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139: Erin Gleeson: The Art of Hosting Gatherings

November 10, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Forest Feast Gatherings cookbook

I am so happy to welcome Erin Gleeson of The Forest Feast here to the show today. Erin is the author, illustrator and photographer of the New York Times best-selling cookbook The Forest Feast and of course she has her popular blog called The Forest Feast, as well. Earlier this year she released The Forest Feast for Kids which is an adaptation of the first book, for kids to learn to cook from.

Erin’s latest book The Forest Feast Gatherings, which just recently hit store shelves, centers around the art of entertaining.

Erin’s work has been featured in the New York Times, The Kitchen, Food52, Bon Appétit and Saveur, just to mention a few.

On Her Latest Cookbook, The Forest Feast Gatherings:

The whole book is set up in menus. So, it’s like, if you’re having six to eight people over, here are, four or five or six things that you could make that kinda go together. It might be seasonal and that you could make in a few hours before people are coming. That’s the idea.

I think my biggest advice is that you don’t have to do everything yourself and it doesn’t have to be perfect. I try to share as many shortcuts and ideas for making it easier. I think, perhaps, my biggest advice is just to do it. Invite the people and then figure it out. Because it can be overwhelming. You have to clean your house first. You want it to be nice. There’s so much that goes into it. It can be overwhelming to have people come into your house. And then, making the food and everything. So, just try to make it as easy on yourself as possible and you can do that by asking people to bring things.

My book is set up in these menus where you could assign one dish to each person. But also, you don’t have to make everything. Like, say, you were gonna use one of these menus. You could just make the main course. Just make one thing and then buy some salad and stuff to go with it. The Jewish high Holiday just passed. Rosh Hashanah is a big one for us and we had 20 people over for dinner on a weekday a couple weeks ago. And that’s, like, maybe the biggest sit down dinner party we’ve ever had. We hardly have room in our house for that. We have, like, a little cabin. We had to move furniture. But I was working that day. I have a two-year old, I’m seven months pregnant. It’s like I knew that I couldn’t go too overboard with this dinner. And so, I went to Whole Foods and I bought containers from the deli of kale salad and a grain salad and some roasted vegetables and some roasted potatoes. And then, all I had to make was the main course. I had people bring drinks, and I had people bring desserts. And for an appetizer I put out bowls of nuts and olives and got one nice, big block of cheese and a bunch of grapes. So, I think that you can shop more than cook, especially for things like appetizers and desserts. You can really make it easier on yourself that way.

If it seems overwhelming, just choose one thing to make yourself and either buy or delegate the rest.

On Setting the Mood For a Get-Together:

Sometimes it’s fun to have a theme but I definitely don’t think that you need one. Sometimes it can be helpful in planning the menu, if you want a seasonal theme or, of course, like a holiday theme or something like that, it can help you figure out what you want to serve or if you have time to do flowers on the table. Maybe you want them to be fall colored, or something like that. That can be extra fun stuff but you definitely don’t need a theme.

I would just go with music that’s not too loud. I often try to choose music that doesn’t have a lot of words, so that you can talk over it. So, something more instrumental. My husband and I always disagree on what music to play. He wants, like, Beastie Boys and I want Frank Sinatra but we usually settle on something in the middle ground. Lately we’ve been doing some reggae which is really fun and kind of upbeat but also kinda mellow. But bluegrass, I think, is always fun and often instrumental and is sort of chill but a little bit upbeat. I always love old jazz for a dinner party, with candles. Blossom Dearie is one of my favorites. I just stream music, usually, on Amazon Prime.

On Deciding on What to Serve for a Dinner Party:

I always try to go in terms of courses. If it’s a sit-down dinner, I try to do a main course, a salad and a side. And I usually do vegetarian. So, those three things and then I usually buy a dessert. If I have time, I’ll bake it. But buy a dessert, buy a nice loaf of bread and then we usually just offer beer and wine.

If you have like two people over, it’s fun to make a fun cocktail, like a Manhattan or something like that. We have a little bar where we keep booze and bitters and mixing glasses. And if you have just a couple of people you can do that.

If you have a couple more people, I often make things in a pitcher. Like in the Gatherings book, I have a lot of punches and pitcher cocktail ideas that you can make a batch of and people can help themselves. But, in terms of what to serve, seasonal can often play into it.

If it’s fall, like right now, we’re doing a lot of squash and kale. End of summer we do a lot of tomatoes and zucchini. I try to think about what’s in the markets right now. At the Farmer’s Market we get this weekly farm box and I often need to use it up. So, that will dictate what goes in the food. But I don’t think there are any specific rules.

I often think about color. Like, I want to have a variety of color and texture, like something crunchy, something smooth. But I think just a main and a couple of sides plus a loaf of bread is great.

