Green Kitchen Stories | The Dinner Special podcast

111: Amanda Paa: How a Gluten Allergy Inspired Her

February 24, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Heartbeet Kitchen

On her blog, Amanda shares food stories and recipes with the hope to inspire us to realize that the best meals are those made with fresh seasonal and simple ingredients. She believes that food doesn’t have to be fancy nor does it require expensive equipment. Amanda is also the author of Smitten with Squash, her cookbook with 80 original recipes on the squash family.

I am so excited to have Amanda Paa of Heartbeet Kitchen with me on the show today.

(*All photos below are Amanda’s.)

On Learning How to Cook:

There were some things that I just watched Grandma do, like my Grandma made the best loaves of bread. I never rolled them out with her, or kneaded, or anything like that. But I always ate what came from it and it was always the same and it was always so good. I could smell the yeast coming from her oven and things like that. So I think it was definitely a little bit of both. Some watching, some helping. With my other Grandma, she makes lefse every year, which is a Norwegian specialty, and I did help her, from rolling the balls to then putting it on the hot iron to getting it real thin, all of those little things, I did do with her.

It wasn’t really until about six years ago, I was living in Wisconsin and I moved back to Minnesota because I did grow up here. But moving into the Twin Cities, there were so many more farmers markets, so much more of a farm to table movement and just interesting food. I had never really taken the time to learn about or experience and so, I had this thing where I’d go to the market and every time, I would pick a new fruit or a new vegetable or even a cut of meat that I had never cooked with before. And I said, “We’re going to experiment. There is no judgment here. Just let the creativity flow,” and that is really kind of how my blog started too. It really forged this passion for telling the real story behind real food and real food recipes and it never gets boring. Because there is always something new to learn.

On Her Food Heroes:

There is so much inspiration that we are so fortunate to have because of the Internet. Years ago, it was just cookbooks which I still am inspired by today. But there is so much content out there and beautiful work being done all across the world. It’s eye opening every single day, and so when I think of my own cooking and who has inspired it a lot, I think of some of my favorite blogs like Lindsey of Dolly and Oatmeal, and Sherrie from With Food and Love, and Sarah Kieffer from The Vanilla Bean Blog.The way she is with baking and her precision and her beauty, you can’t look at it and not be inspired.

And then I think, even just typical sites like The Kitchn and Food52 have, whether it’s new ways of doing things or new ingredients that they are coming up with ideas for, and just the way that they look at food really inspires me.

I also have to say too, like even traditional people, I mean, I think Martha Stewart is phenomenal and she has gone through how many decades and not only evolved with but kept her brand. I only wish that I could throw a dinner party like her. Every little touch she does is really something special. And she takes the time to do it. I think that that’s part of what I love too and the change in me is that, cooking is an experience and I wrote about this on my blog. It’s much more than just for your health or for just putting it on the table. It evokes emotion, it can change mood, it can bring conversation. It’s just a beautiful thing.

On How Her Gluten Allergy Impacted Her Cooking:

So I have had quite a few autoimmune issues since I was young and still kind of battle it. But we finally figured out that one of the main stressors and causes was an intolerance to gluten. It was causing severe headaches and rashes and different things like shingles that I got when I was in eighth grade. I mean just very odd things, and finally, one doctor suggested that I stop eating gluten and it was basically like a miracle. Within three weeks, I was much, much better.

And at first, it was daunting. It was like, “What? You’re telling me I have to give up all of these foods that I love and I have to kind of relearn how to cook? How am I going to eat out?” All that type of stuff. And I can say today, that I would not probably be here sitting and talking to you if that had not happened, because what it did was inspire me to say, “Okay, here is what I can have. Let’s embrace this,” and what happened was it opened my eyes to all these new foods that I had never tasted or nothing that I grew up with, whether it be gluten-free grains like millet and sorghum, or teaching myself how to make flat bread that’s made from chickpea flour known as socca.

And to really too start to look at different cultures because, a lot of other cultures don’t use as much wheat or they use it in different ways, and so there are a lot of cultural things too that really were like, “Wow, this is good. I’ve been missing this for all these years?” And what I also started to realize was that most real food, that’s grown from the ground, plants, lean proteins and meats that are grown in a humane way, fruits, nuts, seeds, all those things are naturally gluten-free anyways.

It’s most of the processed food where the problem comes in. It made me feel good to get that burst of energy in the kitchen. And I wanted to share that with other people. Because as I was going along, I was meeting all these farmers or these artisans that were doing this really cool stuff that it didn’t matter if you were gluten-free or not. It was just really good stuff.

On Some Good Sources for Learning How to Cook with a Gluten Allergy:

It’s funny you ask that, because I had someone message me the other day. Their friend had just found that she was gluten-free. She was like, “Where do they start? How did that work?” And my first resource and still someone that I truly love and really think is such a benefit for the gluten-free community is Shauna from Gluten Free Girl, and her and her husband started a blog before gluten-free had really even been talked about. He was a chef and I read her book which was called, Gluten-Free Girl. It was more of almost a documentary but then also education on her whole transition, and it made me feel so much better. Like, “Okay, my world is not coming to an end. A, I feel so much better and now there is this whole new world of food that I get to explore,” and that was super, super helpful for me.

The other one, I don’t know if she blogs anymore. But her site is still very active. But Gluten-Free Goddess. There are so many beginner, basic recipes that will make you feel less intimidated, and that was really powerful for me too.

On Her Book, Smitten with Squash:

Smitten with Squash was published in July of last year. I was approached by the publisher who, they kind of do these, one book a year basically on a Midwestern fruit or vegetables that you love or that you’re very passionate about and the growing of it and history, because it is a historical publisher that publishes the cookbook. It’s the Minnesota Historical Society Press. They contacted me and were like, “You know, give us a few of your ideas, write a proposal around it. We’ve got a few others in mind.”

And I had always liked squash but what was interesting to me about squash, a couple of things is that, living here in Minnesota, our growing season is rather short. And squash, the family of squash between winter squash and summer squash, you can eat locally almost all year round here. Because summer squash is so abundant and then winter squash, you can store it for up to six months, and that will last you almost until summer squash is starting to arrive again. I thought that that was really neat because I do try to base my recipes off seasonal eating, because I feel like that’s when food tastes the best and you can become creative with what looks good at the market and things like that.

The other part that was really cool to me was that squash really is a part of every culture in one way or another and there aren’t very many foods that are like that. And so I just started formulating this idea about doing my whole book on squash and they accepted the idea.

There is 80 original recipes. There are about 40 summer squash recipes and then 40 winter squash recipes. And you’ll see everything from sweets to appetizers to pickles to main dishes, vegetarian to Paleo to kind of everything in there because it is so versatile.

The other real passion behind it is, you know how there are those foods that you had when you were young and you think like, “Oh my gosh, I do not like this because, this is probably the only way you can make it or this is the way I always see it served and I can’t stand this.” And when people talk about it, they are like, “Oh, yeah, well my mom made it, acorn squash. She baked it in a pan with some water and then when it came out she put butter and brown sugar on it. It’s just not good.” And I wanted to change that. I wanted to give people new ideas for what to do with summer squash in stuff like brownies or cake or things like that.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Chopped.

