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098: Brita Britnell: All About Nashville and Hot Chicken

December 9, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

Brita Britnell of B. Britnell on The Dinner Special podcast.
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Brita Britnell of B. Britnell on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Nashville and Hot Chicken.

B. Britnell

Brita is a Nashville native and on her blog B. Britnell she hopes to inspire us with recipes we’ll enjoy making, love eating and most importantly, be eager to share.

I am Gabriel Soh and I am so happy to have Brita Britnell of B. Britnell here with me today.

On Growing Up in Nashville:

I wasn’t born in Nashville, but we moved here when I was young, and I’ve lived here basically my whole life with the exception of college. I went to college in DC. So I’m very much a Nashville native. I absolutely love Nashville.

I will say I’m not into country music at all. I went through a year spurt in high school this one year where I really loved country music and since then I can’t stand listening to it if I’m being perfectly honest. But I love Music City. I love what it is to this city that I am in and just what it has become.

I feel like what it’s become is when people ask, “What do you do in Nashville?” part of me feels like I don’t have an answer, but it’s only because all I want to say is food and music and there’s 101 million different food and music things you can do every night in Nashville and I absolutely love that.

I love to make sure people know, that if they’ve never been to Nashville or maybe they’ve been, but they just walked down Broadway or went in all of the honky-tonk bars, is that there’s such an awesome music scene in Nashville outside of country music. We all appreciate the country music but there’s a really awesome rock-and-roll scene and a really awesome Indie scene and really anything that you can imagine. There’s just so much music in Nashville. It’s really great.

On the Role that Food Played in Her Home:

My father was born and raised in Italy in Sicily and moved here when he was in his twenties and my mom was born and raised in Georgia and so I got a very southern taste. My mom’s entire side of the family is fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits and sweet potatoes. And then my dad knows how to cook nothing besides traditional Italian food, honestly, and he loves to cook and he cooked all the time. Pretty much all he cooked was, I don’t want to necessarily say it was all spaghetti, but it was all Italian-inspired, for sure.

On the Food Culture in Nashville:

I had a big group of friends come and visit recently and I mentioned hot chicken to them and they didn’t know what I was talking about.

This is such a huge phenomenon in Nashville. I don’t think people understand until they get here. There’s a fried chicken place to every McDonald’s that we have. The myth behind the story is that this woman owned a restaurant and she found out that her husband was cheating on her and so she put a ton of paprika and cayenne and all this pepper in his chicken to punish him. He ended up loving it and started a restaurant and that restaurant is Prince’s. And so, since then it’s just hot chicken.

It’s essentially fried chicken that’s unbearably spicy. I can’t eat it. But there’s a hot chicken festival every year that the mayor comes to and it’s a really big deal here.

On Hot Chicken:

I always tell people you have to go to a hot chicken place. I think the absolute best place is Pepperfire. It’s a newer place but I just think that their recipe is the absolute best. I do a lot of Nashville food writing and do a lot of Nashville food photography. So whether or not I like it, I’m around hot chicken all the time. I always force myself to try it. That way I can at least say “They have good hot chicken. Or I don’t like theirs as much.” They’re all very spicy to me.

I actually have an article that I wrote for Thrillist that’s something like “X Number of Under the Radar Hot Chicken Dishes“. And there’s everything. Hot chicken tacos. Hot chicken taco salad. There’s everything. So I would definitely recommend the hot chicken.

Besides that, there is a place here in Nashville that I really like called Biscuit Love Brunch. I like to recommend that specifically to people just because I think it’s got a new-age new American feel while also having that southern-like “it’s all biscuits”, and they do have a hot chicken biscuit there.

On Her Blog:

I was just really bored at work, and during the summer it was super slow, and so I just felt like I needed a creative outlet. It was just this desire for a creative outlet and I did it because I wanted to write.

Honestly I didn’t know what it was going to be. I will say food had nothing to do with it. I never started my blog thinking that it would be a food blog.

I did think, “Oh, maybe once or twice a month I’ll share a recipe. That’ll be fun. I like to cook.” I never imagined that it would turn into a food blog. When I started doing those once or twice a month recipes I realized that was the part of it that I loved the most. It in a way felt like I had purpose as opposed to this “Let me come up with this witty article.”

