Boulder than it is in where we were, which was Pasadena. Food in LA is, it’s so inexpensive, and it’s so, so good. But Boulder is a little different. The food is really excellent. But you’re going to pay a little more than you would at, let’s say, in San Francisco or in LA. That said, there’s definitely a dedication to local, seasonal farm food, local farmers. They have a lot of great restaurants that focus on, I’d say, modern cuisine, farm-to-table cuisine with European and some Asian fusion influences. That said, their Chinese food in general isn’t that great. They have lots of sushi bars, which is terrific, and there’s quite a bit of Vietnamese in the Denver area. But yeah, other than that, I’m missing a lot of the Asian that I used to get in LA.

Because I couldn’t get it elsewhere, I had to learn to make it myself. My grandmother, when she was alive, she was in San Jose, and so I would go out to visit her several times a year. And every time, we went out to visit, she would take us out to some Chinese restaurant that she had found. It just opened, or it’s been open for a while just down the street. And the food is just fantastic, and we would always get the latest and greatest from the Bay Area Chinese cuisine. I’d come home and think, “Oh, I’m craving this, but there is nowhere for me to get it.” And so I’d have to figure out how to make it myself or look up the recipe.

I don’t think there’s a signature dish (of Colorado’s) that off the top of my head comes to mind, but Colorado lamb in general is phenomenal. I was not a huge fan of lamb before I came to Colorado, and I felt that it tasted a little too, I don’t know if “game-y” is the word, but that’s what comes to mind. It was just the flavor was a little too strong for me. But when I tried Colorado lamb, it is sublime. Really, it’s a mellower flavor, but it’s fantastic. And a lot of the, like I said, Boulder restaurants are dedicated to sourcing their food locally, and so you get Colorado ranchers providing their lamb and it’s fantastic.

And actually, Diane Cu had a similar experience when she and Todd came out. We were doing a workshop together in Boulder, and I took them to dinner at Frasca. One of the courses was lamb, and so she immediately was like, “I don’t like lamb,” so she picked up all of her lamb and put it on Todd’s plate. And he tasted it, and he said, “No, no, it’s really good. You’ve got to taste it.” So she took a taste, and she picked up the lamb that she had put on his plate and put it back on her plate. And that’s how I feel about Colorado lamb. It’s that good.

Also, Colorado peaches (from the Western Slope) are the bomb. And I forage a lot in the mountains in the summertime – mostly porcini, chanterelles, and huckleberries.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

We don’t get television. So I don’t watch TV, which is probably why I can actually do things in my life because I don’t spend a lot of time watching TV.

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

Well, I would say Smitten Kitchen certainly is one of them. Leite’s Culinaria, David Leite’s blog, is fantastic. Simply Recipes by Elise Bauer and crew, that is one of my go-tos. When I have any question about a recipe that I just need to know off the top of my head, I’ll search for her blog first. And then David Lebovitz because he’s awesome, and he’s hilarious at the same time.

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

I don’t do Pinterest just because it’s a matter of time management. I just cannot get into Pinterest, and on Instagram, I have to say one of my favorite people to follow is Food Pornographer, my friend Kelly Cline. She’s a food photographer and food stylist in the Pacific Northwest. And everything she posts is absolutely stunning and creative and beautiful, and it just makes you want to eat and to cook and just get in there and experiment.

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

I don’t actually know what kind of odd things I have. I guess the only one is the dowels that I use for rolling dumplings. Most of the rolling pins you find in stores are the French style, the tapered ones, or they have the handles on them, but the simple Chinese dowel is just a straight cylinder. And that’s what I use for rolling dumpling skins, and it works best for me.

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

Cilantro. Cilantro, when I was little, my parents put it in everything, and I was like, “Mom, you’re ruining this dish.” They put it in the soup, and I am like, “I can’t eat the soup now,” or whatever. And now I love it. I put it in guacamole. I put it in my pho. I put it in Chinese dishes. It’s great.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I would have to say the one that I reference the most is probably The Baking Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. And there’s this old Chinese cookbook that’s my mom’s, it was like a godmother put together in the 1960s or something. It’s this tiny little thing, and I don’t think it’s widely published. But we have a copy of it, and it’s just these traditional Chinese recipes, home-style Chinese recipes. And I’ve blogged a few of them, but I go to that one quite often.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Okay. I thought about this, and I was like, I don’t think there are any songs or albums that make me want to cook, but when I cook, I like to have music on. The White Stripes are one of my favorite bands, and so any of their albums or anything by Jack White gets me pretty pumped and happy in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Jen:

Jennifer Yu of Use Real Butter on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.

