A Brown Table | The Dinner Special podcast

106: Edlyn D’Souza: An Introduction to Goan Cuisine

January 20, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Egeedee

Edlyn restarted her blog when she moved from Goa, India, to the U.S. in 2012. She is greatly influenced by the way her family approaches food and the way they cook. And though she is not a professional cook, she likes believing that she is.

I am so psyched to have Edlyn D’Souza of Egeedee with me on the show today.

(*All photos below are Edlyn’s.)

On Her Blog:

It was about so many random things. I was really young. So picture that, picture like a young person’s journal with, “Oh, look. Look what I did today.” So it was kind of like Instagram but on a blog.

I think the fact that I had that space, not doing anything with it, when I moved here, I couldn’t work for, I think, a year almost, because I was getting my paperwork done and everything. So I was spending so much time at home, and I was getting kind of depressed even. I just needed to channel that energy into something creative, because that’s what I knew how to do.

Also, I was really hungry a lot, so first, I have to make breakfast. Now, what do I do? Okay. Then I make lunch. I used to go online and look for more American things, because I was afraid I wouldn’t find ingredients that I was used to back home. So I started reading The Pioneer Woman Cooks. I really enjoyed her writing style. My eating habits have changed a lot, so I don’t really cook from her blog, but I still really enjoy reading her writing. And then I figured it out from there.

If you read my blog, I try not to write too much about food when I do the writing part of it. I try to keep that still as a journal. That helps me keep in touch with my family back home, because I’m not really an open person. I find it hard to express myself just talking to people. So writing is that outlet for me and that’s the way I get to communicate with people like, “This is how I’m feeling right now. Leave me alone.”

On Growing Up in Goa, India and the Role of Food:

Oh, it played a huge role. I was listening to a podcast, I think your podcast, and the lady was saying how food was something people cooked every day, and eating out is like a luxury almost, it’s like for special occasions. That’s exactly how it was. I don’t think we really missed eating out as much. It was a huge task for my parents to do, cook every day. But now that I’m grown up, I kind of understand how much work it took and it makes me appreciate that. So, yeah, food is huge there.

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

My dad is the primary cook in our family. My mother likes cooking, but my dad is much quicker and I think he enjoys the process more than she does. For her, it’s like, “Oh, it’s a chore sometimes,” but he loves it. But he also doesn’t like having other people interrupt. He’d always yell at us, “Go away.” So we watched. We would just watch and try and help but.

I wasn’t really interested because of that. I always thought it was something negative maybe. But I also enjoy watching, smelling everything. But I only started doing it myself once I moved here.

On Learning How to Cook:

I don’t think I’ve ever cooked anything with their direction, but just watching them and kind of seeing how things looked. As a kid, I’m just watching the onions brown and exactly when you add the tomatoes after and all those spices that you add one after the other. I kind of put those smells together more than anything else, I guess.

Like I was saying, I only started once I moved here. So it was just me feeding myself and my husband, that’s why I moved here. He’s a good cook too, but a lot of his dishes are pretty standard. He likes making a good steak or a good burger and I can’t eat like that. I need different elements on my plate sometimes. So, I encourage myself to add more flavors to our meals. That’s basically what motivates me.

On the Food Culture in Goa:

Things changed once the Indian economy opened up and more foreign products and packaged foods started coming in. So things kind of changed a bit, it became easier to cook at home. And people also wanted to experiment more with other cuisines and that’s where restaurants came in.

So growing up, yes. I don’t think we used to go out. Maybe one birthday or just for fun. But it’s changed a lot now. People go out more as, “Oh, we’re bored. Let’s do something.” And that would mean going out.

On a Traditional Goan Meal:

The staple in Goa is fish curry and rice. That’s one of the staples that you have to try. So the first thing you would need is coconut, because that’s what most of our curries are based, kind of like Thai cooking. But we use fresh coconut and other spices that have a very orange color. So turmeric, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, tamarind, and just whatever fish is fresh that day.

I would say fish curry or shrimp curry. They basically use whatever fish or seafood is fresh or whatever they want to add to it. But, yeah, that would be the first thing I would recommend, fish curry rice.

On Some Good Resources for learning about Goan Cuisine:

I don’t know if you’ve heard of A Brown Table, Nik. He does a lot of Goan-influenced food. It’s really delicious. So if you do want to learn a little bit more about Goan food, because I think he’s half-Goan and half-North Indian, I think, but he makes really good recipes with Goan food. And other more traditional recipes, there are a lot of home cooks and food bloggers that aren’t as popular as bloggers that we read every day, and they may not have the best photography, but they still have really good recipes. So if you just type “Goan food,” (in Google) the top three websites will always pop up.

On How Her Cooking Has Changed Since Moving to the US:

I think it has changed more so because in the beginning, I used to get really swayed by, “Oh, look at these healthy food bloggers, they eat so well.” And I kind of got pulled in that direction, like that was the only way to do things. But over the past few years since I’ve moved here, I realized that that’s an unhealthy way sometimes to cook if you don’t lead that lifestyle.