On How She Learned to Cook:

I just figured it out. I didn’t cook a lot in college. I actually didn’t cook a lot growing up at all to be perfectly honest. It was one of those things that my mom jokes about now. She’s, “I always tried to get you in the kitchen and you wouldn’t even fry an egg.” But I’ve always loved to eat, I feel like, more than the average person. I’ve always been really into food but I just loved to have other people cook it for me.

At a certain point I just dove into it and I just wanted to know everything about it. I listened to lots of food podcasts and read everything I could. I would like to say I’m just self-taught. My husband is also a great cook. In everything that he does, he’s very technical.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I’m a huge fan of Chopped. I have it in my mind that they should do a Chopped blogger version. I really like Chopped. I like to watch Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. There’s always a lot of Nashville places on there so I think that that one’s fun.

My husband’s really loves watching Mind of a Chef. So we watch that a lot. Chopped and Mind of the Chef are two of my favorites.

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

I already mentioned Joy the Baker’s blog. I absolutely love it. I will be honest that for me food blogs are a lot about the photography. So my favorite food blogs are mostly my favorite food blogs because of the photography. There’s a food blog called Local Milk. She caught my eye because she’s local. She lives in Chattanooga and does a lot in Nashville so in the same State as me, and her photography is just the most beautiful photography to me. She also does have really great recipes on her blog. I’ve made quite a few. And I also really like My Name is Yeh. She does, I want to say mostly baking, but she definitely does other stuff. Those are for sure some of my favorites.

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

I’ve not gotten into Snapchat. I tried. Literally the only person I’ve ever snapchatted is my husband. I keep saying I’m going to get more into that. And Periscope. I haven’t even downloaded Periscope yet. But I’m really big on Instagram and again just going back to the whole food photography thing, I just love pictures.

I’m a very visual person and I just love the pictures. Local Milk has really beautiful pictures so I love looking at hers. Who else? I follow this one account called This Wild Idea and it’s a Tennessee account and it’s actually a dog, but it’s the same thing. The pictures are really beautifully done and I love that. So again, it’s a lot about the photography for me.

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

I will say I have this spinny thing that you put eggs on and it sits on the counter top. I could never use it because in America we refrigerate our eggs and you keep them in the carton. About six months ago, earlier this season, we got chickens which has been such a great fun experience and so now I’m able to keep the eggs out on the counter.

I love walking in my kitchen and seeing this. It’s this circular thing where the eggs go around it and when you take one egg off the rest spiral down and it’s a neat thing to me. I just love that I have my own chickens and that I have the eggs in the kitchen. I love it. It’s a really cool thing to me. I like to brag about my chickens.

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

This is going back a little bit but when I was a child I absolutely hated peanut butter. I hated peanut butter. I don’t know why, and now I love it. I do a lot. I have a lot of peanut butter recipes on my blog. I have a peanut butter pie that is one of my most popular recipes and I have no idea why.

The smell of peanut butter made me sick. I couldn’t stand it but I absolutely love it.

I want to say a lot of spices. I never really cooked with spices until I got into my mid-twenties and now it’s like I’m obsessed with spices. I just love messing around with them.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I have both of Joy the Baker’s cookbooks and I absolutely love them. I think she’s working on a third one. I have a cookbook of hers that I want to say it’s called Homemade Decadence.

If you go back and look at my earlier posts from when I first started, I often referenced how much baking made me nervous. I loved to cook but baking was such a complicated thing for me, which kind of goes back to the macaroons, but that one was a great thing for me because I was able to take some of her recipes and I think she does a great job of spelling it out.

We also have the Joy of Cooking which is different from Julia Child’s book but just the Joy of Cooking and it has every recipe you can imagine. I want to say it’s at least 500 pages if not a lot more. I’m not really sure but it’s a ton and it has just everything you can imagine. It doesn’t have more popular or more modern stuff in it. I don’t think it has anything quinoa in there, but it’s got every kind of main dish every kind of bread that you can imagine and it’s an awesome go-to.