If you want to follow what’s going on with the dog, follow me on Instagram. Otherwise, I would say the blog itself is probably the best. I’m just getting really bad about keeping up with social media these days because I think I’ve realized that I’d rather spend my time living my life than just constantly writing about it.

 

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Colorado, Daring Kitchen, David Lebovitz, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Food Pornographer, Frasca, Jennifer Yu, Leite's Culinaria, Photographer, Rose Levy Beranbaum, Simply Recipes, Smitten Kitchen, The Baking Bible, Use Real Butter, White on Rice Couple

070: Cathy Barrow: Charcuterie and Pantry Building

August 24, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

Cathy Barrow of Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast
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Cathy Barrow of Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about charcuterie and pantry building.

Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen

Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen was started in 2009, and it’s where Cathy shares her cooking, baking, preserving, and keeping of her practical pantry. Her recipes have been included in the Food52 cookbook. Al Roker made her Thanksgiving stuffing on the Today Show. And she has been featured in the Washington Post. Cathy recently released her first cookbook, Mrs.Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry, which won the 2015 IACP Single Subject Cookbook Award.

I am so thrilled to have Cathy Barrow of Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen here on the show today.

(*All images below are Cathy’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

Cathy Barrow of Mrs Wheelbarrows Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about starting her food blog.

I had been a landscape designer for about ten years, and I was really a happy landscape designer. I have a big garden, a flower garden, and many, many clients in my general neighborhood. And in 2008, when we all suffered a little bit from the change in the economy, let’s say, my landscape business dried up, not just a little but sort of completely. And I know all the reasons for it now, but at the time, I couldn’t really see clear. I was pretty depressed. And several friends of mine who had come to my kitchen to eat, who I’d helped learn how to make pie dough, or learn how to cook with different ingredients, they all said, “You should be teaching cooking classes.”

And I said, “Well, that’s just a great idea. How will anybody ever find out about it?” And their response was, “Have you heard of this thing called a blog?” And I had not. I had never read one. I was really not part of that world, so I started doing some research. And one of those friends was a graphic designer and helped me set up the site, taught me a few simple tricks to figure out how to load a photo, and off I went. Nobody was more surprised than I was, that anybody actually read it.

I do feel there’s a very distinct line that you can draw from gardening to cooking, and particularly, the kind of cooking I do that is so seasonally dependent. My knowledge of the garden makes me a better preserver in many ways.

 On Learning How to Cook:

I definitely took some cooking classes that were very helpful, and I read a lot of cookbooks. My curiosity led me to want to learn how to make certain things. I remember, maybe even 25 years ago, deciding that I wanted to learn how to make a baguette. And this was long before you could just Google how to make a baguette, or go to YouTube. And what I found, was that maybe the first one wasn’t good, but the second one was better, and the third one was even better than that. I recently read something Sam Sifton wrote in The New York Times, where he said that cooking is like yoga. It’s a practice. It’s not something that you’re born knowing, but the more you practice, the better you get at it. And I’ve been doggedly determined to learn how to make certain things, even in the face of failure.

I think I’ve been developing my own recipes forever, but it never occurred to me that it was something unusual, until I became part of a larger community. I think, for many of us, joining the Internet and starting to share recipes was a revelation. We either thought we were all alone in the world…because my friends, of course, were like, “You’re crazy spending eight weeks trying to figure out how to make a croissant.” And then I find this group of people who do the same thing I do, and it’s so thrilling to me.

So I’ve always gone to restaurants and tasted it, and then come home and tried to recreate things. Or I decided I’m going to study Sichuan cooking, and just cook everything in a book until I felt that I was confident enough that I could take that education, those flavors, and start to refine it a little bit. I definitely started working on my own recipes when I married a vegetarian, because Dennis would prefer not to eat much meat; he does eat a little bit but not much. He’ll eat a little chicken. I was pretty meat-centric when I met him, and now having to learn to take some of my favorite recipes and translate them into something that can become vegetarian, has been a big education for me. It’s a lot of fun.

