Rose Levy Beranbaum | The Dinner Special podcast

086: Samantha Seneviratne: Cooking Up A Career in Baking and Food

October 19, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Love Comma Cake

Sam has been a food editor at Good Housekeeping, Fine Cooking, and Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food. Today, she’s a freelance recipe developer and food stylist and recently released her first cookbook called The New Sugar and Spice: A Recipe for Bolder Baking. She was also a Finalist in the 2015 Saveur Blog Awards for Best Baking and Desserts Blog.

I’m so psyched to have Samantha Seneviratne of Love Comma Cake here on the show today.

On Baking and Sweet Things:

I think I knew I was going to be a baker from when I was a really little kid. I told my family that I was going to be a baker and a librarian when I was five. I always loved dough and sugar and butter. I always loved working with those things. So as soon as I knew that people needed jobs to keep afloat, I realized that dough was probably the way I should go. So I think it’s in my blood.

I went to culinary school and I studied both savory and sweet, and I worked as a food editor at different food magazines. So in doing that, I pretty much have to do both sweet and savory, and these days I do some styling and recipe development both sweet and savory. I do both. I love doing the baked goods. That’s what I really want to do all the time.

On Finding Her Career in Food:

Well, it took me a long time to figure how I was going to do it. I went to college. I went to a liberal arts college, and I studied Latin American studies, and Spanish Literature, and then I got a job after school in public television, and then worked for a different non-profit. I had a bunch of other things that I was directing my life towards. Then, all of a sudden, I just realized what I really loved to do is cook, and that I should just go to culinary school and make it happen. But it took me a while to figure out how to do it because I’m not really a restaurant chef. I have great respect for restaurant chefs but that’s not what I do, and I knew that wouldn’t be my path. So it took me awhile to figure out exactly how I was going to make a living cooking. And magazine test kitchens were the place for me for awhile and that worked out well.

I had a friend who worked at the magazine, and she played on a soccer team with an editor at Gourmet magazine. So I told her I was interested in food and she said, “Well, why don’t you meet this guy. He’s a food editor at Gourmet.” And he took me on a tour of the gourmet test kitchen and showed me what he did, and I thought, “That looks like a good job. That looks like exactly where I should be.” So after that visit with him, I went to culinary school and that’s what I did.

On Her Food Heroes and What She’d Make for Them:

I mean the baking heroes like Dorie Greenspan and David Lebovitz, and there are so many, Rose Levy Beranbaum. There are so many baking stars, so many classics.

I’m really into fried dough. Lately, I’ve been really making donuts and just this morning we made apple fritters and funnel cake. I think fried dough is what I’m really feeling these days. It’s not good for you, but it’s fun to make.

The thing is the difference when you fry it and then eat it right out of the oil, toss it in sugar and then eat it. It’s a whole other ball game. It’s so much more delicious than anything you can ever buy because it’s a timing thing. So I’d probably make some fried dough of some kind.

On Her Blog:

I wanted to get more of an online presence that was just me. I was working at different magazines, and I love working in magazine test kitchens because you’re really part of a team, and you’re all creating this food in this vision and under this brand name.

I wanted to have a body of work that was mine, and that I could contribute to and that was 100% my voice. Just exactly what I wanted to make whenever I wanted to make it and so that’s what I did.

I just was craving a place where I can have complete control over everything I did. So that means any whim that I had I just was able to do it.

On Simple Rules of Thumb for Baking for Greater Success:

I think people are more scared of baking than they need to be. There’s a little more flexibility than people think there is. Things could vary slightly depending on how warm your butter is or something like that, but your disasters are rare, right? So measuring flour is important, temperatures are important. I think measuring flour is number one. Once you’ve learned how to measure flour, things are going to improve greatly, or get a scale, also, a really good way to go.

(On baking with cold eggs.) You can totally warm them up. There are little tricks like you can keep your eggs in some warm water and that’ll heat them up. Or you can even if you crack them into a bowl and then let them warm up that way. That also works. You can warm up your butter by pounding it with a rolling pin or sometimes I even microwave it on a low 20% power, 50% power, you can warm your butter up. Which a lot of people don’t recommend because it’s easy to go from cold butter to melted butter and then you’re kind of screwed. But you can do it. It works. But I think measuring flour is number one.

On Her Cookbook, The New Sugar and Spice:

It was a long process. I probably started a proposal for that book four years ago. It took me a long time to write the proposal. I wrote a proposal for a book I wasn’t that happy with, and then I scrapped it and then wrote a new proposal, and it took a long time to get the proposal in good shape. And then I shopped around with agents. Then she helped me work on the proposal and then we pitched the book. It’s a long process, but I always had the dream of writing cookbook. So just finding the book that felt right and it took me a long time to get there, and I think I did. I like it.

