Jamie Oliver | The Dinner Special podcast

126: Ice Sanford: Tasting Food from Around the World

June 8, 2016 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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Foolproof Living

Ice was born with itchy feet. She grew up in Turkey, lived 10 years in the States, four years in the British Virgin Islands, and has recently moved back to the U.S. A food and lifestyle photographer and full-time blogger, she is a firm believer that if you know how to read, you know how to cook. On Foolproof Living, Ice shares easy to follow recipes that are helpful and full of flavor, as well as stories about her travels.

I am so happy to have Ice Sanford of Foolproof Living with me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Ice’s.)

On Her Favorite Food in Turkey:

A big plate full of Quinoa and Avocado Salad with Blood Oranges and Fennel.

I am a big fan of breakfast. I’m a morning person. I like to get up early and have breakfast. To this day, I do a lot of toast and feta cheese. Feta cheese is so big in Turkey, and olives, my American friends make fun of me because I eat olives in the morning, but olives, jam like cherry jam and homemade marmalade and different cheeses, but mostly feta cheese is big, big back home.

Feta cheese in Turkey, it’s amazing there. Really. It’s so fatty and so delicious, and I just love it. And I have a lot of friends ask me how can you live without this? It’s hard. It’s my favorite thing.

On the Food Culture in British Virgin Islands:

A bowl of braised baby artichoke salad with white beans and shaved manchego.

It’s a combination of a lot of food cultures. When you’re talking about the Caribbean, you have so many little islands and little cultures in there, and they are all living together. We were living on a small island called Virgin Gorda. It’s a nine-mile long island, half an hour ferry ride from the big island Tortola, which is the city, a big, big capital basically. Each island has islanders from the neighboring island like Jamaica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Nevis and Kitts. So they all bring their own culture and we would have these little food gatherings every so often on the island, and you get to taste a lot of different cuisines.

We were just talking about it with some friends the other day. On one of those, we heard that Nevis and Saint Kitts. Those people eat a lot of monkey meat because they have so many monkeys over there, and it’s just a part of culture. I went there because I tried to eat everything, at least know the taste of it and it was gone. Right after they opened their area, it was just gone. And my husband was like, “I can’t eat that. It’s too close to home.” But for me, I wanted to taste it. A lot of curry, they eat a lot of curry, chicken, seafood is big, and a lot of sweet tastes like putting pineapple, coconut, those are obviously in abundance.

On a Recipe She Picked Up from Her Travels:

Mexican Style 2 eggs topped with guacomole, pasilla chile sauce, Mexican cheese, and fresh cilantro served in a Mexican dish.

One of my favorite recipes, it’s on the blog as well, is huevos rancheros, I am a big fan of huevos rancheros. A couple of years ago, we went to San Miguel de Allende, and there my husband and I went to different restaurants every morning and ordered huevos rancheros every single day just to find what is the best one. If you think about it, it’s just eggs served with some sort of a sauce over a corn tortilla. But this one place called Posada Corazon, a small inn in the heart of the city, had the best, like absolutely the best huevos rancheros because the cook made this pathia sauce, chili sauce, and it was just phenomenal.

She didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak good Spanish, and we tried to really communicate, but it came to the point where it was just not working. She was trying to show me what she used, but then I went to the hotel and made the person at the front desk call her and get the recipe. And since then, it’s our favorite, favorite dish. And I shared that on the blog.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

America’s Test Kitchen.

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

I love Artful Desperado, Gabriel, his work, his photography takes my breath away. I love The Bojon Gourmet via Alanna. She is amazing. Her recipes, to me, they are all doable. I want to make everything. I also like The Clever Carrot, Emilie. She is really talented. There are so many, Snixy Kitchen, I love, and Adventures in Cooking. Those are some that I really like.

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

Oh my God, there are so many people. There is an account on Pinterest and Instagram called A Daily Something. I really liked that. Witanddelight, I really like. There is another girl on Instagram, Mademoisellepoirot. Her photography is amazing, her color schemes, those are the ones that I really enjoy.

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

My mom’s mixing bowls.

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

I can’t say I love it, but I’m working on it. And this is so in a way, embarrassing to say as a food blogger living in the U.S., bacon.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Flavor Bible, I go to the supermarket with The Vegetarian Flavor Bible. We have a Farmer’s Market here and you can find every kind of vegetable in there and some of them I’ve never seen, but I would like to try. So I go there and look at what would match with this. That’s a very good resource if you’re creating recipes or if you’re trying to finish stuff in your fridge and don’t know what matches with what.

Cook’s Illustrated is a really good resource for me because if you don’t know something, just go there and look. And then, some food blogger cookbooks. I think those guys and gals, they are just doing an amazing job. Seven Spoon cookbook is like a go-to cookbook. I made a lot of things in there. Jamie Oliver is really good, Thomas Keller if you want to learn how to do certain things the professional way. Those are ones that I go to often.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I like anything Sia. Lately, I’m really, really impressed with her voice and just love it.

On Keeping Posted with Ice:

I do update my Instagram regularly, as well as Facebook. Facebook is Foolproof Living and Instagram is aysegul.sanford. You can find me there.

115: Lilian: Inspiration from Old-School Food and Philosophy

March 23, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Chinese Grandma

Lilian is not a Chinese grandma. Rather she’s a mother of four who believes in old-school food and philosophy inspired by her Chinese grandmas. Her heart is in home cooking, which she describes as uncomplicated, healthful, and satisfying food you can live on, and thinks food should be fresh, comforting, and nourishing. Apart from her food, Lilian shares personal stories about being an adult and discoveries that inspire her. Her blog, Chinese Grandma, was a finalist in the 2014 SAVEUR Best Food Blog Award for Best Family Cooking Blog.

I’m so excited to have Lilian of Chinese Grandma here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Lilian’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

The funny thing is, well, I have four kids and when I started the blog five years ago, almost six years ago, my fourth child was nine months old or something like that. And it was a little crazy, of course, and we were living in Ohio, which was a temporary thing. And I’m from California, and all the kids were born here. I need some space that’s just mine, and I really wanted to write and I kept thinking, “I’m going to write a book someday.” And then I thought, “I have four kids, who am I kidding? I’m never going to have time to write a book.” I just want to do something that’s doable. And I thought, “If I can just get this thing started, I can keep up with it.”

We were going home to California for the summer, and I’d gotten this email from Stanford’s Continuing Education Program. And they have this great writing program. I’ve taken a class or two in the past. So they had this class on blogging, and the goal by end is to launch your blog. And we were going to be home for seven weeks, and it was a six-week course right in that slot. And I thought, “Okay, sign me up.” And I got it going that summer, and that was the beginning of it. And it’s been great.

On Sharing Her Personal Stories on Chinese Grandma:

I do share some really personal things. When my dad died, I wrote about it. And I write about getting older a lot. I write about parenting, because I just feel like being a new parent is so nerve-wracking. This is why the first kid is always the experimental child. You never feel like you know what you’re doing. And then the other kids have more relaxed parents, because you’ve been around, and you’re more of a veteran. I just feel like I really have always felt that if we can share our stories, that life gets easier for all of us, and I think that for the blog, it’s about the food and the stuff I’ve tried that I know works and I can count on.

The life stuff and the family stuff, I don’t write about stuff when I’m in it, but then afterwards, when I’ve had time to reflect, I think, “Okay I learned something from that.” And I want to share it. When you’re young, you always feel anxious and nervous about what’s ahead, and also just always striving. And then older people, like our grandmas, they have this sense of peace. I just feel like I’m a little of that now. So what I’ve learned now, I’m going to try and share with other people.

On Learning How to Cook:

My mom is an amazing cook. Chinese food is, of course, her focus. She came from China. And that is always a little intimidating to me. My mom, she makes amazing pot stickers, because she’s from northern China. And she and my dad were a great team. My dad would roll the dough, and my mom would make the filling. I would try to make them, really bad ones. You could always tell which ones were mine, but that kind of stuff was fun. But to me, my mom is just so great. Everything she did was very time consuming and intricate.

And I learned from messing around by myself. I’d check out other cookbooks in the library. And then I’ve learned from friends too. I had this friend from Italy when I was in college, and when I went to Italy to visit and just saw that whole food world, that was amazing too, and just the simplicity of it really appealed to me. Whereas I love to make things my mom makes, but it always pales, because my mom is this very seasoned pro. I think everyone with their grandmas knows, they don’t write down recipes. And when you replicate it, it’s never quite the same, even though I have tried to capture some of that in recipes on the blog.

But as a Californian, growing up here, and the whole produce thing, I really go for simple. And I really go for great ingredients, and not doing so much to it, and just enjoying the perfection of nature in a way.

On Her Idea of Chinese Grandma Cooking:

It’s funny, because my dad’s mom lived with us. She was a very independent person. She always cooked on her own, cooked her own food, she didn’t eat with us. She wanted to do her thing. She grew stuff. And I have no idea what she cooked, actually, because she had a little kitchen that’s set up back in her room behind the garage, and she did her thing. So I guess my idea of Chinese grandma cooking really does come from my mom, and I think her dumplings are the main thing. It’s about to be Chinese New Year. She’s going to make them. She puts little treasures inside. It tells your fortune for the year. And those are incredible. To me, that’s just the ultimate food from my childhood.

On Wisdom From Her Chinese Grandmas:

They are Depression era grandparents. They are just so super resourceful. They never needed anything, and they just got by. And I think that anti-materialism is so ingrained in me. It’s my dad too. He was an engineer, and he was like MacGyver. You need something? He’s going to make it out of whatever scraps he has. And I think that is, especially in this modern age, and I have indulgences that I love too, but to know that you don’t really need any of it, I just think it’s so powerful.