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

Well, the ones that I mentioned before. So The Vanilla Bean Blog, Dolly and Oatmeal, With Food and Love, Sara from Cake Over Steak has such an interesting food blog that has beautiful recipes but she also illustrates her recipes, and I know she’s been on your show, and she is fantastic.

If you’re looking for a wonderful vegan site, Abby from The Frosted Vegan has just a great way with words and she is one of those people that makes things very easy to understand. I love too, if you’ve never glanced over the blog, Green Kitchen Stories, just beautiful photography and wonderful, nourishing, healthy food that never loses flavor and is exactly what I love to do, which is cooking seasonally.

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

Well, on Instagram, I love following The Fauxmartha. She has her little girl that she posts pictures of, but her food scenes are just so incredible and simple yet they just make me want to start cooking. That is something that is obviously what we all aspire to do. Another friend, her blog, it’s called Sunshine and Sea Salt. And she is just a real good friend and is an amazing recipe developer as well, but her words that she writes on Instagram are almost like sometimes blog posts. They are just beautiful. Oh, Ladycakes too is a really fun one to follow along with, and I love following her. Those are a few of my biggest inspirations.

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

My most treasured, the one that I use the most that like, if you could only keep three things from your kitchen, would be my Le Creuset dutch oven because they are just workhorses. They do everything that you could ever want, and then I used to think it was strange that my mom gave me my grandma’s silverware and now, I love it and I use it in so many of my photographs, and it really means a lot to me when I see it. And then, thirdly, are some of my thrift finds that I find while I’m out. One of those is this real old baker’s scale. You’ll see it in a couple of my posts and on my Instagram but they just don’t make things like that anymore.

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

Ricotta cheese. I used to not like the texture. I only really had it in lasagna and I prefer cottage cheese over it in lasagna and that’s what formulated this dislike. Now, I think it is so great whether that’s baked with lemon and olive oil and herbs for an easy appetizer, or on salads. My favorite thing too is to put it into desserts where typically, you might use yogurt or something like that. It creates such a soft texture and moist, rich, just kind of like cake and it’s really a fabulous ingredient. But I thought I hated it. Now, I love it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Deborah Madison’s Vegetable Literacy is, I mean, that should definitely be in your kitchen because it’s all about cooking with families of plants and how they all go together. It’s just really simple but interesting recipes and I use that as not only a reference guide but something every week in my kitchen.

Another one that I think you just should have it is Joy of Cooking, because every single technique or question you ever had about food is in there. There are also vintage recipes and modern new ways of doing things which I think is really cool.

One of my newest cookbooks that I use a lot and that I love is Sheet Pan Suppers and it’s all different recipes and it’s not just suppers but things that you can make on a sheet pan and have so little clean up. Very little clean up, like a sheet pan is just another workhorse too. And it creates delicious meals.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I wouldn’t say it’s any particular album or anything, but 50s and 60s music, some of those classic kind of blues but like, pop hits too. They’re all so upbeat and all have such a happy tone. They don’t make you think too hard and that’s kind of what I always have on in my kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Amanda:

I am on Facebook and Instagram as heartbeetkitchen and beet is spelled like the vegetable, just for my blog too. And I am also on Pinterest and I am also on Twitter.

Snapchat: heartbeetkitchn

092: Emma Galloway: Learning to Cook with Food Intolerances

November 18, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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My Darling Lemon Thyme

Emm went to culinary school and worked as a chef for almost eight years in restaurants, the pastry section of cafes, and catering companies in Australia and New Zealand. She left when she became a parent and discovered that not only do her children suffer from gluten and lactose intolerance, but so does she. Emm started her blog in 2010 to share gluten-free vegetarian real food recipes, and stories and tips on organic gardening. Since then, she has written a book, My Darling Lemon Thyme – Recipes from My Real Food Kitchen, and her blog was the 2014 Saveur Blog Awards Winner for Best Original Recipes Blog.

I’m so excited to have Emma Galloway of My Darling Lemon Thyme here with me today.

(*All photos below are Emm’s.)

On Her Interest in Cooking:

I grew up on quite a large property, where my parents grew heaps of vegetables and fruit that we had. And being vegetarian, my mom used to put a lot of time and effort into preparing most of what we had from scratch. So it was part of who we are, and my family, I mean, we’re all into cooking, and from a very young age, I knew that I wanted to be a chef. So, even though a few people told me not to, because that’s a pretty crazy profession, long hours and stuff, I didn’t listen and I just followed my heart and did what I wanted to do.

On Working in Restaurants, Cafes, and Catering:

My preference was working in smaller cafes, so that’s where I worked in New Zealand, mostly it was smaller cafes. Smaller cafes, you generally have only a couple of you in the kitchen, so you’re basically covering all bases yourself, you’re doing everything. Sometimes, even doing the dishes as well, which is actually how I started off in the industry. Restaurants tend to be divided into sections, so you’re only in charge of the one section. And catering companies are quite similar. So I was in charge of the pastry section when I worked for two catering companies in Sydney years ago.

They all have their challenges. It’s a pretty high stress environment, working in the kitchen. Especially when, like I said, if you’re working in a cafe, where there’s only one or two of you in the kitchen and you’re doing two, three hundred covers a day, it’s a lot of work and a lot of stress and a lot of running around. So, yeah, they’re all pretty high stressed.

I think cafes in the winter time generally are nice and calm and that’s when you have your time to play and be a little bit more relaxed. I don’t know if it’s the same in the States, but in New Zealand in summertime, if you work in a cafe, it’s extremely busy, especially if you’re in a cafe anywhere near the ocean, which is where I used to work. People are always going to the beach in the summer and then they’re wanting to go and eat, so it’s pretty busy.

On Starting Her Blog:

When I left the kitchen when my daughter was born, I didn’t even know what a food blog was. We’re a little bit behind in New Zealand and Australia. Five years ago when I started my food blog, there was probably only two of my friends that had ever heard of a food blog before. Even though, I mean, there’s people like Heidi Swanson in the States, who have been blogging for well over 10 years. We’re a little bit behind here, so I had no idea when I left the kitchen at all. And it was actually from finding Heidi Swanson’s cookbook in the library and then getting onto her food blog that I even discovered what food blogs were. So that was only five years ago.

For years I’ve always recorded recipes. If I find a great recipe in a magazine, I was always the crazy person who would be frantically writing out recipes and trying new things. And after I got onto food blogs, I thought, “Well, I’m at home.” Just looking after my kids, my kids were four and two at the time when I started it, so I wasn’t working professionally. And then I missed that creative side of cooking, where you can just experiment. So, at the start I had no clue of what I was doing, didn’t really know how to take photos, but just started.

On Recognizing Her and Her Children’s Food Intolerances:

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had basically just a sore tummy the entire pregnancy. I just thought that’s just what happens when you’re pregnant. Being my first pregnancy, I had nothing to compare it too. And then when my daughter came along, she was extremely upset 24/7, wouldn’t sleep and was just in a lot of pain, basically. And so, my midwife at the time suggested that maybe I try cutting out some of the foods in my diet that might be affecting her through my breast milk. So, that’s when I cut out gluten and dairy, but I’d always been interested in alternative food. Being vegetarian, I’d always look to vegan foods and loved seeing how people get creative with vegan food, but the whole gluten-free thing was quite a challenge at the start.