It’s basically a baking book and I use spices and the chapters of the books are all organized by spice. The general idea of the book is that I try to use a little less sugar. I don’t like overly sweet desserts, and I think that it’s easy to fall to that trap. I think sugar can be a crutch. So I try to develop recipes that were a little bit less sweet and used spices to amp up the flavor in a more complex and interesting way. That’s not to say they are low sugar or diet or anything like that, but they seem to me to be a little less sweet and a little more interesting.

I also wrote a lot of history. I got into researching the history of certain spices and how that related a little bit to my family history because my parents are from Sri Lanka. I started digging into the history of cinnamon, I realized that my great grandmother grew clove trees in her yard, and my great grandfather grew vanilla beans. And I learned that my family’s history was intertwined with spices in that fun way, so I wrote a lot about that.

I had fun writing the intros that were all about spice history and my family history and having really personal head notes about my parents, and my brother, and things like that. That felt unique, and fun, and special to me because, as a food editor for a magazine, you don’t ever get to just write about yourself or write about why you like something. You don’t get that opportunity very often and so I took it in the book.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t have cable television so I don’t watch anyone.

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

I have a lot of food blogs that I love. It’s going to be hard to list them. I love Brooklyn Supper, and I love Two Red Bowls. And I love The Fauxmartha. Those are three right now I’ll tell you that I love.

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

The only thing I do out of all those things is Instagram. So I would say, I think David Lebovitz is really funny and his Instagram account makes me laugh.

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

I have a little dowel that I got at a hardware store. I had them cut it down so it’s like a four-inch dowel. I don’t know what they’re for when you buy them at the hardware store, but I use it to roll out little pastries, and I love it. It’s the most useful tool in the world and it was a dollar.

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

I’m into anise seeds now and I didn’t think I was into it before. Actually the book, writing that book, I have a couple of recipes for anise seeds in a biscotti and in a pear tart, and I think they’re both delicious. I’ve really come around on anise seed.

I hate liquorice like so many people, but I didn’t realize that if you use anise seeds sparingly and if you pair it with something delicious, it can work in combination with other things. I just hadn’t figured that out yet, but I like it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Regan Daley’s In the Sweet Kitchen is one of my all-time favorite books in the whole world. I think that book is super smart. There’s a lot of information at the beginning. It’s a baking companion, and there are glossaries and flavor pairing charts and things like that, that make baking really easy and inspire you to do good things. And then the second half of the book is all these wonderful recipes. I think that book is genius. That book makes my life better.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Oh my gosh, anything. I just like Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and all those guys. That kind of music, I love it.

On Keeping Posted with Sam:

Instagram probably. You can find me at @samanthaseneviratne, and you can follow me there or you can sign up to receive all updates on my blog Love Comma Cake.

080: Jennifer Yu: Choosing Food, Photography, and Colorado

September 28, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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Use Real Butter

In her past life, Jen was a NASA programmer, and today she is a freelance nature, food, portrait, and event photographer living and enjoying the outdoors in the Colorado Rockies. Her blog Use Real Butter is more of a directive for life and less about her cooking and baking though food is an integral part of her blog and her life.

I am so pumped to have Jennifer Yu of Use Real Butter joining me today.

(*All images below are Jen’s.)

On Blogging:

The first time I started blogging in 2004, I just began a LiveJournal blog, and it seemed that I had about a handful of friends who had LiveJournal blogs. So we just blogged personal stuff and commented on each other’s blog. It was, a dozen people at most, and it was very informal. It’s pretty private, and we were just goofing around. And the reason I started was because my sister had passed away in a car accident just earlier that year, and so I felt it was a good space for me to just get my feelings out and try and work it out in words. It was a little bit of therapy for me to get through that difficult period. And then I noticed over time, I started posting a lot of photos of my food. And so I would put dinner pictures on there, or if we went out to eat for a snack, I’d have a shaved ice on there.

After a while, I noticed there was a group called the Daring Bakers, which now is a huge, huge group. They’re the Daring Bakers and the Daring Cooks, and I think they comprise the Daring Kitchen now. But back then, they were 80 strong when I joined. It was just 80 people, and they would have a recipe designated to make for the next month, and everyone would make it and blog it on a given day. And we went around supporting one another and seeing how everybody had a different interpretation of the recipe as well as just a really nice community of people who liked to bake, people who enjoyed cooking, people who wanted to expand their skill. That’s why I decided to break off Use Real Butter because I wanted to be a part of that group, but I didn’t want all my baggage in with the recipes.

