Jane Grigson | The Dinner Special podcast

070: Cathy Barrow: Charcuterie and Pantry Building

August 24, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

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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:

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:

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:

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”:

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:

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.

042: Valeria Necchio: How Following Food Seasonality Leads to Tastier Eating

May 29, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Life Love Food

Valeria grew up in the Venetian countryside, and grew up eating local seasonal food most of which was home grown. She has a Masters Degree in Food Culture and Communications, and her recipes on Life Love Food are simple, wholesome, and inspired by her Italian roots.

Currently living in London, she chooses healthier ingredients and enjoys eating a balanced diet that just so happens to be naturally plant-based, and the recipes on her blog reflect this.

I am so excited to have Valeria Necchio of Life Love Food here on the show today.

On the Food Culture in Italy When She Was Growing Up:

I was born in Venice, in the city, but really quickly, we moved in the countryside as my father found a job. He’s a teacher, so he found a job in a school in the Venetian countryside. And my grandmother happened to be there and my grandparents as well. They had a really, really beautiful vegetable garden, and that was definitely not an issue for that generation. Everybody was, to some extent – especially when living in the countryside – just growing their own food, mainly vegetables. Sometimes they would have some livestock.

So for me, that proximity to that vegetable garden, just the proximity to my grandparents, has had a really, really big influence in regards to my way of cooking and eating. And the way they were growing the vegetables, the way they were bringing the vegetables to the kitchen, how they were transforming that and creating meals out of those. Somehow, growing up, I absorbed this concept of seasonality.

Everything was really bountiful. I learned the skill of preserving from them, because they obviously embraced modernity, and indeed had refrigerators, freezers, and things like this. But still, that kind of culture of preserving was really strong. And coming from the past, it was just something that they’ve always done and they kept doing.

For example, lots of tomato preserves and really classic Italian tomato sauce. That was definitely the first food experience for me and what really had a big impact on my way of cooking and eating.

Now it’s definitely this cycle of seasons and respecting the natural growth of vegetables that are brought to the table, and are really so fresh because they have been grown in their right season. And also, this concept of trying to preserve it for the months to come simply because tomatoes, they were not available in the winter, but then they’re really not that tasty in the winter.

So try to enjoy what summer has brought to you in such abundance and just carry on with that. Definitely seasonality is a crucial point for me, and also the fact that we’ve been eating out of this vegetable garden for so long. It has brought so many cheerful meals to our family.

For me, eating mainly vegetables, having vegetables as the core of my meals is just a really natural way of eating. It comes really effortless for me.

On the Seasonality of Food:

That’s a really really important factor, the awaiting for the ripe strawberries, especially things like strawberries that you find available year-round and most of the time are so tasteless. And not only do you miss that feeling of saying, “Okay, it’s May, June, the strawberries are ripe, so great. You just go and pick them,” but also the fact that they really don’t taste very good at all. So yeah, it’s a double miss.

On How Food Culture in Italy Has Changed:

I think it has changed a lot. Not very many people grow their food anymore.

My generation doesn’t have access to their own vegetable garden. Maybe they still have relatives that do that, but more and more, that kind of skill has been lost.

And definitely, obviously, like modern life, everything is much faster.

There is the culture of the supermarket everywhere, a lot of convenient food. People still tend to have some sort of basic knowledge about food. Somehow Italians, because of osmosis or I don’t know what, they absorb some sort of skill that helps them navigate the kitchen, the food world, and try to prepare some decent meals for themselves.

At the same time, not very many people do tomato sauce from scratch anymore. You just open the bottle and just pour it on your pasta and that’s how it goes.

On When She Realized that Food is Her Passion:

I think it happened when I left home to go and study at my university and I started to cook for myself mostly. Because before, really, I was fed rather than cook, so really lucky.

I started to experiment in the kitchen more and more, and share meals with people that were not my family, so my roommates, friends, really different types of mechanisms that go beyond the classic family meal.

For me, it started to become quite interesting to see the different dynamics that happen around the table and how food really brings people together. There were people from different nationalities at that point. So anything can trigger a conversation about food memories or traditions from other countries.

I had really started to become quite passionate about how food can play a different role, yet a really, really crucial one in all different cultures, and so I wanted to dig deeper for sure.

On a Simple Dish that is Very Traditional Italian:

Risotto is, again, a really obvious answer, but it might sound very intimidating to most because they say, “Oh, it’s so complicated. I don’t know how to make it as an Italian makes it.” But in reality, you just need to nail the basic steps and then it really comes together very easily.

Starting from the onion fried in oil. Then you toast the rice and add in the wine. And then you put your ingredients, then you keep cooking it really slowly. You keep stirring it until it comes together into a smooth cream, but the rice is not mushy. And the risotto is not too solid. It needs to be really running still. That’s it.

