Ottolenghi | The Dinner Special podcast

129: Yosef Silver: Kosher Cooking and Barbecue

June 29, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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This American Bite

Since starting This American Bite, Yosef has evolved into a Kansas City based kosher food blogger. On his blog is where he welcomes us into his kitchen, where he highlights flavor when cooking from scratch, seasoning a plate, and breaking bread. Yosef believes that though it is not always easy to express gratitude in person, a home cooked meal says it all.

I am so happy to have Yosef Silver of This American Bite joining me on the show today.

(*All photos below are Yosef’s.)

On Being Kosher:

My wife and I are Jewish, and we keep a kosher home. I didn’t really start off to be a kosher blogger in that niche, but inherently my recipes are kosher, and that means that we don’t mix dairy products with meat products. It means our meat is all certified kosher and I’m personally gluten-free and dairy-free completely. So there’s just a lot of synergy with kosher cooking when you’re already doing a dairy-free diet.

I’ve been eating kosher most of my life. I think about since four or five years old, we’ve been keeping kosher in my family.

One of the big no-no’s is mixing the dairy and the meat product. So there’s no biscuits and gravy if there’s butter involved. So I’ll cook with a lot of dairy alternatives. Kosher slaughter has a lot of rules around how the animals are treated while they’re alive and while they’re being slaughtered, as well as there being restrictions on which meat products we eat, and which fish we eat. There’s also humane treatment of the animals as well. So pork is out of the question, and a lot of shellfish is out of the question, lobster, things like that we don’t eat at all. But, I think there’s a lot of traditional brisket and roast chicken on Friday night for the Sabbath. So we don’t go hungry, I’ll tell you that.

I tend not to get overwhelmed with kosher. Produce, fruit, vegetables, beans, legumes, rice, that’s generally kosher. Fish and meat, primarily meat and chicken, there’s a certification. But in the United States it’s very easy. Most Trader Joe’s you’ll go into will carry kosher chicken, maybe kosher meat, depending on what region you’re in. And if you’ve ever been in a store and seen a little symbol, which is a “U” with a circle around it, that’s the kosher symbol.

On the Food Culture in Kansas City:

Kansas City has an awesome food culture. There’s a lady called Jill Silva who writes for the Kansas City Star. And their food blog actually just won a national award for their coverage of the local food scene.

Our kosher barbecue festival brings people in every year from as far as New York, LA. We have the entire country covered. I have a very good friend from Northern California who isn’t Jewish, doesn’t keep kosher, and he flew in to be on my team. Friends of mine from Israel flew in and are on a team with us, and it’s such a culinary adventure. We’re very lucky that Simon Majumdar from the Food Network comes out every year to our barbecue festival, and he either emcees it or judges it. And if you read his book — I think it’s called Fed, White and Blue — he actually talked about a Friday night dinner that he had in our home, and then the weekend of the barbecue festival.

On Competing in the Barbecue Festival:

My goal at the barbecue festival really isn’t to win. We’re there to have a great time, and my teammates and I have really embodied that. You’re competing in an official Barbecue Society sanctioned competition, and they’re looking for something specific. They’re looking for the smoke rings. They’re looking for the flavor, the texture. And then you kind of got this rogue team brining turkeys. So our competition has a brisket round, a ribs round. I think it’s brisket, ribs, chicken, turkey; obviously no pork because it’s a kosher barbecue festival. To follow the laws of kosher, everyone’s meat is provided for them, which is very atypical.

Everyone has the same supplies. Everyone has the same ingredients list that you can request from. Everyone has the same smokers, same gloves. We have non-Jewish teams, non-kosher teams that participate, and it really does level up that playing field a lot. And the first year I competed, my buddy Chris and I made a terrible brisket. We fell asleep as the water pan ran out. It was disastrous. It wasn’t even good for jerky. And you know, we got better year on year.

Some of what I’ve learned from barbecue, I now apply in the home kitchen; the low and slow technique, using a dry rub, covering your meat. You can do that in an oven winter or summer.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I love Chopped. I love the movie Chef and Burnt, and I really miss Iron Chef America.

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

I’m a big fan of Food52, Amy Kritzer of What Jew Wanna Eat, I think she’s been on your show; Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me. And two others that I really admire are Chanie Apfelbaum of Busy in Brooklyn, and Melinda Strauss of Kitchen Tested. And all those people I consider are friends of mine. They’re awesome people. Whitney Fisch of Jewhungry. Jewhungry the blog is an awesome blog, and her writing style is so cool, so much fun, and Jonathan Margolin of Toque & Scalpel. His photography is outstanding. I’m jealous of his photography skills.

