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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.

001: Claire Thomas: What To NEVER Bring To A Dinner Party

February 20, 2015 by Gabriel

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The Kitchy Kitchen

I am super excited to have the amazing, the awesome Claire Thomas here as my special guest today.

She is doing a lot of really cool stuff. Apart from her website The Kitchy Kitchen, Claire also has a cookbook called The Kitchy Kitchen. She has a television series called Food For Thought with Claire Thomas, and in my opinion, she is rockin’ it.

She is truly on a mission to help us home cooks amp up our everyday dinner routines.

On Her Interest in Food History:

I fell across food history. I read this article. It’s in one of my favorite magazines called Gastronomica. It was an article about how Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper is neither kosher nor Aramaic. It misses it on both accounts, and I thought that was so funny because the Passover meal is kind of a set script. Everyone knows what that is. It seemed sort of a weird place to take artistic license.

As I read the article, it talked about how he actually just put his favorite food in the painting, which is eel with orange slices, which I thought does not sound Italian. He’s Florentinian, so I expected pasta or something like that.

Then it occurred to me that he probably didn’t have pasta. They definitely didn’t have tomatoes. They did not have corn. They didn’t have so many of the things we think about as being integral to the Italian canon of cuisine.

So it sent me on this weird journey of, “What was Italian cuisine before the Age of Exploration?” Just really weird, nerdy side projects.

So I ended up just falling in love with food history.

I found it to be the closest thing to a time machine, because if you understand how people ate, you understand how they lived, their economy, their environment, the politics of the time. Some of the funniest and oldest laws on the book for major cities like Venice, for instance, are actually food-related, something people have seemed to be historically very persnickety about. So you get a great sense of, I guess, people’s personalities through history.

What I love about it too is it’s something inescapable about the human condition. We have to eat.

I love how it makes me feel connected to the past, and the people who lived in the past. Because a lot of times, we can think of them as figures in oil paintings with funny wigs, or that kind of thing. It’s cool to think of them as real people who had very strong opinions. Some of them like their food salty, some of them liked it spicy. That kind of thing.

On Starting The Kitchy Kitchen Blog:

It’s so funny thinking about where my blog started and where it is now.

I started the blog as a little fun place to put my creativity. My job was kind of boring, and my mom saw I was struggling. At this point, I was really full-blown geeking out over food history and recipe testing. She said, “Why don’t you start a food blog?” Which wasn’t really a thing four years ago as much as it is now.

Being a nerd who didn’t understand how the Internet worked, I thought, “Oh, then okay, I have to prep everything. I have to have really great recipes and learn how to shoot.” I put all this pressure on myself not realizing that the Internet is like you’re a tree falling in the middle of a forest. You can fail in anonymity for very long, so it was great.

I learned how to shoot food photography by basically just picking up a camera and shooting it and staring at the picture and trying to figure out what was wrong with it. It was basically trial and error. My dad’s actually kind of an amateur photographer. He loves photography. It all came down to lighting. So we would have conversations about where the light was coming from and what exactly it was doing.

Then I started noticing food styling. I was able to basically quit my job that I had and become a full-time food stylist.

The blog was just pretty interesting. It started out very pretentious. If you go too far back, the food is kind of over-the-top. I think I was trying a little too hard. I was trying to appear very sophisticated, and it’s funny.

On Messing Up in the Kitchen:

The opening line of my cookbook is “Have you cried yet?”

Literally. I’ve had my fair share of kitchen disasters, and still do. It’s funny. Like when I recipe test, most of the time, I’ve gotten it down to where I understand recipe structure really well at this point.

The one place that I’ve seen the most kitchen disasters is with attempts at gluten-free and vegan baking, because it’s just chemistry. It’s straight-up chemistry.

Do you guys have a BJ’s in Canada? It’s where I used to eat in middle school all the time. It’s like a pizza parlor.

They have a thing on the menu called the Pizookie. It’s a chocolate chip cookie that’s cooked in a pizza plate, and it’s gooey in the middle. They serve it with a scoop of ice cream on top. It’s wonderful.

