Vancouver | The Dinner Special podcast

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.

075: Jeannette Ordas: Creating Delicious Meals from Making Do

September 9, 2015 by Gabriel

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Everybody Likes Sandwiches

Jeannette’s blog, Everybody Likes Sandwiches, is about the joy in preparing fresh food simply. She has fun creating delicious dishes from making do, and wants to let us know that eating and living simply and beautifully doesn’t have to be complicated.

I am so thrilled to have Jeannette Ordas of Everybody Likes Sandwiches, joining me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Jeannette’s.)

On Publishing Her Own Pop Culture Magazine:

I think at the time I was working at a record store and I just finished university and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had studied film in school so I wanted some sort of creative outlet and I loved drawing and I just thought, “Oh, I’m gonna start a ‘zine.”

I had seen them being in record stores or in little magazine shops, so I thought, “Oh, I’m gonna start one.” It was just folded, I did cut and paste. This was before Photoshop probably or before I had access to Photoshop. And it was just Xerox, staple, folded, copied at Staples and it was a good way for me to write about music. I originally started it just so I could get free CD’s from record labels.

Then I started having a food column called “Faster Pussycat Eat Eat.” I always wrote a little recipe in every issue and it was fun coming up with recipes. At the time I don’t think there were blogs so it was a good way to combine all my interests. Music, movies, food, so it was fun, and it was a creative endeavor that’s self controlled. I was the boss, I didn’t have anyone telling me what to do so that was a very fun creative project to work on.

On Her Blog:

I think just before I started, I came across a blog called, Chocolate and Zucchini, Clotilde, I think she’s from Paris. And so that was the first one I had ever seen and I was like “Wow, people are writing about food and sharing recipes.” And I really liked that, I liked documenting my food somehow.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted Everybody Likes Sandwiches to be, so I think I initially just opened up blogger. I couldn’t think of a name and I picked probably the worst name, because it’s so long. It’s so hard to type into a browser bar, and it’s not about sandwiches so, I don’t know. But I think it fits, ‘cuz sandwiches are simple, easy, and I think a lot of the recipes I choose to make are like a sandwich, very simple, easy.

That was my start, and I remember it was late at night and I just started my first post. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even have a camera back then. It took a few months, but I remember I started getting people commenting, and it just kind of freaked me out. I didn’t think people were reading it. And, yeah, it was kind of fun, because I realized there was actually like-minded people, and they would link to their blogs so then I realized there’s actually a whole little community out there.

On Blogs She’s Followed Since Starting Her Blog in 2005:

Molly from Orangette. I think she was probably my second commenter. And she’s super successful, she has her amazing podcast which I listen to all the time, Spilled Milk. Yeah, so that is probably the one I remember best that’s still around.

All of a sudden a lot of people had food blogs. There’s still plenty I think from around that time, not 2005, but maybe end of 2006, 2007 maybe. That’s when I think people like, Tea and Cookies blog, I think she started probably around then too.

On Her Passion for Cooking and Food:

I think it comes from my mom. When I was little my mom would always have a ton of cookbooks and she had this big recipe folder that, I don’t even know what it was, a case, a giant plastic case that she used as a file folder. She’d always be clipping recipes from newspapers and magazines, and my mom loved baking, my mom loved cooking, so food always was going on in the kitchen.

We helped out, me and my brother helped out but I really loved helping my mom stir cake batter and then when my mom started working full-time again, she would always leave a little note, “There’s chicken legs in the fridge, Jeannette. Can you make dinner?” So I would have to look up a recipe, figure out what I wanted to make with that. Sometimes she’d leave me a recipe, I think, initially, but then it was just like, “Oh there’s chicken legs, use those up.” So, yeah, I think it was just something to help out the family, it wasn’t a chore exactly, I really liked doing it and, I think, I would get all kinds of ooh’s and ah’s from my parents, so that was very encouraging.

I think there’s a certain point I became a vegetarian and my family was not vegetarian. And I think I was a vegetarian for 10 years, probably in my late teens, early twenties. That I think really helped me love cooking. It was something unusual that I didn’t become a vegetarian for any sort of reason other than to sort of piss off my parents, maybe? It was just a little rebellious kind of move to become a vegetarian. That was just something I sort of figured out on my own, like cooking with beans and cooking with lentils and just using vegetables and tofu.

I think still most of our meals that I cook now are probably 70% vegetarian anyways, so I love vegetarian food.