It’s been a fun way for me to experiment. My husband and I sometimes literally will be, “We want to cook a dessert. Let’s do something we’ve never done before, but that we should know how to do.” I made cheesecake for the first time recently and so it’s just been neat having that cookbook. I highly recommend that one. I think it’s a good bit of money. I think it’s $50 but I think it’s everything that you could ever want to cook from fried chicken to cheesecake to just every kind of bread. It’s awesome.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I just started this thing on my blog. Every time I post a recipe I’ve just been posting a YouTube video. And I told the story about how I love to listen to songs on repeat. So I often do. I just will put something on and whatever catches my attention, I’ll hit that repeat button and it will play the entire time that I’m cooking and photographing. I think it drives my husband crazy but it kind of keeps me going.

I’ve been really into lately Lucy Rose. She’s a British musician and I think I heard her in something on HBO, like she was in the end credits. I Googled the song and I’ve been really into her recently.

On Keeping Posted with Brita:

Brita Britnell of B. Britnell on The Dinner Special podcast.

I would say that if you go to my blog www.bbritnell.com, I’ve got all my social media there. The one that I’m most active on is Instagram and my Instagram handle is @b.britnell. I use Instagram the most.

 

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: B. Britnell, Biscuit Love Brunch, Brita Britnell, Chopped, Diners Drive-ins and Dives, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Homemade Decadence, Hot Chicken, Hot Chicken Festival, Joy of Cooking, Joy the Baker, Local Milk, Lucy Rose, Mind of a Chef, My Name is Yeh, Nashville, Pepperfire, Prince's Hot Chicken, Roller Derby, This Wild Idea, Thrillist

053: Abby Thompson: Veganism and Vegan Baking

June 24, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Abby Thompson of The Frosted Vegan on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted on her.
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Abby Thompson of The Frosted Vegan on The Dinner Special podcast talking about veganism and becoming vegan, as well as baking vegan.

The Frosted Vegan

On The Frosted Vegan Abby showcases recipes that show that even if you’re eating a plant-based diet, you can still enjoy delicious desserts, and that it doesn’t have to be a hassle.

I am so pumped to have Abby Thompson of The Frosted Vegan here on the show today.

(*All images below are Abby’s.)

On Growing Up in a Home Where Food Was Enjoyed and Shared:

It was obviously awesome and delicious. In our house my mom was either making brownies on the weekend or my dad was making cookies after school, stuff like that. It just became a part of how I grew up, and when I moved away and started on my own that kind of fell off because mom and dad weren’t making them for me.

I loved baking, but I didn’t keep up with it. And especially when I turned vegan it became a little bit harder. I didn’t know if I would be able to keep up with all the baking and stuff like that. So, I just integrated it into my life and realized it was something that was part of my childhood and part of who I was.

It shaped how I looked at food, and treats were always an everyday thing. For some people they didn’t grow up with that, but for me it was just always something that was there.

On Being in the Kitchen:

Abby Thompson of The Frosted Vegan on The Dinner Special podcast talking about growing up in a home where food and baking was enjoyed and shared.

This is kind of a weird story to remember, like baking and cooking, but I remember in middle school I did not make show choir. And I was so sad, but I was like, “I just need to make a pie.” So, I made a pie and I remember from then on it was like baking kind of solves everything. It feels awesome, I do it, and then I get a slice of pie at the end. So, it was great! It just started evolving from that.

I discovered in high school, you know, boys really like when you bring them cookies, or everyone is your friend if you bring them cakes! So, when I figured that out and I enjoyed it at the same time, it just started, like I said, becoming part of my everyday life.

I’ve always had a huge sweet tooth, and for some reason cooking doesn’t come easily to me. I have to have a recipe, I’m not just improvising dinner or anything like that. When I do it turns out not so great, so my fiance prefers I don’t improvise. But, it’s always been baking, I can kind of make up a muffin recipe and it’s no problem. I know that’s a little bit harder because baking is a little more scientific and exact, but for me it has just always come naturally. I can feel when it’s right, when it’s going to come out okay. It doesn’t always work, but most of the time it works.

On Veganism:

Abby Thompson of The Frosted Vegan on The Dinner Special podcast talking about veganism and becoming vegan.

A vegan diet generally means you’re not consuming any animal products. So, not only no meat, no fish, no dairy, so cheese, eggs, that kind of thing are out.

You can go from one extreme to the other.