Also, to know that you are creative, and you can make something, and you can fashion something, whether it’s dinner out of the random scraps in your fridge, or fixing something that’s broken. I just think that to know that we have that creative power, that industriousness and that resourcefulness, that to me, is really a fundamental part of not just who I am, but I hope to pass that on to my kids. Because I think to know that you can be independent and make stuff happen is great.

On Being a Parent to Four Children and How it Changed the Way She Cooks:

Yes, my kids actually now, my oldest is 14, and my next oldest is 12, and even my 7-year-old, they love food and they’re open to all kinds of stuff. But for years, I had a lot of white food, plain pasta, stuff for the kids. And so I would make stuff for us, but then you’d have these dumbed-down version for my picky ones. I feel like we all have our right to our preferences. And taste buds do change. All of us who are adults know that.

I think I’m not into forcing anybody to do anything. I do try to appeal to their better nature. So they’ve always been great fruit eaters and a little mixed on the vegetables. But I feel like as long as you’re getting natural, good, fresh food, I’m not going to stress if you aren’t eating broccoli. It’s okay. But one thing is the kids do like food simple, and I do try and keep it simple. And sometimes we eat pancakes for dinner.

You can’t be the parent following a kid around with a spoon, and making deals for one more bite, the kid doesn’t have a good relationship to food. You need to let them make their choices.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I actually don’t watch any, because I’m not a TV person. So I totally don’t watch any, although my kids did love to watch Barefoot Contessa, that was on quite a bit. I actually bought my first kid, when he was like your kid’s age, maybe a little older, but I bought him the series of Barefoot Contessa, because he loved it so much. It was next to Sesame Street.

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

Well, either ones of people that are just so amazing that everybody knows like Smitten Kitchen and David Lebovitz. And also the ones of people that I have met, like when I went to the SAVEUR event a couple of years ago, Molly Yeh from My Name is Yeh, she’s amazing, and Cynthia from Two Red Bowls. Her photography is so, so great. Josh from Culinary Bro-Down is really the funniest person on earth. I love him, even though…Actually, we’re talking about, he’s this UCLA kid and I’m this mom of four. So its Chinese Grandma, and he’s like, “Oh, so you’re a grandma?” And I said, “No, Josh. I’m not a grandma.” I tried not to make him feel bad, but, of course, I felt pretty ancient. But he is hilarious, and I love him, so all kinds of great people. Naz Deravian who writes Bottom of the Pot who was on your show, and Emma who was also on, My Darling Lemon Thyme. When you know the people, it’s also even more fun to see their work and read their work.

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

Yes, gosh, Cynthia is amazing, her photography from Two Red Bowls. Valentina, who was also on your show from Hortus Natural Cuisine, her photography is gorgeous. I do love seeing people’s photography even though it makes me feel a little bad about my own. But of course, Instagram is all about the joy in photography, so I love that.

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

My brother and sister-in-law had given me this Jiffy Pop, and it’s got the little crank handle. And it’s genius. With the air popper, you have to melt the butter and put all that on, and it never gets distributed evenly. With the Jiffy Pop, because you pop the popcorn in oil, you really don’t need to add anything, except salt.

I also love it because I make kettle corn, and if you use a regular pot, it is prone to scorching, because the sugar scorches the bottom. But if you use the Jiffy Pop, and you’re stirring, it doesn’t scorch, and you get this perfect kettle corn, and that’s so awesome to make in three seconds at home. My kids love it.

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

Anchovies. I don’t even know if I even ate anchovies as a kid, but you’re always scared of them on pizza. But as an adult, I love anchovies. And if I can get Caesar salad with anchovies, I love it. Anchovies are awesome. I like to sneak them in my pasta sauce when nobody is looking. I love them.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Okay, The River Café, they’ve got two books. I think they are called it, Italian Easy and Italian Two Easy. But Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers started this restaurant in London decades ago. It’s like Chez Panisse here. So many people, Jamie Oliver, I think worked at The River Café and all kinds of people have come out of it, just like all kinds of amazing chefs have come out of the Chez Panisse kitchen here. And it’s Ruth Roger and Rose Gray, neither of them were trained chefs, but they had a passion for ingredients and technique. They were hyper intense, but they have these cookbooks that are so accessible.

They have recipes that are mozzarella, arugula, balsamic, and figs. And that’s the recipe. It’s just put these flavors together. It’s going to be awesome. And I just think that those cookbooks, like Barefoot Contessa, I love her. I love her because she was a caterer. And I don’t tend to love the chef cookbooks, because they’re not geared toward the home cook. I love the people that are all about accessibility with food. Barefoot Contessa, she had a catering operation, and all this stuff is tried and true. It always works. I love the stuff that I can count on.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I have this play list on my iPod, and depending on what mood I’m in when I’m cooking, and also who’s around, so I’ve got a chill mix which is awesome. I like to grove out when I’m cooking, because it’s very meditative. And then I’ve got a dance mix, because I love to dance. And if I’m feeling a little like I want to really rock out in the kitchen. And then if no one’s around, which is rare, I listen to Missy Elliott. That’s awesome. I love that.

On Keeping Posted with Lilian:

I’m on Facebook, so I put all my posts there. And Instagram, I am not great, but I’m on it. And Twitter, I don’t tweet a ton. But anyway, I love keeping up with people through all these sources.

103: Kaitlin Leung: Connecting with Family Through Cooking

December 30, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Woks of Life

The Woks of Life is written by Bill, Judy, Sarah and Kaitlin a family that has been cooking and serving up meals for a combined 139 years. Their blog is for anyone looking to try their hand at grade A authentic Chinese cooking whatever their background may be. The Woks of Life were the 2015 Saveur Blog Awards winners in Readers’ Choice Best Special Interest Blog, as well as Editors’ Choice Best Special Interest Blog.

I’m so psyched to have Kaitlin Leung of The Woks of Life with me here today.

(*All photos are The Woks of Life’s.)

On Starting The Woks of Life:

Food blogs are not new obviously but there were a couple of big ones that we did follow, me and my sister mainly, which were The Pioneer Woman. So she kind of blew up and she has her own show and she is like a complete celebrity now and also Smitten Kitchen. So those were the two blogs mainly that we enjoyed looking at and that sparked the idea like, “Why can’t we start a food blog too?”

After she (Sarah) graduated she wasn’t really sure what she wanted to do and she had the whole summer to think about that. So she came up with this idea of starting a food blog. My mom and I were pretty excited to help out and start cooking things and take photos. So it organically became this family thing. She had the idea we could call it The Woks of Life, and we could be the four people at the center of it, and it could be a family thing.

At the time my parents were sort of transitioning into that idea of living in Beijing and then I think four months after the blog was started they actually did move. I’m getting my timing a little bit wrong but she graduated and they were moving to Beijing and everything was kind of in flux.

It was a good way for us to gather our family recipes and have a way to connect with each other across spaces. We communicated mainly through iMessage, Skype and emails. I would email my sister from the library at midnight being like, “Hey, I’m really bored what did you eat today?” That kind of little small talk, chit chat that you would normally have but you don’t really have when you are at two different schools and your parents are living in Beijing. It was all sending pictures of food that we made and we were almost already in the mindset. So to actually make it official was not that big of a job. It became a great family thing and a way for us to stay connected.

On Growing Up in a Family Where Food Played a Big Role:

Growing up it was always gathering around a big table full of food, and everybody reaching across loading up their plates. It was just a really great atmosphere. My dad was very active in the kitchen and his sisters loved to cook too. So from a young age we were like sponges just soaking up all this cooking knowledge and the Food Network. Those were the glory days of the Food Network, classics like Emeril Lagasse and Rachael Ray was just starting and Giada De Laurentiis, she was unmarried and without her baby so that was when she was starting out too. It was a really great time to be interested in food.

We would always just be in the kitchen like, “What are you doing? Why are you doing that,” it’s a passive and an active thing. You’re just watching but at some point you kind of have to roll up your sleeves and when me and my sister were teenagers my parents would have dinner parties and we were like catering staff. We knew so much and we could handle so much. All of my parents friends would be like, “Oh my God your daughters, they are so effective in the kitchen.”

It was kind of always growing up with that mentality of food is important and food is at the center and that’s the big reason why we get together, extended family too, it’s let’s get together and have a barbecue or let’s go get dim sum. It’s just an integral part of not just our family specifically but I feel like the Asian experience in general. You have a big extended family and what’s the best thing to do when you have all these huge amounts of people in the room? You eat.

On Learning About Chinese Cooking:

When we were younger you’re seeing Emeril and you’re seeing Rachel Ray and they’re not making Chinese food. So it kind of got to a point where it was… my grandma always loved saying this to her friends. She brags about us like, “Anything you want, they can make it,” it doesn’t necessarily apply to Chinese food. So when my parents moved to Beijing it was tough because I never ate Chinese food anymore.

You can’t go home and have a home cooked meal. That was another big part of why we wanted to start the blog, is documenting these recipes, which for years was like, “a little this, a little that,” like, “eyeball it, just pour it until it feels right.” You can’t really make that. So Chinese cooking has definitely taken on a bigger part of our repertoire, I guess for me and Sarah, but it was always within the expertise of my parents.

On What Authentic Chinese Food is to Her:

For me personally authentic Chinese food is the food that I grew up eating. It’s the Cantonese spread of salt and pepper pork chops and the pork bone soup and the big plate of green veggies with garlic and the steamed fish. It’s all that but I think that today when you think about traditional Chinese food it’s almost like it’s more about who made it for you.

The food itself is anything that tastes good that’s pretty traditional. I guess authentic is traditional. But I think that it’s almost more important who made it for you. Going into Queens to visit my grandparents and going to the restaurants around there, a lot of those places are owned by people that are technically Chinese citizens but they opened a restaurant in Flushing, Queens. It’s almost in my mind this set of dishes that my family makes most often and eats most often. So you could watch A Bite of China which is this documentary and there’s tons and tons of variety and dishes that you could have that are traditional and authentic, but to me it doesn’t resonate as much because I didn’t grow up eating it.

