Pie | The Dinner Special podcast

118: Hannah Messinger: How Cooking is an Exercise in Patience

April 13, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Nothing but Delicious

Hannah graduated from Boston University with a photojournalism degree and started her blog Nothing but Delicious out of boredom. She had spent some time away from writing and photography, but through her blog, has learned many lessons like that she indeed wants to be a writer and that cooking is an exercise in patience.

I am so happy to have Hannah Messinger of Nothing but Delicious here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Hannah’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

I had been reading fashion blogs for awhile. My favorite one is called Sea of Shoes, and they had linked to a blog called, La Tartine Gourmande. Which I’m sure I sound like a redneck. I’m from Tennessee. I’m really sorry. But I had this office job where I was just on the computer all day and talking to people on the phone, so I could look at whatever on the screen.

I ended up reading the entire blog, start to finish, like a book just because, I mean, what else was I going to do? I can’t sit still. I didn’t realize that food blogs were a thing. I didn’t realize they could be a cool thing. Back in the day when you thought of a blog, it was kind of a dorky thing, right? I was just blown away by her images of her recipes and the way she wrote. And I felt like it could be, if nothing else for me, good practice just to write and to photograph things.

Nothing else has brought me so much fun work. It’s not lucrative work. But I mean, my first job, I got from Twitter shooting a brand new chocolate company here, brand new then, not brand new now, called Olive & Sinclair. The owner is a real-life Willy Wonka, and he always just gives me a box with $200 worth of chocolate in it. It’s so much fun.

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

When I was maybe three years old, my yaya – that’s Greek for grandmother – gave me a teeny tiny baking set for Christmas. It’s probably the best gift I’ve ever received, to this day. She was a really great hostess and I have very fond memories of going to her house on every holiday and just Sunday afternoons. And everything she made was so intriguing. From Chex Mix to Jello salad, because it was the ’80s, to prime rib. Everything was perfect.

My mom, every Easter, makes lamb and manestra. Which is not the right name for it, it’s just what my family calls it, I learned recently.

It’s lamb baked on a rack so that the juices drip down. And then you put cherry tomatoes under it and they roast in the juices and let their own juices out. And at the end, you throw in orzo and it cooks in all the tomato and lamb juice. And you serve it all together on a plate with lots of lemon and herbs and feta cheese. And she also makes spanakopita with filo dough. I wasn’t even allowed to touch the filo until I was 18. But now she lets me do it, and it’s really fun.

On Her Food Heroes:

I think everyone in the blogging world. I learned almost everything I know from Alton Brown, as opposed to going to culinary school or anything like that. The book, Ratio, by Michael Ruhlman, was really life changing.

I also love this book called, An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace, which is by Tamar Adler, but it’s modeled on the book, How to Cook a Wolf, by MFK Fisher. It talks about toppling meals. That if you have steamed broccoli for dinner one night, the next day at lunch you make quick pickled broccoli stem salad. And things like that. Meals that make sense, that merge into one another. And that really changed the way I cook.

On Cooking as an Exercise in Patience:

It takes time and there’s no way around that. If you mess up a recipe, a lot of times the store is closed, you’re out of ingredients, you’re out of money to buy new ingredients. You really have to wait until next week, if you’re a home cook, to try it again. And that can seem like such a long time for an impatient person like me. I feel like that’s an everyday challenge for me, not only cooking but things take time, and cooking has conditioned me, I think, to deal with that in my life.

I did a kinfolk dinner maybe three years ago in Chattanooga. It was all about infusion. And I had made a chai pots de creme. Which, in all my recipe tests, the cream broke because ginger is pretty acidic but it’s a necessary flavor in the process.

So I struggled to figure out how to get it in there. And then when I finally figured it out, I was baking them off at my parents’ place which…they were renting a really old condo at the time. And I put them in the oven and I thought, “This is it. I’ve finally got it.” And I swear, the oven door exploded. And I sat down in the middle of the glass and cried.

On a Dish She Finds Challenging and Requires Patience:

I struggle with custard pies. I mean, we all do. They’re very temperamental. I lose one to slumping or sogginess every now and then like everyone. But I try not to let that get me down.

I’m going to use custard pies as an example, because I just talked about it. And my advice would be just to take baby steps. If you can make each separate component by itself and succeed without combining them, which is to say you can roll out the dough and you can bake it in little rounds. You can make lemon curd, put it on top, top it with strawberries and a little whipped cream or something. Then you know you can do it next time and you feel good going into it. Just that you know what each thing is supposed to be like and that you’ve done it successfully.

My mom always says, “Take the next right step,” which sounds so frustrating when you have a really big and daunting task in front of you. It sounds like being told to think small. But small steps snowball. And that’s the only way you can get anywhere. You can’t do step nine before you’ve done step two. I get really mad at her every time she tells me that, but then I’m like, “Okay, wait, this has always been good advice.”