I didn’t really know what I was doing and I don’t think I was 100% gluten-free, because I hadn’t figured out that it’s in basically everything at this stage. So, when my son came along two years later, and showed a lot of the same symptoms as my daughter had, I got quite serious and went and got us allergy tested. That’s when it showed up that we can’t handle any gluten. We can handle small amounts of dairy, and more so as the kids have gotten older, but yeah, gluten is not our friend.

On Tackling a New Approach to Cooking and Food (with Food Intolerances):

I think the easiest way to approach it, is to focus on what you can eat, rather than being all upset that you can’t eat that donut in the store. Although, there are a lot of gluten-free donuts and things around these days, but I think focusing more on what you can eat, and naturally gluten-free and dairy-free things.

I’m very lucky in that my husband is Vietnamese, and so, all of our night-time meals are based mostly around rice, which is gluten-free and dairy-free. So I find that eating a more Asian-inspired diet or a Mexican diet, where the core ingredients are naturally gluten-free is usually the easier way to go to begin with, until you get your head around working with different gluten-free flours and dairy-free alternatives.

I’ve never really used the pre-packet gluten-free flour mixers, I prefer to just use my own individual flours. I think, when you’re first starting out, by all means, if you’re overwhelmed by gluten-free, then going that way is totally acceptable. You’ll probably get to a certain point where you would love more flexibility to add different flavors or different nutritional qualities to what you’re making. So that’s when you can use your own flours, but it’s totally acceptable at the start. When it all feels too much, I just think, do whatever you can do to make it easier for yourself.

On Some Good Resources to Learn More About Gluten-Free Cooking:

The main one that I have used over the years is glutenfreegirl.com. Shauna’s recipes are extremely well-tested. I guess with her teacher background, she’s extremely good at explaining everything, and why she uses certain flours, and for all the basic things that you’re missing, like pizza and bread and all those things. She has brilliant recipes on her site and in all of her books as well.

On Her Book, “My Darling Lemon Thyme – Recipes from My Real Food Kitchen”:

After a couple of years of blogging, I pretty much had made up my mind that I wanted to try and get published. Over the years, there were a lot of recipes I had been holding back from putting on the blog, because I thought they’re too good to share in this capacity and I wanted to save them for a book.

And so, I spent about a year trying to approach publishers and see if they were interested. And I got turned down by every single one. Basically, at that stage, this was probably going back at least three or more years, probably four years nearly even. At that stage, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian food was a little bit too specialized for most publishers, so they turned me down saying, “It’s just all too hard.” And basically, I was in talks with one publisher in New Zealand at the time, who said, “We’ll publish a gluten-free baking book if you’re interested in that.” But that’s not really what I wanted to do for my first book.

And so, I was extremely lucky when I was nearly giving up hope, Harper Collins, New Zealand, who I hadn’t approached, because you had to have an agent to approach them and I didn’t have one at that stage, they actually approached me from seeing my blog. So it all worked out well in the end – very, very happy and thankful.

The book is filled with a hundred of my favorite recipes. Most of the recipes in there are recipes that I have been making for a long, long time. Some are inspired by recipes my mum made when I was little and I’ve adapted them to be gluten-free. And there’s a lot of base recipes, which is what I wanted my first book to be, so that anyone can pick this up, that’s new to gluten-free, and it covers all the bases.

There are numerous breakfasts to choose from. There’s pizza. There’s a homemade sourdough. There’s how to make your own yogurt from scratch. Tomato sauces, everything like that. The whole book is vegetarian and gluten-free, and then most of the recipes are dairy-free also. There are little bits of yogurt and butter, which is what my body tolerates, so that’s in there.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I do watch MasterChef.

There are a lot of professional chefs that think cooking shows like that are just slightly embarrassing, but there’s a lot of talented people that go on MasterChef. Some of the dishes they make a lot of professional chefs would struggle to make. So, I quite like it.

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

I’m terrible, I don’t actually read heaps of food blogs. So, 101 Cookbooks is the number one, I don’t think I’ve ever missed a post of hers in the five/six years that I’ve been reading it. I love The Vanilla Bean Blog, Oh, Ladycakes, The First Mess and With Food and Love. All of those blogs, they make food that I want to eat, even if I can’t, like The Vanilla Bean Blog, my friend Sarah writes it. Most of it I wouldn’t even be able to eat, because it’s not gluten-free, but I just love looking at her gorgeous photos.

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

Green Kitchen Stories Instagram’s feed is amazing, absolutely amazing. Tara O’Brady, Seven Spoons. Luisa Brimble, Australian food and lifestyle photographer, her stuff is always amazing, and both on Pinterest and Instagram, she has amazing stuff on there. And Sarah Kieffer as well, from The Vanilla Bean Blog, her Instagram and her Pinterest even more so, it’s just amazing.

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

That would probably have to be all the vintage props that I’ve acquired over the years. I have a wee thing for bowls and plates and glass jars.

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

Mushrooms. That would probably be one of the vegetables I didn’t like as a kid, but now I can’t get enough of them.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I love, I’m not sure if it’s available in the U.S., but it’s called Vegies, by an Australian chef called Simon Bryant, that’s one of my favorites. Heidi Swanson’s book, Super Natural Every Day is another favorite, and Afro-Vegan by Bryant Terry is another good one. I have so many cookbooks it’s hard to choose. I have stacks of them all around my house.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Anything reggae. So, I really love listening to Burning Spear, any of his albums when I’m cooking, it just makes me happy.

On Keeping Posted with Emm:

Instagram is a daily update, so probably Instagram. On Facebook as well, but yeah, Instagram is probably the best one.

061: Kris Osborne: How Pleasure is an Important Part of Wellness

July 22, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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80twenty

Kris is a holistic chef, recipe developer, and food photographer and stylist. On her blog 80twenty, she shares vibrant and delicious food and drinks that aim to healthfully nourish us 80% of the time and satisfy our cravings and wants 20% of the time.

I am so happy to have Kris Osborne of 80twenty joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below are Kris’s.)

On Growing Up in a Family-Owned Restaurant:

My family owned actually a restaurant and a motel, so we lived in an apartment above the motel and the restaurant was in a building adjacent. And so my whole life, up until I was 13 years old, I spent in and out of the kitchen or in and out of the rooms, and my life was always filled with my family feeding people. It was a really common theme. When we weren’t feeding people in the restaurant, I remember my mom and my aunt always having dinner parties and having friends over.

I come from a family of people who shows their love through feeding people and so I was always surrounded by food.

My mom describes me as being a bit mischievous, I guess. She would say that I would, even as a three year-old, I would be wandering around the restaurant and I would go up to customers’ plates and steal french fries from their plates, for example.

I think probably because I was three, people thought it was adorable. But also because I grew up in a small town, people also got to know my family and got to know me and my siblings. I don’t remember necessarily helping out in the back or anything like that, but I was always in the restaurant scene.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved food. I’ve always loved cooking and learning about food and sharing food with people.

I’ve always had an interest in healthy food. So that’s always formed the backdrop of how I wanted to live my life. And I never intended necessarily to work in the restaurant industry, because when I was a teenager, I served. And then eventually when I was old enough, I became a bartender. I had quite an entrenched life in that world and so I wanted to have a professional career.