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

I know I have specific people on Instagram that I love, but I love exploring the hashtags on Instagram, and discovering other people cooking like me, who, you know…after I hashtag my own photo, I’ll go look at who else is using that hashtag.

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

My wife bought me this beautiful wine rack made out of an old wine barrel. And it’s just this beautiful arch cut out of a wine barrel. It’s the centrepiece of our table all the time. I love it.

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

Cilantro.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I mentioned Culinary Artistry before.

(Ottolenghi) I love his work. I also love that he’s an Israeli author, but he’s not exclusively kosher. I have hundreds of cookbooks.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

The soundtrack to Chef, and not to sound cliche but that movie and that soundtrack it’s on my Spotify, and it’s on Netflix all the time. It’s a great vibe, great upbeat, awesome music.

On Keeping Posted with Yosef:

I’m pretty active on Instagram. My Instagram name is Yosef Silver, and Facebook on ThisAmericanBite and Twitter as ysilver, I have not dived into Snapchat yet. I’m a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my postings.

I would love to connect with everybody on Instagram, and I would love to answer questions and just connect. If you have recipes, ideas you’re not sure about, Instagram me, Facebook me, Tweet me, email me. And if you visit my website you can get emails for my new recipes as well.

128: Noha Serageldin: An Introduction to Egyptian Cuisine and Beyond

June 22, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Matters of the Belly

Noha was born and raised in Egypt where food was such a huge deal that it felt like a member of their family. She moved to Australia with her husband in 2013 and is where she currently lives. On her blog Matters of the Belly is where Noha shares with us the food she likes to cook and eat, and the memories that they evoke, hoping to inspire us to put on our aprons and to pick up our wooden spoons.

I’m so excited to have Noha Serageldin of Matters of the Belly joining me on the show.

(*All photos below are Noha’s.)

On Growing Up in Egypt:

I come from quite a big family. And to us, in Egypt, food is so central to everything we do — all the events, all the birthdays, all the special occasions — everything is centered around food, and so it’s been a massive part of my life growing up. Every social gathering, every holiday, everything has a special food for it, and we always looked forward to that and my parents were very big on making things themselves rather than buying.

My sisters and I learned to cook and to make things and to get excited about food from a very young age, especially my younger sister and I. My older sister was not as interested. Food has always been wonderful and a big part of growing up for us.

The norm is that food is a big deal, but it’s not necessarily made from scratch, if that makes sense. Lots of people rely on bringing food in, buying food, not really making it, and our family was very much interested in gathering around making it, so making an event out of making the food and spending time together in the kitchen, and planning it, basically, and doing it all together. So that’s where ours was, I think, a bit special.

On Egyptian Cuisine:

It’s not very widespread, not like, for example, Lebanese food which you can find almost anywhere. Egyptian food is very similar to Lebanese and other foods of the area where it’s very simple food. It’s very highly reliant on vegetables and beans and things like that because they’re staples and they’re very cheap. Most normal families in Egypt would be on the poorer side and they’d want something to sustain them and keep them going through the day that doesn’t cost that much.

Most of our most famous national dishes are actually vegan or vegetarian without even…not on purpose, but it just happened to be that way.

Lots of big flavors, quite a bit of spices. Our meats are very simply prepared, nothing fancy, when we do have meat, but yeah, that’s pretty much it, sums it up.

When I think of Egypt, the spice that comes to mind instantly is cumin, instantly. So cumin and coriander are very, very widely used in Egyptian dishes, as well as cinnamon, I would say.

Cumin and coriander always go together. Cinnamon, it’s separate, it goes by itself, more like maybe some nutmeg and things like that, more warming dishes. It’s often added to desserts as well. Lots of desserts are flavored with cinnamon.

On What a Typical Egyptian Meal Looks Like:

The typical Egyptian meal, that if you walk into any Egyptian home, you’ll see has to be a massive plate of rice on the table at all times, and there’s probably bread too. Our Egyptian pita bread is really, really special. It’s a bit different to the types of pita bread that you see that are nice and smooth and white. It’s more whole grain and it’s very rustic, and it has the bran of the wheat covering it, all of it, so it’s a very special bread.

These are always there, and you’ll find some sort of stewed vegetable always, with tomato sauce stewed slowly, like green beans or okra or even peas. And if it’s a day where the family is having meat, then there’d probably be fried chicken or maybe grilled kofta meats, like beef kofta or maybe even lamb. Lamb is quite popular as well. That’s your typical Egyptian meal.

