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032: Luisa Weiss: How Travel Has Shaped Her Food Journey

April 29, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Luisa Weiss of The Wednesday Chef on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how her travels have shaped her food journey.
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Luisa Weiss of The Wednesday Chef on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how her travels have shaped her food journey.

The Wednesday Chef, Food Blog

Luisa is an author, a food columnist for Harper’s Bazaar Germany, teacher of both writing and cooking and leads food tours in Berlin where she lives with her husband and son Hugo.

I am so thrilled to have Luisa Weiss of The Wednesday Chef here on the show today.

On How Her Travels Have Shaped Her Food Journey:

Luisa Weiss of The Wednesday Chef on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how her travels have shaped her food journey.

I grew up in an international home. My dad’s American, my mom is Italian and I was born and partially raised in Berlin.

My parents split up so I moved to Boston with my dad but kept coming back to Germany and Italy to see my mother. I’ve had lots of different food cultures in my life from the very beginning and moving to Boston for college was interesting in a way because I came from high school in Berlin and then college food, the dorm room, the freshman 15, all that was totally new to me. And then Paris…

Paris, the food education. Paris was  obviously really wonderful. I don’t think I’ve had as much of an epiphany as a normal American would have just because Italy’s culture is similar in that they really revere ingredients.

Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve definitely picked up something and taken it with me.

Italian food is what I’m really comfortable with and familiar with. I know exactly what it’s supposed to taste like and I have a lot of confidence in that.

But over the past 10 years of blogging, I’ve become so much better at cooking all kinds of different things. Now I feel like I say Italian but then I also want to say that I am really good at cooking Indian food at home now, and American food, and baking, and all kinds of other things.

So it’s still Italian but definitely there’s lots more going on now.

On How Her Blog Started:

Luisa Weiss of The Wednesday Chef on The Dinner Special podcast talking about starting her food blog.

I was working in book publishing and I had discovered food blogs a couple years before. I loved them. And it just dawned on me one day like, “I love reading food blogs. I love to cook and I love to write. Why aren’t I writing a food blog?”

At the time there were many food blogs already and I assumed if I threw my hat in the ring, that nobody would care or pay attention because I’d be the last one to the party. So I just did it on a whim and I thought it was going to be writing practice more than anything else.

I majored in English in college and I wanted to go to graduate school for writing. A professor of mine was like, “Don’t do it. If you’re going to write, you’ll do it out of your own accord.” But I didn’t and so finally the blog was meant to be a practice and then it turned into so much more.

I’ve been a passionate cook and baker my whole life really, but I got into this rut when I was living in New York, my early years in New York but also in Paris.  I made the same things over and over again.

It’s not that I didn’t want to make anything else, it’s just that nothing occurred to me. What else would I cook other than these three things? But I was really obsessive about clipping recipes and so I have binders and binders full of recipes from the newspaper food sections. So when the time came to come up with a concept for the blog, like some kind of a focus, right away I was like, “Okay, well I guess I’ll just cook my way through the newspaper recipes.” Then I could never cook a recipe twice because I always had the blog to think about. So in the past 10 years the blog has been my culinary education.

On Cooking for Hugo:

Luisa Weiss of The Wednesday Chef on The Dinner Special podcast talking about cooking for her son Hugo.

When Hugo was born or when he started eating solid foods, I was coming up with silly little ideas that I thought other people might be interested in. It was also meant to be a journal of what I was feeding him, too. Like, “This was a good idea. Let me write it down so that I remember it next time,” there’s nothing in it that’s earth shattering. There’s nothing totally new in it, but I thought I would have appreciated or I do appreciate when other mothers say, “Oh, this really worked for my kid,” because even though I’m such an omnivore and my husband too, we did not give birth to an omnivore. Everybody says, “Oh just feed the kid whatever you’re eating.” When we tried that, he just wouldn’t eat. He’s a little picky.

It’s getting better and he’s weirdly adventurous in certain moments. So we have a Sichuan restaurant that we’re obsessed with. Every once in a blue moon we go. He’ll end up eating half the things that we do. His mouth’s on fire. He’s got tears streaming down his face and he’s asking for more. But then other days, he refuses to eat a meat sauce with his pasta. The pasta has to be unadorned and plain, nothing.