All of my off time was spent reading cookbooks and visiting whole food producers or local farms or things like that. And so it’s always been integrated into part of my life.

I think probably a lot of bloggers that you interview, I imagine, would have a similar perspective on this. And that is that food is such an integral part of our life. We use it for, obviously, sustenance and nourishment, but we also use it to celebrate and we use it as a reward and we use it to show love. There are so many reasons that we use food in our lives. And I feel so fortunate that I get to somehow do this in a way that also involves my career and my passions. Probably other bloggers feel the same way, where we are hoping to connect people with that same meaning that we get from it.

On Starting Her Blog:

It’s not really that interesting of a story but I wanted to start a food blog for a long time, mostly just as a way to share what I was already doing. My partner kept encouraging me to start it and I kept thinking, “Well, I don’t know how to do anything. I don’t know how to take photos and I don’t know what to write and I don’t know what to post.” So literally I had a URL for a year or two before I even posted anything.

The blog name was something different and I was just talking one day and I said, “You know what? I think what I want to be able to convey to people is this idea of, I want people to eat healthy food, and I want to inspire people to eat healthy food, because I think we get a lot of the other stuff all the time anyway, so why not do what I’m passionate about?” But also if I want to eat pizza on a Friday night, then I want to be able to talk about that and share that with people because that’s also part of life and part of wellness.

And so, I was speaking about that and I said, “It’s kind of like 80/20,” and then the name came out and I was like, “That’s it, that’s the name. It’s 80twenty.” Then it evolved and when I was in naturopathic school I often thought that it was going to be a way for me to get potential patients interested in what I was doing, but then life changes and shifts and here I am today doing something totally different.

On a Kitchen Experiment that Didn’t Turn Out As Planned:

This happens regularly. I don’t know if it’s going to be interesting or not. I can just tell you the thing that comes to mind. So this was somebody else’s recipe actually that I had to modify, and it had already been modified by somebody, which I didn’t realize. I was in the third iteration of it. It didn’t make sense, there’s a lot of mistakes in it, and the ingredients were off and the proportions were off. But of course I didn’t know this until I started working with it, and I made it and it didn’t taste very good. And so then I had to go back to the person and say, “I think there’s a problem with this.” But in the end ultimately I actually had to take that recipe, the original recipe, and make it workable.

One of the components that’s involved in the recipe is, you simmer tofu in a marinade essentially, and I eat tofu pretty regularly, but I’ve never essentially boiled it or simmered it. It sounds not very appealing when you think about it.

You might have tofu in soup and then it takes on the flavor of the broth, but this was actually going into a stir fry so it was going to be simmered in the marinade and then go into the stir fry. I went through this recipe five times. I kept trying to make it work, and I eventually got to a point where I was like, “Yeah, I think this is good now. I think it’s okay. It’s not my favorite.”

If it was up to me I would have pan fried it or done something else, but this is how it’s supposed to be. So I did it and I had a ton of leftovers and I brought them to my sister’s place. My sister and her boyfriend, their reaction was, this is gross. And they actually refused to eat it. They waited for me to bring them dinner, and then when I brought it they didn’t eat it. I feel like that’s a big failure. That has never happened. Of all the years that I’ve been doing this, my family is usually pretty good about eating my creations but they ended up throwing it out.

On Her Studies in Naturopathic Medicine:

I have a passion for health and really all things health-related or wellness-related and I just decided to go to naturopathic school as a way to combine my love of food and nutrition. It seems kind of like an unlikely path and I think if you were to look at it objectively, people might think that I should have gone to nutrition school or to become a dietician, but I really believe in the philosophy that naturopathy offers, which is really a holistic approach to life in general, a holistic approach to eating. That really spoke to me.

I never intended, necessarily, to practice as a doctor. I just wanted to have the knowledge to be able to, essentially, inspire people to eat more vibrantly, I guess.

I learned things all the time that surprised me because you’re studying medicine, so you are constantly learning things that are surprising and interesting. But when it comes to nutrition, I would say that one of the nuggets that has stayed with me the most is . . . we all know that we should eat more vegetables. I don’t think that that’s a piece of information that most people would disagree with or that most people don’t know already. Even if they know little about health, they’ve probably heard that or they’ve probably considered that they should eat more vegetables. But one thing that really stood out to me and stuck with me is how beneficial raw olive oil is, and so when I say raw I just mean uncooked. It’s prescribed naturopathically for a lot of disease prevention, but also actually in disease treatment because fat plays such a critical role in so many of our body processes and, in particular, olive oil just does a lot of good things.

On Misconceptions of Eating Healthy:

I think maybe the biggest one that I see all the time still, that permeates mainstream culture, is that fat is bad for us.

There’s still an idea that we should be eating a low fat diet. And I think the research, to my knowledge, is pretty clear that that’s not really the way to go. Researchers present it in a different way and so we saw, when you look in the past, that if people were eating low fat diets they were typically replacing the fat with things like sugar and more carbs that were not necessarily satiating them and were also just giving them more calories, and not necessarily good things for their body.

It seems so simple but I just really wish people wouldn’t fear fat because fat is so good for you and it’s so critical for bodily processes but also just for feeling satisfied. When we eat a meal, when there’s fat involved or you have a snack and there’s fat involved, it’s so much easier to feel satiated.

I would also say that one thing that I come across pretty regularly is people saying that healthy food doesn’t taste very good. My challenge is always, “Okay, tell me what you want me to make. And I’ll make it taste good because I wholeheartedly disagree.”

In some ways this conversation is a bit scientific, and I want to bring a personal component to it. My opinion is that pleasure is a really important component of wellness and we never think about pleasure as a form of wellness. We talk about sleep and exercise and stress and diet. Those are very simplified but, of course, those are the main things we talk about and we never talk about pleasure. Pleasure brings us so much joy and releases endorphins and allows us to relax. There are so many things that pleasure brings us in terms of wellness.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I really like watching cooking videos online. I love watching Green Kitchen Stories’ videos and some bloggers who do videos. So I will watch those kinds of things.

There’s a chef here in Canada. Her name is Anna Olson. She’s a pastry chef. So I used to like to watch her show. I can’t even remember what it’s called. I think because she does things that I’m so unfamiliar with. Baking is something that I’m learning now, and I absolutely love baking, but it’s not something that comes naturally to me, and so I loved watching her show back in the day.

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

Okay, so I’m going to try to pick blogs that you probably haven’t heard about. Well actually, that’s not even true. You’ve probably heard about them.

Another colleague of mine, her name is Ashley Colburn, and she writes a blog called Butterfly Food and she has some of the most stunning photography and she is just a really lovely person. But her photography is, I think, some of the best out there. And she recently had a photo of hers used as a cover photo for a National Geographic Book.

Another blog that I just discovered within the last few months, and she’s now been nominated for a Saveur Award, so I’m sure everybody knows, but Faring Well. Again, really beautiful photography and also a nice peek into her life. She lives in Colorado and I feel like it’s always really nice to be able to see an element of people’s lives beyond that. There are also some nature photos incorporated into her blog and into her Instagram feed, and I really love that.

Kelly from The Gouda Life is one of the bloggers that I first discovered when I was starting to blog myself. And I remember linking to her blog something that I really liked and she wrote me back this really lovely email thanking me for linking to her.