On Charcutepalooza:

Cathy Barrow of Mrs Wheelbarrows Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Charcutepalooza.

How it came together is really crazy. A friend of mine on Twitter, it happened that it was a late December Sunday morning. The tree was up, the presents were wrapped, the cookies were mailed. It was actually the first Sunday that I wasn’t crazy with things to do. I was hanging out in my kitchen and playing on Twitter, and a friend of mine said, “It’s so cold in my basement, I could hang meat.” And I said, “If you hang a duck breast, you’ll have prosciutto in seven days.” “Really?” was the answer. And I don’t know what kind of divine intervention happened, but I literary saw this whole program layout for me.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I might do to push my blog up a little bit in terms of recognition, and it became clear to me that my knowledge of how to make charcuterie at home as a home cook could be the basis for an education program. So I got off of Twitter at that very moment and I sketched out a 12-month education program to go each month and learn something about charcuterie, following the guide of Michael Ruhlman’s great book, Charcuterie. And I came back online and said, “Hey, here’s the idea.” And a lot of people said, “We’d love to do that.”

And it became a blogger challenge over the next couple of weeks. After that, I started making random phone calls to see if I could find some sponsors. And one of my dearest friends now, who I didn’t know at all, Kate Hill, offered a week-long charcuterie program at her French retreat in Gascony. And that was gonna be the Grand Prize. So I was trying to establish how you would get the prize and how it would be voted on. Anyway, I worked out those details but I also realized that just offering somebody a week-long thing in France wasn’t enough. You had to get them there.

So then I found a travel agent called Trufflepig. I didn’t know them at all but I just went to their contact form on the web and said, “Hey, you got a great name. I got this crazy idea, would you give me free tickets to France?” And they came back and said, “Sure, and we’ll do train tickets and hotels. And how about a party?” I mean, they were so generous. And so I put this program together and about 400 bloggers around the world participated, and Food52 partnered with us and ran the whole program on their site. And it was just tremendously fun. What I loved is that in September of that year, Kate Hill invited me to her farm in the south of France, so I got to do that same charcuterie training. It was wonderful.

On Making Charcuterie for the First Time:

Cathy Barrow of Mrs Wheelbarrows Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about making charcuterie for the first time.

I always say to start with bacon. You can’t go wrong. Everybody loves bacon. And once you have it, you’ll join that forever club. You’ll never go back. Bacon, simply you get a pork belly, you cure it for a week in the refrigerator and then you roast it very, very low until it comes to a temperature that’s safe. So there’s no hanging it in the closet. There’s nothing dangerous or unsafe about it. It’s going to be refrigerated then it’s going to be cooked. It’ll change your mind about charcuterie right then and there. You’ll never go back.

Salting, and then you could add other flavorings, too. You can do plain salt but I personally have a combination in my book that is maple syrup, bourbon, and coffee. And those three things with some salt makes a really delicious bacon.

I think that the biggest mistake you can make is not buying really good meat. Buying commodity meats makes it more difficult to be precise with charcuterie, mostly because there’s too much water in most commodity meat. And you need to get the water out in order to make safe charcuterie. And sometimes that means that…what we look for, for instance, in most charcuterie, is a 30% weight loss will tell you that that meat is ready, if you’re hanging it. But if you have commodity or commercial pork, for instance, it might have such a high water content that it’ll need to reduce more. So I would say buying the best possible meat from sources that you know is going to guarantee more success.

On Some Good Resources for Learning about Charcuterie:

I think Michael’s book is a really great place to start. And then there’s a new book by Jeffrey Weiss called, Charcuteria, and that’s more Spanish. There’s Jane Grigson’s classic charcuterie book from England. But I really think if you want to learn charcuterie, just start with Michael Ruhlman’s book and work from the front to the back. Or you can get my book, which has this small discreet and very simple chapter on charcuterie.

On Her Book, “Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry”:

Cathy Barrow of Mrs Wheelbarrows Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her book, Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Practical Pantry.