Some people just stop at cheese and eggs. Others avoid all gelatin because gelatin has animal-dried products. Fish sauces and a lot of Thai dishes, stuff like that. Then, it expands into a vegan lifestyle so some people choose not to consume leather goods or have anything with animal-dried products. It’s a sliding scale of what extreme you want to go to. And then, on the other side of it, I kind of try to also approach it with a plant-based diet, so that’s also avoiding excessive oils, super-fatty products.

Some of the vegan products out there are not necessarily healthy, they’re vegan, doesn’t mean they’re healthy. So, it really depends on what extreme you’re on or what part of the scale you’re on. It means something different for everyone.

On Becoming Vegan:

Abby Thompson of The Frosted Vegan on The Dinner Special podcast talking about becoming vegan.

I went vegan about three years ago.

I always grew up in a household where cheese is on everything, we had chicken, fish, all that kind of stuff. But, I had never been a huge meat eater, I never really liked it.

I was starting to slowly phase out the meat in my diet just because it didn’t really matter to me. Then, my dad actually went cold turkey vegan about three years ago. He watched Forks Over Knives, which is a documentary, and he just decided that he wanted to make a change. He wasn’t really feeling great, wanted to feel a lot better, and eat a lot better. Nothing had ever really stuck for him. So, he did that and then I was still living at home at the time so it was kind of a natural thing to follow along with it.

When I moved away from home I just kept following it because I realized I felt a lot better. My body just felt better when I didn’t eat certain foods, and I’ve just slowly gone more vegan over the years.

The meat part wasn’t as hard, but the dairy is hard. A lot of stuff like grilled cheese or things with cheese in them, you have to figure out what works if you want to use vegan cheese or cheese at all, stuff like that. I’m still figuring it out.

I’m sure it will be a lifelong journey to figure out what works and what tastes the best, to me. That’s what I like about it though because it doesn’t feel very stagnant. I’m always finding something new. It’s awesome what people are doing with vegan food now.

On Baking Vegan and Her Blog:

Abby Thompson of The Frosted Vegan on The Dinner Special podcast talking about baking vegan.

I originally started it because when I moved away my dad was still wanting to make all the baked goods that I grew up making, but he didn’t want to necessarily include all the vegan butters, or oils, and extra stuff like that. He wasn’t really sure how to approach it, so I wanted to start figuring it out, not only for him but myself, too.

It just progressed from wanting to share those recipes and figuring out, “Hey, maybe other people are looking for these, so I’ll just start a blog!” I kind of just had to figure out what egg replacements work, or what kind of oil replacements, or can I get rid of the oil? Stuff like that.

It’s really relearning because up until I went vegan, I was making croissants from scratch, and things with a lot of eggs in them, and I loved it, but then trying to relearn what’s going to work in place of those things was a challenge.

On the Biggest Misconception of Baking Vegan:

Abby Thompson of The Frosted Vegan on The Dinner Special podcast talking about misconceptions around baking vegan

I think the biggest one is that it’s going to be gross. I know some of the commercially made vegan, baked goods I’ve had have not been great. They’ve come out dry, or too oily, or it’s just not the same.

I really want to make it so that if you give someone a cookie and they eat it, they’re not like, “Oh, is this vegan? I can tell.” I want it to be, “Oh, this a cookie and it’s great. I had no idea.” So, I think it’s fighting that misconception that things are automatically going to be disgusting because they’re vegan.

Coconut oil, more people are becoming familiar with it, but that’s a big one that I use a lot, especially in place of butter or different oils. I know it’s more of an up and coming ingredient, but I use that quite a bit.

Ground flax seed, I had never used until I started baking vegan and that, when you combine it with water and let it sit for a little bit, it becomes sort of a gel and makes a really good egg substitute in a lot of things.

Those are two of the main ones that I hadn’t really heard of. I try avoid using weird things or things that are hard to find because I know not everyone lives super close to Whole Foods or anything like that. So, those are my two main ones that I use quite a bit.

Then, just using high quality flours or agave nectar and stuff like that just helps substitute for some of those common ingredients.

One of the first food blogs that I followed that helped a lot was, Oh She Glows. She’s really well known, she has everything from cooking to baking. She goes more in-depth into some of the things when she makes vegan baked goods and it has helped quite a bit.