So whenever somebody says, “This really worked for my nine month old, or a 10 month old, or two and a half year old,” I think, “I want to pass that information on,” and the same for me. I had a couple inspiration moments and I just found recipes that he ended up liking. I thought, “Might as well share them.”

I hated hearing this when I was pregnant, the mother of a newborn and all this but now that I’m a little older I understand why people say, “Enjoy it,” because actually the stages are all so short that while you’re in them, especially for the first time, you have no idea. You’re like, “Oh my God. My kid’s going to be eating pureed carrots for the next 10 years,” but subconsciously you think that they’re not even going to be eating pureed carrots for a month. So just live in the moment and then move on. Be flexible.

On Her Book, “My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story With Recipes”:

Luisa Weiss of The Wednesday Chef on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her book My Berlin Kitchen.

The book is a collection of stories in chronological order that tell the rough outline, and in some cases not that rough, of sort of the strange path from Germany to the States, back to Germany, back to the States, to France and then ultimately back to Germany again.

Each chapter has a recipe at the end so it’s a lot about food but also about family, about what it’s like to grow up in several different cultures. All the alienation and difficulty that that can present even though it’s in a sense a nice problem to have, but it does have a lot of its own emotional baggage.

Then the love story with the city of Berlin that I’ve had my whole life.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I used to watch, like literally 13 years ago, Nigella and Jamie and Two Fat Ladies, but now I don’t watch any.

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

Dinner: A Love Story which is about cooking for your family, specifically older children once they’re three years and up, how you get family dinner on the table.

Orangette which is a beautiful food blog with lovely recipes and writing and photos and just wonderful.

Bon Appetempt, which is a humorous take on cooking recipes from magazines but it’s also about life and things.

Lottie and Doof. Tim’s writing is so amazing and his food is too but now that I think about it, I haven’t actually cooked that many things from it but I just love his take on the world and I just feel his site is a little blast of joy.

There are so many others. Those are the ones off the top of my head.

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

Okay, Abbey Nova from Design Scouting which is the other blog I was going to say that I love, but it’s not a food blog. Follow her on Pinterest. Love her.

And on Facebook, Humans of New York. Best account ever. Literally every post is a gut punch in good and bad ways. It’s just wonderful.

Instagram. My friend, Rachel Roddy, in Rome. She always posts pictures of her sink with all of the beautiful things that she’s bought at the market that day and it’s just her sink. My mother’s from Rome and my mother lived in Rome when I was in college, and there’s just something about the light. When I look at those pictures, there’s something very deep going on inside of me. They make me happy.

Her blog is Rachel Eats and that’s the other blog I was thinking of. Beautiful, provocative, gorgeous writing about living in Italy but being English. It’s incredible and her Instagram.

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

Canned tomatoes, salt, olive oil.

I feel like I can’t live without canned tomatoes. That’s breakfast, lunch and dinner right there.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without.

Yeah, canned tomatoes without a doubt.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Fuchsia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice, which is Chinese home cooking demystified.

The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater. I love it. It’s more of a journal of food but it’s very inspiring for when you’re feeling like, “I don’t feel like cooking anymore. What should I do?” I go to him and he always gets me going again.

Diana Henry’s A Change of Appetite, so Diana Henry is an Irish food writer in London and she’s incredibly prolific. She publishes a book a year or something and they’re all incredible. I don’t understand how she does it.  I mean really they’re all incredible and they’re all so different. Her most recent book that’s available now is called A Change of Appetite and it’s ostensively of being like a lighter eating book but it’s just great. It’s full of incredibly delicious, lush, interesting recipes.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I actually am not really into music when I’m cooking although I guess something cheerful like Ella Fitzgerald.

Keep Posted on Luisa:

Luisa Weiss of The Wednesday Chef on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted on her.

Well I’m pretty good whenever I have a blog post up, I ping the three big ones: Instagram, Facebook and Twitter so any of those is fine. I love Instagram most. It’s definitely the most fun I have while doing social media. It doesn’t feel like work.