On Who in the Family is More Traditional and Who Likes to Experiment:

I would say my mother is definitely the most traditional which makes sense because she grew up China and she came over to the U.S. when she was 16. So she definitely has the most knowledge so therefore the most respect for those traditional dishes. I think my dad has a similar level of traditionalism but he grew up more on the Americanized Cantonese side of things. So he has more of an expertise in take-out dishes. He is the king of General Tso’s chicken and the pork fried rices and the lo meins, he can churn out anything.

In terms of who’s the most experimental? I think it’s probably a tie between me and my sister. I think we sort of alternate in our bolts of lightning moments of culinary brilliance. There’s one dish that she made that was so good. It was kimchi french fries and it’s this delicious kimchi mixture and then you put over french fries and then you put cheese on top and it’s 10 times better than chili cheese fries. But chili cheese fries are also good.

And then I’ll make something like Sichuan peppercorn Cacio e Pepe. Which is just cheese and black peppercorns but I wanted to incorporate an Asian spin so I used Sichuan peppercorns and white peppercorns and black peppercorns. It can become hard honestly to come up with those interesting ideas. You can’t fully hang your hat on just traditional Chinese food because that’s good but sometimes you just want something more interesting. We’re definitely always watching and seeing what the food world is doing and trying to get ideas.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I do watch The Pioneer Woman just because it’s a wonderful escape from real life. She’s got this amazing ranch and she makes all this delicious, comforting, fatty food, it’s great. I love that show and Jamie at Home. That was a short lived show but that was a really good show by Jamie Oliver. He has a beautiful garden, he sits outside with a little cutting board and just cuts and reaches over and plucks fresh herbs, it’s great.

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

So the sense that we get in the food blog world is that there’s just so many blogs out there and I think a lot of them don’t get enough credit because everybody’s really passionate about food and just telling their story. A couple that we like, one of them would be, Omnivore’s Cookbook which is this girl named Maggie and she actually was living in Beijing at the same time as we were and my sister and her actually met up and talked about food. She has a great blog that has authentic recipes. She makes them a little bit easier and more approachable but they still have that good authentic taste of Chinese food. So we really like her blog.

Another blog would be Little Cooking Tips which is a really cute, really friendly couple in Greece named Panos and Mirella, and they are so nice. They have really good Greek recipes. I just was on their website today and they had a finger licking feta and sausage mac and cheese. That sounds really good. They have a lot of good fusion Greek recipes. So we definitely like them. Hummingbird High, I think she was one of your most recent podcast guest. Her photography is gorgeous and her cakes look so good. Every time I want cake I just go to her Instagram and then I visually eat it.

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

I’m not sure about Pinterest because that’s my mother’s domain. She is the Pinterest master but on Instagram we follow a bunch of people. But I would say a couple of really good accounts are…there’s one by Dennis The Prescott, his photography is gorgeous and all of his food just looks so freakin yummy. He’s just one of those people that I go to time and time again.

Another one that I really like is Symmetry Breakfast. I think it’s a couple and they just take pictures of breakfasts that they have together and it’s perfectly symmetrical. It’s just so perfect for somebody who’s a little OCD like me. It’s just beautiful, I love it. They’ve got really great stuff. They have like a bagette that’s cut open and baked with eggs inside. They know how to live. They eat good for breakfast. I just roll out of bed and I’m lucky if I have a piece of toast. So those are just a couple that I like but there are so many people on Instagram that have just amazing photography. It can be hard to keep up because so many people are just putting out amazing content but those are two that I love.

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

I would say unusual for a nonChinese audience that is actually very useful is a tong device for picking up plates. If you put a hot dish in a steamer you don’t want to grab it and it kind of goes like this and then you can grab the plate and lift it out. That’s a really amazing underrated and not that well known tool. So for anybody listening, you should go buy one.

Most treasured I would say is probably my grandfather’s cleavers from my dad’s side. He was a chef and they actually had a Chinese restaurant for a number of years. We have his old cleaver that actually has his initials carved in the side. Because there are a bunch of chefs in the kitchen and you want to differentiate which one’s yours. We don’t use that one often but it’s still very sharp. It’s interesting. It’s years and years old but it’s still really good.

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

Cilantro. I didn’t hate it. There are some people out there that hate cilantro, I never hated it but I never really liked it maybe until I was 14. It adds so much flavor. If you have a guacamole that has no cilantro, I’m sorry, but that’s not real guacamole. You need it. When you’re putting it on steamed fish with soy sauce and scallions and ginger, you need the cilantro, it adds a little something.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Ina Garten has a cookbook that is… I don’t know exactly what it’s called but it’s the pink one so people that know Ina Garten’s cookbook, there’s a blue one and there’s an orange one. But the orange one is Barefoot in Paris and there’s a pink one which is her basics cookbook. There is a chocolate cake recipe in that cookbook called Beatty’s Chocolate Cake it changed my life. This chocolate cake recipe is the only one you will ever need. It’s so moist and the frosting is perfect. It’s kind of sad actually because if you flip through the whole book, almost every page is totally pristine, and then when you go to this chocolate cake recipe, there’s just schmutz all over it. There are stains and drips of buttermilk because that’s how often I make that cake. This is more of a PSA than an interview question I feel because that cake is truly the best. We make it for friends and they rave. They love it.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

For my sister it would definitely be Nat King Cole. For me, I would say, if anybody’s ever seen the movie Something’s Gotta Give with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson, that soundtrack is our favorite for cooking. It’s all French bistro music and whets your appetite and you feel so jazzy walking around the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with The Woks of Life:

The best way to keep posted is to follow us on Facebook or Instagram. If you use Twitter, definitely follow us on Twitter, and I would say subscribe to our email list because we send out an email noon everyday when we have a new recipe.

099: Dennis Prescott: An Unfolding Food and Photography Journey

December 14, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Dennis The Prescott

Dennis cooks, photographs and writes all the time. His food photography is incredible, and I have to confess I get instant cravings when I see his beautifully made, styled and photographed food on Instagram and on his blog. You can also find Dennis on Food and Wine’s FWx.com where he’s also got some really cool videos up.

I am so excited to have Dennis Prescott of Dennis the Prescott here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Dennis’s.)

On Learning to Cook:

I lived in Nashville for a while, being down there as a guitar player. And being a musician was a wonderful experience, as a full-time musician. Got to do a ton of things and travel and everything else, but I did not get paid very well, because that’s the musician’s lifestyle. But I had come to really enjoy all of these different foods, traveling, and so I kind of decided, well, I can either eat pasta with butter on it, eat at the dollar menu at McDonald’s essentially, or I could learn how to cook. And it was one of those three.

So I went to the Nashville public library, I got a library card, which was probably the first library card I’ve ever had in my entire life, and took out three cookbooks. And then just started working through them, and I became absolutely just obsessed with needing to know everything about everything about food, and how to make every dish. So that’s kind of where it started for me, honestly. Just innocently I just really wanted to learn how to cook some dishes so that I didn’t have to eat junk food anymore.

The people around me encouraged it for sure, because they liked to try it. My friends seem to call me “All or Nothing Guy.” If I’m really passionate about something or if I’m into it, I’m really into it and I want to know everything. It was the same when I was a kid and I wanted to learn how to play guitar, it’s the same. I really like history, it’s the same with that for me, and food was the same thing. And now food and photography are the same thing with me, I just want to know everything about everything.

I’ve never gotten bored of it probably because there are so many things to learn. I don’t know 4% of all of the foods that can be cooked in the world. It’s amazing and I find that really exciting, honestly.

On His Blog:

Initially I started taking pictures of the food dishes that I was cooking just to remember them. I was making so many, working through all of these books and I thought, “I want to be able to remember the dishes that I really like,” so I started taking photos. And then this thing called Instagram kind of popped up, so I started an account. I think initially I started an account for my band actually, and then I started a personal one. And I started posting these photos, honestly horrible, horrible photos, on Instagram. You can just scroll through a few years ago and check it out if you need. But really that’s where it started for me.

And then all of a sudden I started to realize, I was like, “Wait a second, these photos, if you catch the light a certain way or if you do this.” I started to have these glimpses of what a pretty good food photo could be, and then I was like, “Oh wait a second, there’s something more to this here, right?” But initially it was all iPhone shots for honestly probably about two years, so just on my phone snapping photos for documentation.

I only had an Instagram account for quite a while, and probably just because my friends drove me crazy saying like, “You need to write your recipes down, you need to start doing this.” I was like, “Okay, I’ll do it.” And honestly it was quite a scary thing for me initially because writing those recipes or writing that blog I found to be a pretty vulnerable thing. And so jumping in I had a really hard time.

On Honing His Photography:

There’s been some mentors in my life. Some of them I know and some of them don’t know me at all, but I just really love their work. I’ve tried to find people along that way that I find really inspiring, both from a styling standpoint and from a photography standpoint. And then meeting people personally and saying, “I love your craft, can we sit down and have a coffee?,” something like that along the way.

The Internet’s an amazing thing where you can really go online and see all of this amazing work and put that into your own perspective and take that and say, “I’m not going to do it like that, but I love how this is lit.” Lighting is the biggest thing in photography. You can’t really recreate that necessarily unless you practice it. I took hundreds, if not thousands, of really bad shots to get some pretty good shots. And there’s still days where I struggle, because I shoot in natural light. So there’s some days where it’s really dark on the East Coast and you’re just like, “Okay, it’s not working today. It’s just not working for me.” But I really think it’s just this journey where you constantly try to get better and you look back.