At the start, because the blog was a personal blog, it was all personal. All of my baggage was in there, and as I became more public, I think I’ve reined in what I’m sharing. It seems like I share a lot now, but actually, I don’t. I don’t share that much compared to what I used to. And it’s mostly because the more reach the blog has achieved, the more I am holding back because you get some odd readers who, I mean, there are some people, most of them are really well-intentioned and they just want to be your friend and they want to get to know you, and then others are a little less so. And so I withdrew a little bit to protect, not only myself, but also the people that I care about. But still, a lot of my friends know, like, “Oh, if you have dinner with Jen or if you go out to lunch with Jen, you’re going to show up on the Internet.”

On Her Passion for Food and Cooking:

I think since I was a little kid, I really enjoyed it. It’s odd but I like washing fruit and cutting it up. I used to try and sell it out of my bedroom to my family members as they pass by in the hall, which was kind of odd because if you think about it, my parents bought the fruit and then they’d have to buy it again from me. But I guess I added that extra service of cleaning and cutting fruit.

My grandmother lived with us from pretty much when I was an infant until about when I was nine years old. And she is my mother’s mother, and she cooked so many wonderful things. She was a fantastic cook. Both my parents are fantastic cooks. So when we got together to cook Sunday dinner, I was always there watching. And it was like this big family affair, and they would make Chinese dumplings. And it was just kind of a regular thing every Sunday, and I really enjoyed it. And I think that had a big influence on me.

When I was growing up, I would cook very simple things, and I would experiment with baking because nobody in my family baked. So I can’t tell you how many batches of meringues I have tanked, how many cookies have come out rock hard. But I learned all that when I was little, and in my parent’s kitchen. Then when I went away to college, there were nights when our dorm didn’t provide food or food plans. It was on the weekends, they didn’t provide meals. And so the undergraduates were left to fend for themselves, and I thought, “Oh, I’m going to make X, Y, and Z that mom and dad made at home.”

I could never remember what it was that went into the recipes. I didn’t have recipes, so I just called them up and said, “Mom, how do you make this?” And you know Chinese parents, actually, I think anyone beyond a certain generation, they don’t do recipes. They are just, like, off the top of their head, “Oh, a little bit of soy sauce.” “How much is a little bit?” “I don’t know, you know, a little bit.” And that’s how I got my feet wet with Chinese cooking, and then it became my way of connecting back to my family and my cultural heritage, which I rejected for a long time as a little kid.

On Blogs She’s Followed Since the Beginning:

I think Smitten Kitchen, Deb Perelman’s blog, was one of my early favorites, and it’s still one of my favorites because her recipes are just really solid and reliable. I guess I feel that I like her taste as well. I think that makes a big difference. There are some bloggers, they have gorgeous blogs or whatever, but their style of food is just not my style. So yeah, Deb of Smitten Kitchen. White on Rice Couple, that’s Todd and Diane. We started out around the same time, and we were blog buddies. And then we met in person, and we’ve been good friends ever since. They have a great blog. I love their recipes, but even more, they’re very dear friends of mine.

On Things Not Going as Planned:

Things don’t go as planned, that happens a lot. That happens more than most people would probably think. But do I wish that I were back in science? No, I don’t. I really don’t. That’s something I was happy to move on from. My husband, he remained in science. He’s in astrophysics. And I really felt that we didn’t both need to be in academia. So it’s kind of a nice balance, I think, to have us doing different things. I keep track of what’s going on in his career, and he will sometimes ask me, “Well, there’s a graduate student. This is what the student wants to do. How should I advise?” And I’ll give my take on it, especially if it’s a female student because I think it’s good for male faculty to be more sensitive to female students, and he’s particularly good about that.

But yeah, I don’t miss it at all. I actually like what I do, and I think that’s good because it’s what I chose. It would be terrible if you say, “I choose to do this,” and then you’re like, “This sucks.” So I chose to do this. I’m really happy with it. I think I like managing my time. I work more hours as a freelancer than I did working nine to five in a science desk job. But it’s worth it to me. I like the freedom.