On Must-Have Dishes for Visitors to Egypt:

I’d say there are three dishes that cannot be missed for anyone visiting Egypt, and they’re quite easy to get because they’re widely available on the street. Most Egyptian food, you’d need to go into an Egyptian house, in a home, to eat them but these three… The first one is koshari, which is, pretty much, I would consider it the fast food of Egypt because it’s what people eat during work for lunch and typically have on their working day. It’s made up of, again, rice and lentils, cooked lentils, cooked chickpeas, a spicy tomato sauce, and fried onions on top. People usually even have it in a big plastic bowl or even a bag. I think that’s popular in Asia, as well, where you can get drinks and food in plastic bags. That happens a lot. So koshari is a must, must have. It’s a very spicy and very filling dish while being a vegan one as well.

The other two that usually go together are ta’amiya which are Egyptian falafel. They’re very similar to most of the falafel you know, but they’re made with fava beans rather than chickpeas, and they’re very, very green inside. So you’d take a bite and they’d be bright, bright green inside from all the herbs. And these are often eaten with ful which is, I would say, the number one national dish of Egypt, which are very slow-cooked fava beans. It’s a stew. It’s dark brown, and it’s very often flavored with cumin and coriander and olive oil, and maybe chopped tomatoes and cucumber and eaten with the pita bread. So these are the must, must haves.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I’m hooked on MasterChef and I’m never going to stop.

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

Well, food websites that I go to back and back again are Food52, The Kitchn, and Bon Appetit. I always go there if I need a basic recipe. As for food bloggers, they are endless. I’ve discovered so many talented food blogs and food bloggers around. I’m going to say a couple of the Australian ones that I’ve discovered here.

I love Cook Republic by Sneh Roy. She’s just wonderful and her recipes are never failing. I love, for desserts, I really like Thalia Ho from Butter and Brioche. I love, what else, My Darling Lemon Thyme of course.

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

I’m not big on Snapchat yet. I’m still trying to figure out how to work, how that works, but I’ve started following a few people and I do enjoy following very little video stories. I love following Local is Lovely, which is a wonderful local blogger here called Sophie Hansen that lives in regional New South Wales. Their stories and photos and events always make me so happy and make me actually want to move to the countryside, because she just focuses on the local growers and the local farmers and everything that this beautiful land has to offer, which always really, really makes me happy and makes me want to explore more of what Australia has to offer.

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

Actually, this is a funny story, but when I first came here for the first year, I started trying to collect all the things that I need in my kitchen from around Australia, and there were two things that I could not find anywhere that I was used to use back home. So when I went back to visit, I carried them back with me in my luggage, which is one, my rice washer. It’s just a bowl with slits down the side that you can easily wash rice in without it falling through. So it’s very thin slits and it’s a very simple thing, but it just saves me so much time washing my rice, and rice is such a big thing in Egyptian cooking. So that was something I had to bring back. And the other thing was the tool we use to hollow out vegetables for stuffing. It’s a really thin, long tool, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. So these two things are, they’re very precious and I guard them all the time and make sure I pack them first whenever we move.

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

So many, because my mother used to always try to feed us all the wonderful Egyptian food, and we’d just say, “Oh, I don’t like eggplant,” or I don’t like one other very popular dish in Egypt is called Molokhia which is… I mean looking at it, you’d probably think it’s gross because it’s basically a green, slimy soup, and it’s not very appetizing, but I cannot have enough from it now. And I go specially, I trek out to the western suburbs, to the Middle Eastern grocers to buy it specially frozen so I can have it often. I used to make fun of my mom because she could have it every day, and I was just very grossed out by it, but now, I’m just completely addicted to it. I love it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Definitely Ottolenghi cookbooks. I use them like a resource. It’s just like an encyclopedia for how to cook vegetables well. He knows his vegetables. He’s tested every sort of method there is and he always gives you the final verdict. So that, for sure, and I do have the Cairo Kitchen cookbook with me from back home, which is written by an Egyptian who opened a restaurant by the same name. So that has lots of classic and slightly modernized versions of our classic Egyptian dishes. I love having that whenever I need a quick tip on how to make something that I miss, I go for that.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

The soundtrack for Amelie, the movie. It always makes me want to cook.

On Keeping Posted with Noha:

Definitely Instagram, I’m quite active on there and use it to also do micro posts because I don’t always have time to do full blog posts anymore, but I try to keep every other day, at least, on Instagram with a bit of an update, a bit of a story, anything like that.

