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

April 13, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Hannah Messinger of Nothing but Delicious on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.
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Hannah Messinger of Nothing but Delicious on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how cooking is an exercise in patience.

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:

Hannah Messinger of Nothing but Delicious on The Dinner Special podcast talking about starting her food 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:

Hannah Messinger of Nothing but Delicious on The Dinner Special podcast talking about 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:

Hannah Messinger of Nothing but Delicious on The Dinner Special podcast talking about 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:

Hannah Messinger of Nothing but Delicious on The Dinner Special podcast talking about 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:

Hannah Messinger of Nothing but Delicious on The Dinner Special podcast talking about a dish that she finds challenging.

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:

Hannah Messinger of Nothing but Delicious on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.

Definitely Instagram. And my handle is HMMessinger.

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Alton Brown, Chef Jacques La Merde, Chef's Table, Donna Hay, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Great British Bake Off, Hannah Messinger, How to Cook a Wolf, I'll Have What Phil's Having, Kimi Swimmy, La Tartine Gourmande, Lady and Pups, Little Octopus, MFK Fisher, Michael Ruhlman, Mind of a Chef, Molly Yeh, Nashville, Nothing But Delicious, Olive & Sinclair, Phil Rosenthal, Photographer, Pie, Ratio, Sea of Shoes, Seasons, Tamar Adler, The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, Wilco, Writer

095: Tessa Fisher: Gluten-Free Baking with Whole Ingredients

November 30, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast
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Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about gluten-free baking with whole ingredients.

Salted Plains

Tessa is fascinated with turning her love of baking into creating gluten-free treats that taste good. On her blog Salted Plains she shares recipes of her gluten-free creations many of which are also dairy-free or vegan. Tessa strives to use whole ingredients and refrains from baking with refined sugar whenever she can.

I am so happy to have Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains joining me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Tessa’s.)

On Her Interest in Baking:

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her interest in baking.

Baking was something that I always did growing up. My mom was a really great cook, she was always creating new things for us at dinner but she didn’t do a whole lot of baking. That was something that I always really liked experimenting with, probably putting weird combinations together when I shouldn’t have been. But it’s always been something that I’ve really just enjoyed doing.

I’ve always felt more comfortable baking than cooking and from preparing meals for sure.

I think the idea of just creating something sweet, I kind of have a sweet tooth, and then being able to share those things with other people, has always just been a lot of fun for me.

On Being Gluten-Free:

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about being gluten-free.

About middle school, high school, I started getting severe migraines and they would just put me out for a whole day and then make me pretty sick, very nauseous, dehydrated, just really awful. As I went through high school they kind of became more frequent. In college, they were very frequent, and so I tried everything. I did acupuncture and saw a chiropractor and saw ear, nose and throat doctors, and allergies and all sorts of things to try to figure out what was going on and no real an answer. Some things helped calm symptoms a little bit but nothing really ever got rid of them. I just became okay with the idea that I was always going to have migraines but at the same time when a special event was coming up, I’d get nervous that one would come and it would just ruin the day.

So I really came to be gluten-free because I had a friend mention that they had read that there was a connection between gluten and migraines and maybe I should check it out. So I did. I did some reading and I decided to cut gluten out for a couple of months just to see what would happen. I really didn’t think anything was going to change and I started feeling better and so I kept going and the migraines lessened. I’ve been a few years migraine free now, so kind of life changing.

On Baking Gluten-Free and Being Self-Taught:

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about learning to bake gluten-free.

My biggest adjustment, I think, with the absence of gluten–that kind of glues everything together–is just figuring out, “Okay, so how does that work exactly? And what do you use to replace it?” Just the very basics, really, of it. That was probably the toughest part for me and a little bit overwhelming.

When I went gluten-free and I started seeing the positive effects for me of that, I then also at the same time realized, “Oh, so that means no cookies and cake and all the stuff that I loved.” I was okay with maybe not having bread so much, but the other things seemed kind of dire so I started looking things up online. That’s how I became acquainted with bloggers that were dealing with being gluten-free and that kind of thing and really just did a lot of reading online about it.

On Some Good Resources for Gluten-Free Baking:

The blogs that I was going to initially over and over again for baking gluten-free and cooking gluten-free were Gluten-Free Girl, I learned a lot through what she was doing. Also Against All Grain, Danielle Walker’s site, I learned a lot there. Tasty Yummies, I went to all the time.

Against All Grain and Tasty Yummies are both, I think, more Paleo-based, but obviously grain free, gluten-free and so I learned a lot through reading their blogs.

On Baking Without Refined Sugar:

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about baking without using refined sugar.