On the Food Culture in Colorado:

It’s a pretty hip scene, I’d say. I think when we moved to Boulder, the first thing we noticed was kind of the sticker shock. Food is a little more expensive in Boulder than it is in where we were, which was Pasadena. Food in LA is, it’s so inexpensive, and it’s so, so good. But Boulder is a little different. The food is really excellent. But you’re going to pay a little more than you would at, let’s say, in San Francisco or in LA. That said, there’s definitely a dedication to local, seasonal farm food, local farmers. They have a lot of great restaurants that focus on, I’d say, modern cuisine, farm-to-table cuisine with European and some Asian fusion influences. That said, their Chinese food in general isn’t that great. They have lots of sushi bars, which is terrific, and there’s quite a bit of Vietnamese in the Denver area. But yeah, other than that, I’m missing a lot of the Asian that I used to get in LA.

Because I couldn’t get it elsewhere, I had to learn to make it myself. My grandmother, when she was alive, she was in San Jose, and so I would go out to visit her several times a year. And every time, we went out to visit, she would take us out to some Chinese restaurant that she had found. It just opened, or it’s been open for a while just down the street. And the food is just fantastic, and we would always get the latest and greatest from the Bay Area Chinese cuisine. I’d come home and think, “Oh, I’m craving this, but there is nowhere for me to get it.” And so I’d have to figure out how to make it myself or look up the recipe.

I don’t think there’s a signature dish (of Colorado’s) that off the top of my head comes to mind, but Colorado lamb in general is phenomenal. I was not a huge fan of lamb before I came to Colorado, and I felt that it tasted a little too, I don’t know if “game-y” is the word, but that’s what comes to mind. It was just the flavor was a little too strong for me. But when I tried Colorado lamb, it is sublime. Really, it’s a mellower flavor, but it’s fantastic. And a lot of the, like I said, Boulder restaurants are dedicated to sourcing their food locally, and so you get Colorado ranchers providing their lamb and it’s fantastic.

And actually, Diane Cu had a similar experience when she and Todd came out. We were doing a workshop together in Boulder, and I took them to dinner at Frasca. One of the courses was lamb, and so she immediately was like, “I don’t like lamb,” so she picked up all of her lamb and put it on Todd’s plate. And he tasted it, and he said, “No, no, it’s really good. You’ve got to taste it.” So she took a taste, and she picked up the lamb that she had put on his plate and put it back on her plate. And that’s how I feel about Colorado lamb. It’s that good.

Also, Colorado peaches (from the Western Slope) are the bomb. And I forage a lot in the mountains in the summertime – mostly porcini, chanterelles, and huckleberries.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

We don’t get television. So I don’t watch TV, which is probably why I can actually do things in my life because I don’t spend a lot of time watching TV.

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

Well, I would say Smitten Kitchen certainly is one of them. Leite’s Culinaria, David Leite’s blog, is fantastic. Simply Recipes by Elise Bauer and crew, that is one of my go-tos. When I have any question about a recipe that I just need to know off the top of my head, I’ll search for her blog first. And then David Lebovitz because he’s awesome, and he’s hilarious at the same time.

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

I don’t do Pinterest just because it’s a matter of time management. I just cannot get into Pinterest, and on Instagram, I have to say one of my favorite people to follow is Food Pornographer, my friend Kelly Cline. She’s a food photographer and food stylist in the Pacific Northwest. And everything she posts is absolutely stunning and creative and beautiful, and it just makes you want to eat and to cook and just get in there and experiment.

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

I don’t actually know what kind of odd things I have. I guess the only one is the dowels that I use for rolling dumplings. Most of the rolling pins you find in stores are the French style, the tapered ones, or they have the handles on them, but the simple Chinese dowel is just a straight cylinder. And that’s what I use for rolling dumpling skins, and it works best for me.

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

Cilantro. Cilantro, when I was little, my parents put it in everything, and I was like, “Mom, you’re ruining this dish.” They put it in the soup, and I am like, “I can’t eat the soup now,” or whatever. And now I love it. I put it in guacamole. I put it in my pho. I put it in Chinese dishes. It’s great.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I would have to say the one that I reference the most is probably The Baking Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. And there’s this old Chinese cookbook that’s my mom’s, it was like a godmother put together in the 1960s or something. It’s this tiny little thing, and I don’t think it’s widely published. But we have a copy of it, and it’s just these traditional Chinese recipes, home-style Chinese recipes. And I’ve blogged a few of them, but I go to that one quite often.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Okay. I thought about this, and I was like, I don’t think there are any songs or albums that make me want to cook, but when I cook, I like to have music on. The White Stripes are one of my favorite bands, and so any of their albums or anything by Jack White gets me pretty pumped and happy in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Jen:

If you want to follow what’s going on with the dog, follow me on Instagram. Otherwise, I would say the blog itself is probably the best. I’m just getting really bad about keeping up with social media these days because I think I’ve realized that I’d rather spend my time living my life than just constantly writing about it.