The other thing that I try to do often is take a look at shots that I did maybe six months ago or something along those lines and go, “Okay, so what was I doing here? What am I doing now? And how did I get from A to B?,” so I can realize what I’ve learned along the way and keep learning that way. But aside from that, it’s just shooting, constantly shooting. My Instagram is only food for sure, but I shoot people all the time. When I’m lucky enough to travel, I probably take 1,000 shots in Philadelphia or New York City or Toronto or wherever that are just for me, but all of that helps you practice on how to capture composition and lighting and everything else. Which can then cross over into how you do food photography and how you do styling.

On His Photography Inspirations:

David Loftus is fantastic; he shoots most, if not all, of Jamie Oliver’s stuff. Daniel Krieger is a great friend of mine. He shoots cookbooks and for the New York Times and everything. So those two guys for sure for me are probably the ones who I gravitate towards their work. But there is Alice Gao, who has a great account on Instagram, who does some food but she does a lot of lifestyle shots, too. I try to follow a lot of those people, as well, who do travel and do everything, and just be able to constantly be inspired. But in terms of food, those two guys for sure are the ones that I initially fell in love with what they do.

On His Work on Food and Wine’s FWx.com:

Food and Wine, they’re wonderful. I’m not on staff, but I’ve been working with them for over a year. Some of their staff reached out to me through Twitter and sent me a message, said that they really enjoyed my stuff and wanted to see what we could do to collaborate. I was just going to do a project for them, or I didn’t even really know. I honestly freaked out because it was a huge deal for me, and still is, to be able to work with them. It’s a magazine that I read long before we had anything to do with them. So then we just had creative meetings along the way, and then eventually decided how could we kind of take this.

And a videography friend of mine, who’s my partner in the videos, we made a video together with no plan, aside from we thought it was a really great idea. And then that turned into the series. And there’s more of them coming along the way.

I don’t know why I started doing the stacking things, but I did. I don’t want to sound weird, but it did happen organically. I really just enjoyed it. And with that Twitter reach-out, we just decided that that made the most sense. It seemed like I was stacking things and we could go from there. I still do that a little bit, but the column’s branched out a little bit beyond that where I will do other things now, but definitely I guess its main focus is like let’s pick the biggest, boldest, craziest comfort food possible, whatever that is. It could be stacked in a huge burger, it could be ice cream sandwiches, it could polenta fries with some dipping sauce, whatever. But it just has to be over the top.

On Which Creative Outlet He Enjoys the Most:

I definitely enjoy Instagram the most, for sure. Because, as far as the social media world, it’s my first love. It’s the thing I gravitate towards. It’s the thing that I personally go on when I am looking at other people’s social media accounts and what they’re doing. But I really do enjoy Snapchat and I started doing Snapchat with my friends because living in Nashville for a while it was just a really easy way to connect back and forth with them. And then some people were asking me some questions about, this was before I did any videos at all, they were saying, “How do we cook X, Y and Z?” So I was thinking, “Well, how can I do this, and do this cost-effectively and quickly and just get this out there?”

So one day I posted on an Instagram picture, I said, “Follow me on Snapchat, I’m going to show how to make a steak this afternoon, like a restaurant-style steak.” And I had, I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of people that added me on Snapchat, it was crazy. So then I thought, “Well, I better start using this now.”

I really enjoy it, to be perfectly honest. It’s something where I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in to that world and how best to use that medium for me. But I really like it and I love being able to connect with people. I feel like it’s a different way to connect with people. And I’m able to Snapchat things about my daily life, which I try to do, too. And it’s not necessarily food. Like I was dressed up in a suit and tie yesterday, so I took a selfie of myself. I wouldn’t put that on my Instagram account, but I’ll put that on there. So it’s a cool way, I think, for other people.

And I follow other accounts that do that, too. It’s a way to get a background scene of what that person is actually doing at the time and what’s going on in their daily life, which I think is really cool. I always thought, when I was a kid I was a big Radiohead fan, and I was like, “What are they doing today? What are they eating? Are they at a record store? Are they at the mall?” I just wanted to know that stuff.

I think that’s really cool that we live in a world today where we can get a glimpse into what those people are actually doing. Because they’re probably not making a movie that day or recording a record, they might just be out with their kids. But I think that stuff’s really interesting and it helps you to develop this relationship with the person because you’re like, “Oh, I actually know you, you’re a real human and I appreciate you even more.”

That’s why I like that, as well. So it’s more for me to get that investment in what those people are doing in their lives. And if I can be a part of that, that’s really cool.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

That’s hard. Any of the Jamie Oliver stuff.

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

Definitely FWx. I won’t say my own, but you should probably go check that out sometime. i am a food blog is great, I love that, I love everything she does, too.

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

Definitely my friend Daniel Krieger is great, Alice Gao is great, Stephanie from i am a food blog is great. Diala, her name is Diala’s Kitchen, is great. She’s from Toronto and posts a lot of Toronto shots. If you’re Canadian it’s specifically great.

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

I collect antiques all the time. So I’ve got an antique citrus…like a juicer, and an ice cream scooper from 1880, 1870, and I absolutely love them.

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

Dates. I hated them. When I was a kid I hated dates. And my dad would eat date squares growing up and just try to force feed them on me. I was like, “No,” I was not having it at all. And now I think they’re the most delicious thing in the world.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

When I started cooking I started cooking to the Jamie Oliver cookbooks. As a little plug for a guy I don’t know at all obviously, they’re great, they’re fast, they’re easy. Anyone can make all of those recipes, and it’s really great to build your confidence and learn basic, easy steps that then you can take from there. So for me that’s initially how I started doing it.

I love older cookbooks, so kind of collecting ones. I actually just was looking at one the other day that it was a White House cookbook from the early 1900s and all the recipes that the White House made for the President.

I like a lot of those weird and wacky ones for sure, too. But reading through newer ones, as well, at the same time. So it’s kind of hard to pin exactly one. But if I could say ones that helped me out, for sure initially it was definitely the Jamie Oliver books.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love alt-J; I cook a lot to the alt-J records. Foals is a British band that I really love. Anything kind of atmospheric. Anything with a really great drum beat, a little bit of atmosphere. I actually cook to a lot of hip-hop, too, surprisingly. So I love listening to Jay-Z and Kanye and stuff. I’m not nearly cool enough to actually say that I’m a fan of theirs, but I really actually love that when I’m cooking.

On Keeping Posted with Dennis:

On Instagram for sure, on my website, Twitter, Facebook, it’s all @dennistheprescott. If you want to check out FWx, I’m on there, as well. And then if you just google “Dennis the Prescott,” that will come up with different…because I’m very fortunate enough to work with other companies and that kind of thing, like Reynolds and Frigidaire and stuff, so a lot of different recipes are on there that I’ve been able to do for them. Dependent upon what they are, if you’re looking for chicken wings, if you’re looking for whatever, you’ll find it somewhere out there.

089: Naz Deravian: Persian Cuisine with a Global Twist

October 28, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Bottom of the Pot

Born in Tehran, Iran, Naz grew up in Rome, Italy and then Vancouver, Canada. She now lives in Los Angeles. And Bottom of the Pot is the result of cooking and eating a lot and the lively conversations around the kitchen table. Bottom of the Pot is Naz’s food journal where she shares her adventures in cooking Persian food and beyond. Her blog was the 2015 IACP Narrative Culinary Blog Winner and 2014 Saveur Awards Best Regional Cuisine Blog Finalist, and Best New Blog Finalist.

I am so happy to have Naz Deravian of Bottom of the Pot here with me today.

(*All photos below are Naz’s.)

On Food in Iran and Italy:

I was born in Iran. I left when I was quite young. I had just turned eight years old. And then we moved to Italy. It was right around the time of the revolution in Iran, but Italy was always our second home. It’s where we vacationed, where my parents met, so there was a close connection to Italy. I think Italians and Iranians are very, very similar in their love and appreciation of food. I always like to say food is just part of our culture, and I think, I could say it’s part of the Italian culture, too. It just is, it’s in our blood. It’s not something that we think about too much, we just do it. I grew up eating home-cooked meals, going out was for a special occasion, it was a treat, but it was always around the dinner table or the kitchen table, or in the kitchen. So I think both cultures share that love and appreciation for home-cooked meals. And putting the time, effort, and love into it.

We really don’t share that many similar ingredients. But I would say one similarity is the differences in regional cooking. Both Iran and Italy are very set in their regional cooking, if you’re from the north, from the south, from the east, from the west, and everyone’s very passionate about their way. And it breaks down even further, then it’s from city to city, town to town, neighborhood to neighborhood, the same dish will differ just because someone added a little bit of this spice or a little bit of that spice, and then home to home.

On the Food in Canada and the US:

As a proud Canadian, I feel the need to distinguish ourselves from our friendly neighbors to the south, our American friends. But yes, I would say it’s a North American style of eating, and approach to food. I moved to Canada as a child in the early 1980’s, and Vancouver in particular was not the cosmopolitan city that it is today. So, it was quite a culture shock to move from Iran, then Italy, and then to the Vancouver of the early ’80s for my family. For instance, finding plain yogurt was very difficult. It was either in health food stores, or in very small tubs. And Iranians, we consume a lot of yogurt, it’s not just a little container. So, I can’t speak for America, because I wasn’t here then, but I assume they’re rather similar.

On What She’s Learned from the Different Places She’s Lived:

These cultures and regions, countries, they define my cooking. I really couldn’t say I could cook without being influenced by them. I feel just as nostalgic for a Caprese salad as I do for an Iranian dish of rice and stew, and it brings back so many memories for me. A lot of these foods are linked to memories and stories for me.