One of my favorite substitutes for just regular granulated white sugar would be coconut sugar. You can use it as a one-to-one substitute, it’s also a lower glycemic but it also has a little bit more nutrients than just regular white sugar so you can feel a little bit better about using that. I really like coconut sugar. I use honey a lot; I also use maple syrup a lot. Those three are probably my top unrefined sugars.

Usually honey and maple syrup are pretty interchangeable. It will change the flavor a tad bit, but for those recipes that could be converted to vegan, obviously maple syrup would be a great way to go.

I have some recipes on my site that are using coconut sugar and people try to use maple syrup or vice versa, the liquid, the granulated, usually don’t always transfer very well.

Coconut sugar is more similar to brown sugar, it has a more caramel-ly taste to it which I really like. I think it gives a whole different depth to your baked goods. So that’s something I wasn’t initially thinking about when I started using it. Now I will purposely use it in something that I think could use that flavor. Sometimes I use sucanat also, which is a little bit lighter. It doesn’t have so much of that caramel-ly flavor but is also unrefined.

Learning those little nuances with the sugars has helped a great deal.

On Her Blog:

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her food blog.

I was riding myself ragged with my full-time job and I was also coaching swimming. That schedule in general was pretty intense. Early mornings, working all day and then late evenings and weekends. I was feeling just totally worn out which wouldn’t make you think, “Let’s start a blog,” but I was feeling the need for something creative, something to look forward to, to cause myself to learn about something on daily basis. It really was born out of that. I had started playing around with gluten-free baked goods by then, taking them to our weekly girls’ night and getting really good feedback and I thought, “Well, maybe this is the way to go for now and just see what happens.”

A lot of inspiration I get from just the seasons – the fruit and vegetables that’s out there seasonally, but also just what I’m craving a lot of times goes into what’s the next thing that I’m going to work on. Or, what have I not attempted yet that I think other people might want to have a gluten-free version of? Or, what not gluten-free grain could I use that I haven’t really played much with? That kind of dictates what I do next.

The Bojon Gourmet, I love her blog, her photography, what she does with her food I think is amazing, always getting really good ideas from her. The cookbook Flavor Flours by Alice Medrich is fantastic and she has chapters on, maybe seven or eight, different grains–gluten-free grains–and how to use them. So I go to that a lot to get ideas on the texture and what you can use for cakes, and what’s good for cookies and that kind of thing.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t really watch a whole lot of TV and I don’t have a particular food show, but if I turn on the TV and I’m flipping through and there’s something related to food on, I’m going to stop and just watch.

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

Well, one quick blog that I came across recently that I loved is called Appeasing a Food Geek and Kelsey is the writer of the blog. She breaks things down from a scientific point of view, how things work and react and because I wish I knew more about that, I love that she does that.

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

I guess Instagram is probably my favorite. I love seeing photos from Food Stories. Also Adventures in Cooking–Eva Flores. She just does beautiful photography. There are so many and I love also following travel photographers on Instagram. Alex Strohl is a travel photographer and he just goes to amazing places so I would have to say those are my top.

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

Well, this is pretty simple. But my Silpat that you use for baking on your cookie sheets. It’s a reusable replacement of parchment paper, but I use it over and over and over again and it’s great. It cleans super fast and it’s always handy.

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

Well, one food for sure is brussels sprouts. Never liked them growing up and now they’re probably one of my favorite foods.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, this is not a cookbook but Ratio. The book Ratio has been really helpful for me. My Paleo Patisserie that came out this last year has been fantastic and again I think I mentioned Flavor Flours, one of my all-time favorite cook books.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, Josh Ritter–he’s coming out with a new album and one of his new singles is Getting Ready To Get Down. That pretty much gets you ready to do anything I think, so love that song.

On Keeping Posted with Tessa:

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with her.

I really love Instagram, I’m on there a lot. Also on Pinterest and Facebook, and those are all @SaltedPlains. Those are probably the best places to find me, and Twitter.

 

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Adventures in Cooking, Against All Grain, Alex Strohl, Alice Medrich, Appeasing a Food Geek, Baking, Flavor Flours, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Food Stories, Gluten-Free, Gluten-Free Girl, My Paleo Patisserie, No Refined Sugar, Ratio, Salted Plains, Tasty Yummies, Tessa Fisher, The Bojon Gourmet

004: Elena Rosemond-Hoerr: How Southern Food Stands Out From Other Cuisines

February 23, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Elena Rosemond-Hoerr of Biscuits and Such on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with her.
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Elena Rosemond-Hoerr of Biscuits and Such on The Dinner Special podcast on How Southern Food Stands Out From Other Cuisines

Biscuits and Such

On her blog, Elena shares her love of southern cuisine and southern culture, and apart from the amazing recipes, you'll find gems such as her Cast Iron Chronicles, which is a series that documents the restoration of a seriously rusted cast iron pan.