090: Lily Diamond: Playing with Food for Beauty and Nourishment

November 4, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Kale & Caramel

On Kale & Caramel, Lily has fun with local, seasonal produce and plays with different flavor combinations in the kitchen while creating body and beauty products that are pure enough to eat. She believes diet is a personal matter and highly recommends eating, cooking, and mixing with our own two hands.

I am so excited to have Lily Diamond of Kale & Caramel joining me on the show today.

(*All images below are Lily’s.)

On Growing Up in Maui:

Growing up on Maui, first of all, I just feel incredibly lucky that I had that background and was able to be immersed in so much natural beauty, and to have such a strong connection to the land instilled in me from a really young age. Both my parents spent a lot of time in the gardens that we had surrounding our house. And my mom was an aromatherapist and an herbologist, and so I learned about working with plants from her. And that informed the way that I approach both self care, definitely, in terms of mixing up crazy potions that I would slather all over myself, but also in the kitchen and really thinking about food, not just one-dimensionally in terms of flavor, but really on a much broader level, hence the tagline “food for all five senses”.

For me there is so much richness in experiencing the other qualities of food, the way that it feels, its scent, all of these things that make it a really multi-dimensional experience to work with in the kitchen and to play with, whether you’re nourishing inside or outside of your body.

I think having that deep immersion in gardening and growing our own food made it really easy for me to want to explore different ingredients. And a lot of that just was very basic. The fruits and vegetables that we grew, not basic now that I’m living here on the mainland in California. Their ingredients are harder to get, and I don’t have the luxury of walking outside and having three different kinds of passion fruit to choose from or being able to pick my own pomegranate. But having a culinary vocabulary in that way really informed, I think, how I eat and how I cook now.

On Foraging:

I lived in San Francisco prior to living here, and there is actually a really cool foraging movement growing, definitely, in California. I think, around the nation of urban dwellers who are aware that even potentially within the confines of their city limits, there are oasis that contain a lot of natural life that can be foraged and eaten. I definitely don’t recommend doing any of that on your own, scrounging up things that you think look edible, totally a bad idea. But if you can go with somebody who really knows how to identify plants.

Something that I did was when I lived in San Francisco, I didn’t have a car, and so when I moved down here, I still was into walking around everywhere and exploring my neighborhood, and I really quickly discovered this walled-in secret garden. I would peer through the fence and try and figure out what was going on there. And for a few weeks. I then finally saw a sign, and looked it up online, and ended up just showing up at a community service day for this community garden that is just a few blocks from me.

And it’s huge. It has, I think, over 150 individual plots and then several acres of avocado orchards. And the avocado trees, some of them are over a hundred years old. And it’s just an incredibly special place. So right away I went in and I was like, “Can I help? I would love to just be able to work here and spend some time here.” And they said, “Sure.” And I’ve since developed a really close relationship with them.

So many people who live in L.A. don’t know that this place exists. It’s in the middle of the city, but it’s just kind of hidden, and you do have to look, and you have to explore and I think, be willing to go off the beaten track and just have your eyes open for plant life. I don’t think that’s something that most people do. Most people aren’t really walking around and going like, “I wonder where the next rosemary plant is that I will see.”

But once you have it on your radar, you start noticing like, “Oh my gosh, there’s lavender growing at the end of my block,” or, “There’s a fig tree two blocks from me that is growing over the street and all of those figs are just dropping on the ground.” And that’s technically public property. Just little things that you can attune to that will make it easier to feel like you’re in less of a desert.

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

I think I was about 11. I saw an advertisement for a Quaker Oats recipe contest. And I promptly decided that I should make up a recipe and enter it, and so I did. I still remember I can see the printed page, and I remember the font that I used. And I remember what they were called, and I remember what they were. I think that I should try to recreate them now. I called them “Mini Blueberry Munchies”. And they were basically blueberry hand pies, but they had an oat crumble. Instead of being as a topping, it was baked in. So I’m not sure how that would work out now. That was the first time that I really remember making a recipe, was when I was really young.

Even before then, I would go outside, because my mom started a business making body caring spa products actually around the same age when I was around 11. And I spent a lot of time from very young, watching her put together ingredients and use different plants and scents and all different aspects of food to create really beautiful dishes, and also body products. But I would go outside. I remember just running around the yard when I was young, and I would decide I was going to make lipstick or something. And I would go, and I would pick the pink flowers and different things, and mash them all together, and then put it on myself, and go show my mom.

That mentality, just playing with food, has always been really present for me. And I think what that does for me now is informs a joy in the process of cooking that, yes, I am concerned with the final outcome, but it’s also really fun for me to take my time and play with the ingredients, which is lovely for me and means that sometimes I take a long time to make things.