Iran I would say is the soul of my cooking, and cooking in general. It’s the aromas that permeate the kitchen. Before moving into our current house, my husband now, then boyfriend, we lived in an apartment building, and there was a long hallway. And walking down that hallway, before we got to our door, as my mother was visiting, you would start smelling the aroma of the rice steaming. And right away you knew what was for dinner, and so that would take me back to Iran. And Italy, my brother and I always have this joke about put the hot water on for the pasta. You make the phone call, put the water on, it’s ready for the pasta. Vancouver, interestingly enough, is I think where I was introduced to salmon of course, and it fit in perfectly with our Persian cuisine because we love fish, fish and rice. We have many traditional fish dishes, and the salmon in Vancouver is legendary.

On What a Traditional Persian Meal Looks Like:

A typical traditional Persian meal on any given day, there will be rice, always rice. And Tahdig, which is the bottom of the pot. It’s the crispy rice under the bottom of the pot, which is why obviously my blog is called Bottom of the Pot. And there will be a stew of some kind, and then all the condiments that go with it. There will be pickles of some kind, which we call torshi, some sort of yogurt, either plain or it’s a dish called Maast-o khiar, which is a yogurt and cucumber dip. And there will be bread, and fresh herbs, fresh herbs are huge. And it’s all about creating balance in a meal. So if you have something warm, you temperate it with the yogurt, the fresh herbs aid in digestion, which we’re obsessed with. So it all works in harmony.

On Putting a Twist on a Traditional Persian Meal:

That’s what I do, not every night, but at least twice a week. We get a farm box, it’s like a CSA box every week, and that really helps me get creative, because it’s introduced me to so many different vegetables in particular. A traditional Persian stew that would just be fresh herbs, which would just be maybe parsley, and cilantro and mint, when my CSA box arrives and there’s this beautiful bunch of Swiss chard, or even kale, then that’s all going to go into that stew as well, so I will incorporate it.

On Pantry Items to Have for Persian Cooking:

Certain spices are key. Turmeric, you can make a Persian dish by just using turmeric, of course, I have to mention saffron, it’s the crown jewel of all spices. It’s the most expensive spice in the world, but really a Persian stew would not come to life without saffron, and on my blog I have a post about saffron and how to make it last longer, because it is very expensive. So how do you use it to be, economical, and still make your dishes tasty? So turmeric, you use turmeric and saffron, and you have the makings of a Persian stew. Herbs, fresh herbs, like I mentioned, parsley, cilantro, basil, fresh mint. Again, we use them in abundance, as in bunches and bunches, so not like little Trader Joe’s packets of four sprigs of parsley. There’s a little effort involved, because you have to clean it and wash it, but I would say it’s well worth it.

On Resources for Learning More about Persian Cuisine:

I feel very fortunate, in the past year I was introduced to quite a few other Persian food bloggers that I didn’t even know where out there, and we formed this community, and we do joint posts, either for Persian New Year, or other celebrations. So, if you go on my blog, and search for…you know what I’m going to do actually, after this conversation? I’ll go on the blog and make a link to all of their sites. They’re all doing amazing stuff out there.

There was The New Persian Kitchen, the cookbook that came out a couple of years ago, by Louisa Shafia. It’s wonderful, it’s modernized, she has modernized the way we cook, and it’s accessible I would say. Of course, there is Mrs. Batmanglij, Najmieh Batmanglij’s lovely book, Food of Life, which is more in the traditional realm, but you can get an idea of it. I believe Margaret Shada’s book is wonderful as well, Greg and Lucy Malouf have a beautiful cookbook out there.

I think Persian food is really starting to come out, out of the shadows, and becoming much more popular as it should, because anyone you speak to who has ever tried Persian food loves it. I haven’t encountered one person who has not liked it, and they all want to know about tahdig, the crispy rice. So, I’m really happy that it’s really starting to become more popular.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Unfortunately, because I have two little girls now, and with my job, I don’t watch a lot of cooking shows anymore, except for when I’m working out at the gym.

I’m not a big fan of the cooking competition shows, but I still really enjoy Jamie Oliver, and online there is the Two Greedy Italians, I love their stuff, it’s Gennaro Contaldo with I forget the other gentleman’s name, but I love that. I love any cooking show that will take me to another place.

I know Ottolenghi did a couple of BBC series, I think it was called Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast. I just love that, I love traveling, and watching what people eat around the world. So those would be it.

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

There are many, so I’m sure I’m going to miss some here, but Pamela Salzman, she is the one blogger that I would say we actually cook from in our household the most. Her recipes are family friendly, wholesome, whatever that means, and just fun to make, so Pamela Salzman.

My friend, Cheryl Sternman Rule, her Five-Second blog is just beautifully written, beautiful food, and also her new site called Team Yogurt, which I’m also a contributor to, but any site dedicated to yogurt, you’ll find me there. That to me is heaven, yogurt is life.

Dash and Bella, the writing is incredible, with really fun and interesting food as well, but her writing just stuns me.

Nik Sharma’s A Brown Table, Nik’s photography is pure poetry to me, every time he blows my mind with his photography, food photography.

The Wednesday Chef, she and Pamela Salzman were the very first bloggers that I reached out to when I started my blog. And they were so kind and generous, and they actually wrote back, which I did not expect, and were very encouraging. And I read Luisa’s book that she wrote, My Berlin Kitchen, and that was right before I started my blog too, and it just really resonated with me. She has this term she uses about being perpetually homesick, and that really resonated with me, because it captured, it put to words my emotions, perpetually homesick. And that’s exactly, I think why I started the blog, and how it’s been developing with the story telling, and the memories connected to the food.

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

I am so new to social media. I was a hold out for the longest time, and then I started my blog. And very slowly, I do things very slowly, I like to take my time, I got on Instagram which I think I enjoy the most.

I enjoy telling stories through pictures, and seeing and traveling with people to all these different places that I haven’t been to, or have been to and seeing what they’re eating, and what they’re cooking.

So on Instagram, there is Cucina Digitale, it’s this woman who lives in Rome, I think she’s an American who lives in Rome, I love her stuff. Sami Tamimi who is Mr. Ottolenghi’s partner, they wrote Jerusalem together, I love seeing all of his stuff. It makes my mouth water, and it makes me want to get into the kitchen, which is what you really want.

There is another feed called Palestine On A Plate, I love taking a look at her stuff. Elizabeth Minchilli, she’s in Rome, she’s based in Rome. So I think I connect to the places that I’ve been to, and the type of food that I enjoy eating. And as long as it inspires me, that’s what matters most.

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

It’s this little wooden spoon that I call my saffron spoon, and my saffron jar. My saffron jar and my saffron spoon that no one else is allowed to touch because it’s very precious. And the saffron jar is this little jam jar that my mom always packs for me. It has again, a lot of memory attached to it. I would say all my spice jars. I don’t have the most cohesive looking spice cabinet, they’re all random jars from probably 30 years ago, that have just been passed down from family members. So spice jars and my saffron spoon.

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

Eggplant and zucchini, couldn’t stand it as a child. I don’t think it was until my late teens that I started enjoying eggplant, and zucchini even came later than that, and now I love them. I could eat them all the time. So, I give my kids a break on those two vegetables, but that’s it. They have to eat everything else.

I think it’s general with eggplant. I have yet to meet a child that actually enjoys eggplant. Yes, they like zucchini, sometimes raw, they like the crunch as most children do. I made a zucchini dish the other day that I sautéed, and it really melted into the spaghetti sauce, and my older daughter who’s a little more adventurous, she enjoyed that. I have to mention another blog, Rachel Eats, British girl, Rome-based, I love her writing and all her food too.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Marcella Hazan’s, The Classic Italian Cookbook. No pictures, straight forward. When I need to cook, that’s what I need. It doesn’t have to be pretty, it doesn’t have to be all set up, it just needs to be a great recipe, and these are authentic Italian recipes. So that’s what I’m going to go to.

The Ottolenghi books, they’re all lovely, inspirational, I cook from them. What I also love about them is that we share many of the same ingredients, and I just love how it’s catapulted Middle Eastern ingredients to the masses, and I thank them for that.

We like to cook from Gwyneth Paltrow’s books. They’re convenient, they’re accessible, I like them, they work.

And then all my Persian cookbooks, another great thing has been I’ve been reading through some very old, older Persian cookbooks written in Farsi actually, and my Farsi’s, my reading and writing is not great, but this has been a great exercise, so it’s improving.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

This is a great question, because music and cooking goes hand-in-hand in this house. One would not happen without the other. So Manu Chao. If I’m working on a new recipe, if I need something for a pick-me-up to get me excited to get into the kitchen, it’s going to be Manu Chao. Other than that, we have NPR 24/7 in the background, it’s just on. And there’s a great music program on our local NPR station KCRW called Morning Becomes Eclectic. The D.J. is Jason Bentley, and he just rocks it, and I like to chop all my vegetables to whatever he’s playing. That would be it, I think.

On Keeping Posted with Naz:

Instagram, Facebook, now that I’m finally on it, and Twitter.

064: Katrín Björk: Redefining the Term Housewife

August 3, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Modern Wifestyle

Katrín is originally from Iceland and has lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, since 2002. Her blog Modern Wifestyle is filled with recipes from family style dinners to decadent desserts, but she also wants to focus on reinventing the word “housewife” to recognize that housewives come in all forms and shapes and to bring positivity to the art of being a home maker.

I am so happy to have Katrín Björk, of Modern Wifestyle joining me here today.

(*All images below are Katrín’s.)

On Her Definition of “Housewife”:

Housewife is someone who likes to take care of her family, her house, her home. Someone who likes to build up a life. It doesn’t necessarily mean only cooking and it definitely doesn’t mean someone telling you to cook or telling you to be in the kitchen. And for me to kind of . . . reinventing is a big word, but there’s a lot of negativity linked to the word housewife. I am proud to say that I am a housewife, but I’m also a photographer and I work full-time. And you can be both.