I set out to write a book that would really be a primer on all kinds of preserving, because as long as I’ve been doing it and looking for resources, I couldn’t find one book that had everything I needed. So I also wanted to make sure that the book not only would take you through all the steps necessary to learn how to preserve everything, like jams and jellies and pickles, tomatoes, also meats and beans and soups and fish and diary, like cheese. Then I worry that so many people don’t think about what they’re going to do with all those jars they’ve put on the shelf, so I included 35 recipes using what you preserved.

For me, there’s preserving at one level, which is making the jams and jellies and the pickles. And that’s great, but that’s not really sustainable. It’s hobby preserving. I’m very interested in more of that pantry building in this practical sense, and the sustainable nature of preserving and how that means that I can eat locally year-round, that I can keep my food money in my community by purchasing from my local farmers all summer, preserving that food and then eating it all winter long.

It means that I can come home from a long trip and I don’t have to run to the grocery store or call for Chinese take out, but I can just go downstairs into my pantry and find all kinds of things that are right there for me to eat.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I’ll admit that I like the vintage ones best. I like to watch old Julia, especially Julia and Jacques Pepin. Those are great. I do love Sara Moulton. I think she’s just a solid cook. My husband and I used to watch her show a lot when we first got married, and so I always love to watch Sara.

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

I hope you know about Cheryl Sternman Rule. She’s been writing the blog, 5 Second Rule, for a long time, and had a beautiful vegetable book out called Ripe, a while back. But now she has a new book called Yogurt Culture, and a coordinating blog called Team Yogurt. And it’s a marvelous website. I love to follow my friend Mardi who writes the blog, Eat. Live. Travel. Write. And she’s been working with these young chefs, these young boys, in her chef class. It’s so fun to watch what they make. In the preserving area, Food in Jars, Hip Girl’s Guide, those are great resources. Well Preserved out of Canada, love those. I mean, I read a lot. Of course I’m smitten with Smitten Kitchen. She’s genius. David Lebovitz, I love. I guess that’s maybe a start.

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

I follow my friend Kate Spinillo on Facebook and on Instagram, because she raises chickens and pigs. She had polka-dotted pigs earlier this year. And sometimes I just had to go and look at those pigs because they’re so cute. I love following them. I’m passionate about Punk Domestics. I follow everything they do. Sean Timberlake collects all kinds of DIY on preserving information there. So I’m really always following what he’s doing. And I love Food52. Who doesn’t? I mean, they’re brilliant. They do everything wonderful.

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

I have three things that I brought back from the south of France. One is a handmade cassole to make cassoulet. It’s big terracotta and just beautiful. I also have a pepper grinder. It could be a coffee grinder, but I use it for pepper. It’s a little wooden box with a thing that turns on the top and a drawer that pulls out. And the pepper comes out in a large cracked form and it’s perfect to coat pastrami or to put on the outside of pancetta. And then on that same trip, my friend Kate’s sister, Stephanie, found these little (figures). Often, they’re babies that are put in the Mardi Gras cakes. You probably have seen it – if you get the baby it’s going to be your year, but in France, they have them for all the different professions. These tiny little pastries and sugars and confiture, just little ceramic things that sit on my stove and make me happy.

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

Anchovies. I can’t get enough of them. That’s the only one I can think of. I’m pretty much an omnivore, but for a long time, I wasn’t sure at all about anchovies. And now, I can’t get enough.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I’m really a fan of the old ones. I turn to Marcella Hazan and The Classic Italian Cookbook all the time. It’s just a brilliant book. I love the pairings after every recipe. So if you find one recipe you want to make, you know then what to make with what pasta. It’s really lovely.

Edna Lewis’ book, The Taste of Country Cooking, I read that all the time because her voice is beautiful and the recipes are just intense and organic and natural, like, what you would do if you saw beautiful things growing and brought them back to your kitchen. I like to read Laurie Colwin’s, Home Cooking, and all her recipes. And the Canal House ladies, they were my photographers, Christopher and Melissa. And they can’t do wrong, as far as I’m concerned. Every cookbook they have, you can just open it up, point, and make it, and you’re going to be happy.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I’ll admit. I don’t listen to a lot of music in the kitchen. It’s oddly distracting for me. More likely when things are processing, that I might turn something on and just dance. I’ve been listening to Ellie Goulding a lot lately. I just never know what I want to put on to dance around the kitchen. But while I’m cooking, I’m concentrating and I’m trying to measure ingredients. I find music, because I love it so much, totally distracting.