On Creating Beauty Products Pure Enough to Eat:

So I think on a really basic way, if you go into my bathroom, you’ll see on my sink, there’s a jar of honey, which is not usually something that you see in people’s bathrooms. And people would always…they’d come out, they’d say, “Can I use your restroom?” And I’d say, “Sure.” And they’d come out and they would say, “Why do you have a jar of honey sitting on your sink?” And it was a tip that was given to me by an esthetician, maybe five or more years ago, who said, “We use so many harsh ingredients, and we spend so much money on really complex products. And really, for most of our lives, we don’t need those products. What we need is to help preserve and care for and on a super basic level, clean our skin. That’s it.”

And one really easy way to do that is with honey. Honey is a natural preservative. If you think about it Egyptians used to preserve mummies in honey. And it also is antibacterial. It’s a really good cleanser, and if you get raw honey, it has a little bit of a grain to it. And so it’s actually a tad exfoliating, which is super nice.

I also make my own face oil as a moisturizer. It just really started as for me saying, “Our skin is our bodies’ largest organ, what we put on our skin goes directly into our body, and people spend so much money on products to try to deal with their skin issues, whatever they may be. And a lot of them have really harsh chemicals or ingredients in them that aren’t doing them any favors at all. For me, I love being able to say, “Well, my face cleanser cost me $6 at Whole Foods to get a jar of really nice raw, wild flower, wild crafted or wild whatever honey that will last me a month.”

And the face oil that I use, I make from either sweet almond oil or sometimes add apricot kernel oil. These are all ingredients that you can get super easily at a co-op or Whole Foods or a household store. And I add a few different essential oils depending on the level of dryness or moisture that I have in my skin that season, and that’s it. And that gets to be my routine. And it’s so simple, and it feels so good, and it’s really pure.

I sat next to this super sweet high school senior on my way back home on an airplane, and she was going to Maui with her family. I think it was for some holiday vacation. And we were talking about Kale & Caramel and these different products, and she ended up telling me she had a bunch of challenges, acne and red bumps on her skin. I’m not an esthetician or a dermatologist, I would never presume to prescribe anything to anyone. But I just shared with her what I did, and I said, “You could try it and see.” And we had such a nice conversation.

We ended up exchanging information, and a couple of months later, she wrote to me and said, “I’m sorry this email is so long overdue, but I just wanted to let you know that the red bumps that I have on my skin are completely gone. I’ve never seen results like what happened with using the honey and sweet almond oil.” It’s just so simple. But I think as a culture, we’ve been trained to want the thing that’s most expensive and most complex, and yet the ingredients to really care for ourselves and for our skin are close to the earth. That’s what’s also going to keep us feeling the healthiest and the most radiant, I think. Because it’s what’s naturally occurring.

On Good Resources for Learning More About Food for Beauty:

The first thing that comes to mind is actually my mother wrote a book called The Complete Book of Flowers. It’s sort of an encyclopedia of flowers. And it is possibly not available on Amazon right now. But it’s always worth taking a look. That’s called The Complete Book of Flowers. I haven’t found any singular go-to book in that regard, but I may be working on something that could help you in that dimension.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I actually don’t have a TV. I’ve watched some MasterChef Junior. I’ve watched some of those with a friend’s kid, but that’s it.

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

Some of my favorite food blogs right now that I go to as just regular sources of inspiration, I would say, are probably, Fix Feast Flair, With Food and Love, Will Frolic For Food, and The First Mess. Those are just some that are off the top of my head. Two Red Bowls, I love. My Name Is Yeh, also. There are so many. I’m really just constantly astounded by the amount of inspiration that is out there and the level of beauty is so extraordinary.

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

This is someone that comes to mind right away whose blog I just absolutely adore is Dash and Bella, Phyllis Grant. She’s an incredible writer and as a food writer, I think, is doing really exciting things. Instagram, definitely, I’m Laura Miller. She just does hilarious things with fruits and veggies posing with them, putting them on herself in weird ways, which obviously I like doing as well.

Oh, I follow Beyonce, clearly, and some other fashion accounts. I really love fashion, and some travel magazines, Trotter and Cereal Mag. And I think, oh, The Feed Feed is also an incredible aggregate of a lot of what’s happening on Instagram and just in the food sphere today. It’s, I think, a great way to keep up to date. And anything else? The people who I mentioned previously in terms of their blogs, I love following as well. Vegetarian Ventures, Shelly is an amazing photographer. So those are a few that come to mind.