She co-authored a cookbook called The American Cookbook: A Fresh Take on Classic Recipes, contributed recipes to The Meat Cookbook, and has a new book coming out in April called The No Time To Cook! Book, which you can preorder.

I am so delighted to have Elena Rosemond-Hoerr from Biscuits and Such here on the show today.

On Missing Home:

Elena Rosemond-Hoerr of Biscuits and Such on The Dinner Special podcast talks about missing home.

I graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art which is an art school in 2008. I graduated right at the beginning of the recession which meant that I took a job that I didn't really want just to sort of float along. I was living in D.C. with my then fiancé, who's now my husband, and the apartment was decorated with all of his stuff which meant swords and dragons.

I was so out of place and I felt so homesick.

I just kept telling myself that if I could only make food that reminded me of home, I would feel better and it would be the way to get myself through this stretch.

I really wanted to make my grandmother's country-style steak, but I couldn't remember the whole recipe and I was a little dodgy on it. So I looked online because food blogs were starting to become a thing and I felt like I might be able to find some resources and there were no southern food blogs.

It was just a total lack of availability; there was nothing representative of the south online.

So I was complaining about it to Dan, my husband, and he was like, 'Well, you could just do it.' I was like, 'Oh, yeah, that's a good point.'

So I have a degree in photography, that's my background, and he is a web developer. So we put together Biscuits and Such and the first post, which was Country-Style Steak went up in October of 2008.

I have gone back and updated a lot of the photos and a lot of old posts. But, I have left the photos on that post because they are horrible and since they're so bad I think it's nice to look back sometimes and see how far I've come.

It's a good indicator of how much the blog and I have progressed over the past six years.

On Cooking:

Elena Rosemond-Hoerr of Biscuits and Such on The Dinner Special podcast talks about cooking.

My family is very passionate about cooking, all sides.

My mother is from New Jersey and her mother is very Sicilian and her father is very Irish; both families are recent immigrants and food is the way that they give love and the way that they nurture each other.

My father's family is very, very southern and on that side, also, food is how you comfort. You bring food to friends and relatives and families; potlucks for funerals, potlucks for weddings. It's the way that we nurture each other. So I grew up in a family where even through a lot of passionate fighting, the way that we connected and the way that we communicated was around the dinner table.

So I'm definitely not a chef. I learned from my parents and my grandparents and from experimenting. But food is something I've always been very passionate about.

I cook for my family pretty frequently. When I first started the blog, the person I was thinking of most was my grandmother, my father's mother, Barbara. We just spent a ton of time together throughout my childhood and my teenage years.

She cooked with me a lot and both of my parents were not super keen on having us in the kitchen when we were growing up because it got in the way of the productive things. But my grandmother would let me make JELL-O with her and let me dabble with her. It's really where I learned how to experiment.

I do love cooking for my family, now. My dad and I cook together all the time and it's really nice to talk to them about food and to feed them and to share traditions. Especially because what I focused the blog on is our southern food culture. So I really had a great opportunity to connect with my family about our family food traditions and foods that they grew up eating, and that they still love, and that I grew up eating and that I still love. That's been really nice.

On Southern Cuisine:

Elena Rosemond-Hoerr of Biscuits and Such on The Dinner Special podcast talks about southern cuisine.

The thing that stands out about this so much, to be both in southern cuisine and southern culture, is just the sense of warmth and a sense of community. I feel so loved everywhere I go in the south. The grocery store, my vet, the parents at the school where I teach. Everyone is just loving, and friendly, and welcoming, and warm and that's one of the things that I missed the most when I was outside the south.

Southern food is kind of the same way. It's home food, it's comfort food. It's not overly experimental or fancy. It's just good, quality ingredients made with care and that is something that I think is really special.

It definitely has its roots in sort of frugal, simple, farm-based, agricultural-based communities. They didn't have a lot of many things, but what they had was the time and energy to put into the ingredients and to really cook with quality and care.

On Being Fearless in The Kitchen:

Elena Rosemond-Hoerr of Biscuits and Such on The Dinner Special podcast talks about being fearless in the kitchen.

I was definitely always fearless.

It’s a really important quality, especially during recipe development.

I learned a lot of techniques, both with my parents and grandparents and through trial and error, just by sort of seeing what would happen if I combined these ingredients or if I tried this method.

I drew a lot of inspiration from watching them and from cooking with them. But a lot of my progression has just been through seeing what would happen and a lot of times failing and being cool with that.

On Kitchen Disasters:

Elena Rosemond-Hoerr of Biscuits and Such on The Dinner Special podcast talks about her kitchen disasters.