On Bar Style Serving Menus:

I have a couple of different bar ideas. One is a creamy polenta bar. Polenta cooks in less than 10 minutes. So, it’s really easy to make a big pot of it after everyone’s arrived. Just sneak away for a few minutes and make it. And then you can just put it on a table or a bar with lots of toppings that you’ve prepped ahead, like Marinara sauce, Feta cheese, some fresh herbs, some Parmesan cheese. I love cheese. I think you can tell.

Another idea is a rice noodle bar, which is great for people if they have gluten-free, gluten allergy or sensitivity. But also, these kinds of bar styles serving menus offer people with dietary restrictions the option to create their own bowl. Polenta is also gluten-free, so that’s a good one. But, I always do try to ask people in an e-mail ahead of time when I’m inviting them, or after they said they can come, I say, “Okay, do you have any allergies or food sensitivities?” And so, I try to plan my menu around that too.

On What Hosting Means to Her:

But I think the whole point of hosting is really to get people together, and get people talking, and get to know people better. When people come over to your house, rather than meeting you in a restaurant, it’s a totally different view into your world and your family and your space. It helps people understand you in a different way. I know I love going to other people’s houses and it helps me to understand them and build a closer friendship or relationship. People are often scared to do it or hesitant to do it because it does feel overwhelming sometimes but I think as much as you can, just try to have people over, even in small groups. I think it’s important for relationship building and for community building. It’s good.

On What’s Next:

I’m not working on another book currently, but I do have a couple ideas floating in my head so maybe at some point I’ll do another book. But my next project which is actually launching next week, I’m so excited, is an online shop. So, I’m gonna start an e-commerce site as part of theforestfeast.com and I’m going to be selling my own products.

I have these three books plus my publisher has created a whole line of stationery and gift items like a journal, notebooks, and these really beautiful watercolor notecards and some placemats that I created. So, it’s all with a combination of my watercolor and photography, several different products. So, I’m going to start with about 10 items and add items little by little over the coming months.

I really see it as a place to be creative. I’m always making things for my own home with my artwork printed on textiles. I print a lot of my photos on fabric and I’ve upholster some furniture, I made clothing, I made throw pillows, and made artwork for the walls. So, I have a lot of fun making home decor items that are inspired by watercolor and photography. And so, I’m excited to transition out into actual products.

I’m sort of in talks with doing a line of linens that another company would produce, table cloths and fabric napkins with my watercolor designs on them. And I would love to do dishes at some point. So, I’m really brainstorming fun products that you could use for entertaining, or just to make you happy around your home a little bit and bring more art into your home.

On How to Get Our Hands on The Forest Feast Gatherings:

It’s available, almost everywhere books are sold. The easiest place is perhaps my online shop, but it’s also at Anthropology stores and most local bookstores, Barnes&Noble, all the independent bookstores, a lot of them have it. You can also just go to theforestfeast.com/cookbook and I list a bunch of places where you can buy it online.

138: Alanna Taylor-Tobin: Behind the Pages of Alternative Baker

September 7, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Alternative Baker cookbook

I am so excited to welcome Alanna Taylor-Tobin of The Bojon Gourmet back to the show today. The last time we talked was over a year ago. And Alanna has been busy working on a bunch of awesome stuff. One thing in particular is her cookbook called, Alternative Baker: Reinventing Dessert with Gluten-Free Grains and Flours. I’m super psyched to have her here today to chat about her labour of love. And to learn about the process of putting her book together.

(*All photos below are Alanna’s.)

On Her Cookbook, Alternative Baker:

I really wanted to write a cookbook about rustic fruit desserts because that’s my favorite way to cook. It’s like using what’s in season and how do you take those perfectly ripe peaches and make them even better than they are on their own? And I’m gluten sensitive so I’ve been playing with different flours for the last decade or so. I think actually the thing that made me really want to write this book was my gluten-free pie dough, which I’m really proud of. It’s so delicious. I just wanted to really highlight that in the book. And how you can create these great flavours and textures from these alternative flours. The publisher was really excited about the alternative flours aspect of it so we sort of put the two together and we came up with this concept of alternative grains and flours, but also seasonal fruits and vegetables. It makes for this really vibrant, colourful, fun cookbook.

In October, it will be two years since the initial e-mail exchange. I started working on the book actually right when we had talked the last time in January of 2015 but it was brand new and I hadn’t told anyone about it yet. I had eight months for the recipes and manuscripts and then an additional month for the photographs after that. And then it was tying up things and doing editing. Then it’s been at the printer being printed.

So it will be almost two years from start to finish.