On Food Culture in London, UK Versus Italy:

London is a really, really exciting place for food in general. In terms of the food scene, it’s extremely diverse, so it’s really hard to categorize it. But in terms of daily cooking and daily living, I think families rely a lot more than Italians on convenience and just prepared dishes.

I also think that there’s generally less of a knowledge about basic cooking skills. You just notice it from the type of offering that you find in supermarkets in general.

Other big difference is I noticed, as soon as I came here, that most of the fruit and vegetables that you buy at supermarkets is all prepackaged, which is really strange because in Italy, even supermarkets, you just pick up your lettuce or your carrots and it’s all loose. And then I think also in terms of seasonality, there is not a lot of culture related to that. And it’s just a different way of conceiving a meal.

For Italians, vegetables are very much part of a dish, whereas here, for example, vegetables are conceived as a side. You have the protein, and then it’s like a “meat and three veg” type of culture most of the time. This a huge generalization, of course. But just in terms of feeling of how meals are constructed, I think it is pretty much how it works.

On a Food She Was Introduced to in London that She Now Cannot Live Without:

It’s definitely brassicas. We don’t use them very much in Italy just because they grow better in colder climates.

Going to the markets and finding this huge variety of brassicas, for me has been really eye-opening. You can find various types of kales, a lot of different cabbages, little sprouts and all these brassic-y things that make at least the winter a bit more colorful. It’s just not potatoes and beetroots, so there is at least something else.

It’s quite nice and I really grew fond of them besides kale, obviously, which is the big thing. But also other things, as I said, like savoy cabbage, just really, really nice ingredients to cook with and quite versatile.

On Her Blog:

I started the blog in 2010 in spring time, so it’s almost five years. It was just after I knew that I was accepted for this Masters in Food Culture.

I wanted to start sharing recipes from my family, or just recipes that I really enjoyed from Venice, from the region, as well as my experience throughout the Masters of just moving to a different town, living this experience, one year with this really international group of students and the trips that I was doing. And so it just all went from there.

After the end of the Masters, I just realized that I really enjoyed doing it and I just wanted to keep doing it. And so I just kept going.

It has been good thus far. But now it’s just hard to find the time, because London is quite busy too. It’s something that there’s no way I’m going to give up. I just cut some corners and find some time for it.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I watch No Reservations, obviously, which now became Parts Unknown.

Here in the UK, I don’t have a TV, so I don’t really watch very many shows anymore.

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

I love Orangette for the food writing. It’s absolutely stunning. And one called Rachel Eats. She’s an English woman based in Rome. Her writing is stunning. Her recipes are absolutely fantastic.

One blog I always always read is written by an amazing lady and friend – Emiko Davies.

And probably one called Hortus Cuisine, for the really, really lovely photography and also because she portrays the Italian countryside in a really romantic way, which is always nice to see.

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

On Pinterest, I follow Local Milk. She is quite an inspiration for things like interiors and things. And I think her eye is really interesting. I don’t know if she makes me happy, but she makes me inspired.

On Twitter, that makes me happy, Bruce Bourdain is quite interesting, and also whoever has created the account for Queen Elizabeth is quite hilarious as well.

And on Facebook, there’s an Italian satire website called Spinoza, who has always quite a sharp pen in regards to news and things. It’s quite fun.

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

Unusual, I have a really old mill that you use to mash basically anything, mash boiled vegetables and potatoes. Or you can mash grapes and make a grape pudding. I have that.

And then the most treasured, I treasure my food processor quite a lot. It helps save my arm and it just does the meringue better than I could ever do myself.

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

Cilantro. Italians really don’t have a palate for cilantro. It’s not an ingredient that we ever, ever use or you’ll ever find in an Italian kitchen.

The first time that I was invited to dinner by my Thai friend back during Masters times, I thought everything was tasting quite soapy. But then, I definitely developed a palate for it. So much so that now I really enjoy salads that are basically made just of cilantro and something else.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Jane Grigson’s, The Vegetable Book. It’s a bible and it’s absolutely fantastic for tips on how to choose vegetables, how to clean them, and just simple ways to prepare them.

I have been using Heidi Swanson’s book quite a lot, the blogger behind 101 Cookbooks. Her book, Super Natural Everyday, is just something that we pull out very, very often for a quick week night meal or just simply inspiration.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Lately, I’ve been listening to The National quite a lot. I know they’re quite obscure, but I really like them. They have a good mixture of relaxing and cheerful that gives it a good rhythm in the kitchen.

Keep Posted with Valeria:

Definitely Instagram. It’s where I share things that I cook that I don’t have the time to blog about, and where definitely I spend most of my time when it comes to social media. Because it’s really visual and it’s just really fun. So Instagram, @valerianecchio.