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

I’m going to have to say it’s a weird answer, because it’s so utilitarian, but my Vitamix, it’s so multipurpose, and I use it so often. Most days, I definitely use it at least once and often more than once. And so, I think, for me I would have to go with the Vitamix. Not sentimental, but practical.

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

Cilantro. I couldn’t stand cilantro, which I know is something that is common for a lot of people. I really disliked it when I was growing up. I don’t know when it was that that shifted, but it definitely became something that for me, I use it for so many types of cuisine, and I think it adds an incredible dimension of flavor. So I love it now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Definitely, Ottolenghi’s Plenty and Plenty More. There’s so much complexity and depth in those recipes, that I’m always astounded when I explore it. There’s a cookbook called The Balanced Plate by Renee Loux, who’s a vegan chef, but she has a lot of great recipes that are super easy. There’s a vegan cupcake recipe that she has that I used to make. I just alter it to become a coffee cake. It has a really nice streusel on top. You would never know that it’s vegan. I don’t like cooking vegan recipes where you’re making a lot of substitutions and using silken tofu, and flax eggs, and complex things. I love vegan recipes where the ingredients just all stand for themselves. That cookbook really does that, which is lovely.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I do listen to a lot of Beyonce while I’m cooking, it’s true. I would say that I alternate between listening to really fun, upbeat music like Beyonce and listening to podcasts. That’s something that, for me, I live alone and being able to have that human element in the kitchen with me if I don’t have someone else over visiting, is really nice to be able to keep my brain engaged in that way, even as I’m using the rest of my body.

On Keeping Posted with Lily:

Instagram, any social platform, really, I’m everywhere @KaleandCaramel, so you can hit me up on any of those social media platforms.

089: Naz Deravian: Persian Cuisine with a Global Twist

October 28, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Bottom of the Pot

Born in Tehran, Iran, Naz grew up in Rome, Italy and then Vancouver, Canada. She now lives in Los Angeles. And Bottom of the Pot is the result of cooking and eating a lot and the lively conversations around the kitchen table. Bottom of the Pot is Naz’s food journal where she shares her adventures in cooking Persian food and beyond. Her blog was the 2015 IACP Narrative Culinary Blog Winner and 2014 Saveur Awards Best Regional Cuisine Blog Finalist, and Best New Blog Finalist.

I am so happy to have Naz Deravian of Bottom of the Pot here with me today.

(*All photos below are Naz’s.)

On Food in Iran and Italy:

I was born in Iran. I left when I was quite young. I had just turned eight years old. And then we moved to Italy. It was right around the time of the revolution in Iran, but Italy was always our second home. It’s where we vacationed, where my parents met, so there was a close connection to Italy. I think Italians and Iranians are very, very similar in their love and appreciation of food. I always like to say food is just part of our culture, and I think, I could say it’s part of the Italian culture, too. It just is, it’s in our blood. It’s not something that we think about too much, we just do it. I grew up eating home-cooked meals, going out was for a special occasion, it was a treat, but it was always around the dinner table or the kitchen table, or in the kitchen. So I think both cultures share that love and appreciation for home-cooked meals. And putting the time, effort, and love into it.

We really don’t share that many similar ingredients. But I would say one similarity is the differences in regional cooking. Both Iran and Italy are very set in their regional cooking, if you’re from the north, from the south, from the east, from the west, and everyone’s very passionate about their way. And it breaks down even further, then it’s from city to city, town to town, neighborhood to neighborhood, the same dish will differ just because someone added a little bit of this spice or a little bit of that spice, and then home to home.

On the Food in Canada and the US:

As a proud Canadian, I feel the need to distinguish ourselves from our friendly neighbors to the south, our American friends. But yes, I would say it’s a North American style of eating, and approach to food. I moved to Canada as a child in the early 1980’s, and Vancouver in particular was not the cosmopolitan city that it is today. So, it was quite a culture shock to move from Iran, then Italy, and then to the Vancouver of the early ’80s for my family. For instance, finding plain yogurt was very difficult. It was either in health food stores, or in very small tubs. And Iranians, we consume a lot of yogurt, it’s not just a little container. So, I can’t speak for America, because I wasn’t here then, but I assume they’re rather similar.

On What She’s Learned from the Different Places She’s Lived:

These cultures and regions, countries, they define my cooking. I really couldn’t say I could cook without being influenced by them. I feel just as nostalgic for a Caprese salad as I do for an Iranian dish of rice and stew, and it brings back so many memories for me. A lot of these foods are linked to memories and stories for me.