The first Thanksgiving after Dan and I started dating, we had his sister, her husband and their then two-year-old daughter, our niece Meredith, over for dinner. It was the first time that I'd ever cooked for them.

There was a lot of pressure because I had just started this blog and I bought a pumpkin to make a pumpkin pie. I was super excited to make it from the pumpkin and to do it from scratch. I made it and I was so proud. It had taken me hours.

Meredith and I whipped the cream together and we put it out. She took a bite and she started to bawl.

I was like, 'What happened?'

Then, I tasted it. I realized that in my excitement, I had forgotten to put spices in the pumpkin pie and sugar in the whipped cream. Two super essential ingredients. Pumpkins don't really taste like anything without the pumpkin pie spices. You need those. It was awful, it was so awful, I was so embarrassed.

The next year for her birthday, I made Meredith a chocolate mousse pie and she said it was 'pony magical.' That's about the highest praise a three-year-old will give you.

On Co-authoring – The American Cookbook: A Fresh Take on Classic Recipes

Elena Rosemond-Hoerr of Biscuits and Such on The Dinner Special podcast talking about co-authoring a cook book.

I got a call last June from someone at DK, which is a publisher based in London. They have U.S. and international publications and they're part of Random House.

They said that they had been interested in doing a cookbook about American cuisine, but that the author that had pitched the idea was from London. They didn't think it was a great idea for an English author to fly solo writing an American cookbook, so, they were looking for an American author to work with her.

I was super interested and it turned out that Caroline, my co-author, lives in Durham, which is about two hours away from where I live and is where I'm from. I drove up to meet her and we just really hit it off. We spent the day coming up with a list of all the recipes and dividing it up.

Then I spent about three and a half, four weeks cooking, writing recipes and cooking like crazy. The whole book was cooked and tested and re-cooked and written in about three and half, four weeks.

It was a really cool experience for me.

I had obviously been writing recipes and developing recipes for the blog for a number of years, but it was my first experience writing for a book where there are standards for how the recipes need to be written. It's UK-based, so I had to measure and weigh everything because it's the metric system which I am not familiar with.

There was this huge learning curve which was really challenging and also really fun. I'm very fortunate that my first cookbook was in such a wonderful environment where I had Caroline holding my hand and the editors holding my hand and everyone sort of showing me the ropes.

I'm very fortunate that since the American cookbook, DK has asked me to come back and work with them on two additional projects. So I did The Meat Cookbook and then we just wrapped on The No Time to Cook! Book, which has been fun.

The Meat Cookbook came out this past September so it's available. It's 300 recipes and so much more. It's a really great, solid cookbook and I contributed 50 recipes to that book.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

None. We don't have cable.

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

Nothing in the House is one of my favorite ones. Not Without Salt is great. Those are probably my two favorites.

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

Instagram is great. I follow a ton of food bloggers but then also, a lot of lifestyle bloggers. One of my favorites is Hey Natalie Jean.

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

Red pepper flakes.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Red pepper flakes.

I love them because they add a really subtle heat. They add a nice undertone of spice that isn't overpowering and that you can use in any dish.

I put them in everything.

You never notice that they're there, but they add just a really rich and subtle heat, which I think is important in pretty much all savory dishes.

What are a few cookbooks that have made your life better?

I just bought Not Without Salt's new date night book, Date Night In.

I love her blog and I love that 'Dating My Husband' series, so I'm really excited to dig into that one.

When I was first learning how to cook, my husband bought me Tom Colicchio's Think Like a Chef. It's amazing because it teaches you processes, not recipes, which I think is so important, especially when you're first starting out.

Ratio is another one that's similar that's really great.

That teaches you how to make things… like the ratios for making cookies, the ratios for making cakes. The sort of standard recipes for all of these things that you can then adapt to your own needs.

That is absolutely what made me the recipe developer that I am now. I have a foundational understanding of how to make different kinds of dishes.

Keep Posted on Elena:

Elena Rosemond-Hoerr of Biscuits and Such on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with her.

The blog is called Biscuits and Such. It's BiscuitsAndSuch.com. I am on Twitter and Instagram as @ElenaBrent. On Facebook as Biscuits and Such.

So you can find me and follow the blog and see new posts and updates on all of those places.

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    Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Biscuits and Such, Cast Iron Chronicles, Cookbook Author, Country-style steak, Date Night In, Elena Rosemond-Hoerr, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Hey Natalie Jean, Jell-O, Maryland Institute College of Art, Not Without Salt, Nothing in the House, Ratio, Southern Cuisine, Southern Food, The American Cookbook: A Fresh Take on Classic Recipes, The Meat Cookbook, The No Time To Cook! Book, Think Like a Chef, Tom Colicchio

    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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