The world is changing and to me, to be a housewife, I’m also focused on to not be the type of a housewife my grandmother was. My grandmother, she worked a little bit but mainly she was taking care of the children, she was cooking, she was cleaning, and she didn’t necessarily like it. Now she’s living by herself after my grandpa passed and she doesn’t cook anymore. She eats take out and has her children to bring food and stuff like that, which I think is great but I also think it’s really sad that she now, at the age of 84, is realizing that you don’t have to cook and you don’t have to like it.

Here in Denmark where I live, Copenhagen, let’s just say that Danish men are really well-raised by their mothers. They all make bread. When I moved here from Iceland I was like, “What is going on?” It was like in a different world, you know, they all bake, they all vacuum and had really nice homes. It was so different and that was really inspiring to me.

On Taking Pride in Being a Homemaker:

Food has never been as popular as right now. Everybody’s cooking. Everybody has opinion on food now and people eat out a lot and I think there’s definitely a food revolution going on. I think the homemaker is within that as well. And then people are interested in cooking and then you get interested in throwing dinner parties. Then all these hostess-type of roles are coming back, which I think is great.

I see it as a hobby. I’m really interested in design, I’m really interested in architecture, and so I see it as a hobby. To create a beautiful space to live in, to create beautiful food for my family. It’s a hobby.

On Her Passion for Photography and Food:

Photography is my profession. That’s what I do for a living, that’s what I study, that’s my number one passion. And then as I said, food and homemaking is my hobby. So my blog is created around the images and it’s just a plus that I can cook and I can style.

Not always but a lot of the time, I do start with an idea of an image or a shape or a form and then I start thinking what type of food would fit into that, what type of food would fit with this table cloth that I really want to use.

When I started the blog I was doing photography and then I started blogging about food. Now it’s all kind of melted together and I’m basically only doing food photography now. I do a little lifestyle – big word – in between, but it’s mainly food and food photography that I do. I get a lot of jobs through the blog. If I create a recipe of pictures for a magazine I would put that in the blog later. So it’s changing a lot.

In the beginning it was all about starting fresh and I didn’t have any clients and I wasn’t really doing food photography. I was learning by doing. So it’s changing a lot now. But from an idea to a finished product, like a finished blog post or a finished article, it can vary. It can be a day. I can wake up in the morning and be like,” Yes, I want to cook a whole fish today,” and then I’ll just go out and get it and cook it and style and then photograph it and boom! It’s there. But other times I’ll go for days and think about, “What do I want to do? Should I do waffles or should I do pancakes? What is better?”

I have read a lot of cookbooks. I’m not a chef, I’m not a baker, I’m not a pastry chef, and I don’t pretend to be. I’m a home cook. So I’ve read a lot of books with technique and then I just practice, and then I figure it out. Now after so many years I’ve nailed down the basic techniques. It’s working out. But I test a lot. My recipes are definitely tested, I promise you that. Because you never know. But often, if I’m watching a cooking show on TV and they’re making something, I’ll go the next day and use what they did and do something similar. And often it turns out to be completely different.

On the Food Culture in Iceland:

The food culture in Iceland is . . . it’s a little old fashioned. They’re getting there definitely, and more and more beautiful restaurants are opening and serving delicious food. Iceland is a country with amazing products and produce. They have the best lamb in the world, they have fresh fish. They have it all, but they’re still preparing it in the old fashioned way.

Luckily I have a lot of readers from Iceland that I can inspire with either Danish food and they’re American inspired too. But yeah, I mean traditionally Icelandic food is pretty gross. I’m pretty sure you would not want to taste that. We’re talking fermented everything. A lot of fermented fish and not really delicious. But they’re definitely getting there.

What I think is most special about Icelandic food is that all lambs are born in late April and May. And then they’re let go freely up to the mountains where they just go. They eat berries and plants and then the farmers will go up to the mountains in September on horses and gather them around again, bring them down from the mountain and then they’re slaughtered right away. So our lamb is super fresh, really young, and spiced from the inside.

On How Danes Approach Food:

Danes are really into food and Danes have a great word that means cozy but it also means gather. It means basically everything that’s good. And they do that a lot with family. So they come together, they eat together for the holidays, every single day. And it doesn’t matter how old you are. If you’re 50 years old, you will still go to your mother’s house and have a feast with your whole family. It’s really impressive. They’re very family-oriented and big feast, big gatherings, they’re all for that.

Danes really love a dish that they call smørrebrød which is an open-faced sandwich that comes with various toppings. And they have rules about what they pair together and what goes on top and such. And these open sandwiches you can get almost everywhere. You can both go to traditional restaurants, both around the cities and in the countrysides, at bed and breakfasts and hotels. And then also in Copenhagen they are doing their modern take on this sandwich.

I think that is definitely something that people visiting Denmark and Copenhagen should try, because they’re delicious. They can have everything on them. Everything from pickled herring with apples, fried fish fillet with remoulade sauce on top and a little lemon and it’s delicious. It definitely contains mayonnaise, butter, and all these delicious things, so it’s not healthy but it’s definitely delicious.

You will definitely have ice cold beer with it, and probably a shot of Danish snaps. They have this snaps that taste a little bit like Caraway seeds. It’s super strong but yummy and kind of cleanses your palate, in between mayonnaise and butter.

This is it. It’s one piece of bread with either a thick layer of mayo or butter and then toppings on top. These can be super tall and they can fill out a whole plate with this one piece of bread. My husband and I will have smørrebrød for dinner on a lazy day. It’s like having a sandwich, just in a little fancier way.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I watch, religiously, MasterChef Australia. Not U.S., not Canada, not UK, Australia. It is amazing!

I think there are five shows, five episodes per week, and it’s all about the food. It’s not about the drama. They’re all super supportive with each other, and they’re cooking amazing food, and there’s a lot of focus on the food and focus on techniques.

I’ll watch an episode of that and then I’m out in my kitchen and trying it.

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

I’m going to say Two Red Bowls. Beautiful, I mean beautiful photography, amazing styling and delicious recipes. And I’m going to say My Name is Yeh, which is equally as amazing. Always with Butter. Chasing Delicious. Yeah, those four.

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

Oh, I follow everybody on Pinterest. I love Pinterest. But I also love Instagram, definitely. On Instagram I follow Nik Sharma. He is so talented and his images are great. So I follow him on Instagram and I’m really inspired by what he’s doing. I follow Molly Yeh from My name is Yeh. And I follow Ashley Marti from the Local Haven. She’s really good. She does a lot of cocktails, which is right up my alley.

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

You know when you open a bottle of wine and then you maybe just have a glass, and then you have to have an extra cork to put in it? Because if you pull out the cork, they don’t always fit in again? I have this cork from my grandfather that has this huge golden horse head on top. I mean it’s so weird and strange and so not in style with my Scandinavian home, but I think that is the greatest thing I have in my kitchen right now.

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

Cheese. I know, it’s so weird. I didn’t eat cheese as a kid. I wouldn’t touch it. I hated it. And when I grew up, it was embarrassing. It was embarrassing to go to parties, go to people’s houses, and be like, “Oh, I don’t eat cheese.” And being the type picking cheese off a pizza. I mean it was so weird. So I made an effort. I just said to myself, “This is a no go. You have to learn how to eat cheese.” So I did.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Definitely The Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, definitely. I mean I’ve read it from one end to another, because it’s basic, but it’s so great, and it teaches you a lot. And then everything by Jamie Oliver. Huge fan of Jamie Oliver.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I listen to a lot of jazz when I cook. Nothing special in particular, just a playlist of jazz. Just go on, Spotify, and just jazz. And then just pick a random playlist and play it.

It sets a good mood you know? It’s different.

If I’m cooking for the blog and working, I might listen to something more upbeat-y and if I’m cooking for a dinner party, it’s definitely slow jazz, because then I’m also having wine, for sure.

On Keeping Posted with Katrín:

Instagram for sure. If you’re interested in more than just food, if you’re interested in more of the homemaking aspect of me, Pinterest, definitely.

062: Saghar Setareh: Iranian Cuisine with a Touch of Italian

July 27, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Lab Noon

Originally from Iran, Saghar has been living in Rome, Italy for the past eight years. Her blog is her laboratory where she creates and experiments with seasonal and natural food, and shares her photography and small DIYs. Lab Noon is a finalist in the 2015 SAVEUR Blog Awards for Best Special Interest Blog.

I’m so excited to have Saghar Setareh of Lab Noon here on the show today.

(*All images below are Saghar’s.)

On the Role of Food in Her Family:

I have grown up in a family where my parents have always cooked. My mom, especially being a housewife, she always cooked at home and she was very reluctant to let me get processed food and snacks at school. She was so strict about it that she often didn’t let me take my pocket money to school because she always baked cakes at home and she always gave me a lot of fruit because she was always quite obsessed with this.

While with my father, he’s a huge food lover but he doesn’t have that healthy sort of approach to food. He just loves really eating a lot so he also loves a lot of different types of fast foods. He experiments with cooking, and he just makes things up, which most of the times were great but sometimes just had some culinary disasters too.

That’s how I grew up. I have grown up mostly with homemade meals and then, from a certain point, also with a lot of junk food and fast food.

On the Food Culture in Iran:

I would say that it’s quite strong but since I came to Italy, I’m not so sure about it because I don’t think that the food culture is anywhere as strong as Italy.

People take a lot of take outs, even for big parties they order homemade food because there are, they call them “Kitchens.” There are people who make what they call homemade food and they bring everything to your house and so you don’t have to cook. Our food culture in Iran is all about abundance.

