Southern Souffle | The Dinner Special podcast

058: Erika Council: An Introduction to Southern Food

July 13, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Southern Soufflé

Erika was introduced to the art of biscuit-making at the ripe old age of four and was nicknamed Southern Souffle in college when she was dishing out meals from the hot plate in her dorm room. On her blog Southern Soufflé, she shares her love of Southern soul food through not only her recipes, but the warmth in her writing and stories.

I am so excited to have Erika Council of Southern Soufflé here on the show today.

(*All images below are Erika’s.)

On Growing Up Around Food and Cooking:

My paternal grandmother owns a restaurant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and it’s been there since 1976. A lot of my summers were spent in the back of that kitchen, not always happily, but you learned how to make things like biscuits and fried chicken. She owned what we call a Southern style meat and three, and that’s where you get the meat and three vegetables and side of cornbread or biscuits. So you can imagine how much meat and three we’re turning out on a daily basis.

It was really kind of a drop biscuit that she taught me. It’s kind of a wet dough and you use the scoop and just drop it. You make a lot of batches at one time like that and that was my experience actually just scooping it and dropping it on the pan.

Then my mother’s mother made fancier angel biscuits, which use yeast and rise real high.

When you’re 13, 14, 15, you don’t really appreciate it as much as I do now that I can make fried chicken with my eyes closed. I will say that I learned a lot of valuable lessons just working back there and meeting the average people that wash the dishes, not a lot of the top chefs you see that live this glamorous lifestyle on Food Network. It’s just so far from that actually really running a restaurant and just trying to maintain success over a decades’ worth of time.

I think I learned more about the importance of food and how it was important to the people making it, rather than the whole glamor, a beautiful picture of food, you know.

She (grandmother) is older now and my uncle does most of the cooking in the back, but we do go and visit.

I’m in Atlanta so it’s about seven hours from here. I’ll go every now and then and visit her at home, but she doesn’t do a lot of actual cooking in the restaurant. You can find her every now and then sitting at a booth in the front when you walk in drinking coffee. She kinda makes it her way to introduce herself or speak to everybody, but if you’re from the North Carolina area and around there you know who Mama Dip is.

On Southern Culture:

I guess Southern culture, in my opinion, is kind of the backbone for a lot of things that you see everywhere. I’ll go to San Francisco for work and see someone rolling up collard green wraps and I’ll think about, just actually picking those collard greens out of the ground and hot liquor which is the liquor and the juice from the actual greens boiling down.

The South for me is just so many things. This is where I was born and raised and lived the majority of my life. It’s the people who have a complicated past, but I mean the most hospitable. Everyone says Southern hospitality but you would think it’d be a bunch of disgruntled angry Southerners, but we’re far from that.

It’s a lot of things you don’t see, where communal tables with all different kinds of people sitting together. It’s a melting pot, which is what the South has always been.

On Southern Food:

I think that Southern food is a mix of all cultures. From the very beginning, without getting into historical aspects, you have plantation cooking, which is a combination of European and African, West African cooking, and you’re seeing this sort of Southern revival, everywhere, but here, I think a lot of people are getting more back to the roots, which is, Southern food really was a plant-based diet.

So you think fried chicken and greasy and all this, but it was really the plants, like the greens, and the onions, and things of that nature. And I see a lot of people just getting back to that and just having the greens and their vegetables being the focus of their dish.

I would say that soul food is Southern food. I think that anything that you cook, and you put your heart and soul into it, that is soul food. So whether it is a Boston Cream Pie that you’ve taken your time, you’ve sat down and you made it from scratch, that’s your soul food. When you look at the definition of it, it’s a term actually that came around about the 1960s to describe African American Southern cooking, but the actuality of soul food is, it is the origins of Southern food, because Southern food started out with plantation cooking and you have to look at that and then you look at soul food as being fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread. Which commercially it is, but a lot of African Americans will say if you’re cooking something from the heart and soul, that’s your soul food.

I absolutely love fried chicken and I love crawfish. It’s hard to get crawfish here in Atlanta like I could get it in Louisiana, but definitely those two items. Any way you got em’, I’ll take em’.

On Some Resources to Learn More about Southern Cuisine:

So my grandmother wrote a cookbook. It’s an older one, Mama Dip’s Kitchen. It’s a great basic book. The basics, she’s got a good forward in there about her life. A huge one is Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking and that’s by Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart. Nathalie Dupree is the grand dame of Southern cooking. She’s actually been nominated for Who’s Who James Beard Award this year and that book was nominated for one of James Beard’s Awards. So I definitely would say that book, it’s like 730 pages of Southern food and it’s talking about Southern food.

There’s so many. Charleston Receipts is another one, that’s a Junior League cookbook. It’s an old school book from Charleston. A friend of mine, Adrian Miller, he wrote a book called Soul Food. So that’s a great book to read about the origins of soul food, it won a James Beard Award too.

On Her Blog:

My mom actually never was a cook, and she mentioned to me one day she was reading someone’s blog and she sent it to me. She was like, “Hey, you know what? You should do this.” So when I started out, I just kind of was doing the recipes. I used to email my mom recipes that I would cook and she would try it. So I would just type up a recipe and it’d be a really short little passage or whatever.