So over time, I started cooking more food that makes me happy and nourishes me as well. So I won’t shy away from making mac and cheese just because I like it. So what’s wrong with eating it? So my thinking has changed in that way and I’m happy about that.

On Goan Food in the US:

Pretty much everything is not the same, but Goan food is really hard to find in this part of the country, I think. I never get to eat anything from home unless I make it myself. But the North Indian foods and the South Indian foods, the dosa and the chicken tandoori, that’s really popular here. And I think the restaurants do a good job, but I can’t say for sure, because I don’t live in those parts, so.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Lately, I’ve been watching, it’s a PBS show called, Mind Of A Chef, and it’s all on my Netflix that I have.

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

If I had to pick a few, my first one would be Hungry and Excited and she needs to get her blog back up. Hi, Revati, do it. Okay. And my other favorites are, which I do enjoy for the writing, is Orangette. Also, I like Oh, Ladycakes, just because she swears a lot and she writes really good recipes. I like that, I like her honesty. And a blog that I can always immediately cook from is Sprouted Kitchen. She always uses ingredients that I know I always have. Those are my basics that I like a lot.

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

Instagram I like following Cats of Instagram. I like looking at cat pictures. They’re so funny. I do follow a lot of food people on Instagram too, but I enjoy looking more at animals — cats, dogs. Another one is, I think it’s called This Wild Idea, where he takes his dog and he puts her on random surfaces. I don’t know if you’ve seen that one.

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

My most treasured item would be my tea strainer. I’ve been wanting to own a tea strainer for the longest time, because when I make tea, I like to make it of loose leaf tea. So, yes, that is my most treasured item. And unusual would be a coconut scraper that it’s not a traditional scraper and sometimes I feel like I’m gonna scrape my palm off when I use it, but yeah, maybe that.

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

I used to really hate cardamom a lot, because whenever we would eat it in food in India, it would always be in a rice dish and it would be the whole cardamom. So when you’re eating it, you bite into it and it used to be a very unsavory taste. But now, I know that you can grind it into dust and use it in baking dishes. I like it a lot more now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I don’t really read a lot of cookbooks, sadly. I do have a few that I own that I go back to every now and then. I like The Baking Bible, and the new Sprouted Kitchen cookbook is one of my favorites that I keep going back to every time I need to look up something or just look at beautiful photographs. Her husband takes really beautiful photographs.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Lately I’ve been listening to M.I.A. I thinks it’s her Kala album.

On Keeping Posted with Edlyn:

The best way is through the blog that I post on and other favorite social media platforms that I like are Instagram.

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.

087: Nick Evans: Learning to Love Your Leftovers

October 21, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Macheesmo

Nick has a ton of fun cooking. He’s self-taught and loves experimenting with all kinds of food. On his blog, he’s shared over a thousand recipes since 2008, and he wants to teach us home cooks to be more confident in the kitchen. In 2014, he published his first full cook book called Love Your Leftovers and you might have seen him on TV. He was a featured home cook on NBC’s Food Fighters.

I’m so excited to have Nick Evans of Macheesmo joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below are Nick’s.)

On Learning How to Cook:

Well, I would say, three or four years of doing Macheesmo, I put myself through an informal cooking school. I would look up recipes that had really technical aspects to them and then just practice and practice and practice them in my home until I felt really comfortable with that method, comfortable enough that I could write about it, at least, in a funny way if not a successful way. So I put myself through a little bit of a culinary school, I would say. Not the culinary school aspect where I know how to run a kitchen like a professional restaurant, but a culinary aspect in a technical way, at least, so knowing how to make sauces and knowing how to do stuff like that. I feel pretty comfortable with some of that stuff. It’s mostly just practice, a lot of failure.

On Some Good Resources for Learning to Cook:

I think if you don’t subscribe to it, America’s Test Kitchen, and I do some work with them also so it’s a little bit self-promotional, but they are an amazing resource and the recipes are some of what I think to be the most clearly written recipes. They’re very well tested, they’re very well written and almost without a doubt fail safe. And they have a lot of really basic stuff too.

Another place I’d look if I’m looking up a technique that I don’t know how to do is just YouTube. YouTube can be a nightmare. You have to be careful with it, but what I always try to do is if I’m looking up a technique, I will watch three or four videos on it, because there’s going to be a million. Try to pick up the similarities that the chefs are doing and that’s probably going to be right. And then if there are any weird outlier parts, maybe just be like, “I don’t know about that.” But YouTube is a great resource because a lot of cooking techniques are very visual, I think. It helps to actually see somebody do it, which is funny, because I don’t have a lot of videos on my website actually, I just do mostly photos and try to write it in a way that makes sense. I went through a phase where I watched a lot of YouTube videos on various techniques.