We are also famous for being very hospitable. That hospitality often translates to an overabundance of food, which a lot of time leads to also a lot of food waste which is not quite okay. But when we want to show that we care, there is always a lot of food and I mean literally a lot of food. We serve everything together. It’s not like I serve the starters first and then there comes different dishes. We serve everything together and people choose what to eat first and what to eat after that.

I would say we’re a very meat eater nation. So also the amount of meat in each type of dish is directly connected to the same thing. The more abundant the dish is with meat, it means that we usually care more and we’re more hospitable. Food is directly related to what kind of face we make, especially with our guests, something that people, neighbors, family would talk about in years to come if it’s a wedding or something like that.

On Iranian Cuisine:

The thing is that Iran is a huge country and it shares borders with Turkey that shares that Mediterranean type of cuisine. Then, on the other hand, with Afghanistan and the countries of Central Asia which are connected to India and in the south to the Arab Middle Eastern countries. So it has taken a little bit from all of them.

But, in general, I would say the Iranian cuisine is very delicate. It’s not the image that some people might have of very spicy and strong flavors. The flavors in Iranian cooking are actually very delicate. The food is not very spicy, everything is very balanced. But I would say that, yes, without any doubt the most famous and the most appreciated Iranian dish is definitely the Persian Kebab, which is very different with the Turkish one, the döner one. It’s like a huge barbecue and, ironically, it’s something that usually always men do. And we have different sorts of kebab. One of the most famous ones is with minced meat. We have chicken kebabs. We have chopped rib kebabs that are very great.

We have very good restaurants. We have the rustic, old family restaurants who do them. We have luxurious restaurants who do them. And then we have all sorts of these different stews that we have with our rice because our rice is very famous, it’s similar to basmati rice. We’re very, very fussy about how we cook the rice and how the rice should be. I think even if not as fussy as Italians about their pasta, definitely not less.

We have these very beautiful mixed rices. Like now is the season for sour cherries, which people don’t even eat or I don’t see them selling that. We have this very beautiful mixed rice with sour cherries, a little bit of saffron and pistachios. Some people serve it with small meatballs, some people with saffron chicken or, actually, saffron chicken kebab or it depends. You can serve it with whatever you want. So we have these very, very particular rices that are interesting.

And there some rustic dishes and some elegant dishes. In the last, I would say, 30, 40 years or maybe more, we have adopted a lot of dishes that are actually not from Iran but in the course of the years, they have become so. Like we have this salad which is called salad Olivier or something like that which is actually a Russian dish. It’s the famous Russian potato salad. And if you ask Iranians, most of them wouldn’t even know that the dish is Russian. Everybody thinks that this is Iranian for the amount of years that people have been preparing and eating it.

On a Dish that Reminds Her of Tehran:

There are so many. If we want to talk about something that I have on my blog, it’s something that I’d like to cook quite often because it’s very healthy, and it’s probably one of those Iranian dishes that I cook most often here because I don’t normally cook Iranian. It’s rice and lentils, which is called Adas Polo in Persian, in Farsi. And I just did it even in an Italian cooking show I was participating in because it’s so simple, so full of layers of flavors because you would think, rice and lentils what could that be? But there’s chopped fried onions with turmeric, and there is a little bit of saffron in the rice. There’s also raisins that are lightly toasted with some butter and a little bit of saffron. Everything is mixed together with a little bit of cinnamon.

So from the most simple ingredient, this one is actually a very poor dish but it turns out to be a very tasty and a very nutritious dish. If I have it, I usually have this with yogurt because we have this sort of thing that we mix rice with yogurt. It’s even said that it’s not the nicest thing to do if you are at a party or in a wedding, it’s not nice to add yogurt to your rice but it just works so well, the combination of yogurt and different sorts of spices. You can find it on my blog, too. I made some sort of risotto out of it. I mixed it with the Italian rice. That’s one of the dishes that reminds me a lot of my childhood among many other.

On Her Current Home, Rome, Italy:

What brought me to Rome was really chance because I was just graduating from university, and I had always wanted to go abroad and I had mainly thought about Europe. I came to know about coming to Italy as a student with a student visa and continue to study by chance, and I realized that it was quite an affordable way, especially comparing to other countries in the same situation. And I thought, “Okay let’s do this,” so I had actually never thought about Italy before that, before knowing about this.

I chose Rome simply because it’s the capital city and by my measurement of things, the Iranian way, the capital cities are always the best. So that’s how I chose the city, and I fell in love with it almost immediately. I’m very attached to the city. I notice that whenever I take tourists around, friends come from different parts of the world, friends of family, I take them around and I realize most of the times that I have seen these places. I have been there millions of times by now. I am still the one that is most enthusiastic about these places.

On Food Culture in Italy Versus Iran:

I think the attention and how Italian people care about their food is something very unique. That you wouldn’t find it anywhere else. I remember one of the things I was most amazed by the early months is that when you call somebody on the phone, a friend, your mom, your child and you’re talking on the phone, the first question is, “Hi, how are you?” Immediately, the second or the third question is, “Have you eaten?” and then, “What have you eaten?” This doesn’t happen anywhere else.

If you want to look at it from this point of view, no, there are not much similarities. But in terms of ingredients, sometimes there are some foods that remind you of some particular Iranian dishes while at the same time, the cooking is very different because Italian cooking is all about the simplicity, few ingredients, few great ingredients. So it’s all about the original ingredient and just a few touches and you have a great dish. While in Iran, we have even the most simple dish of all, you always have some onions somewhere, some spices somewhere, some turmeric or something. So Iranian cooking is more complex and definitely it takes much more time compared to some kinds of Italian cooking.

But, in terms of taste, I think that there are some dishes that recall each other. For example, there is this very, very, very Roman dish which is called coda alla vaccinara, which means the oxtail with tomato sauce. And it kind of tastes like. . . we have some sort of stew that we make with filet. I think it’s either sheep filet or maybe it’s beef. I’m not sure. But they kind of … with sauce and everything, they kind of taste the same but we would serve it with rice. These are the dishes that are most similar.

On Her Blog:

The blog was and still is connected to the other side of my life, which is graphic design because I have studied graphic design and I have been a graphic designer for so many years now. I was searching and I stumbled upon many different food blogs, I was awed by the beauty of the pictures. And I had the critic eye, I would say, to recognize composition and the graphic element actually. That’s why I was not really surprised when I read about these people and most of them were graphic designers or designers of some sort. I said, “Oh my God this is really cool!” It’s a great way to express creativity and it’s a great way to create this sort of window through the world.

And it’s a perfect way to combine these two sorts of passion also because, before actually launching the blog, one of projects in my specialist course, my Master’s course in Graphic Design and Photography, was about the design of a food event. So I had already done a lot of graphic material for this, and I realized that I loved this. This is something that I wanted to do not only in the process of recipe developing but also in the process of the graphic design. That’s how I thought, “Okay, let’s do this.” Although Lab Noon was initially not intended to be only a food blog, actually I intended to create more. By the time I actually launched the blog, it kind of found its own way just as time went by. Also because I realized that it needs a huge amount of time to create high quality content, from the idea of the recipe to developing it, shooting, editing and the text and everything and then I have to also translate it.

The blog was meant to be in three languages, English, Italian and Persian. Eventually, right in the very early month I realized this is not going to be possible. So I almost immediately omitted the Persian. Right now I struggle to write the Italian part because it’s not very easy to me, but I try. So I think it’s something that puts everything together for me. Actually, I get my final project, my thesis in this semester of university. I created a cookbook with my own photos and recipes. Most of them have been already published on the blog by now, and it has become an interesting book speaking directly from the aesthetic and design point of view.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I always watch Jamie Oliver’s Food Tube, and that I found really, really entertaining. You learn a lot from it.

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

There are so many of them. I am pretty much in love with this food blog called Hortus Natural Cooking. It was written by Valentina Solfrini who is an Italian girl who has lived a long amount of time in New York. She is amazing, very inspiring.

The other blog that I really like is The Vanilla Bean Blog. I really like it, especially for the dessert. She’s also a fellow SAVEUR finalist.

I love a friend of mine who is actually, it’s not quite a blog, but she has this little food strategy company that is really amazing, and it’s called WE Factory.

If you want to know more about some good Persian cooking, there is another blog who was another SAVEUR finalist a couple of years ago, who’s called Bottom of the Pot. I think these are really good.

There are too many of them. I could make a list that would never end.

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

I follow way too many people. People who make me really happy, especially in the terms of photography, one of them is Call Me Cupcake, the blog, by this amazing Swedish blogger who is called Linda.

The other one is by Beth Kirby who writes the Local Milk blog, and her photos are just out of the world. I also follow Two Red Bowls. I love them. My Blue and White Kitchen, I follow these people on almost all of their socials, and they are very good, especially in terms of the visual impact.

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

I don’t think I have any unusual because, especially once you’ve entered the world of food, nothing is really unusual. My most treasured item is definitely my saffron because it comes from Iran. My mom has made it for me, prepared it for me and it’s a tiny little box and a tiny little jar. It definitely is the most precious one.

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

There are so many of them. I almost hated all sorts of vegetable and now I love them. Especially eggplant, I hated eggplant and now I love it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I have this cookbook called What Katie Ate, which is the name of the same blog by the Irish photographer and blogger Katie. I love her photography.

Another cookbook which has definitely made my life better, not now that I cook but when I was younger is actually a Persian cookbook. It’s a huge cookbook by Miss Roza Montazemi, Iranian lady who has this huge cookbook which is a must in all Iranian kitchens. Then the Italian ones, the Artusi cookbook, the very famous cookbook by Artusi about the Italian cooking. They’re very good.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love the Juno soundtrack, the movie, and there are some certain songs on that album that I get relaxed and say, “Okay let’s whip up something!”