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: A Change of Appetite, Berlin, Bon Appétempt, Cooking for Parents, Design Scouting, Diana Henry, Dinner: A Love Story, Ella Fitzgerald, Every Grain of Rice, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Fuchsia Dunlop, Germany, Harper's Bazaar Germany, Humans of New York, International Food, Jamie Oliver, Lottie and Doof, Luisa Weiss, Mom, My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story With Recipes, Nigel Slater, Nigella Lawson, Orangette, Parent, Rachel Eats, The Kitchen Diaries, The Wednesday Chef, Two Fat Ladies, Writer

024: Meike Peters: How Mediterranean Cooking Can Be Simple

April 10, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about food culture in Berlin, Germany.
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Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast on How Mediterranean Cooking Can Be Simple

Eat in My Kitchen

On Eat in My Kitchen, Meike shares her culinary journey which is inspired by her mother’s passion for cooking and food, and her connection with Malta in the Mediterranean. Her photography is amazing and transports us to her dining table in her apartment in one of Berlin’s wide boulevards.

I am so thrilled to have Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on the show today.

On Her Blog:

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her food blog.

I’ve always loved food and cooking. I’ve been cooking for almost 20 years now and we always have lots of friends over. Sometimes I cook for ten, 15, 20 people. After our dinner parties, people always ask me for recipes, they just give me a call during the week like, “Can you give me some inspiration and tell me what I can cook?” So at one point I thought I can also share all of this on a blog.

I also love photography, I love writing. The blog brings everything together. Now you can just go to the blog and see what I cook and get some inspiration from there.

Cooking is definitely easiest. I don’t even have to think much about it; it just comes naturally. Photography and writing, it depends a lot on my moods, especially with writing. Sometimes when I’m in the right mood or sometimes even when I’m lying in bed in the morning, I have a whole text in my head. But when I’m not in the right mood, it can take an hour, two hours and it just doesn’t come out.

With photography, it depends a lot on the light. So since I take all my pictures with daylight, I depend a lot on how the lights change. Sometimes the food and the light and everything works perfectly, and sometimes it doesn’t, and then it’s a bit more work.

For me it’s important that the food looks quite natural and even of late, I don’t decorate much. With my food, I’m not the kind of person who gets five plates and five fancy spoons. What you see on the photos is what I use for cooking and the plates we eat from. It’s very practical.

On Her Mother As an Inspiration:

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her mother as her inspiration.

We talk on the phone two, three times a week and very often we just talk about recipes, what we cook.

She travels a lot and sometimes she calls me from a restaurant and tells me, “I had this amazing pasta here in Sicily with truffle. You have to try that.”

We both have this huge passion for food; for cooking and good ingredients. And very often it comes very natural that we talk about it other than mother and daughter. Others may talk about clothes and shoes and handbags. We talk about cabbage, carrots, soups, and pasta.

When I visit my mama, we sit at the table and we drink wine, we eat. Sometimes we meet in the kitchen at five in the afternoon and we just cook and chat. Although my family is German, it’s quite Italian.

On Mediterranean Food and Cooking:

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Mediterranean food and cooking.

It doesn’t need many ingredients, but the ingredients are very good. It starts with good olive oil, good vegetables, ripe vegetables, something that’s hard to find sometimes here in the north of Europe, in Berlin.

But in the Mediterranean, they pick the vegetables and fruits from the trees and they are perfect, ripe, sweet. So whenever we go to Malta and I come back home to Berlin, I’m a bit disappointed with what I find here. The cooking is varied because they have these amazing ingredients; they don’t actually need much. You throw together what you have.

Whenever we are in Malta my cooking is very quick.  The seafood is amazing; we just throw some fish on the barbecue and some great bread and olive oil. A quick salad and that’s it; doesn’t need much. But what you have is very, very good and it’s very pure.