On Keeping Motivated to Learn:

My biggest thing, which I still do to this day, is I think it’s so important to go to different stores. Because you can look up all kinds of stuff on the Internet and I sometimes struggle with that because it seems overwhelming. But instead of going to your normal grocery store, go to a different one. Go to an Asian grocery store. Go to a Latin grocery store. And it can be a little bit intimidating and you’ll be out of your comfort zone, but at the same time, you’re going to find things that are different and you’re going to be inspired by, “Oh, there’s a totally different kind of produce there that’s not in my normal grocery store. Oh, there’s a different brand of this, maybe that tastes a little bit different.”

I’ll just pick up a few things that look interesting, then I’ll go back home and look up ways to use those things. So I start with the store and what I can actually find, and then I try to get inspired based on that instead of just trying to tackle the Internet or something and find something that looks appealing, because then it’s always a struggle. If you find some recipe and it has this weird ingredient and you go, “I can’t find that,” and so you just give up. So instead I start with what I can find, then maybe try a new place and then go the other direction and try to find something good to make with it.

On His Cookbook, Love Your Leftovers:

I came up with the idea a long time ago actually and just had a hard time wrapping my head around the best way to present it. But essentially I was getting a lot of feedback from readers and people that I talk to that they felt like they had to start from scratch every day. So like, “Oh it’s Tuesday, I have to get up, I have to chop all this stuff, I have to do all this stuff. Okay, now it’s Wednesday, I have to cook all from scratch.” So the idea is that instead of cooking from scratch, you cook like foundational meals when you have time, so big batches of things, and then those will store well and you can use those as jumping off points for other meals.

So leftovers is such a non-sexy word and it doesn’t get a lot of respect in America, but even great chefs will tell you that in really big restaurants, they’re taking stuff they cooked before and transforming it into something totally new and making it a special or using it in a different way.

The idea of the book was to take that into the home kitchen and it’s how I actually cook and how I actually feed my family, and so I thought it would be helpful to write a book around that. So that’s what it is. It’s fun. People e-mail me all the time like on Amazon reviews and stuff and say that it’s totally changed the way they think about how to cook, because it’s a little bit different of a method but I think the results are pretty awesome.

On Appearing on NBC’s Food Fighters:

It was very random. I saw something on a Facebook group that I’m a part of and they said, “Hey, this new show.” At the time, the show didn’t have a name or anything, but a production team was just looking for good home cooks. And so I just applied. I just sent in an e-mail and it was a very long process. They later told me that they got about 10,000 applications and they whittled that down to, I think, eight home cooks. So it was like a four-month process basically of interviews. We had to do in-person cooking. It was a big deal.

And now they’re on Season 2 of the show actually, and so I’m sure that that audition process is even more intense than the one I went through, because I was in Season 1, but yeah, it was super fun. It was a crazy experience. My family got to fly to LA and do the whole LA thing for a little bit, so that was fun. And I got to meet some awesome chefs. They’re all really cool and really down to earth, very fun, and I earned some money, so hey.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Well, I watch Food Fighters since I was on it and I watch Chopped a lot. I think Chopped is probably the hardest of any cooking show. I can’t imagine doing it. I think it would be really challenging but also that’s why it’s awesome to watch. Those are the two I watch most regularly.

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

There’s a new one that I’m reading recently called the The Beeroness. You’ve got to check her out. She’s awesome. Every recipe has beer in it and I’m a big beer drinker, and she takes beautiful photos.

My friend Nik, who I met last year, he runs a blog called A Brown Table, and he takes, I think, some of the most stunning food photos on the Internet right now. They’re very dark. It’s actually a look I’ve never been able to get down when I photograph stuff. They’re very dark but they all look so delicious. I just want to eat everything that he makes because it looks so great. So check out A Brown Table.

And then my other friend Dan. I like to read guy food blogs, because there are not a lot of them and I feel like there’s a guy food blogger community that needs some love. So Dan from The Food in My Beard, he just makes weird stuff. He’s just a weirdo dude, but he is a great cook and always funny and his food is like out of this world crazy and delicious, so check that out.

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

I don’t do Snapchat yet. People keep asking me that and I’m like I don’t understand it. I haven’t wrapped my head around it yet. I always tend to be a late adaptor to these things so I will probably get to it in a year when there’s some other cool thing that I should be learning but I’m not on Snapchat yet.

Instagram, I really like following Local Milk. Her name is Beth and she just has these beautiful photos which I think is what makes Instagram awesome, it’s photos, so I just follow people that take great photos, or my wife who posts only photos of our child. She’s a little creepy.

On Pinterest, honestly my Pinterest account is such a cluster of just… It’s thousands of pins because I follow every food blogger, so I don’t have a specific person really that I like.

But on Facebook, well, actually they’re on Pinterest too, but I really like Todd and Dianne. They write a blog called White on Rice Couple and they take really great photos. I’ve taken some of their photography lessons and they’re super helpful, very friendly people, and they are just an inspiration in the food photography world and also in the food blogging world. And they post really cool videos on Facebook, so if you’re a Facebook fan, their page is awesome because they shoot these beautiful, quick, little 30-second or 1-minute videos that are really beautiful. I always have to go cook something right away after I watch them.