On Make-Do Cooking:

I think it comes from maybe not having a lot of money. When I moved to Vancouver I worked at a record store, so I didn’t make a lot of money. And as a creative I’ve always been sort of struggling. So yeah, I hate wasting food and then I tend to postpone cooking dinner sometimes. It will be late so stores are closed or I don’t wanna run out to the store and buy anything, so I have to scramble and look, what’s in my cupboard or here’s some celery and some lentils. It just comes from our grandmother’s type of cooking where, yeah, they didn’t go to the grocery store and buy the best cuts of meat. They couldn’t buy whatever they wanted, because they had a strict budget. So I think that’s how my style of cooking developed, part laziness, part that I didn’t have a lot of money, so I think it all comes from a little quirkiness.

I remember once just having, this was years ago, and I was having a friend over for dinner when I realized I have no money. So I bought a little bit of Parmesan cheese and I had celery and pasta and onion and so I made this pasta dish that was basically sautéed celery and onions with some hot peppers topped with celery and then little bread crumbs. And I was just like, “Wow, this is very delicious.” It’s probably not what you want to serve someone coming over for dinner necessarily, but the person I was with probably was in a similar situation, and they were happy to have a free meal.

I think it’s probably good to have some good herbs on hand, dried is totally fine, fresh is better. I love having rosemary on hand or like Herbes de Provence, which is this herb mix that has lavender and thyme and rosemary. I think generally you should be playing with recipes. Like I don’t have a lot of things sometimes, and I hate bananas so most smoothie recipes always call for bananas so I use pineapple instead. But yeah, I have lentils. You should have aromatics like onions and garlic on hand. I think you can do a lot if you have an onion and some garlic.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I do watch TV and I would have to say we just started watching The Great British Bakeoff. I only started watching the newest season and it’s perfect. Everyone is so polite, everyone is so kind and gentle, there’s no ego and there’s lots of luscious cakes and baked goods, so that’s pretty great. And then we also started watching, my husband and I, it’s a Netflix show, I think it’s called Chef’s Table. And it’s by the director of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, so each episode is a new chef, one-hour documentary about a certain chef, and it’s probably the most inspiring television I have seen in a long time. Not even if you’re interested in cooking, but I think obviously that helps, my husband who could care less about cooking finds it very inspiring. I think if you’re a creative person it’s really great hearing from people who are creative and have passion for what they do and do well.

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

I think Dinner Was Delicious. I really like that one. Good photography, but it’s the writing that’s kind of snappy, sassy and fun. Kitchen Culinaire. She’s a local Vancouver blogger. I’ve been to her kitchen and pretty much the blog features her beautiful kitchen and her beautiful recipes that are quite simple but very beautiful.

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

I would say Kitchen Culinaire is really good on Instagram. I look at Instagram a lot. Wit and Vinegar is another food blogger who has a great Instagram. Coco Cake Land, another Vancouver blogger, beautiful, fun, photographs of tasty cakes.

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

It would probably be a split between, I have this old cast iron frying pan that was given to us by my husband Cornelius’s grandmother when she passed away, and it’s an old workhorse. I feel like it’s just something that I’ll never get rid of, and I use it all the time. I just made eggs for breakfast in it this morning. I use it for baking salmon, I’ve baked cakes in it, it’s really amazing. I also am very partial to my pistachio colored KitchenAid mixer, which I got as a wedding present so, I love that.

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

I have a lot of dislikes for being a food blogger and someone who supposedly loves food, but I think cucumber is one that I never really liked, and I still don’t really like when people flavor water with cucumber. That’s not very refreshing for me. But now, like last night, we had sandwiches and I had cucumber in the sandwich. I make cucumber salads all the time. I just find it really refreshing, especially during the summer.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, I think one of the first cookbooks that I really loved when I started cooking, when I became a vegetarian, was The Moosewood Cookbook. It has no photos and that doesn’t bother me and I just really loved it. It was hippy-ish, but it really sort of explained vegetarian cooking for me, so I really think that cookbook deserves the prime spot on my shelf and I’ll never get rid of it.

There’s a whole series of those books from I think it’s a restaurant in upstate New York, vegetarian restaurant, and all the recipes are really great.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Probably an album by the Kinks called Village Green Preservation Society. Very retro, it’s from the ’60s so it’s retro, but it’s just very pleasant sounding poppy. It would be a perfect cooking album, but if I really am feeling tired and I need a little something, I would probably throw on Robyn, something really fun to get in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Jeannette:

I would say on Instagram. My handle is kickpleat so that would be the best way.