Iran I would say is the soul of my cooking, and cooking in general. It’s the aromas that permeate the kitchen. Before moving into our current house, my husband now, then boyfriend, we lived in an apartment building, and there was a long hallway. And walking down that hallway, before we got to our door, as my mother was visiting, you would start smelling the aroma of the rice steaming. And right away you knew what was for dinner, and so that would take me back to Iran. And Italy, my brother and I always have this joke about put the hot water on for the pasta. You make the phone call, put the water on, it’s ready for the pasta. Vancouver, interestingly enough, is I think where I was introduced to salmon of course, and it fit in perfectly with our Persian cuisine because we love fish, fish and rice. We have many traditional fish dishes, and the salmon in Vancouver is legendary.

On What a Traditional Persian Meal Looks Like:

A typical traditional Persian meal on any given day, there will be rice, always rice. And Tahdig, which is the bottom of the pot. It’s the crispy rice under the bottom of the pot, which is why obviously my blog is called Bottom of the Pot. And there will be a stew of some kind, and then all the condiments that go with it. There will be pickles of some kind, which we call torshi, some sort of yogurt, either plain or it’s a dish called Maast-o khiar, which is a yogurt and cucumber dip. And there will be bread, and fresh herbs, fresh herbs are huge. And it’s all about creating balance in a meal. So if you have something warm, you temperate it with the yogurt, the fresh herbs aid in digestion, which we’re obsessed with. So it all works in harmony.

On Putting a Twist on a Traditional Persian Meal:

That’s what I do, not every night, but at least twice a week. We get a farm box, it’s like a CSA box every week, and that really helps me get creative, because it’s introduced me to so many different vegetables in particular. A traditional Persian stew that would just be fresh herbs, which would just be maybe parsley, and cilantro and mint, when my CSA box arrives and there’s this beautiful bunch of Swiss chard, or even kale, then that’s all going to go into that stew as well, so I will incorporate it.

On Pantry Items to Have for Persian Cooking:

Certain spices are key. Turmeric, you can make a Persian dish by just using turmeric, of course, I have to mention saffron, it’s the crown jewel of all spices. It’s the most expensive spice in the world, but really a Persian stew would not come to life without saffron, and on my blog I have a post about saffron and how to make it last longer, because it is very expensive. So how do you use it to be, economical, and still make your dishes tasty? So turmeric, you use turmeric and saffron, and you have the makings of a Persian stew. Herbs, fresh herbs, like I mentioned, parsley, cilantro, basil, fresh mint. Again, we use them in abundance, as in bunches and bunches, so not like little Trader Joe’s packets of four sprigs of parsley. There’s a little effort involved, because you have to clean it and wash it, but I would say it’s well worth it.

On Resources for Learning More about Persian Cuisine:

I feel very fortunate, in the past year I was introduced to quite a few other Persian food bloggers that I didn’t even know where out there, and we formed this community, and we do joint posts, either for Persian New Year, or other celebrations. So, if you go on my blog, and search for…you know what I’m going to do actually, after this conversation? I’ll go on the blog and make a link to all of their sites. They’re all doing amazing stuff out there.

There was The New Persian Kitchen, the cookbook that came out a couple of years ago, by Louisa Shafia. It’s wonderful, it’s modernized, she has modernized the way we cook, and it’s accessible I would say. Of course, there is Mrs. Batmanglij, Najmieh Batmanglij’s lovely book, Food of Life, which is more in the traditional realm, but you can get an idea of it. I believe Margaret Shada’s book is wonderful as well, Greg and Lucy Malouf have a beautiful cookbook out there.

I think Persian food is really starting to come out, out of the shadows, and becoming much more popular as it should, because anyone you speak to who has ever tried Persian food loves it. I haven’t encountered one person who has not liked it, and they all want to know about tahdig, the crispy rice. So, I’m really happy that it’s really starting to become more popular.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Unfortunately, because I have two little girls now, and with my job, I don’t watch a lot of cooking shows anymore, except for when I’m working out at the gym.

I’m not a big fan of the cooking competition shows, but I still really enjoy Jamie Oliver, and online there is the Two Greedy Italians, I love their stuff, it’s Gennaro Contaldo with I forget the other gentleman’s name, but I love that. I love any cooking show that will take me to another place.

I know Ottolenghi did a couple of BBC series, I think it was called Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast. I just love that, I love traveling, and watching what people eat around the world. So those would be it.

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

There are many, so I’m sure I’m going to miss some here, but Pamela Salzman, she is the one blogger that I would say we actually cook from in our household the most. Her recipes are family friendly, wholesome, whatever that means, and just fun to make, so Pamela Salzman.