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

Okay, so this is weird. It’s not actually anything I use to cook, but it’s something that appeases my son while I cook. I have an eight-month old baby and one of my friends got us… At the time I was like, “Well, that’s stupid,” but it’s like a net stuck to a ring that they can hold and you can put food in the net, and then they can chew on it and you don’t have to worry about it choking them or something. So I will stuff this net thing full of fruit like water melon, pineapple, and he’ll just chew and suck on it for like 30 minutes and I can do whatever I need to do. So that net, it must have cost like five bucks, but I’ve used it $200 worth of times already, so I love the net thing. I don’t know what it’s called. I can’t Google kid net thing. Don’t Google kid net thing. I don’t know what to Google, but it’s like a kid feeder net thing. It’s my favorite thing in the kitchen right now.

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

I think this is may be a common one for food bloggers but I used to hate beets. The only reason why is because my idea of a beet was a canned beet that was really soggy and bright maroon-red color and would stain everything. It was only later that I was like, “Oh, wait, you can get fresh beets that aren’t canned? Well, those are delicious,” so now I really love beets but I still don’t eat the canned kind.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, there’s one, well, Love Your Leftovers obviously but the one book that I’ve used, I probably got it close to when I started Macheesmo. I’ve had it for six or seven years I would say. It’s called The Flavor Bible and I still use it every single week to help just with my recipes. Basically it lists every food in the world and then it has complimentary foods with it, so you can look up apples, then it’ll say blue cheese, red wine, whatever goes to your list. And there’ll be a huge list so you can literally come up with recipes just by looking up these flavors and seeing what pairs well with them, so I use it all the time. My copy is beat to hell but I love that book.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

It depends if my wife is in the kitchen or not. If Betsy’s there, she really likes classic rock so we’ll listen to like Van Morrison, she’s a huge Van Morrison fan, and I just noticed they re-released one of his, like the essential Van Morrison or something and it’s awesome. So we’ll listen to that. If she’s not there, I like to listen to rap music when I cook, so like right now, I’ve been listening to the Fetty Wap album which is… I don’t know what to say about it. I just love it. I think he’s awesome and I love listening to rap music. And it gets me pumped up and I like to cook to it.

On Keeping Posted with Nick:

Well, as you might imagine, Macheesmo.com is my blog. I’m on every social media platform except Snapchat, and it’s all slash macheesmo. So Facebook, whatever, it’s all just slash macheesmo, you’ll find me. So whatever platform you like.

078: Chitra Agrawal: Following Tradition and Inspiration with Her Creations

September 21, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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ABCD’s of Cooking

On her blog, ABCD’s of Cooking, Chitra shares her family recipes from South and North India as well as her own creations from things that inspire her, like local ingredients and other cuisines. Chitra is writing her first cookbook on Bangalore recipes using local ingredients and runs a small batch Indian condiments company called Brooklyn Delhi. As if she isn’t busy enough, Chitra hosts pop-ups featuring Indian inspired cuisine and teaches cooking classes.

I am so excited to have Chitra Agrawal of ABCD’s of Cooking and Brooklyn Delhi joining me today.

(*All images below are Chitra’s.)

On Her Blog:

I guess I have been collecting a lot of my family’s recipes for a long time, and I also get a farm share every week during the growing season. So I usually take a lot of those recipes and then use whatever vegetables or produce that I have and make these recipes my own.

The name ABCDs of Cooking comes from that because ABCD means American-Born Confused Desi which is basically someone like me who grew up in the U.S. but is of Indian or South Asian descent. A lot of my cooking is an analogy of that where it’s based in traditional Indian cooking techniques but then using influences local or even just like cuisines that I grew up eating in the U.S.

I always was cooking for my friends in high school or in college. I remember even my roommate and I, we would religiously go to the grocery store every week, and as a college student, I think that was weird because a lot of the times, college kids go out and eat a lot, but we made it a point to cook at home. It was basically also the way I grew up. My parents have always even though they worked nine to five jobs, they always had home cooked meals on a table. So I think, it’s just the culture that I grew up into.

On Her Condiments Company, Brooklyn Delhi:

I make achaar or Indian pickle. So it’s basically a spicy condiment that is made from vegetables and fruits, and of course in India, it’s also made from local vegetables and fruits. A lot of times, green mangos or thin skinned lemon, gooseberries.

My farm share actually inspired me to come up with a lot of these recipes. The farm which I actually source from now is called Wilklow Orchards and they were the farm that was supplying the Greene Harvest CSA that we were a part of when we lived in Fort Greene, which is basically the neighborhood over from where we are now. And we got rhubarb, heirloom tomatoes, green gooseberries, and I started making achaars from all of these different vegetables and fruits, and I started serving them at my pop-ups and at my cooking classes, and then I got so into it.