068: The Food Gays: Sharing a Taste of Vancouver

August 17, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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The Food Gays

Adrian and Jeremy love food, photography, and social media. And on their website, The Food Gays, they share healthy and tasty recipes as well as food news in and around Vancouver, BC, Canada.

I am so happy to have Adrian Harris and Jeremy Inglett of The Food Gays on the show today.

(*All images below are Adrian and Jeremy’s.)

On How They Met:

Adrian: We met I think maybe close to six years ago.

Jeremy: Yup, we met through a friend.

Adrian: Through a mutual friend at a random party that neither of us were planning to go to.

Jeremy: We went anyways.

Adrian: And we didn’t really know anyone there other than the host. So yeah, we kind of just gravitated towards each other, and we’ve been hanging out and . . .

Jeremy: Doing our thing ever since.

On Collaborating on Their Blog:

Jeremy: So it was probably July of 2012 when we decided to pursue the food blog, not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into.

Adrian: We were just wanting to find a hobby to do together, something fun. I was blogging previous to this, doing a fashion arts kind of blog, and I think Jeremy was tired of me being on the computer all the time. So we thought we’d put our heads together and was like, “What do we both like?” And we were already cooking a lot at home and doing that, so we just started it not really knowing what was going to become of it, just something fun to do as a hobby.

Jeremy: Baking is kind of a specialty. So it just goes back to my roots. My grandma used to be a baker, and there are probably three or four other bakers in my family too. So it’s just in the family, and I feel comfortable with it.

Adrian: I guess I’d always been cooking too. Even as a little kid, I was in the kitchen making weird snacks and that kind of thing, left to my own devices probably a little too much. But I never ever thought that we’d have a blog, that it just started really organically. Neither of us had any sort of preconceived notions of . . .

Jeremy: What it’s gonna look like…

Adrian: . . . what it’s was gonna be…

Jeremy: what we’re gonna post in a month.

Adrian: Yeah, it’s really evolved a lot from three years ago, for sure.

On Their Separate Roles for the Website:

Adrian: We don’t really have anything set in stone, but we’ve, I guess, gravitated towards what . . .

Jeremy: we enjoy most.

Adrian: Or what each other’s strong suits are. So Jeremy’s definitely a lot more about the analytics and the planning and . . .

Jeremy: organizing and making sure things are up.

Adrian: And I’m probably more gravitated towards the styling and photography.

Jeremy: And then we work together on recipes and in the kitchen, so it’s intertwining. It’s a good nest.

Adrian: We pick up where the other leaves off. Because it’s hard, right? Being a blogger . . . We don’t need to tell you. It’s like there’s so much involved, and you don’t necessarily think of all of that when you’re first starting.

We definitely worked our way through it.

Jeremy: There’s no way I was thinking about analytics week 2 of our Food Gays. It was just like, “What am I gonna tweet about?” and “Who should I follow?” and stuff like that.

On Deciding What to Make for the Blog:

Jeremy: Depends on the season.

Adrian: Yeah, nowadays probably, it’s really seasonal for us. We cook a lot with fresh plant-based ingredients, I guess you could say, so what’s fresh at the market. I really love farmer’s markets and going at least once or twice a month and getting inspired…

Jeremy: Sometimes once a week.

Adrian: Well, depending on what we can afford. But I don’t know. I guess before we were very much just cooking . . .

Jeremy: to experience cooking and to get to do that.

Adrian: I guess now we are probably trying to be more creative and inventive with flavor combinations and what can we come up with and that kind of stuff.

On Their Blogging Process:

Jeremy: First, create, of course. I think I’ve tested out a few things over the couple of years, but I think right now we’re doing the Instagram test first.

Adrian: Yeah, a lot of times, we’ll post stuff to Instagram now because that’s where we really put our primary focus in the past few months. So we’ll put something up and if it gets a lot of interest, then we’re like, “Okay, that’s definitely worthy of a blog post,” and we’ll then go to the next steps.

But generally, if we do post our recipe to the blog, we’ll try to have tested it a few times at least and make sure it’s a solid recipe because that’s important too, that you’re putting something out there that’s going to work for people. But it’s different every time, I guess.

If we were doing it, say, for a client or something, if it was a sponsored post, then there would be a lot more involved time-wise.

Adrian: I really focused a lot in the last few months practicing, and Jeremy definitely is very important part of the process though. He’ll tell me if something’s not working or if I can’t figure something out.

Jeremy: “Do this there. Try this.”

Adrian: Or use his hands a lot in the shots.