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Obviously, I watch Mind of a Chef and Chef’s Table. And Great British Bake Off. Who doesn’t love that? But recently, my favorite is called, I’ll Have What Phil’s Having, on PBS with Phil Rosenthal. It’s so, so, so funny.

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

I’m assuming everyone knows about Molly Yeh. Everyone loves Molly Yeh. She’s so funny and so sweet. I’m just a super huge, major fan girl of Lady and Pups. I like her brutal honesty. I like that she has a series called, The Shit I Eat When By Myself. I mean, it’s embarrassing stuff that I eat shit like that when I’m by myself, too. And I’m like, “Yes! Yes, she’s so cool!” My favorite one, it’s like flaming Cheetos in a grilled cheese with arugula and gouda. It’s beautiful.

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

My favorites right now…do you follow Chef Jacques La Merde? It’s really some of the best satire our generation has ever seen. And then there’s another one called Kimi Swimmy. And I saw her via Munchies on Vice. And they say that she kills octopus with her bare teeth.

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

It’s not very unusual but I have this marble rolling pin that I bought at a thrift store years ago for $10. And two or three years ago, I was in this real freak accident with this semi that ran over my Subaru, and the only things I pulled out of the car, besides myself, were my dog, my camera, and my marble rolling pin. It’s been through a lot with me, so I’m a little attached to it.

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

I’m actually in the process of learning to like shrimp. I know everyone loves shrimp but I just never have. Actually, the restaurant group I work for has a restaurant called, Little Octopus, and the chef there makes shrimp ceviche. That’s really the first time I’ve ever felt like “Okay, I can do this.” I make myself try shrimp a minimum of three times a year, and I’m really glad I did because this was the first time I thought I could get somewhere with it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Probably my favorite cookbook right now, and maybe always, is Donna Hay’s, Seasons. It’s just photographed beautifully. The recipes are simple. They’re seasonal. They’re just beautiful. And then because I make pie a lot, I refer to The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Cookbook all the time. It’s really like the pie Bible. You can’t go wrong with a recipe from Four & Twenty Blackbirds.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love the album called, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot from the band Wilco. I don’t know, I have a lot of moods while I cook. I go up and down and everywhere in between. And it has a good range of songs that I feel like accompany that.

On Keeping Posted with Hannah:

Definitely Instagram. And my handle is HMMessinger.

023: Emily Hilliard: How Pie and Folklore Mix

April 8, 2015 by Gabriel

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Nothing in the House

Today we are talking about pies. Emily’s Nothing in the House is a pie blog and a finalist in The Kitchn’s 2014 Best Baking and Sweets Blog Homies Awards. Emily’s writing and media work has been featured on NPR, PBS Food, and American Food Roots, just to mention a few. And her interests in food folklore, history, and music is a recipe that makes her blog awesome.

I am so excited to have Emily Hilliard of Nothing in the House here on the show today.

On the Idea Behind Her Blog:

This was actually about ten years ago now; I’m sort of aging myself. But it was the summer after I graduated college and my friends and I, a lot of women friends, were finding these berry trees and bushes all over Ann Harbor where we went to school. We started getting into pie making and I never really made a pie before. My mother was always sort of the pie maker in the family.

It sort of became this social pursuit. We would get together and bake pies and have friends over and eat on the porch. And then that summer, I got a job in Vermont. When I moved my friend Margaret, who was sort of a partner in crime, she suggested that we start this blog so we could stay in touch through the pies that we were making. So I really just started not necessarily for the public, and just as a thing between friends, and as I made more friends in Vermont, they started contributing.

It’s sort of evolved from there and at this point I’ve been the sole writer for a few years now but I still like to pull in other contributors and friends and bakers. But that’s really how it got going. I never really set out to have a blog necessarily, a food blog. But it’s kind of grown with me as I’ve developed different interests.

On Naming Her Blog “Nothing in the House”:

When we started the blog, I was developing an interest in folklore, which I later went on to study in grad school. But I was reading a book. I think it was called The Study of American Folklore. And in it, it was talking about Depression Era pies. So pies that were made with little ingredients or whatever was around. And those are things like mock apple pies, which are made with crackers. Or green tomato pies or chess pies, which often use vinegar, which was kind of a replacement for lemon. And another name for that other than desperation pies is “nothing in the house” pies. So Margaret and I thought that was a cool name. So it became Nothing in the House.

On Her Inspirations:

Well, there’s a lot. I guess in the food world and folklore world, I would definitely say my professor and thesis advisor, Marcie Cohen Ferris. She’s written a great book recently called The Edible South, about the history of southern food. Ronni Lundy, who’s another food writer. She has a book coming out, Sorghum’s Savor. Molly O’Neill, a great food writer who used to write for the Times.

Then in writing, I don’t know. I can list so many names right now, but I think I really look to women creatives who have been working in the fields that I’m interested in for a long time and really put the time in. I really feel like I am looking to my elders. Not that they’re old but these women who have put in a lot of work and done some really profound things.