On Keeping Posted with Cathy:

Cathy Barrow of Mrs Wheelbarrows Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.

I’m Mrs. Wheelbarrow everywhere. You’ll find me on Instagram. On Facebook, it’s Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen. Twitter, it’s Mrs.Wheelbarrow. And I guess at the blog, on my contact form.

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: 2015 IACP Single Subject Cookbook Award, 5 Second Rule, Author, Canal House, Cathy Barrow, Charcutepalooza, Charcuterie, Cheryl Sternman Rule, Cookbook Author, David Lebovitz, Eat. Live. Travel. Write., Edna Lewis, Ellie Goulding, Food Blogger, Food in Jars, Food52, Food52 cookbook, Hip Girl's Guide, Jacques Pepin, Jane Grigson, Jeffrey Weiss, Julia Child, Laurie Colwin, Marcella Hazan, Michael Ruhlman, Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Kitchen, Practical Pantry, Punk Domestics, Ripe, Sam Sifton, Sara Moulton, Smitten Kitchen, Team Yogurt, The Taste of Country Cooking, Trufflepig, Well Preserved, Yogurt Culture

069: Danguole Lekaviciute: Being Adventurous and Playing with Food

August 19, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

Danguole Lekaviciute of 10th Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted on her.
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Danguole Lekaviciute of 10th Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about being adventurous and playing with food.

10th Kitchen

Danguole believes in adventurous eating and drinking. And her kitchen is her ultimate playground. Although she appreciates the classics, she truly tries to bring something creative and original to her blog, 10th Kitchen.

I am so delighted to have Danguole Lekaviciute of 10th Kitchen joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below are Danguole’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

Danguole Lekaviciute of 10th Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about starting her food blog.

What happened was that a good friend of mine moved across the country, and she had a personal blog that she was doing a project 365 on, which is where you take a picture everyday and write a little blurb about it. And it’s meant to get a good blogging habit going.

When she moved away, I jumped on board. I got my own blog, and I started doing the same thing. It was a fun way for us to keep in touch. I don’t think anybody read it besides us. But what I found eventually was that I was mostly interested in talking about food and cooking. So when that wrapped up, it was just a natural transition for me to start a food blog.

I pretty much immediately bought my domain and started taking some crappy pictures and telling awkward jokes. And about four years later, I’m still doing the same thing.

I had a personal WordPress blog before, just your basic template. I had no idea how a website works. Those templates make it so easy for anyone to put up their website without really having to do a whole lot of work. Since then I’ve learned a lot about HTML and CSS and all the intricacies with hosting and stuff like that. So I’m at the point where I put it on my resume now, because it is such a valuable skill that I never had before.

I think the most challenging part was trying to switch hosts halfway. And I just lost my website for a day and a half. And it was terrifying, even though at that point, not that many people read it. So I just went back to my old host, and was like, “Please take all my money. I’ll stick with you. Just make it work again.”

It’s a terrifying thing when your website is down for some reason. It’s like an extension of you. And even though you know it doesn’t matter, it feels so strange.

I think all of it felt pretty natural to me. I’ve always played with recipes a little bit and developed my own. I’ve written before. And I’ve done photography as a hobby before. I don’t know if you can tell from those early shots because they’re just not great. But I always dabbled in artistic things like that. So all of it made sense, except the technical part probably.

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

Danguole Lekaviciute of 10th Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her curiosity around food.

I cooked since I was a kid. And I remember trying to make things work from an early age. I definitely helped out in the kitchen a lot. And I definitely have memories of being 10 or 12 and just playing in the kitchen and seeing what happens.

In my family, it was more of a chore. And I actually really liked it. So my sister would always do the dishes if I cooked, so I always enjoyed that arrangement. To me, it was fun.

I love David Lebovitz. I think his style is so classic and so refined. And he has such a good way of connecting it to his life in France as far as blogging goes. Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni’s Ice Creams in Columbus completely changed my life with her method for making ice cream, which I do regularly. And I love Mark Bittman. I have his books. I’ve read his articles. I followed his podcast. He just has so many smart things to say about food and policy and connecting it to the everyday cook in the kitchen and how you can make small changes and work toward a more sustainable food system, which is the stuff that I find interesting.