I remember at the time thinking it was so nice of her because really there was nobody reading my blog and she had already had such a big following, I’m sure. But her photography really inspired me when I was starting out, and also she’s always been really supportive of me as a blogger and professionally, and now we work together on this blog called Baked. I think she’s really cool and unique. She’s got a really unique style of moody photography that you should check out.

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

I don’t really follow people on Pinterest or Facebook really that much but Instagram, I would say . . . I’m sure you’ve heard of this Instagram account called Momma’s Gone City, and it’s typically photos of her children with their cats and typically one child with a dog. But I’m a huge animal lover and so I love seeing photos of the animals and particularly animals and kids. Every time I look through her feed I’m always just so happy.

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

Perhaps not unusual, but treasured for sure is my cast iron skillet. I use it for almost everything. It’s amazing for pancakes. It’s amazing for pan frying anything, for making tortillas. I make fried eggs on it. And I even . . .it’s not maybe the best use of this, but because it’s always out, I always quickly saute spinach or kale or something like that for an easy meal all in the same pan. And that pan was probably $20 and it’s going to last me for my whole life.

I always recommend that if people are wondering if they should get . . . what five or ten things in their kitchen, I think a cast iron skillet is a really awesome thing to have.

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

Brussel sprouts and actually asparagus, anything that has a pungent, earthy flavor.

I was not a vegetable fan, ironically. When I was a kid I used to eat them, and my mom would probably put butter and sugar on things or butter and salt, things to make me like or make me eat them more often. But as I’ve gotten older my palate has fully, I think, been trained because I actually recall when I was in university in my undergrad, I would make myself eat vegetables. I was old enough to know that I should eat them. And so then I started making myself just eat more of them and eventually I started liking them.

I figured out that if I ate something three times I tended to like it by the third or fourth time. And now I just love those things. Asparagus, as an example. I just made an asparagus kimchi that I’m going to be posting for a column that I write. And years ago I never would have eaten kimchi or asparagus, so I’m really into things, I guess, with a lot more pungent flavors now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Mark Bittman’s, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, is a really good dictionary to have in your kitchen. If you’re in a pinch and you have a vegetable or you have a grain or anything in your life, you can literally open up the book and go to the word millet or to the word broccoli and it will give you several recipes. It also has this great resource of tying things together so there will be a number of sauces and then there will be a table later in the book that says, 10 things you can add to tacos or 15 ways to make a sandwich better and it will incorporate other recipes from the book. Also, it’s showing you how to make simple things, but then it’s also showing you how to incorporate them into different dishes. It’s also a great resource for just basics.

I also love Donna Hay, any Donna Hay books because they’re beautiful to look at, and also her recipes are really simple. Usually using anywhere from between five and ten ingredients, depending, and I would say 10 is rare. So they’re very simple, they’re very straightforward, and they’re really beautiful and really tasty. So those would be my go-tos.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I don’t have a particular song or album, but I am notorious for going on to Spotify now that Spotify’s a thing, and searching under the mood section, and finding anything that’s folky or acoustic. My vision of cooking is in this relaxed, airy kitchen, windows open and a breeze coming through, and you’re sipping a glass of wine and you’re laughing with a friend and you’re just casually, slowly easing into whatever meal you’re going to have.

It’s intentional and joyful and thoughtful and all of that stuff and so I feel like that music often brings that vibe to what I’m doing. So it’s not a direct recommendation but certainly Spotify has a lot to offer in that realm.

On Keeping Posted with Kris:

You can keep posted with me on Instagram or you can follow me on Facebook. But Instagram, I think, is probably the most up-to-date current.

046: Valentina Solfrini: Olive Oil and Italian Countryside Living

June 8, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Hortus Cuisine

On her blog, Valentina writes as she explores a more natural form of cooking and food, which is always real and locally harvested. She focuses on unprocessed ingredients from her farm and makes simple traditional Italian meals with a creative, modern twist.

Hortus Cuisine was recognized in the 2014 Saveur Food Blog Awards for Best New Blog Editor’s Choice.

I am so thrilled to have Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine joining me here on the show today.

On Where She Currently Lives, Writes and Cooks:

I am placed in between two regions in Italy, one is called Marche and the other one is called Romagna, and I’m right on the border.

So each region in Italy is very different but it’s really nice because I get the best of every world. I’m right at the seaside, and I have the woods next to me, and the hills, and the countryside. So I have a little bit of everything and it’s really a great place to live in, in my opinion.

On Moving to New York City:

I wanted to really explore the world and I felt like New York City had it all condensed in one place.

So especially back then, we don’t really have much internationality, so to speak. I really wanted to explore the Asian world and the Mexican world. I wanted to know what everything was all about. I had the chance to do this trip to New York and I fell in love with it.

It was amazing.

I knew that there was a lot that I couldn’t impossibly know about other cultures, about the world and everything, but it was so much and it felt so overwhelming but in a very good way. Every time I went out the door and I walked into the street, everything seemed just so huge and I loved it.

On What Drew Her Back to Countryside Living:

Life here is quieter. The pace is much slower especially compared to New York where everybody is super-fast. Everything here is quite laid back. Nothing is really a big deal for Italians.

So sometimes we help my grandparents tend the garden, the vegetable garden or when winter comes, we go to collect the wood for the fireplace.

I have a desk job but our life really revolves around this little moment when you have to plant a seed or collect some vegetables, or me to go forage for wild herbs and stuff like that. It’s all very, very close to nature.

On Her Interest in Food and Cooking:

Food was one of those things that fell into the realm of the things that I took for granted because it’s something that always happen in my house.

My mom and my grandmother, they were always cooking, always. I’m lucky because I was in one of those families where women can stay at home and take care of us and the kids, and they’d be cooking, making pasta or baking something or anything.

I pretty much always learned to appreciate good food. We never really had anything processed or we didn’t buy snacks or anything even as kids because we felt that we didn’t need them. We never liked candy or anything just because my mom made amazing sweets at home.

I love to look at my mom doing stuff. I wouldn’t always do something but I would always stay there and look or sometimes would maybe shape the cookies or shape the pasta.

I would help or sometimes I would eat when she was cooking or lick the bowls. I was always there watching and eventually it grew on me.

When I went to New York, I was surprised that nobody was cooking. It was, “Are you serious? What, you go and buy salad that’s already been cut?”

On What Natural Cooking Means to Her:

To me, natural cooking means cooking with ingredients that have not been processed too much. Sometimes, if you learn to read the labels, you’ll see that some foods have really unnecessary ingredients.

If you buy a jar of mayonnaise, you’ll find that it has preservatives and maybe food coloring or even sugar.

So to me, natural cooking is cooking with a list of ingredients that doesn’t have a list of ingredients.

On Her Blog:

So that was a very interesting process because when I got back from New York, I realized that I had absorbed so much of other cultures that I was starting to forget about my own.

I realized that Italian cooking is actually quite healthy by itself. It has always been full of legumes and vegetables and there were so many recipes that are Italian and perfectly vegetarian, so I thought it would be interesting to rediscover my own culture with natural food. And I thought of combining those two things and it worked wonders.