My husband is a food packaging designer. He was like, “Why don’t we start packaging these?” and basically we just went with it, and I contacted the farmer directly and I was telling him that I tested all my recipes using his ingredients, and now I want to order like hundreds of pounds of the produce. I literally just text him, and then I get the produce, and then I make it in a commercial kitchen space that I rent out.

It really helped that I already had the recipes pretty much down. The next part was testing to see that these recipes could be shelf stable according to FDA regulations. So there’s all these different hoops you have to jump through when you are making a product for store shelves. So that was definitely a learning process. Luckily, I have a lot of friends that are in the Brooklyn community, in the food community that have either launched products or knew people that did launch. So I was able to gather a lot of this information through that network and then quickly bring everything to market. And it helped because Ben has that background as a food packaging designer. So, he was able to navigate for me really quickly as to how the label was going to look. I didn’t even know how big the font size should be or these types of things. So that was extremely helpful to have him there.

I think that achaar also is an unfamiliar condiment. So a lot of what we’re still doing is educating people on how to use it. A lot of people compare it to a chutney but it’s definitely more intense in flavor because it’s actually pickled in the oil, and the salt, and the spices versus a chutney that a lot of times can be definitely more mild in flavor. So that has been one thing where when I walk into a store and I want the buyer to try it, I have to explain through all of those different uses of the product versus if I was selling like a ketchup or something like that. So I think that’s probably been the main challenge, but it’s also been cool because a lot of store owners that really love the product, had been huge advocates for us, and when you have that type of support from local stores that are talking to their customers about new products that are in the store, they become advocates for us when we’re not there.

On Writing Her First Cookbook:

The cookbook is all going to be about Bangalore, South Indian style cooking. My mother is from Bangalore. So all of the recipes are based in traditional South Indian cooking techniques but also, as I cook at home, I am using a lot of the local ingredients that are found seasonally. So that’s the spin on it and it’s all vegetarian. A lot of it is gluten-free. I am a lifelong vegetarian, so this book is the story of my family and how, a lot of these recipes came to be. I have just been working on that for the last year or so.

There are so many different types of cooking in India, and they actually vary quite a bit. My dad is from North India. I guess I can speak to the difference between those two cuisines, what you find in the restaurants a lot of times, North Indian cuisine, non-curry. But South Indian cooking is a lot based in rice, lentils, you may know, dosa or idli, the fermented kinds of foods, and then both regions have dals but I’d say that like sāmbhar or rasam, these are some of the lentil dishes that are popular in the South. And so those are some of the differences. Even some of the spices, like curry leaves, are used more in South India. Black mustard seeds, even the beverage is different. So after a meal, you’ll drink tea in the North usually, and in the South you drink coffee that has chicory in it. So those are some of the differences but even in the book I talk about how, the cooking that is of my mom’s family from Bangalore is a lot different from South Indian cooking that may exist in Tamil Nadu or in Andhra Pradesh.

Bangalore is a city in Karnataka. So there is all of these different layers to cooking, and especially regional styles of cooking in India vary not only from North, South, East, West but within South India, to even from household to household. Because when I was researching a lot of the recipes, I found that my aunt may make one recipe that is according to what her mother-in-law may have taught her versus another aunt that is making the recipe according to how my grandmother taught her.

On Her Pop-Ups and Teaching Cooking:

I guess the pop-ups started because I started selling prepared foods at some markets in Brooklyn and my friend, who I used to do the prepared foods with and a pop-up that was Indian Mexican. So we started coming up with all of these different recipes, we did Indian Tacos at this one market. And that was actually pretty soon after I had started the blog, too. So I started to realize that, not only do I like writing about and creating the recipes, but I really like feeding people, and so that part became one that I wanted to explore further. After doing the market, we decided to do a pop-up supper club. That was in 2009, and we were just playing around with all these different recipes.

We would make like Indian Tamales. We would make all these enchiladas, all these crazy sauces and condiments, and then we would invite people, and this pop-up was in her house. And so we would literally would have these tables in her dining room and set it up all nice and everything, and then we put out tickets, and people bought them, and they would show up at her house. And so it was so fun.

So we did those, and then I started doing some of my own, where I would do, I did one at Brooklyn Winery, where they had someone that paired the wines with my meal. So that was the North and South Indian dinner I had done. And now, I do a dinner with my friend Diana Kuan, who is a cookbook author. She wrote, The Chinese Takeout Cookbook. So what we do, and this one is called Tangra, we make up recipes that are mix of Indian and Chinese cooking, and it’s all vegetarian, and also uses local ingredients. We always partner with a farm and also a local brewery, and then we are able to offer our creations to whoever wants to come.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Chef’s Table on Netflix. That show is amazing.