On Adventurous Eating:

I’ve always been interested in just playing with things and seeing what happens. I think if I didn’t have an artistic streak, I think I’d be some sort of scientist because I just like to see how a dish changes if you use coconut oil instead of butter or more herbs or more this or more vinegar. So to me, that comes naturally. I think it’s important to appreciate all aspects of cooking.

I love ethnic food from all over the world. I’ve always dabbled in Mexican or Thai or Vietnamese. I don’t think there’s a particular cuisine that’s the good gateway. It’s more about playing with recipes that you know and love. Like if your family is from France or Russia or wherever, I think it just comes from mastering what you know and changing one thing here or there to see how the dish changes and to see how the ingredients interact with one and other.

Fish sauce, when you first smell it, is just so overwhelming and so different from what I’m used to. But it just makes such a difference in dishes. And it’s such a great savory base for crisp, clean flavors. They all meld so beautifully together in Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. It’s a thing of beauty. I love it.

On Being Fearless and Experimenting in the Kitchen:

Danguole Lekaviciute of 10th Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about being fearless and experimenting in the kitchen.

I remember making tacos from this leftover roast chicken, and I mixed it with a bunch of sour cream and green onion. That’s not a taco. But it was one of those times right before grocery shopping that you had to make do with whatever you had. And my family appreciated that.

One thing I was trying to do was make buttermilk rolls, which I have eventually got to making through cultured buttermilk, with powdered buttermilk. I really wanted that flavor. But I was working with a recipe that required you to heat up milk. And so I was like, “Oh, I’ll just switch it with buttermilk.” And of course, I should have known that when you heat buttermilk, you just get a curdled mess. That completely threw me off my game. That’s something that I should have know but just didn’t think about. So that happens all the time.

On Making Cooking More Fun:

Danguole Lekaviciute of 10th Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about making cooking more fun.

I think mastering the things you know and love is a good first step to where you don’t even need the recipe anymore. Then you can play with the proportions or add different ingredients to it. Simple things like switching out parsley for cilantro or basil or something like that is a good start.

If you view recipes as a template, if you see the part that’s starchy and the part that’s savory and the part that’s fresh and the part that’s acidic, it’s like a puzzle. You can swap out the lemon juice for sherry vinegar maybe and see what happens. Just see a recipe as a whole, and then take apart the components and see what we can do with them.

It’s a balancing act, and it also makes you more flexible. If you don’t have lemon juice, you can try a certain vinegar or lime juice, things like that.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I honestly don’t watch much TV. I used to watch Top Chef back in the day. Right now, I’m binging on Orange Is The New Black. There’s cooking in that show, a little bit, prison cooking.

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

I think anyone listening to your podcast would probably know about Smitten Kitchen and David Lebovitz. Those are my favorites.

I also have blogger friends that I keep up with who are really talented, The Sugar Hit is fantastic, My Name is Yeh. Who else? SugarHero is a really fun baking blog. There’s tons. Any type of cuisine, any type of cooking you’re into, there’s a blog about it, which is fantastic.

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

I follow Take A Megabite. I think you’ve had her on your podcast before. She is just so colorful. It’s not my style at all, but it makes me very happy.

I follow The Sugar Hit, like I said. Sarah just has great taste for desserts and a great eye for photography. Tieghan from Half Baked Harvest, she’s really fantastic. She’s really visually oriented. Kelly Beall, who does Design Crush, is also really good. On Pinterest, she always posts interesting design, interesting food, interesting style.

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

I have a stovetop smoker, which I don’t break out too often because it makes your house smell like bacon for days afterward. But yeah, it’s fantastic. I love it. If you don’t have a backyard pit for barbecue, it’s a good alternative.

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

I am really trying hard to like mushrooms. It’s the one food that I just never liked, never appreciated it. And I like the flavor of it. I do like mushroom ravioli if it’s all chopped up. I think it’s a texture thing. So I’m trying really hard, and I’ve done some things with it that I ended up liking a lot.

I actually smoked shiitaki mushrooms one time, put them on polenta, and that was actually enjoyable. So that’s where the stovetop smoker comes in.