I thought, “Oh, how cool would it be to do like a gluten-free, vegan version of that. Almost like a flourless chocolate cake, but a chocolate chip cookie.” I thought like, “Oh, this won’t be that hard.”

I had soup.

I had gluten-free, vegan, chocolate chip cookie soup the first three times I tried to make this thing. It just would not come together.

On What to (not) Bring for a Dinner Party:

What I tell people whenever they come to a party I’m throwing, they asks, “Oh, how should I do my event?” or whatever. I always tell them, “Don’t ever try something the first time at a party. It’s just Murphy’s Law. It’s not going to work ever.”

It’s this need to impress. We want to be fancy and cool in front of our friends. My aunt has this cookbook called Cooking For Compliments, which is amazing just because of the title. Because at least it’s open about it, cooking for those compliments.

I mean, honestly, if you want to cook for compliments, if you want to impress people when you go to a party, just bring the dessert, because people will love a mediocre dessert and will not forgive a mediocre salad. So you will never get a high-five like, “Oh my gosh, amazing salad!” That never happens at a dinner party.

You could bring boxed brownies. I’m not kidding. If you bring boxed brownies, people will be like, “Oh, I love boxed brownies. Thank you so much. This is fantastic.” No one would be mad at you. Everyone would be totally happy about it.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

No Reservations

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

Joy the Baker, she’s a buddy of mine and she’s amazing.

Then Whitney A. My girlfriend, Whitney, is a sommelier and is amazing at putting together events and pairing wine and food. Those are definitely two of my favorites.

Also A Cozy Kitchen is another favorite. There are so many.

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

On Pinterest, I follow Bonnie Tsang. She has like a million followers. But she’s a photographer and she has so many great little pics. Also, Jenni Kayne. She’s a designer here in L.A. who I love. She’s so chic. She just picks beautiful, minimalist items.

Instagram, there are a few people I just followed that I thought were really, really special.

Nectar and Stone was one that I follow. She’s a patisserie person. She makes these just ridiculous, ridiculous confections. Then, I guess, also my friend, Jonathan from Compartes. He’s a chocolatier, and he always posts photos from his chocolate-making process.

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

I’d say for me, sriracha. Because, full disclosure, on weekday nights when I’m just lazy, my favorite dinner to make is scrambled eggs. I love eggs in general. I did scrambled eggs with a little bit of sweet soy sauce and whatever soft herbs I had. So basil, cilantro, green onion. Whatever I had, and then sriracha. That was it, and it was just the best thing. It was so good.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Butter.

Brown butter makes it much better.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

The Joy of Cooking is important in sort of an encyclopedic way. I mean, it doesn’t have that heart but it’s just such a great reference.

I collect vintage cookbooks. I have a couple dozen now. They’re so fun to me. The one that I actually cook out of the most though is called A Shaker Cookbook Not By Bread Alone. You can actually find it all over eBay. It is not a difficult vintage cookbook to find.

But vintage cookbooks have a habit of being poorly edited. A lot of times, the recipes haven’t been tested at all. A lot of times they’re presented in paragraph format, and they will actually say sometimes like, “You should know how to do this.” I was reading a recipe for a welsh rarebit, and they listed, “Cheese and toast. You should know how to make this.”

The Shaker cookbook is filled with amazing pie recipes.

It’s a great sort of anthropological look at the Shaker community and their approach to food. It has titles like Sister Amelia’s Strawberry Flummery, which I don’t know what that is, but it sounds magical.

It’s ridiculous sounding. But it’s fun. I love it, and I cook from it all the time. The recipes are really well edited. They’ve been tested a million times, and I’ve been very impressed.

If you’re going to start a vintage cookbook collection, that’s actually a pretty good one to start with.

Keep Posted on Claire:

Well, my YouTube channel. I post on my YouTube channel three times a week. If you guys are looking for things between showings of Food For Thought and between the blog, you can always find some fun, new content there. I do everything from quick little tips to full-blown recipes.

Then otherwise, Instagram. If you @ mention me, or say hello, I’ll say hi back. I follow a lot of my own followers. I love reaching out to you guys. Please find me out there.