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

Not Eating Out in New York, my friend, Cathy Erway’s site. She posts every week and it’s very interesting because she also is very in tune with seasonality and what she is getting in her farm share. And she also calculates how much each meal costs because for a year or two what she did was, she just cooked at home. So it’s an odd pairing to be eating-in every day in New York. It’s like the city of restaurants. I feel like she has a very cool take and spin on what she does, and she posts very frequently, which I feel like is sometimes the anomaly now with a lot of food bloggers, myself included sometimes.

And then another one that I’m sure you may know is A Brown Table, Nik Sharma, I feel like his photography is just mind blowing, and he is such an awesome guy too. He always has super creative recipes and I love his blog.

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

On Instagram, I love Diana Kuan’s feed, who I partner with for our pop-ups because not only is she a really talented chef, but she’s also a talented illustrator as well. So she always has something really cool that she’s working on on her site. I love The Feed Feed, they are reposting photos from other food bloggers or food Instagrammers, and there’s always something so interesting that you can get from there. And then, of course, I love again, A Brown Table and his Instagram feed.

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

So, this is my tempering pot. It’s this little pot and basically this is what I fry all my spices in. You put just a little bit of oil and then different spices, and what happens is in the hot oil, the spices, the flavor just blooms, and after that, you pour the spices, the tempering, on top of the dishes. So it could be a lentil dish or it could be a yogurt dish. But I love this thing. I take it everywhere when I’m teaching classes, and I always encourage students to buy one as well because I think because of the small surface area, it really does the job well, and I love poaching eggs in it because it’s so tiny that you can poach an egg perfectly in it.

In different parts of India, it’s called different things. So sometimes, it’s called what tempering is, it’s called chaunk, or it can be called vagharne, or it can be called tadka. So there’s all these different names.

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

Oh, bitter gourd. When I was growing up, I hated it. It was just so bitter, and now, I’ve developed a taste for bitter things. So I actually, I’m going to include a recipe for bitter gourd chips in a cookbook, and there’s a farm actually, Hepworth Farms, that started growing bitter gourd locally, too. So it’s awesome because we can get local bitter gourd and, yeah, the bitter flavor, I like it now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, I have like all the Ottolenghi cookbooks. I feel like I just love looking at those photos. They’re just amazing, and I think he just combines recipes in such interesting ways. Another cookbook is of course Diana’s cookbook. That’s my Bible for Chinese cooking, The Chinese Takeout Cookbook. Louisa Shafia’s, New Persian Kitchen. I have that. I have so many cookbooks piled up all over the place for looking at, but those are some of the ones that I really love, and of course, the classic Madhur Jaffrey cookbooks, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, A Taste of India, all those classic ones are like gems.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, I love Shangri-La by The Kinks. I love that song on so many levels, but what I love about it too, I guess, when you compare it to cooking, is that, it always surprises you. Some parts of the song are really sweet and all of a sudden, it becomes this cacophonous noise, and I love that about cooking too. There’s the slow simmer and then if you’re tempering spices, the crackling of the spices, so it’s that type of dynamic, I like.

On Keeping Posted with Chitra:

Probably Instagram, and I am just Chitra, and then on Twitter, it’s my blog, ABCD’s of Cooking.

041: Nik Sharma: Exploring the Culinary Arts and Food Photography

May 27, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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A Brown Table

Nik grew up in India and the United States. The non-traditional dishes on his blog represents this experience. He believes in using fresh, seasonal whole foods and knowing where his ingredients come from. A Brown Table was recognized by Better Homes and Garden in 2014 as a top ten healthy food blog. Nik recently gave up his job in the pharmaceutical industry to follow his dream of learning more about the culinary arts.

I am so happy to have Nik Sharma of A Brown Table here on the show today.

(UPDATE: Since recording this episode, A Brown Table was chosen as the winner of the International Association of Best Culinary Professionals – Best Photo Based Culinary Blog of 2015, and is a Finalist in the 2015 Saveur Blog Awards for Best Photography.)

On His Upbringing in India:

I come from a mixed background where my dad is from the north and he grew up Hindu and my mother is Goan who grew up Catholic. So it’s an infusion of cultures which is what I try to reflect in my food, but it’s also something that I grew up with where you eat everything.

That is something that my parents gave us, both me and my sister the opportunity to do that. We were very fortunate in that sense to try everything out at least once. But make up your mind about it and then you decide. That is something I strongly believe in. I think people should explore food. There’s a lot out there. And have fun with it more than anything.

On His Interest in Cooking:

Growing up, both my parents had day jobs. I think Thursdays were my day off from school and I had to take care of my sister at a certain point. So she would come home from school and she hated my mother’s food.

My mother’s a good cook but I feel like my grandmother, her mother, was a better cook. We always lean through with my grandmother’s food. Anyway, I started learning how to cook at that age because neither of us wanted to eat what my mother cooked. It was good food. It just wasn’t something that we were interested in so I started exploring, going through my mother’s cookbooks and notes that she had collected before getting married, and I started exploring those recipes by myself.