It depends on what kind of mushroom. Big, slimy portobello, I’m still at like 1%. I’ll eat it if I have too. But yeah, shiitake mushrooms are great. I love chanterelles. So, I’m working on it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I have a lot of cookbooks. I like Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. I’m trying to cook my way through it. Mark Bittman’s books are always a great resource. I have How To Cook Everything Fast right now. It’s focused on fast food, but it is also really inspirational. His combinations are really innovative. And I think the cookbook that I like the most isn’t actually a cookbook, but I literally sleep with The Flavor Bible. I’m always flipping through it at night when I’m looking for ideas. It’s like a dictionary of what flavors go together. And it’s fantastic. I use it for inspiration all the time, and I used to have it on my nightstand. It’s like the bedtime story for me.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I’ve been branching out a little bit with my taste in music. I usually listen to indie rock or stuff like that. But I’ve been into soul lately. So if I had to pick a song, I would pick Nothing On Me by Curtis Mayfield. I love that. It’s my jam right now.

On Keeping Posted with Danguole:

Danguole Lekaviciute of 10th Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted on her.

I probably use Instagram the most. I’m really visually oriented. It just makes it so easy to let people know what you’re up to and what you’re drinking, what you’re eating.

 

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: 10th Kitchen, Adventurous Eating, Curtis Mayfield, Danguole Lekaviciute, David Lebovitz, Design Crush, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Half Baked Harvest, How To Cook Everything Fast, Jeni Britton Bauer, Jeni's Ice Cream, Kelly Beall, Marcella Hazan, Mark Bittman, My Name is Yeh, Orange Is The New Black, Smitten Kitchen, SugarHero, Take a Megabite, The Flavor Bible, The Sugar Hit, Top Chef

036: Stephanie Shih: Learning to Cook with Tea

May 8, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Stephanie Shih of Desserts for Breakfast on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.
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Stephanie Shih of Desserts for Breakfast on The Dinner Special podcast talking about learning to cook with tea.

Desserts for Breakfast

Stephanie started her blog in 2009, and Desserts for Breakfast has been a finalist in the Saveur Food Blog Awards for Best Baking and Desserts blog twice in 2011 and 2013. She is a food and travel photographer, a dessert designer, and she’s also on the tenured track towards professorhood.

I am so delighted to have Stephanie Shih of Desserts for Breakfast here on the show today.

On Her Blog:

Stephanie Shih of Desserts for Breakfast on The Dinner Special podcast talking about starting her food blog.

It started shortly after my first year of graduate school when I was looking for a new hobby to do outside of studies, and got really into catering for some reason and did a couple of weddings.

Clients really wanted to see photos of what I had done and understand what was being offered. And so the easiest way to set that up was a blog. I just logged onto Blogger and put up a website, and then people started to ask for recipes, and so I started to post recipes. And all of a sudden, I was doing this thing called food blogging.

The first year of grad school is always an adjustment. So it was really nice to have that balance outside of school. I definitely stopped the whole catering thing very quickly after my first year.

On How Blogging Has Changed Since She Started:

Stephanie Shih of Desserts for Breakfast on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how food blogging has changed since when she started.

Blogging has gotten really intense since I started. There’s just so many amazing blogs out there now, and new ones coming up every single day. And the level that everyone is starting at is just so much higher than before. I feel like when I started, it was just this casual thing. There were a couple of really big blogs like Pioneer Woman and you could just do whatever you wanted, but now it’s such a business, such an actual intense thing that you could do. So that’s been a really interesting shift, I think, in the blogosphere.

Where is my blog going to go? I’m kind of a perfectionist, so every post takes so much time from recipe development to actually making the recipe, to actually photographing it and styling it, and then all the posts, and writing the posts. And so it’s become a big question about, “Okay, well, should the blog continue to be this really good professional thing that’s out there, or just a journal of my life?” and I haven’t decided yet where it’s going go.

On Photographing Steeped: Recipes Infused With Tea:

Stephanie Shih of Desserts for Breakfast on The Dinner Special podcast talking about photographing Steeped: Recipes Infused with Tea.

I like to think of it as exercising the same creative muscle that I hope to bring to research. You’re all one person, so everything we do informs every other part of yourself. So, yes, in a way, it’s a nice escape from thinking about math equations all day, but on the other hand, it’s really great to try to think of how it makes me a better researcher and teacher.