On Misconceptions about Healthy Food and Healthy Eating:

Jeremy: That it’s all green and boring.

Adrian: We really try and show people that it can be fun and that you can really make fun interesting things and use new ingredients. I think it can feel really limiting for people.

We’re not vegetarian, and that’s why I think we can have so much fun with it. But for those who are and who have food allergies and limitations that way, it can feel really like the same thing. I think you can get into a bit of a food rut. So, yeah, I think that’s our biggest thing, just that it can be different and you can have fun with it and have great, amazing flavors.

Adrian: And get to know your farmers too because that starts to inspire you too.

Jeremy: Yeah, he’s glad to know this really, really wonderful woman for his edible flowers.

Adrian: I’m talking about her flowers all the time.

Jeremy: Well, eating-out option is kind of hard in itself.

Adrian: Yeah, I think eating out can be a challenge.

Jeremy: You’re not gonna go out and buy a nine-dollar salad when you can easily make a three-dollar salad at home and that can fill you up.

Adrian: I think pick your splurge moments, I guess. We definitely eat junk food, and not everything that we eat is on Instagram. And then we have just regular routine meals and stuff.

Jeremy: But just incorporating it into your routine is just a good way to do it.

Adrian: Just start slow. Just start somewhere.

And cut down on your meat. That’s something that we’ve done a lot. We love protein still, and we’ll eat it maybe a few times a month now, as opposed to it being like it felt like it needed to be every single night of the week. That, with the side of your vegetables.

If you shift your focus . . . And I think cookbooks. Cookbooks and blogs, that’s a really great way because a lot of the work is done for you. You don’t need to sit and worry about trying to come up with something super creative. Just go online and find it. Someone’s done it. Try it out.

On the Food Culture in Vancouver, BC Canada:

Adrian: You can probably find a little bit of everything here. For someone who’s really well traveled, maybe Vancouver still has a lot of growing to do, but in a lot of ways, if you’ve been here or if you’re from here, you know it’s a bit of a small town. So in that respect, we do have a lot of options, and we’re spoiled.

Jeremy: There’s still a lot of restaurants that we have never been to.

Adrian: People ask us where we should go eat, and we’re like, we haven’t dined out probably, nearly . . .

Jeremy: as much as we used to.

Adrian: Yeah, nearly as much as we used. Can’t keep up. It’s like a full-time job.

On Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner in Vancouver:

Adrian: I think breakfast, we’d probably say Café Medina.

It’s a good solid spot. Go early so you’re not waiting in line for too long. But they do a really good breakfast.

Jeremy: Lunch, there’s this really cute spot, Japanese spot, Basho Café. They do these lunch sets, so you get three little pastries, or two pastries.

Adrian: Yup, and some soup.

Jeremy: A lunch bowl and a soup and a drink.

Adrian: It’s made by this little Japanese family. It’s super authentic, really, really good, just solid home-cooking lunch. And dinner, we’d probably say Kessel&March. That’s one of our favorite restaurants.

And we live in the distillery and brewing district of Vancouver, so there’s literally within a 15-minute walking span four or five different places that you can go drinking.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Jeremy: MasterChef Canada.

Adrian: Love Nigella Lawson, which I mentioned, Nigel Slater.

Adrian: Oh, and we just started watching Food Network Star, which is just ridiculous, but… Cutthroat Kitchen.

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

Adrian: I’m sure you probably know about a lot of them, but stuff we love, Feed Feed, that’s a really great place for just dinner inspiration. Artful Desperado, yeah, we love him. And then we’ll give Baked a shout because we just started contributing for Baked, the blog, so that’s a really good baking website.

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

Jeremy: I really love Dennis The Prescott stuff.

Adrian: Yup, Dennis Prescott, for sure. Again, Feed Feed for sure, Artful Desperado, Molly Yeh, I am a Food Blog, Vanilla and Bean…

Jeremy: Just to name a few.

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

Jeremy: Ironically, the appliance we didn’t use for maybe two years, which we’re now using almost every other day.

Adrian: The pressure cooker.

Jeremy: Yeah, steam pressure cooker.

Adrian: And we just got it and we never used it, and then it sat there for literally two years. We finally figured out how to use this scary-looking object, and yeah, it’s really great.

Adrian: We make dog food for our dog, so we have to steam vegetables.

Jeremy: It just keeps all the nutrients in the vegetables that we’re cooking for him and because we only feed him real food.

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

Adrian: Mine would be cilantro.