A lot of them were desserts. I have a strong sweet tooth that shows up quite a bit on my blog. So that’s when I started to cook.

I also spend a lot of time with my grandmother where I’d watch her cooking and she would talk about how you need to cut all the vegetables to the right size, they should all be similar, and stuff like that.

On His Culinary Influences:

For me, it’s been more to explore and see what’s out there because my personal belief is that I do not want to get restricted to be in one genre. I’d like to learn as much as I can because there’s so much out there and you live once. Why stop yourself?

Definitely when I moved here, there was definitely that stage where I wanted to taste a lot, get an idea. Because in Indian food, I think the flavors are a little stronger and there’s definitely a mix of what doesn’t match can actually be mixed and brought together in Indian cooking.

Whereas in Western food, it’s a little more mellow and subtle; flavors are kept subtle. So over the years, I’ve definitely learned to strive to get close to a mixed balance between the two. I think I’ve become better at it. I don’t think I’m an expert in any sense. But I think with each recipe, I try and strive for that.

On Experimenting with Indian Flavors:

I always say start basic and simple. That’s how I’ve learned. I think a lot of the Indian food, we use a lot of combinations. So there’s like the garam masala, then there’s like when you make chana masala, there’s a separate mix. It’s nice for me. My experience has been to go back to the spice mix because that’s the root of all the flavor. Go back, make it from scratch.

You may find that certain ingredients in there, you may not like them individually but they actually make the dish up as a whole. So I think it’s important to go back to the basics. Knock everything down piece-by-piece and that’s something you learn in science.

When I worked in science, one of the things we do is hypothesis testing. Go back to the basics and break everything down and then build it up again from scratch. I think that really applies to food as well. I think not only with Indian food but any cuisine.

On Starting His Blog:

So I was in the habit of entertaining a lot of friends at home for a while. It’s something that I enjoyed doing. Then a couple of them, and I think this sounds a stereotypical way of friends or family members tell that, “You should start a blog.” I said, “Okay, let me go ahead and do this thing.” and it sucked. It sucked. It was way too much work for me and I decided to scrap the whole thing. Because I couldn’t keep up with it. I just started school. I was working full time. I was about to start in school in the evenings and it just wasn’t happening. It wasn’t coming together.

So then, a couple of months later, we had gone to visit my now mother-in-law’s house. She said, “I think you should go back and give it a shot.” So I said, “Well, I think my photography sucks,” number one, and all the blogs out there that I’m drawn to are visually just stunning. I can spend hours just scrolling back through the pages and I don’t have it.

I said, “Well, maybe I should invest a little money in a simple camera and then give it a shot.” So I went ahead and I did that. I started practicing a little bit. And then I thought, “Maybe I also need a concept and I wanted it to be something more personal. It didn’t matter if it’s mainstream or not.”

That’s the other thing in blogging. You have mainstream and then you have off-site, probably just never does well. And that’s where I was coming from. I said, “Let me talk about the food that I make at home. That’s a fusion of cultures. Let’s do that. Lets infuse things and see what happens. If it works, it works; if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.”

So I tried it again.

I started finding my voice and personality which is when I started falling in love with it. I think the main thing for me there was I was talking from my heart. My food was coming from my heart. I think that’s important in anything that you do. Blogging or a job, it should come from your heart, and then you’ll enjoy. And that worked for me.

On Finding His Style of Photography:

I think it’s really important to find your own voice. It takes time.

When I started blogging, one of the things that a lot of food bloggers, we do as a community is you go and submit a photograph to photo curating sites, which is all good and done deal at the end of the day. It gives you traffic but also you have to remember why you’re blogging. For me, it was expressing myself through food and also getting to be creative which I wasn’t getting to do at work.

Photo curating sites are good to a certain point. Take the advice they give you with a grain of salt and move on. When I stepped away from all of that, I feel I grew as a photographer, as a cook. That helped me because I stopped caring about the numbers.

In blogging, we get really focused on numbers so much. As soon as I stopped focusing on that, I felt happier with my work. I’m not saying I’m perfect right now. I’m definitely not. I still see faults in everything I do. But as a person, I feel happier with my work now. I think that’s what people need to focus on. Just be happy with what you do.

Alot of the times, the style that I’m doing now is something that I’ve always wanted to do. When all these sites people come and tell, “Don’t do this because they don’t want this. This is not good.” For me, the biggest step was putting my hands out. You see my hands a lot with my photographs. I like to do a lot of process shots because I’m not very good at writing, so I like to visually tell people. If I’m making a recipe, I’d like them visually to see what’s going on.

For me, that’s an easier way to get that message across. So for me, that was something important but a lot of sites did not want that. I said, “Well, let me take a chance and see how this works out for a couple of months. So far, it’s been fortunate enough that people have been very receptive about it, so it’s good.