On Keeping Posted with Saghar:

I would say that my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are the most updated. Of course, the blog itself www.labnoon.com where you have most of the postings both in Italian and English, but I do have quite a lot of things on my socials that are not always updated on the blog.

050: Sheri Wetherell: Founding Foodista and the International Food Blogger Conference

June 17, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Foodista, International Food Blogger Conference

Started in 2008, Foodista is a passionate community of food lovers who share and exchange its knowledge about everything culinary. There’s editorial content from food, news, to health and nutrition, but Foodista stands out with its always growing database of user submitted recipes.

Since 2009, Sheri and her team has been organizing the International Food Blogger Conference, which focuses on food, writing, and technology. This year, it’s being held in Seattle, Washington, from September 18 to 20.

I am so excited to have Sheri Wetherell, co-founder and CEO of Foodista, and the International Food Blogger Conference, here on the show today.

On Her Passion for Food and Cooking:

My father’s a retired airline pilot, so I spent a lot of my youth just hopping on planes, because it was free, traveling the world with him. I think just exploring a lot of international cuisines and cultures really honed by palette for food and travel. Also, my mother comes from a very large family and I was just always in the kitchen, cooking with my grandmother and my aunts.

Also, my father’s mother had a restaurant. I never professionally cooked, but I’ve just always been around food and I’m just passionate about it.

I started baking with my grandmother. I had my own little bread loaf pan and we would bake bread a lot. It’s funny, I’m a really bad baker to this day. So, clearly, nothing really stuck from a baking standpoint.

I would say my longest stint of living abroad was in Japan. I taught English there for three years, so I definitely like to incorporate a lot of Asian, specifically Japanese elements, into my cooking. Tofu for one, I’m trying to get my four-year-old to really embrace tofu – unsuccessfully, thus far. Then, I did a study abroad in Italy many, many years ago. Those foods, rich pasta dishes are still definitely part of my cooking core.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have amazing access to just beautiful fresh fish. We eat a ton of fish.

On Starting Foodista:

I would love to take credit for that, but that was completely my life partner and business partner, Barnaby Dorfman’s idea. He was an executive at Amazon.com and created, if you know the Internet Movie Database, he created IMDB Pro. So his idea, if you’re familiar with the Internet Movie Database, he wanted to create something similar, but around food.

Both of us have a passion for food and cooking, and so for many years we thought, “Oh, wouldn’t it be great to someday start a company that’s all recipes, that’s smart as far as search, like a Google search, so you don’t have apple pie, apple pie, apple pie.”

In 2005, we came up with the name Foodista and registered the domain and hired engineers to create software much like Google would pull in fair-to-use, free to use, recipe content algorithmically.

For a few years, we were just a lights on, nobody’s home recipe database, just a little search field. And then in 2007, we really wanted to start our own company, so we thought, “Let’s move back to the Foodista idea,” and we brought on another partner who is a brilliant engineer, Colin Saunders. He comes from a Napa Valley wine family, so he also shares the same delicious passions that we do.

We started to develop Foodista, and at the time, it was a completely different company than it is now. When we launched, we really were a Wikipedia of food, if you will. So it was structured data that our software would pull in algorithmically, as I said, but then we were developing a large community of predominantly food bloggers to add recipe content.

Amazon then invested in us, because the three of us founders are all former Amazon.com employees, and they were interested in the new IMDB of food, if you will. We were operating that way for a long time, building our network of our community of food bloggers.

About three years ago, we shifted away a little bit – long story short – from the cooking encyclopedia, is what we were calling it, but everybody could edit, to much more of an editorial website and food news. We still have that large community of recipe contributors and bloggers, but we’re now much more food and recipe news.

That’s the short story of how we started.

I think at the end of the day our goal is to feature everything and anything related to food that people are interested in. If they want to take a cooking class in Italy, they can find all the resources on Foodista. So that’s one of my personal goals, but who knows. The Internet changes so quickly. I think the key as any website owner, blogger, whatever, is to be nimble and to change with what your audience is looking for, so that’s what we will continue to do.

On the International Food Blogger Conference:

It is a fun party. The three things of the conference are food, writing, and technology. We gather speakers in all of those areas just to offer the best of the best to our attendees. It’s definitely a weekend of intense learning, but amazing networking with people in the industry, as well as fellow bloggers.

We share on social media and connect with our fellow bloggers, but this is really an opportunity to meet offline and engage and form friendships. It’s just an amazing event and there’s a ton of gourmet food and wine. We feature some of the best restaurants and shops and food producers in the area. It’s a lot of bang for your buck.

Back in the day, we were developing tools for bloggers to help them build traffic and SEO to their sites. Any industry that you’re in, you always want to go to the conference that represents your industry, and there wasn’t one. I kept talking to food bloggers and saying, “Is there any sort of conference for food bloggers?” Everyone was saying, “No, but we want one.” In less than four months, we hurried and put one together.

We thought if we could get 50 people in a room to talk about food, writing, and technology, the three things that are most important to food bloggers, we can really hash out what are their goals, what bloggers are really aiming to improve upon. And so we kicked it off. It immediately sold out in less than a week. So we thought, “Well, our venue has space for 50 more.” So we extended it and we capped it at 100, and it was amazing.

Our keynote was Ruth Reichl formerly of Gourmet. We had Molly Wizenberg and Elise Bauer, Jaden Hair, just a bunch of amazing, amazing speakers. Sur la Table was our key sponsor. They put together a 23 pound bag of goodies, which was amazing, for each attendee. It was just this weekend of amazing food and speakers, and then afterwards everybody said, “That’s great. When’s the next one?” And we went, “Oh, yikes! We’re now in the event business.” So I operate two businesses: Foodista and the International Food Blogger Conference.

So that’s how IFBC started, kind of by accident.

We thought we would just do one, so now it’s grown into an event of more than 300 attendees.

On How Food Blogging Has Changed Since 2009:

In 2009, when we hosted ours, Twitter was still was fairly new. And I was still kind of unsure, I was like, “What’s this Twitter thing? We’re going to write 140 characters? Who’s going to read this stuff?” So it is interesting to see how things have evolved.

I think the medium as a whole has become much more visual, especially with social media, as we’ve seen with Pinterest and Instagram. I think Instagram has barely even scratched the surface of what its potential is going to be. So bloggers, if you’re not yet on Instagram, sign up today and start doing it. And the same with Google Plus; I think we’ve just scratched the surface with the capabilities of Google Plus.

As far as a blog, I think it is going to become more visual. And I mean that in the sense that people are already taking amazing photographs, but I think perhaps it might be more interactive, maybe people will be doing more podcasts such as yourself, more video content, video tutorials, things that are quick and easy for their readers to digest, if you will, like, three minute how-to videos.

I think blogs will become more enriched with a variety of different content, maybe more self-publishing will be done as far as ebooks. I think ebooks, as far as cookbooks, are still relatively new. They have a long ways to go. They need to become a lot more visual, I think, than a lot of them are now.

It’s going to be really interesting to see how blogs take off. I think, not just food bloggers, but bloggers in general, need to be very creative as far as how they present their content. There are so many, as you said, food bloggers out there. It’s how do you separate yourself. So it’s hard work.

I’ve said at our conference before that bloggers are not just bloggers, they’re content producers. As you said, you’re doing recipe development, you’re styling your plate, you’re photographing it, then you’re editing those photos, you’re publishing it. But then once it’s live, you can’t just forget about your content. You have to keep marketing that content, and how do you repackage it into new and interesting ways. If you write that chicken recipe, don’t just forget about it. Include it in other chicken posts, like a round-up. It’s really thinking like an editor and a marketer, rather than just a food blogger.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I love anything Jamie Oliver.

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

I’m going to promote my girl, Andie Mitchell, Can You Stay For Dinner, not that she needs any help because it’s a phenomenal blog, but beautiful photography. Oh, gosh, there are so many. We have such a big blogger community that I’d hate to call out one over the other. Also, La Tavola Marche in Italy. She and her husband do amazing things. They run an inn and a cooking school too, and unfortunately, they’re selling it. So if anyone’s on the market to buy it…

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

Gosh, that’s a good question. I cannot think of anyone specifically. I’m going to have to pass on that one. I’m totally blanking on specific names.

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

My mother brought me this amazing Vietnamese vegetable peeler from her cooking school in Vietnam, so that’s pretty cool.

I also find, as a parent especially, I’ve got a vegetable spiral cutter, not that it’s that unusual, but for all you parents, you want to get your kids to eat more vegetables. You can do mile long zucchini pasta noodles from this thing, or curly fries. It’ll peel the whole thing in these fun little spirals. Not necessarily unusual, but super fun and a great way to make your food fun.

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

Avocado. Amazingly, I used to hate avocado until I literally was about 25. I liked guacamole, but I did not like anything else. I did not like just sliced avocado in salad, crazy I know. But I just happened to be in the kitchen talking to my step-mom one day and she was slicing them and putting this vinaigrette over them. And all of sudden, it’s like something snapped in my head where I had to have them. Now I absolutely cannot get enough avocado in my life. I love it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Anything from Ottolenghi. I could just sit for days and drool over his cookbooks.

Also, just anything from Dorie Greenspan, too, if you’re looking for great French recipes that are doable. And Marcella Hazan, her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. She has just amazing recipes, specifically just a very simple roast chicken where she seasons the bird with salt and pepper, and just stuffs the cavity with pierced lemons and roasts it. It’s the most brilliant roast chicken you’ll ever have.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

It depends on my mood and what I’m cooking. Sometimes I like classical, sometimes I like some jazz, and anything Cuban. I love Cuban music. I have no Cuban in my DNA, but I think maybe in my past life I was Caribbean.

On Keeping Posted with Sheri:

Check us out on Instagram; we’re working on building that up and I’m addicted to it. It’s super fun. So Instagram, Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest; we’re on it all.