Jeremy: Blue cheese for me. It was too pungent to eat before, but now I can just eat it, no problem.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Adrian: Definitely Ottolenghi’s cookbooks Plenty, Plenty More. Those are two really great ones. Sunday Suppers, love that book.

Jeremy: My school pastry book, that’s good resource.

Adrian: Yeah, Jeremy has a lot of books from school, and then we’ve got this Seven Spoons cookbook. We haven’t cooked from that yet, but it’s a really beautiful one. We actually laid off the cookbooks in the last few months because I kind of went a little crazy.

It’s like an addiction in itself.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Adrian: Right now we really love Galantis’ “Peanut Butter Jelly.”

It’s such a good song. They just released the album. It’s very good.

On Keeping Posted with The Food Gays:

Adrian: Definitely, Instagram’s our number one platform.

But Twitter, Facebook, we’re pretty much on all three, and we’re trying to post more recipes to the blog. So definitely, check us out there more, where you can expect more recipes this summer.

033: Gabriel Cabrera: Food Styling, Photography and Mexican Cuisine

May 1, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Artful Desperado

On The Artful Desperado, Gabriel shares his favorite things from food to art and design all through his beautiful photography, styling and his lively commentary. Originally from Mexico, he now lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

I am so psyched to have Gabriel Cabrera of The Artful Desperado here on the show.

On Starting His Blog:

The reason that I got started is at that time I was going to culinary arts school. There were a lot of things that were new to me which I assumed were new to the world. They weren’t. So then I started doing it A: I wanted to just document a lot of the stuff that I was learning and seeing and B: honestly, it was a hobby, just something that was cool to do.

On Food Styling and Photography:

I’m a prop stylist. But as of late, also, because part of the job, I have been doing quite a lot of photography, so now the balance is tilting a little bit more towards photography. So, I’m going and reading about classic photographers, and just going back into film.

Every time I start something, I get really obsessed with it and I deconstruct it. So it’s a little bit of, I guess between photography and styling.

Mostly, I would say styling. So as you can see, just for example, on the blog, I do use original recipes, but a lot of the recipes are adapted from other sources because that really helps me minimize the time that I have to develop, test and do something with the recipe, and leaves all the time to do the styling. Which, is what I’m mostly interested in. That’s what I do for a job, so my heart will run with styling and sometimes it runs away with photography.

What happened was, photography, I have always been interested in since I was a kid. I was lucky enough that my parents also loved photography. They are not photographers. They just loved it as a hobby, so we were always exposed to that. So, I guess that is where the love of photography came from at an early stage.

And, the food styling, in a sense, we were always cooking at home and I was always interested in the kitchen and that is what lead me into culinary arts.

In culinary arts, a big part of it is plating your dishes. It’s part of the process, but it’s more than just spending time in the kitchen and preparing it, I love the part at the end where you get to present it or create a crazy way of putting it together or just a classic way with a little spin to make it a little more modern. I guess that’s where my interest came from.

I knew there were food stylists. Actually, I guess I knew, but I never thought I would do it full time. When you see a magazine or something, I think most of us think of the photographer. “Oh, what a good photographer,” right? It wasn’t until I started blogging and doing things on my own that, “Oh, there’s a stylist!”

And now that I work for a company doing full time styling for other clients, there’s a photographer, an assistant, and cooks. There’s a whole other layer of things. So, no, I didn’t know you could do it full time. Doing it, I was like, “Oh, there is potential here.”

I’m lucky enough in Vancouver, people love, love food. And everybody is a foodie. It’s an easy thing to do. It’s not like you’re trying to explain things to people, like this is whatever dish. So, it was a surprise, a very, very happy surprise.

On Cooking:

I’m originally from Mexico. I was born in Mexico. We do love our food down there. So, I guess the same as when I was a kid. We were not the typical Mexican family that you would see in the movies where, “Oh, we are all gathering together there around the table and making food.” It was just regular food, Mexican food. But, I was always interested in it.

My brother is a pastry chef. Well, he’s not doing that anymore, but he was doing that for quite a long time. There was also that component. So, that was when it started. I was good in the kitchen. With just regular stuff, I was good.

I guess going to cooking school really helped me boost that on to a professional level. I just learned so many things and I think I take it for granted now because when I’m cooking or when I’m doing things, I just do it quickly and done.

When I have friends over and they see me, they say, “How do you cut like that?” Just things I take for granted I learned in cooking school that you wouldn’t have learned maybe so much if you were just at home. That’s where my interest came from, from actually just being hungry all the time.