I started the blog as a way to explore my own country. I realized that I didn’t understand Italy because I was feeling so good in New York and I didn’t really feel Italian. And then in the process, I rediscovered cooking and I really started to learn about the foods that we used have as kids and to really, really fall in love with it.

On Olive Oil:

Once the olives are at a good ripeness point in November, it’s usually November, you lay huge nets below the trees and you have little rakes and you rake through the branches and the olives fall out. Then you collect those huge nets of olives and these olives are cleaned.

You separate leaves from the olives and this is quite important because if your leaves get into the olives, then the olive oil taste like grass, and that happens a lot. So you have to be careful with that process.

And then we take it to the mill. I call it a mill. It’s just basically this huge stone, you have two grinding stones, pretty much like flour, and that’s why it’s called cold pressed extra virgin olive oil. The very first layer of fat that you get out of this cold pressing, grinding between two stones, then the olive oil just filters out and you get this bright green beautiful thing but it’s actually murky. It’s not as clear.

Olive oil actually gets that golden and that clear when it’s about four or five months old. When it’s super fresh, it’s bright green and quite cloudy. And that’s it, that’s virgin olive oil.

Then you have other kinds of olive oil that are lesser quality. You can obtain by pressing what is left by pressing extra virgin olive oil.

And then you have another press which is regular olive oil.

What I’ve always seen in Italy was extra virgin olive oil. It might be very bad quality extra virgin olive oil, with olives they are not Italian that come from other countries, but we only cook with extra virgin olive oil essentially.

You have great quality extra virgin oil and you have so so quality extra virgin oil and you use the so so for cooking, for stir fries and for stuff like that, and the best quality for dressing.

That’s my experience at least.

I think that the best olive oil, it has to be quite a strong character. It’s really difficult to tell maybe by the color or the smell because it really depends on the kind of olive or on how old the olive oil is.

But usually the green sort of cloudy olive oil is really the best and it’s actually quite difficult to plant and sell because that’s going to be very expensive.

I saw that some supermarkets or some stores had a little sampler with bread that you could try, and at the end of the day, if it’s virgin olive oil, you should just taste it and see if you like it.

You can tell olive oil from extra virgin olive oil because regular olive oil is much clearer and it has a more pale color. So that’s how you tell.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I love to watch Jamie Oliver. Just whatever he does, he puts such passion in it that I just love watching his enthusiasm.

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

There are so many. I love Green Kitchen Stories. They got me inspired to actually start a blog. They were probably the first bloggers that I started to follow seriously.

And then there is another one that’s called In The Making By Belen, which is a healthy food blog. She is a yoga teacher who shares vegetarian recipes. They are really awesome.

And then there is Beth Kirby from Local Milk. She is like pure aesthetics. I love her blog so much.

And then Skye McAlpine’s blog From My Dining Table. She talks about Venice in such a beautiful way.

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

I follow definitely Beth Kirby, again, on Pinterest. She has a well-organized Pinterest account. It’s so so beautiful.

And then I love to follow Japanese photographers on Instagram. I’m not sure about the names right now but just a bunch of Japanese people. I really love the bright style that they have.

My favorites to follow on Facebook are probably everybody who has something to do with healthy food and Mimi Thorisson from Manger, the French blog. She is amazing. She really has quite the sense for aesthetics as well.

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

My Vitamix. It’s unusual for Italy because actually when I bought it, it wasn’t available here and I had to buy it from Germany but I love it so much.

It’s probably the best spent money of my entire life. I use it every day, two times per day. I love it.

Some ingredients are really hard to find in Italy, so I have to make my own like almond milk.

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

That has to be sesame oil or sesame in general.

I wasn’t into sesame probably because it’s not that known in Italian cooking. It’s not an ingredient that we use. But then I started to experiment with Asian cooking and Middle Eastern cooking and, of course, sesame is there.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Actually, the cookbooks I cook from are those old cookbooks made from the 50s or from the 70s that have those very nice recipes that I love to reinterpret in a healthier way.

And then I have my favorite cookbook to look at is probably Isa Does It. It’s a vegan cookbook that is so so full of fun ideas. I don’t think it’s always healthy but it’s amazing.

I also love to read the Julia Child’s cookbook because it’s amazing. Just so well done. It’s my kind of cookbook.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I don’t have a song in particular. I guess all French or Italian songs get me in the mood. There are a bunch of French songs that really getting me in the mood for cooking.

Old French songs, maybe like Edith Piaf. You know these people but maybe the happier kind of songs. Not the super romantic French songs.

On Keeping Posted on Valentina:

You can follow me on Facebook at Hortus Cuisine, Pinterest, then I’m on Instagram, and I love receiving comments of all kinds. I look forward to hearing from people who write in on my blog.

016: Renee Byrd: Learning to Cook With Food Sensitivities

March 23, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Will Frolic for Food

Renee is a writer, photographer, recipe developer, and chocolate maker. She eats a wheat-free, dairy-free and vegetarian diet, and her blog is a reflection of this. On Will Frolic for Food, you will find recipes for creative, savory vegetarian dishes and occasionally more healthful versions of something indulgent.

I am so happy to have Renee Byrd of Will Frolic for Food here on the show today.

On The Idea Behind Her Blog:

I think the main idea for the blog came from just cooking in my daily life. I am bored very easily so I make a lot of weird, interesting recipes at home, and my now husband, then fiancé, was just really… I would make meals and he would say, “You really need to start a blog about this because people need to know these recipes. You can’t just keep them to yourself. It’s really not fair in a way.”

From my side, I was like, “No, I mean that’s so much work. I don’t want to. I don’t know.” Finally I was just like, “This is probably worth my time to share this with people,” and it totally has been. The community is a major reason I keep going.

I often have recipes that take me over eight hours to do. All in all, like recipe development, making the recipe, photographing the recipe, editing the recipe, post processing, writing; all things that go into it.

It’s so much. I love every second of it, but it’s not easy technically.

On Her Interest in Cooking and Food:

I’ve pretty much always been interested in it. I have a natural affinity towards natural foods and wanting to feel healthy and feel great.

I’ve always associated food with feeling good and being happy. I am sure the majority of that is that my mother is a fantastic cook and taught me how to make a lot of interesting foods and interesting meals out of nothing; out of like, “What’s in the fridge?” “I don’t know. We don’t have anything in fridge. I guess we’re going to make a pizza out of stuff.” She really had a good understanding of flavors and flavor combinations and how to balance meals. From that perspective, I learned all of that from her.

A lot of my inspiration has come from friends who are just passionate about food, from my friends who were basically in this little vegan, raw foods, commune situation in college, because I am just sort of hippy at heart and all my friends are like that. I love the way that they eat.

That was very inspiring to me to be with those people because they were just making these incredible curries, chutneys, and raw date brownies and it just blew my mind; so those people, and of course my mother, who gave me the foundation thankfully. I am very thankful for that.

Beyond that, so much of my inspiration comes from incredible bloggers on Internet who have been doing what they do for so long.

On Her Food Sensitivities:

I ignored most of it. Well, the dairy thing I ignored. Funnily enough, everyone in my family is allergic to dairy; allergic, not lactose-intolerant. Most of them just kind of ignore it and the wheat thing I developed a sensitivity to in my early 20s in college.