My friend, Cheryl Sternman Rule, her Five-Second blog is just beautifully written, beautiful food, and also her new site called Team Yogurt, which I’m also a contributor to, but any site dedicated to yogurt, you’ll find me there. That to me is heaven, yogurt is life.

Dash and Bella, the writing is incredible, with really fun and interesting food as well, but her writing just stuns me.

Nik Sharma’s A Brown Table, Nik’s photography is pure poetry to me, every time he blows my mind with his photography, food photography.

The Wednesday Chef, she and Pamela Salzman were the very first bloggers that I reached out to when I started my blog. And they were so kind and generous, and they actually wrote back, which I did not expect, and were very encouraging. And I read Luisa’s book that she wrote, My Berlin Kitchen, and that was right before I started my blog too, and it just really resonated with me. She has this term she uses about being perpetually homesick, and that really resonated with me, because it captured, it put to words my emotions, perpetually homesick. And that’s exactly, I think why I started the blog, and how it’s been developing with the story telling, and the memories connected to the food.

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

I am so new to social media. I was a hold out for the longest time, and then I started my blog. And very slowly, I do things very slowly, I like to take my time, I got on Instagram which I think I enjoy the most.

I enjoy telling stories through pictures, and seeing and traveling with people to all these different places that I haven’t been to, or have been to and seeing what they’re eating, and what they’re cooking.

So on Instagram, there is Cucina Digitale, it’s this woman who lives in Rome, I think she’s an American who lives in Rome, I love her stuff. Sami Tamimi who is Mr. Ottolenghi’s partner, they wrote Jerusalem together, I love seeing all of his stuff. It makes my mouth water, and it makes me want to get into the kitchen, which is what you really want.

There is another feed called Palestine On A Plate, I love taking a look at her stuff. Elizabeth Minchilli, she’s in Rome, she’s based in Rome. So I think I connect to the places that I’ve been to, and the type of food that I enjoy eating. And as long as it inspires me, that’s what matters most.

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

It’s this little wooden spoon that I call my saffron spoon, and my saffron jar. My saffron jar and my saffron spoon that no one else is allowed to touch because it’s very precious. And the saffron jar is this little jam jar that my mom always packs for me. It has again, a lot of memory attached to it. I would say all my spice jars. I don’t have the most cohesive looking spice cabinet, they’re all random jars from probably 30 years ago, that have just been passed down from family members. So spice jars and my saffron spoon.

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

Eggplant and zucchini, couldn’t stand it as a child. I don’t think it was until my late teens that I started enjoying eggplant, and zucchini even came later than that, and now I love them. I could eat them all the time. So, I give my kids a break on those two vegetables, but that’s it. They have to eat everything else.

I think it’s general with eggplant. I have yet to meet a child that actually enjoys eggplant. Yes, they like zucchini, sometimes raw, they like the crunch as most children do. I made a zucchini dish the other day that I sautéed, and it really melted into the spaghetti sauce, and my older daughter who’s a little more adventurous, she enjoyed that. I have to mention another blog, Rachel Eats, British girl, Rome-based, I love her writing and all her food too.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Marcella Hazan’s, The Classic Italian Cookbook. No pictures, straight forward. When I need to cook, that’s what I need. It doesn’t have to be pretty, it doesn’t have to be all set up, it just needs to be a great recipe, and these are authentic Italian recipes. So that’s what I’m going to go to.

The Ottolenghi books, they’re all lovely, inspirational, I cook from them. What I also love about them is that we share many of the same ingredients, and I just love how it’s catapulted Middle Eastern ingredients to the masses, and I thank them for that.

We like to cook from Gwyneth Paltrow’s books. They’re convenient, they’re accessible, I like them, they work.

And then all my Persian cookbooks, another great thing has been I’ve been reading through some very old, older Persian cookbooks written in Farsi actually, and my Farsi’s, my reading and writing is not great, but this has been a great exercise, so it’s improving.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

This is a great question, because music and cooking goes hand-in-hand in this house. One would not happen without the other. So Manu Chao. If I’m working on a new recipe, if I need something for a pick-me-up to get me excited to get into the kitchen, it’s going to be Manu Chao. Other than that, we have NPR 24/7 in the background, it’s just on. And there’s a great music program on our local NPR station KCRW called Morning Becomes Eclectic. The D.J. is Jason Bentley, and he just rocks it, and I like to chop all my vegetables to whatever he’s playing. That would be it, I think.

On Keeping Posted with Naz:

Instagram, Facebook, now that I’m finally on it, and Twitter.