On Creating a Cookbook for All Skill Levels:

I didn’t really think about that at first. The thing that really made that become important to me was when I started sending my recipes out to testers. I ended up with I think 60 or 80 recipe testers, just volunteers or friends or readers. I really wanted to get each recipe tested by at least two different people because gluten-free baking is so finicky. And so I just really wanted to make sure at least two people could make each recipes before they went into print and went out to the masses.

When the testers started making these recipes I really realized like, this isn’t just a hypothetical person who I don’t know, who’s anonymous and who buys the book years in the future. This is my teacher from pastry school making this or this is an old friend of mine, this is a reader who I have a nice rapport with. I want to make this recipe really easy for them and make it as good as possible, and as streamlined as possible. I realized I was already asking a lot for people to go find these obscure flours to use and also seasonal produce that maybe was not in season or was hard to find. So I started to try to simplify things.

On an Instant Household Classic for a Beginner:

I have a few recipes. And actually, I have a full section in the book that lists the simpler recipes or the more complex ones. If you’re a flour child, F-L-O-U-R, then you can make these simpler recipes that don’t use many flours or these easy to find flours. Up to you. If you’re a grainiac then you can make these crazy recipes with more obscure flours. And so one recipe is a brownie recipe that is adopted from Alice Medrich who’s the goddess of baking, gluten-free baking and alternative flour baking. And her brownie recipe is just…it’s amazing. You whip the eggs with the sugar so you get the light and airy, but they’re really dense and fudgy, and chocolate-y at the same time. But it’s totally easy to make and you can use pretty much any flour in there. There’s so much chocolate and eggs to stick it together. The ones in my book have chestnut flour in them. It makes an extra earthy, rich brownie with this delicious buttery texture.

On Probably the Most Challenging Recipe in the Cookbook:

There is one recipe. I think it’s probably the most challenging recipe in the book. And it’s not necessarily hard to make. But it’s just sort of a pain in the butt. And it’s this trifle… When you make a chiffon cake, just add like a citrus flavor in the chiffon cake… And the chiffon cake is like, it’s just really easy to make. It just takes a little bit of technique that you have to whip the egg whites and then fold them into the batter so you have to know how to do that. And then you make a Zabaglione… Zabaglione is such an annoying dessert because first you have eight egg yolks and what are you going to do with those egg whites. That’s annoying just to begin with. And you put sugar and I put Lillet Blanc in it. It’s that aperitif…It’s a wine base that has these citrus, honey flavors in it. So delicious. So you put that with the egg yolks and then sugar. And you put it in a hot water bath. You have to whisk it and you have… You’re sweating and there’s steam coming up from the pot and it’s burning you, you have to just keep whipping and whipping, mixing by hand with the whisk until it get’s really frothy. And then you have to chill it. Then you have to fold heavy cream into it. It’s such a pain to make it but it’s just like nothing else. It’s just this super silky, fluffy, light sort of custard that is layered with the chiffon cake and soaked with more citrus juice and more Lillet, and then layered with winter citrus fruits, like oranges and grapefruits and tangerines. It’s this amazing really impressive looking dessert. But it’s really a pain to make.

On a Surprising Challenge That was Different From Blogging:

The thing that snuck up on me was that when I’m photographing for my blog, first of all, I do those process shots. And so I get to warm up…you don’t just go sprint out the door. You stretch and you start slowly and work up to it. When shooting for my blog, I realized shooting these process shots was kind of a warm up to get the final beauty shots at the end. And then with the book, it was only the finished shot. It kind of surprised me how much it helps me when I’m shooting for my blog to have this warm up period to the beauty shot. Also, just being creative under pressure was really hard for me.

With my blog, it’s free content, it doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect. But, with the book, it kind of put the fear in me. First of all, there was this intense deadline – all these other people are waiting on. For my blog if don’t post one week it doesn’t matter really. No one’s mad at me. For the book they had this deadline and I had to try to be creative and really think on my feet and just come up with interesting shots. At first I felt paralyzed. Because it was just so different and it just felt really difficult.

On If We Can Expect More Cookbooks in the Future:

I think I’m crazy enough to do this thing again. I don’t have kids but I would imagine, your first kid, is like you have no idea what you are doing.

It would be nice to do a second book to apply all of those things first of all. But also I love the whole process, making all these recipes that all fit together. For the blog, I do that to some extent on the blog, but it’s not the same as like having it all together in a book and pulling all these different influences and flavors and everything and having it all come together into a book. That was really satisfying and I’d love to do that again.

On How to Get our Hands on Alternative Baker:

Well it comes out September 13th. And it can be preordered through anywhere. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your local bookstore, Books-a-Million, any retailers of books you can preorder it. And if you want to find out more about the book you can go to alternativebaker.com and that’s my cookbook page. I talk all about the book there.