I started getting really painful stomach aches and was having really terrible digestive issues; it just hurt. I didn’t know what it was, didn’t understand it and it turned out to be a combination of sensitivity to peanuts and wheat.

I didn’t get officially diagnosed with those things but I essentially cut both of them out, and then suddenly, “Wow. Eating is fun again and doesn’t hurt me anymore.”

I just decided that I didn’t want to feel sick when I ate, and in my life, and I wasn’t going to compromise about that and I did for a long time. I basically was like, “I’ll eat wheat here and there. I’ll eat dairy here and there,” but then I was just feeling sick. It just got to a point where I was like, “I don’t need these things.”

I do eat goat dairy because it doesn’t have the same sugars and proteins as cow dairy. I am able to digest that fine, so you see a lot of that on my blog. You see a lot of chevre and goat cheese, goat yogurt. I think it’s a wonderful food, personally, so I do feature that relatively often.

On Learning To Cook with Food Sensitivities:

There are tons of resources. There are some books that I really, really love that are really on point for teaching you how to make exact recipes. Inspired Vegan is amazing. I love that book. I think it’s Bryant Terry, and it’s so wonderful. Obviously all of the Ottolenghi books, anything that’s naturally wheat-free in there is incredible.

Getting yourself out there and volunteering to help people cook big meals and for gatherings and things is another great way to learn.

Obviously blogs are fantastic resources. I’ve got a massive blog roll of people who are constantly teaching me with their process and their way.

I just have so many things going through my brain right now. I’m allergic to dairy, so the lactose and the casein that I’m allergic to but I eat Ghee. Ghee is amazing. A lot of people aren’t very familiar with it and a lot of people with sensitivities aren’t very familiar with the fact there is something that’s derived from cow dairy that they can eat.

Ghee is a wonderful clarifying food that is good for the joints, it’s good for the skin and helps support the nervous system. You can actually put it on your skin and it’s very calming and moisturizing. It’s an incredible food. I love it. I eat it a lot. I make it at home so that’s something that I use often that I feel like I am probably preaching about a lot.

Ghee is clarified butter.

To make it at home, I get a really nice organic butter. If I can get it from a farmer that’s local — that’s fantastic as well — that I trust and then I boil it over medium-high heat. I skim all of the froth that comes to the top, all of the lactose and casein off of the top. I discard that.

You just keep doing that until all of that frothy stuff is gone. Then you strain it and you pour it into a heat safe jar and you can use it. Generally a very clean organic butter, you’re going to be able to turn it into ghee relatively quickly and then you have this wonderful food that you can keep on your counter. You don’t even have to refrigerate it. It lasts for years — literally years — and it makes everything taste better.

Tips for Cooking Gluten-Free or Dairy-Free for the First Time:

Trust simple recipes. Starting with that, if you’re cooking for somebody who has allergies, trying to start out with doing a complicated baking recipe especially if you don’t have all of the ingredients and aren’t willing to follow all of the directions exactly, it’s going to be very frustrating.

I just remember back to when I was first learning how to do gluten-free cooking a couple of years ago how angry I was. These recipes weren’t working for me but I always want to try something that is more complicated because I want to be the best at it right now, but I don’t know what I’m doing.

Trusting simple recipes and finding a recipe developer that you really trust and that you really respect. I feel like I sorted through blogs and authors for years before I found people that I felt like I could trust their recipes. I wish I had a list of bloggers that I think are awesome and that I really trust their recipes. Actually I do have a list of inspiration on my blog of a bunch of different blogs that I love; not all of them are gluten-free but I definitely trust all of them. It’s just under the inspiration tab.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t really watch a lot of cooking shows but I could tell you that I want to watch a really cool cooking show that is all about seasonal eating but it’s fun and there’s traveling involved.

I don’t have anything that I watch regularly. I watch YouTube videos of folks sometimes doing their thing. Green Kitchen Stories has some really cool videos.

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

Oh my god. Yeah, hundreds of them. That’s a terribly hard question but what pops in my mind, let’s see. Two Red Bowls — super awesome, gorgeous photography; hilarious and just wonderfully inspiring recipes.

Dolly and Oatmeal, I love Lindsey Love’s recipes. They all are gluten-free, they are generally dairy-free, too; very creative and beautiful photography as well. I take a lot of inspiration from her recipes, so I just have to stress that.

Let’s see, so many of them. Obviously, Local Milk. I mean do I even need to say it? She’s the best ever that ever existed. I want to be her.

Eva Kosmas Flores of Adventures in Cooking has the most gorgeous photography in the world ever.

I am trying to think of other gluten-free bloggers here. I am always super in love with My New Roots. Everything is great on My New Roots, and Green Kitchen Stories, and Sprouted Kitchen. If you do not read those, you’re a crazy person. They’re just so good.

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

Also a very hard question. Instagram, I follow a lot of people, a range of folks who do everything from food to really wonderful landscapes and stuff. Again, Eva Kosmas Flores has a wonderful Instagram.

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

Coconut oil, quinoa, always gluten-free pasta is a go-to for sure, and fantastic quality olive oil and sea salt are better than anything. I actually use JQ Dickinson sea salt which is a West Virginia sea salt which is very flaky. It is a little bit lower in sodium and has of mineral quality to it. I love it. When I’m out of it, I cry a little bit.

Olive oil, I use Zoe’s because it’s really affordable in large amounts and it is really good, just delicious. I just feel like with good oil and salts you can make anything taste good.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

The JQD sea salt pretty much. I bring it with me everywhere.

Pretty much anytime I say coarse sea salt, I’m talking about that salt.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi, Inspired Vegan, BabyCakes Covers the Classics by Erin McKenna is the foundation of gluten-free desserts in my mind. She is such a genius with gluten-free desserts. I pretty much owe that cookbook everything. My basic understanding of how gluten-free baking works and what you need to make it work. I’ve definitely branched off from that but that’s the foundation for sure.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Everything by Kishi Bashi. His most recent album, I can’t remember the name of it. Yeah, I just want to dance around my house and cook.

Keep Posted on Renee:

Other than following my blog, at willfrolicforfood.com, I am always posting on Instagram and Twitter. My handle is @FrolicChocolate. I have a Facebook page, too, but definitely Twitter and Instagram are the best ways.

Have One of Renee’s Delicious Soup Recipes Sent to You Now:

014: Karen Chan: Tasty Global Cuisines for Eaters Wanting To Try New Flavours

March 18, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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HonestlyYUM

Karen has been globetrotting the world and documenting her food adventures since 2009, and today she’s the food editor and co-founder of HonestlyYum, where she helps to create an experience that inspires readers to try seasonal recipes, delightful drinks, culinary adventures, and festive DIYs.

I am so pumped to have Karen Chan of Honestly Yum here on the show today.

On What First Drew Her To Start a Blog:

My first blog was Globetrotter Diaries and to be honest, it was really just one day sitting around and kind of thinking I need a creative outlet. I love food. I love travel. I love food culture and I love exploring other peoples’ foods so it really just came out of, “Well, this is a creative outlet and so let me just start a blog for fun,” basically exploring different cultures and different foods.

On Her Global Curiosity Around Food:

I’m Chinese and so I grew up eating all kinds of food. I think at a young age my parents really prepped my palate for different flavors and different types of cuisines. I grew up in LA so it’s just a melting pot of all kinds of ethnic foods.