On Food in Mexico:

Mexican food is, I think, internationally has a good and a bad rep. A good rep because it’s yummy, a lot of people like it, but it has a bad rep because a lot of people think it’s burritos, chips and salsa and guacamole and that’s it. That’s snack food. There’s so much more to that.

In Mexico City, I will say that it’s like the epicenter of almost everything there. You can find all sorts of food. It is basically like New York, but in Spanish. It’s huge and there are so many trendy restaurants now that retain our food culture, but they make it more modern. Like I said, you will not find there a burrito. You will not find there chips and salsa. It’s a whole different level of cuisine.

There’s a mix because of all of our history. There’s a mix of Spanish influence, French and our own food comes from the Aztec times, corn and different kinds of mushrooms and desserts. It is quite huge and broad, but I do love it in Mexico City.

Every time I eat Mexican food in Mexico City, it’s like a little party with your family and it’s so good and it’s always so yummy. That’s in a nutshell how I will describe it there.

On a Specialty Mexican Food:

The name in Spanish is called huitlacoche. It sounds really gross, but it is really amazing. What it is, is a fungi that grows in corn. So, it’s a pest, you know, something that actually grows in the corn. But, Aztecs harvest it and they will eat it. It is very good for you and also, it tastes amazing. Unless you knew about it because it is an Aztec word, it would be hard for you to find if you don’t know the word. Locals know it. We eat it all the time. It’s a earthy flavor thingy. But, the thing is, you never Google how it looks because it looks really weird, but it tastes amazing.

It would be its own dish. It looks like little fibers, very thin fibers. What people will usually do is sauté it with onions and garlic and put it for example in a tortilla to make a taco or they can put it on top of something as well, rice or something else. You can put it in mole sauce. It’s very famous, mole. They can put it in mole and you can eat it with mole.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Jamie Oliver’s show and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and I just discovered an Irish cook.

His name is Donal Skehan. It’s DonalSkehan.com. He has all these little YouTube snippets and he as all these different shows but they’re really cool and are very quick and easy. They are usually really decadent desserts. I just discovered it recently. So, I have been watching those little ones and it’s really fun.

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

For websites, I would say, Food52 for sure. That’s like the almighty site for everything.

For blogs, I would say, she’s quite big now, Top With Cinnamon, is one of my favorite ones. She’s really, really good. She has lots of great desserts and her recipes are usually very simple and her photography is amazing.

Another one would be Bakers Royale. Her photography also is super. It’s crazy. And I’m sure everybody knows all about her too, but I always go back to it, What Katie Ate from Australia. It’s also stunning photography. I think she puts more of her commercial work rather than just her recipes, but if you go back to the archives, her history I will say, there are beautiful photos and her style is very unique.

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

Instagram, it’s called Slice of Pai. She’s a local photographer and she is really sweet. She always has really beautifully photos and I’m always so jealous because she posts these photos like, “Boom, I was having coffee,” and it’s beautiful and it makes me happy. She loves Paris and she puts a lot of things about Paris. So, that’s amazing.

On Pinterest, I’m going to say, she has the best food boards. Every time I see it, you are amazing, please never leave earth. It’s called Lucy supergoldenbakes and her board for food photography is great. She finds the best stuff in there.

Laura from The First Mess is what it’s called. I follow her, well, we are friends too. Well, we have met online. We are online friends. But, Laura from the First Mess. She’s great, she posts so many beautiful things. She has a vegan blog. Her photos are always stunning and she lives on a beautiful farm in the Niagara region. And of course, she just has fresh veggies coming up from the ground and it’s just happiness and wholesome foods.

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

Chocolate.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without.

Chili flakes.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Yes, so, Barefoot Contessa Parties! it’s called. It has a lot of classic recipes and some of the recipes might be a little bit old school like cupcakes with chocolate, but great book to have.

Maybe it’s not a cookbook, per say, just Gather Journal. It’s culture magazine, and it’s a biannual magazine. The photography in there is just breath-taking, the styling is stunning and their recipes are really good and very easy to make.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

There’s a band called St. Lucia. They have their latest album that is called When the Night and that would be one because it reminds me of summer. They’re a little bit of 80s vibe, but you always want to have summer. When it’s kind of crappy outside, I put it on and say, “Okay, let’s get something cooking here.”

Keep Posted on Gabriel:

Instagram. Artful Desperado on Instagram would be the best one. That’s where I keep in touch with everyone and post regularly. So, yeah, you can find me there almost every day.