Annelies is kind of amazing. She’s this writer/marketer/recipe developer, and I’ve known her for a couple years now through the SF area food scene, and all of a sudden one day she was like, “Steph, I wrote a book, and I have a publisher, and I’m going to publish this book. Will you shoot it?” And I was like, “Yes! Of course! That would be amazing!” So that was a really awesome opportunity that she definitely put my way, and I’m very grateful to her for that.

The book is excellent. It is a bunch of recipes that are amazing. All about cooking with tea.

Instead of just drinking tea or having tea as a supplement to your meal, you’re really bringing out the flavors and understanding how to use it in these highly creative ways, as a rub, or as a sauce, or infused and steeped. I learned a lot from just watching Annelies use tea in so many different ways I never even thought of.

From a dessert baker’s point of view, the most we ever use is maybe steeping milk with some Earl Grey, or using matcha in cakes. But this book goes way beyond that. One of my favorite recipes is furikake popcorn. Have you ever had furikake popcorn?

It’s this seaweed sesame blend with spices, it’s kind of salty and sweet, and you put it on popcorn. But Annelies does this amazing thing where she does it with tea instead of seaweed, and it’s so addictive and so good. I would have never thought to use roasted tea that way.

On Food Photography vs Experimenting in the Kitchen:

Stephanie Shih of Desserts for Breakfast on The Dinner Special podcast talking about food photography versus experimenting in the kitchen.

That’s such a hard question. It depends on what day you ask me.

I have to say if I had to just choose one to do for the rest of my life, it would probably be the photography aspect, ’cause you can take that wherever you go. But I wouldn’t want to choose.

On Things Not Going as Planned in the Kitchen but Turning Out Better:

Stephanie Shih of Desserts for Breakfast on The Dinner Special podcast talking about things not going as planned but turning out better.

A new experience has been cooking really fast dinners for myself, and I’ve actually gotten really creative with kale and eggs.

There are a lot of things you can apparently do with baked kale and eggs and just different spices. That’s been amazing. So if you get tired of sumac in your eggs, you can just put cinnamon and nutmeg, and it’s like this whole different thing.

Worcestershire sauce is this new thing to me, which is delicious on everything, so that’s definitely been how I’ve been exercising my creativity in the kitchen lately.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Top Chef, I’m a religious watcher of Top Chef.

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

I have to confess that I’ve been a little bit out of the blogosphere lately just because I haven’t had time to follow-up.

There’s this woman who does these most beautiful photos. Her food site is called Suvi sur le vif, and she just does photos. She doesn’t post recipes or anything, but they’re just like the most gorgeous dark and contrasty photos, or bright and contrasty photos that you’ve ever seen.

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

On Instagram, there’s this furniture designer out of L.A. that I’ve been following lately.

I think his name is Etrine. He makes really cool, very hipster stools that are highly geometric and I’ve been really enjoying his feed. He does a lot of photos with cactuses recently.

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

My grandmother’s rolling pin.

It’s super tiny and I wouldn’t use it for anything ’cause it’s so small, but I really love having it.

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

I recently became convinced of roasted asparagus.

I just wouldn’t touch asparagus. But then someone cooked it to a crisp for me in the oven, and it’s so good.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, I have to say Steeped, first of all, ’cause I have to push Annelies’ awesome book. But in addition to that, any of the David Lebovitz books I turn to any time I need a solid, good dessert recipe.

What song or album just makes you wanna cook?

Lately I’ve been listening to Brandi Carlile’s latest, the one that just came out. Anything I happen to be into at that point is good to listen to in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted on Stephanie:

Stephanie Shih of Desserts for Breakfast on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.

Yeah, I’ve been on Instagram a lot lately since I’ve moved to a new place. It’s been really fun to post new pictures of the seasons here that I’ve never experience before and things like that. So my Instagram is @shihbakes, same thing as my Twitter, so I’m on there a lot too. And I apologize, the blog hasn’t been updating as much as it should be, but every now and then I’ll stop in and say hello.

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: 2011 Saveur Food Blog Awards, 2013 Saveur Food Blog Awards, Baking, Brandi Carlile, David Lebovitz, Desserts, Desserts for Breakfast, Etrine, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Photographer, Pioneer Woman, Steeped: Recipes Infused With Tea, Stephanie Shih, Suvi sur le vif, Tea, Top Chef

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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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