Anything you want you can get it, so obviously really great Chinese food, Japanese food, Korean food, even Pakistani food. One of my favorite restaurants is a Pakistani restaurant. So I’ve always, always had this love of just exploring different types of cuisines.

Not only that but I’ve also been lucky enough to travel a lot, so even just the traveling, like nearly half my plan of traveling is always, “What am I going to eat there?” So that definitely shaped my curiosity for that.

Mexico and Singapore – two very different places, but if I had to pick one I might say Mexico and Oaxaca in particular. Oaxacan cuisine because that was just… I think if you were a foodie it is the ultimate. Getting to explore all the markets and there are so many interesting ingredients, but that is the ultimate for me. My culinary heart lives in Mexico.

I live in California and so naturally there’s a big Mexican cuisine influence in California. I’ve gone myself to Mexico many times and I’m just such a fan of the culture.

On Starting HonestlyYUM:

The reason I ended up stopping Globetrotter Diaries is because I went back to school. I went to Graduate School. I went to Law School actually, and so when I had started Globetrotter Diaries, I was already on that process to going back to school. It was really for fun for me and I just knew I wouldn’t be able to have the time to keep up with it.

So once I was in school, kind of doing that, my sister, she runs HonestlyWTF, which is a fashion and lifestyle blog and she said, “You know, we really want to add a new dimension to the HonestlyWTF family. We really want to do food and entertaining and cocktails and you’ve done Globetrotter Diaries, and I really want you to come on board.” I thought it’s a lot more feasible given my busy schedule at school because I have two other people I get to work with.

It’s not all resting on my shoulders. So I thought, yeah, this is something I can do with other people who are super talented and super driven. So that’s kind of what made me do the switch. It was not planned, I guess, but it was just an opportunity that I couldn’t say no to.

On Creating an Experience Rather Than Only Featuring Recipes:

I would say it’s sort of all of our ideas, but probably primarily Erica because she’s just so creative when it comes to entertaining ideas. I mean all of us are entertainers. I love having friends over and so naturally you just kind of want to have an experience for your guests. I don’t really know where that comes from other than just we really love to create.

Part of it, too, is that it’s just so fun to do these tablescapes and parties. They’re faux parties because they’re only attended by us and our cameras, but it’s just so fun to kind of go over the top because there are very few times in the year where you do. It’s maybe Thanksgiving, maybe Christmas, and maybe a special occasion, but other than that you just, when you have a dinner party, you’re not going to be calling a florist.

This is a chance to just kind of go all out, over the top and have fun with it. I think Erica and I, especially, both really love that aspect of entertaining. It’s really creating an atmosphere and a theme, and what is the whole experience going to feel like, too.

On Her Passion for Food and Cooking:

It’s so funny because my mom always looks at my sister and I and laughs and thinks, “I don’t know where they get it from,” because my mom is not a cook.

I did not grow up in a household where I started cooking cinnamon rolls with my mom from a very young age. She cooked but she didn’t enjoy it. It was just sort of like I come home, I cook for my kids, done. And so she’s just like, “I don’t know where you guys get it from,” and we both are obsessed with food, we’re both obsessed with cooking.

I would say my interest peaked or just started to kind of form in college and probably in high school, cooking for myself a snack or whatever. But my aunt, my father’s sister, she is a huge foodie and she’s actually my aunt who is in Singapore.

That’s probably why I love Singaporean food so much. She would take me to all the hawker stalls and try everything and it’s just so good. But she is a huge foodie and so I think she helped inspire me. She’s a great cook so she would always be the one, when I was younger, to kind of be like, “Oh, here’s your recipe. Try it.” I think it’s strange. Maybe it skipped a generation. I don’t know.

She’s always been on the other side of the globe but she follows the blog and obviously sees. We see what we cook in our respective countries over Facebook and social media and emails and stuff.

On Expanding a Non-Adventurous Eater’s Food Horizons Via a New Cuisine:

I would say Vietnamese food. I think it still starts to incorporate some interesting flavors that you might not expect like, for example, lemongrass or fish sauce, which of course, if you just smell it you’re just like, “Whoah.” It’s kind of repulsive smelling but it adds a subtle flavor that when people are eating it in food, they wouldn’t be like, “Oh, there’s fish sauce in here,” and so that might help them think, “Well, if I want to make this at home, I could actually use this ingredient that I normally would never touch.”

I just think generally the flavors in Vietnamese food are very clean, light. There’s nothing incredibly aggressive about it but it’s so satisfying and it just hits a spot. I’m like a huge fan of Vietnamese, huge, huge, huge.

And even the basil’s different. I’m sure a lot of people are used to the sweet Italian basil versus the Thai basil, which has a very different flavor.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I actually watch Top Chef a lot. That’s one of my favorites.

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

One of my favorites is, I would say lately because of the New Year and because we’re trying to be healthy, it would be Green Kitchen Stories. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it but their photography is just gorgeous and such wholesome healthy cooking.

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

I actually have recently discovered that all of the U.S. National Parks have their own Instagram accounts, for example, Yellowstone National Park.

It makes me so happy because it is, like the photography is just gorgeous, and they really post quite often and they’ll post these beautiful photos of the landscape and the Grand Teton Mountains and animals. I didn’t know that the U.S. Government was doing this and I just discovered a slew of Instagram accounts and I just follow them all.

When I’m sitting at my desk in the office and I’m just looking at how gorgeous some of these places are, it helps me escape and it just makes me very happy.

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

Okay, a good, good flake sea salt like Maldon.

I would say Maldon sea salt because I use that for everything. It makes such a huge, huge difference in your cooking. I know it sounds kind of strange like salt is salt. I have kosher salt and I use that, for example, if you’re salting a pot of pasta water. I’m not going to use a big handful of Maldon salt in it, but it really does change subtly the flavor of your cooking. I would recommend that for everyone to get.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

This is hard. One ingredient, I would say eggs, couldn’t live without eggs. I love eggs.

I eat, sometimes, eggs for dinner. That’s how much I love them. They’re amazing in every form.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I would say anything by Nigel Slater because I just love his recipes. I mean, Jamie Oliver in the same kind of thread is like, they’re not precise, and with cooking especially, I mean with baking it’s a different story. But with cooking I think not having to literally measure out tablespoons of certain things, I think for beginners, yes, it’s probably necessary at that point, but being able to not be confined by those restrictions or those directions is good.

I know Jamie Oliver does like a glug of this and a dash of that and same with Nigel Slater. It’s sort of very loosely-based recipes. I think that’s a great way to start developing your own cooking skills because it helps you think outside the box. Like, “Okay, I’m going to rely on my own tasting.”

And cooking is so much about tasting as you go and really seeing what works and what doesn’t and experimenting. That helps you develop your own talent to be able to rely on your own judgment when it comes to measuring things, and how much to put of this, and how much to put of that, and why did we add this, and what does this contribute. I just really love Nigel Slater cookbooks.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I would say the band, Alabama Shakes, makes me want to cook because they are just so upbeat and live. I saw them live and I love them. It’s really fun music and that makes me want to cook because I just want to have fun.

Keep Posted on Karen:

Instagram and Pinterest (and HonestlyYUM.com).