Dairyfreebaking.com. Dairy free might still include a few eggs, but more milk substitute, stuff like that, she goes into that. I’ve had her site come up a lot when I’ve looked for different things.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t watch a ton of cooking shows, but when she’s on, Giada De Laurentiis. I watch her, I think she’s pretty inspiring.

Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, usually late at night it makes me really hungry so my fiance and I watch that quite a bit on a weekend night. Alton Brown shows when they were on, and I think those are the main ones.

I like Chopped too. It makes me think, “I can do anything in the kitchen!”

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

The First Mess, Laura writes that one and she’s awesome and totally inspiring. Vegan food that just, if you have it, again, you wouldn’t really know it’s vegan. She has an awesome writing style and I absolutely love it. I love her.

Cookie and Kate, she does amazing stuff with seasonal produce, and whenever I get my produce of the week, I know that she always has something that I can do anything with.

Cake Over Steak, Sara is awesome, I know she’s been on your podcast. And I love that she’s doing something different with using illustrations. I know she’s starting to do photography, but she does illustration and they’re awesome and amazing, so I love her things as well.

Then, let’s do one more, Joy the Baker, oh my gosh. She’s one of the first blogs I ever read. I would love to be the Joy the Baker of vegan baking.

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

Floating Kitchen, Liz over at Floating Kitchen, she lives on the east coast and she posts really awesome pictures. She lives by the beach and takes her dogs on walks and stuff like that. When it’s snowing here or really crappy, it’s cool to see her pictures of that.

Laura, again, of The First Mess, she does a lot of gardening and I love when she posts pictures of pulling radishes, or carrots, or anything like that. I think her dad does weekly deliveries to her, berries and things that he grows. So, I love seeing those things because it’s really cool. I think those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

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

My most treasured one at the moment is my Vitamix blender. I just got it about six months ago, and I use it almost every day, all the time. I’ve always wanted one so I’m glad I finally sprung for it.

Then another one is, it’s a measuring cup, which sounds weird, but it’s a tin measuring cup that my grandmother passed down to me. She grew up baking with it, I think it was her grandmother’s, and it’s really cool to use it. It’s super functional, and I love using it because I know it’s been passed down through baking generations in our family.

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

Tomatoes. I use to not eat tomatoes in anything. I hated them. I hated chunks of them in anything, and I still wouldn’t like, eat one whole like some people do. But I’ve discovered that really good tomatoes, like fresh, summer tomatoes are amazing, and I love it now!

Then spinach too, I used to hate spinach. I grew my own spinach a couple years ago, and I loved it. So, I think the freshness really makes a difference.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

The Bountiful cookbook which is by the White on Rice Couple, Todd and Diane, is awesome. Again, really focused on seasonal produce. They grow a lot of their own stuff, and it’s made it so much better because I’ll get something from the grocery store and think, “I don’t really know what to do with this. I’m going to look at this cookbook.” They have something amazing, very accessible, very easy, love their cookbook.

I have a baking cookbook from Williams Sonoma that I got several years ago that doesn’t have any vegan baking recipes in it, but it’s a super solid foundation for if I need a good jumping off point for a cake recipe or anything like that. I know that it’s going to be reliable, and even if I tinker with it with all my weird vegan stuff, it will probably come out or make a good foundation.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

So, I’m a big fan of Pandora and I’ve really been into the song Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars. I think that song makes me say, “Okay, I can do this. Let’s get some cooking done. I am ready to go.”

On Keeping Posted with Abby:

Abby Thompson of The Frosted Vegan on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted on her.

I would say probably Instagram and Facebook. Those are the two biggest ones I am probably most active on.

 

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Abby Thompson, Alton Brown, Baking, Baking Vegan, Bountiful, Bruno Mars, Cake Over Steak, Chopped, Cookie and Kate, Dairyfreebaking.com, Diners Drive-ins and Dives, Floating Kitchen, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Forks Over Knives, Giada de Laurentiis, Oh She Glows, Plant-based, The First Mess, The Frosted Vegan, Vegan, Veganism, Vitamix, White on Rice Couple, Williams Sonoma

Hello! I'm Gabriel Soh, home cook, food enthusiast and your host of The Dinner Special podcast.
Everything here on The Dinner Special is an experiment, just like with cooking. Thank you for listening and being part of the adventure.

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