I use a lot of fennel seeds in my cooking. That started, was it ten years ago, when I moved in with my boyfriend because they have amazing fennel seeds in Malta. So there are more fennel seeds in my cooking. And citrus fruits like lemon zest, orange zest, I use that a lot. These are ingredients that everybody really knows but once it really fits your taste buds, you might use it a bit more. So for me, it’s citrus flavors and fennel seeds.

The best thing is to travel to Italy, to Malta. Find a nice mama who opens her kitchen for you and cook with her. I think it’s like with any other style of cooking as well; that it’s always best to meet someone who is from this country and to cook with this person.

Because a cookbook, a blog, they can inspire you to try out things that you might not have tried before, but the best thing is always to cook with people who come from this country or from this area, and to learn from them. That’s what I believe.

They know more of the secrets because it’s the cooking that comes from their mother or grandmother; all these recipes that are given from one generation to the next. And I love to learn like this.

On Food Culture in Berlin, Germany:

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about food culture in Berlin, Germany.

It’s very multicultural and there are these trends like in any other big cities. At the moment, there’s big hype for Korean food, burgers as well; a big burger hype.

There are always new people coming to the city and bringing their culinary background with them. But it’s really very inspiring because it’s permanently changing and developing.

The locals here, they love a dish that is called Königsberger Klopse. It’s like a meatball and it’s cooked in a broth. The sauce is a bit thick and creamy with capers. It’s sweet as well. For some people it’s quite a challenge. If someone prepares it well, then it’s really, really good.

What is very famous here is currywurst. Everybody knows currywurst, it’s a sausage. It’s light with a curry ketchup. I’m not a big fan of that.

On Her Blog Series, “Meet in Your Kitchen”:

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about a series on her blog called Meet in Your Kitchen.

The idea is that I meet other people in their kitchen because on my blog people just see what happens in my kitchen.

For Meet in Your Kitchen, I meet other people in their kitchen, people who inspire me. Some have culinary backgrounds, some are artists, designers, friends. The idea is to show a process through the eyes of their kitchen.

We cook one dish together; the recipe will be, as always, on the blog and as well, they choose if they want to bake or to cook. I spend a few hours with them in their kitchen and we talk about their lives, the projects, food. Also culinary memories, how they learned about cooking and the food culture in their family.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

None, I don’t watch any. I’m sorry.

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

I love Manger by Mimi Thorisson. I mean, it’s very popular. I love France. I love the food. I love the pictures. It’s a very popular blog.

I love What Should I Eat for Breakfast Today by Marta. She lives in Berlin as well. I did a feature with her and I love her photography. I love her writing, her start into the day, and I love her blog.

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

Okay, I follow Marta What should I Eat for Breakfast Today, she makes me happy.

I follow Manger as well, Mimi Thorisson because she shows France.

I like to follow travel bloggers. I don’t know their names, but I love to see when they go to the Caribbean and it’s like going on holiday for a split second.

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

Everybody should have good olive oil, good flour. I use spelt flour, like white spelt flour, for all my baking and that’s really good. Yeast for baking, also.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Something I cannot live without is bread. I love bread. If that’s the only thing I can eat for the rest of my life, I’m happy. I love bread.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I love the Nigel Slater cookbooks because I love his approach to cooking and his diary form of the books.

I like Ottolenghi although I don’t cook much of his recipes, but I find him inspiring.

There is a new cookbook that I got for Christmas, Persiana; this book is great too.

I like Nigella Lawson’s baking book.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Jazz music, in general, Wes Montgomery. Yes, jazz music, definitely.

Sometimes I need something loud and wild, sometimes classic music. It depends a lot on my mood really.

Keep Posted on Meike:

Meike Peters of Eat in My Kitchen on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted on her.

The blog, that’s where I share pictures on Instagram, on Pinterest, on Facebook, on Twitter as well. You get the recipes, the pictures, all on the blog.

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    Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Berlin, currywurst, Eat in My Kitchen, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Germany, Königsberger Klopse, Malta, Manger, Mediterranean, Meet in Your Kitchen, Meike Peters, Mimi Thorisson, Nigel Slater, Nigella Lawson, Wes Montgomery, What Should I Eat for Breakfast Today, Yotam Ottolenghi

    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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