On Following His Passion for Food and Culinary Arts:

My husband has been my number one supporter of everything that I’ve done. As a kid growing up, I wanted to go to chef school. My mother said, “Well, a lot of chefs, all they do is they sit in the kitchens. I’ve seen them because this is what happens at work. They are sitting in those walk-in freezers peeling onions and cutting their fingers. I don’t think it’s meant for you.”

So I went the traditional route as all Goan Indian families push you to do. It’s either engineering, medicine or something more stable. I went with that and there were still those nagging feelings that I enjoy being creative. And I love biochemistry. That’s one of my things. And a lot of foods is especially based in the pastry field. It’s all about chemistry, like knowing biochemistry and why stuff does what it does in food.

I started noticing that as I started applying those rules from school into my food, my baking skills improved quite a bit. So in that sense, I found that I wasn’t really going to step away from all the knowledge I had gained in school, so it wasn’t a waste but it’s helped me quite a bit.

I talked to my husband a couple of months. We had moved from DC to San Francisco. I said, “I feel now that I’m at this stage where I want to take the dive. And if I don’t do it now, I’ll always regret it. I want to have a professional angle to my work.” So he said, “Well, okay. Go ahead. See what’s out there.”

I called out every bakery that was close by. No one responded. I had almost given up and finally got a call from this lady who says, “So you had called up both of our bakeries. It sounds like you’re really interested. Would you be willing to come in and talk with me?” I said, “Sure.”

So I went in with no expectations. Because a lot of the people that actually called me back, a few of them that actually called me back said, “You don’t have a culinary degree, so we’re not gonna take you in.” But then again, to that end, I had read a lot of blogs who had said, “Go out there. Get the experience before you do decide to do anything professionally because it’s so different. It’s not at all a glamorous field. You’re on your feet all day.”

So I met this lady and she was really nice and kind to give me a chance. She said, “Come on in. It’s definitely a hard business, especially pastry because you’ll get up at 5:00. You are in sometimes at 5:00 and you’re on your feet all day long. So it’s a hard life, but let’s do a trial phase. And if you like it and if we like you, we’ll keep you on.” So I did that for a long time, for a month.

The trial was a month, and then I asked them. I said, “Do you want me to come back? What’s going on? Because I’m still working at the other job I attend during the week. I’ve gone part-time on everything.” I said, “I’m still working in my pharmaceutical job and then this at the side. I’d really like to just really give it all up and come here? Do you want me?” She said, “Yes, we would love you to come back. But just remember, it’s going to be tough.” So that’s when I said, “Okay.”

I spoke to my husband at home. He said, “Go for it,” and did it and I’m happy I made the decision. It helps having someone who supports you emotionally during the whole phase because it’s scary. I’m still scared about what’s going to happen tomorrow because it’s such a risky business.

It’s worth the risk. I feel like if you feel like it’s something you’re questioning, give it a shot if you can. I’m not saying everybody can do it. It’s a financial risk. It’s a stability risk, I feel. So go ahead. Give it a shot if you can. Go for it a little bit. If you don’t like it, okay. At least you tried it. Move on. I think that’s critical.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

It’s called The Great British Baking Show on PBS. That’s one of my favorites.

America’s Test Kitchen is another great show to learn from, and Lidia’s Italy. That’s another really good show to learn about food and culture and flavors. I guess all those are all PBS shows.

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

Gosh, there are so many good ones so calling any specific ones up will be hard.

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the best blogs out there, so go ahead and look those up. But when it comes to some of the more different ones, I would say, feel free to choose a great community to get involved in and learn from them. America’s Test Kitchen, again. They have a great resource on their website, and The Kitchn is another great resource to learn from.

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

Dogs of Instagram?

I have a dog. I obsess over my dog like a crazy person. Yeah, so Dogs of Instagram.

Pinterest, I follow a lot of food photographers and photographers in general. So it’s hard to pinpoint any one person, but anything that I find different from stuff that I do and that visually speaks to me.

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

My ice cream maker. I love ice cream. I love making ice cream at home.

If and when I go to culinary school, and if I get to open a restaurant or a little shop, ice cream would be a special section. So yeah, ice cream maker.

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

Radishes. I hated radishes as a kid. I thought they were the nastiest things that existed.

I still don’t like the large, white radishes. I still find the flavor a little disgusting. But radishes, the Easter egg radishes, I’ve come to appreciate that they look cute. They’re not that harsh in flavor, so I like those a lot.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I do collect a lot of pastry books. Some of the ones that I really find useful are the ones, again, by America’s Test Kitchen because there’s a lot of talk process.

I like the books by Thomas Keller from Bouchon and The French Laundry. Those are really good books to own.

Also, a lot of the culinary textbooks from the CIA. If you don’t want to buy a lot of cookbooks, those are some of the good resources to learn from, so I always have those stocked.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

As of now, I would say Taylor Swift’s new album. I love that CD.

On Keeping Posted on Nik:

Instagram would be the best way. Then my second social media platform that I really use is Facebook. Those two are the two that I love.