I’ve brought pies to classes with Marcie and I was working for Molly a few summers ago and made some pies up there. Sometimes it’s a little intimidating. But it’s also sort of… I see baking as a type of gift or sharing.

I remember making a North Carolina peanut pie for Marcie. This was for a graduate seminar class and I think I also made some sort of nothing in the house pie, I think it was a vinegar pie, for a big lecture I was in of hers. At Molly’s, I think I made a peach pie because it was summertime in upstate New York.

Tips on Making a Pie Crust from Scratch:

For the crust, one of the key things is to keep everything cold. I don’t really keep my dry ingredients, like flour and salt, cold but definitely you want to keep your butter or whatever fat you’re using; maybe you’re being adventurous and using lard. But you definitely want to keep that cold because those butter chunks won’t disintegrate and will add to the flakiness.

Also, another thing I would say is it’s really hard to roll out a pie crust when it’s hot out. So maybe make sure if you’re trying a pie crust for the first time, don’t do it in the heat of summer if you don’t have air conditioning because it can stick to the surface.

Another thing I would say is sometimes you will think that you need to knead the crust but really you want to work it as little as possible because it’s that thing with the butter. You don’t want to melt the butter because then it will be tough and you won’t have the flakiness that you really want in a good crust.

On How to Make Cooking More Fun:

Lately I’ve been getting a CSA or a farm share and that’s really nice because I’m not necessarily someone who can just go to the store and have an idea. But when I have a set framework of like, “Alright, I have onions and broccoli and potatoes and I have to do something with that.” So I think that adds sort of a limiting factor so you don’t have to start from scratch.

Another thing I like is I really like cooking with other people, and that’s always been present in my life with family. I’ve taught at this program where communal cooking is a big part of it and just having friends over and cooking together. And I also like having music or the radio on while I cook.

On Her Book “PIE. A Hand Drawn Almanac”:

Elizabeth is a local illustrator in DC and I’ve admired her work. And I noticed that she had some food drawings and one of them was a tart illustration. And so I contacted her a few years ago and asked her if I could post about it on my blog. We started emailing and had the idea of collaborating.

So we got together a few times and had a few ideas and the book kind of stuck. I basically had all these seasonal recipes all ready so I drew from the blog; I gave her the text and she went to town and just pulled out images and things from the text.

We self-published it and printed it and it was great. We got some great press for it and we’re thinking about either reprinting or doing maybe a savory version. We worked together a lot and we have some other ideas we might follow up on. Maybe pie related or maybe not. This holiday season we made some pie tea towels together.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I have been interested in A Chef’s Life and I’ve heard some great things.

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

Well, definitely American Food Roots. That was started by a group of four women who are all established journalists and it’s great. It explores food traditions all over the country.

Another one would be the Southern Foodways Alliance. They explore traditional food ways all across the south.

Biscuits and Such is a great southern food blog.

There’s so many to name. Witchin’ in the Kitchen, Jess Schreibstein’s blog. That’s food and sort of delves into herbalism and such, too. I could go on and on.

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

Well, on Instagram I would say those women, Jess, and Elena. And Yossy Arefi of Apartment 2B baking. She’s just a beautiful photographer. She takes just stunning photos of food and baked goods.

And also Tara Jensen. I think her handle on Instagram is Bakerhands. She’s a bread baker and pie baker, wood fired. She lives in Marshall, North Carolina. She’s also a great photographer and artist. She brings a lot of art into her baked goods with her stencils and decorated crusts.

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

Well, I think one thing I use a lot is my Tupperware rolling mat. Not that it has to be Tupperware but it’s one of those old, vintage Tupperware mats that is just so helpful for biscuits, pie crust, anything you’re rolling out to keep things from sticking to the counter.

You don’t have to wash down the counter all the time. And I’ll even travel with mine.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Salt is maybe too easy. Maybe I’ll say butter.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, one that just came out by a great pie maker on the west coast is Kate Lebo’s Pie School. She’s a really brilliant writer and pie baker and so it really comes together in the book.

I would also say Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. It’s not really in the pie realm but all fermented foods, pickles and vinegars and everything. That’s been a big inspiration.

The River Cottage Preserves book is really great for jams and pickles. It has some traditional recipes like beech leaf tincture. Sort of these older recipes.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Wow. There’s so many to choose from. Well, I’m just going to go with the thing I can see on my record shelf right now. The Silly Sisters album with June Tabor and Maddie Prior. It’s a bunch of old English songs, but it’s just a favorite and I often have it on while making food.

Keep Posted on Emily:

Definitely follow the blog, nothinginthehouse.com. And yeah, I’m pretty much on Facebook. Instagram as TheHousePie and Twitter, Housepie. So whatever is your fancy for social media I suppose you can find me there.