Actually, what kind of turned it around for me was, I went to a food blog conference and it just was everything I didn’t want to be. And that kind of made me turn my back towards what I thought was cool and just kind of go with what was actually me. I hate to say that, it’s awful, but it’s just the reality.

I used a different camera, the camera I was using to take pictures of my kids, before I was using my iPhone. You know, I started out kind of, staging the food, but that really wasn’t me either, so now it’s more just taking the pictures as I go and just how I cook it, because that’s really what it’s about to me. If I could make elaborately beautiful layouts of food, then I would do it, but I can’t, so I’m not even going to try.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t. I used to watch Top Chef.

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

So I’m obsessed with Two Red Bowls and Lady and Pups. Those two blogs are amazing. I guess from learning about different types of Asian style cooking, just how they incorporate different things, I love that.

The Bitter Southerner, if you like to read. They post a kind of journal entry every Tuesday and it’s something that’s about the South. Sometimes it upsets people and sometimes it’s beautiful, but I would definitely recommend reading The Bitter Southerner.

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

What makes me happy on Instagram, Megan from Take A Megabite, because her food is so happy with the animals and the different flags. So definitely Take A Megabite on Instagram. She definitely makes me happy with all her photos.

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

The most treasured item I have is my grandmother’s apron. It’s in a lot of the photos. My maternal grandmother passed away a few years ago, but she was a history teacher back in the ’40s, ’50s. She and my grandfather were huge civil rights activists. I learned so much from her as far as just African American history and just things that they don’t teach in school, things that you wouldn’t even know, just having to have been in her presence, learning how to make cakes and along with the struggles of the past, and her apron was always what she wore. So that is probably my most prized possession in my kitchen.

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

I like beets and I used to just be extremely anti-beet. The rest of the people in my family, not so much, or in my house, but I’m trying to slowly get them into it. I definitely would say beets.

I think that when they were made for me, they weren’t made right perhaps, but gosh, this was probably about ten years ago and someone made these little appetizers with goat cheese and they had pickled beets on the top. And it sounds disgusting, right, but it was so good, and I think then on, I’d say, “Well, you know what? Maybe I can find a way to make it better.” In the South, we pickle everything.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

The Joy of Cooking is a good one. Right now, I’m kind of on a baking kick. The Bread Bible is one I’ve been using. Definitely those two have been helping me.

So there’s a chef in Kentucky named Edward Lee, and he’s American or he’s Korean-American and his book is Smoke & Pickles and it’s a great… I hate to say fusion because I don’t like that word. It’s a combination of Southern and Asian food, and he’s just done an impeccable job. It’s an older book but I’ve been kind of cooking my way through that just lately. There’s so many. I have a lot of cookbooks but definitely those.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Right now, Rihanna. I won’t say the name of this song because it’s explicit. I’m a big hip hop fan. We listen to a lot of rap music. Kendrick Lamar and Drake are really kind of on repeat. They make me want to cook. I listen to that all day.

On Keeping Posted with Erika:

I do better on Instagram. I’m on Twitter, and then Southern Soufflé on Facebook.

056: Autumn Giles: Black Sheep Ingredients, Gluten-Free and Beyond Canning

July 6, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Autumn Makes and Does

Autumn is a writer and home cook who shares her greenmarket-focused gluten-free food on her blog. She’s also a poet and produced a podcast called Alphabet Soup, a project about food and language from fall 2011 to spring 2014. Autumn’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Serious Eats, and Buzz Feed Food, just to name a few.

I am so thrilled to have Autumn Giles of Autumn Makes and Does here on the show today.

(*All images below are Autumn’s.)

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

I always remember being fascinated with food. I can recall when I was just old enough to be left home by myself with my little sister, we would make up a lot of experiments in the kitchen, and my mom getting home and feeling frustrated with me. Because not all of my experiments were edible at that time. But I did that. I remember always having that interest, wanting to experiment, I guess, and cooking up weird stuff and making my sister eat it.

Then, both my parents, I gardened with them growing up. And my grandmother always gardened, so I think that grew my interest, and cooking came from that as well.

On Her Blog:

It was at a time when I had been out of graduate school for about a year. It was nothing that I had thought about or considered, but it was sort of because of the prodding of my friends and family saying, “You might have something to share. You might have some knowledge that could be useful for other people.” I didn’t go into it with any kind of expectations. It was very casual at the beginning. And my blog is still very casual, you know, crappy camera, crappy pictures, that kind of thing, like, “Here’s what I cooked.” And it just evolved from there.

The writing (is most challenging) but it’s a specific aspect of the writing that was difficult for me and remains difficult because I think I’m a pretty private person. As I moved more toward writing my blog more regularly and writing online more regularly, I never really had that impulse to write about what was going on in my life. I didn’t have that drive. I actually felt like I was resistant to that. Because I was feeling like not really wanting to put all the details out there on the Internet.

I’ve worked on striking a balance. So I can still be a blogger who writes about what’s going on in my life, but also keeps a comfortable level of privacy for me as a person.

On Her Interest in “Black Sheep” Ingredients:

I guess I just mean weird stuff. When I lived in New York, I was a regular greenmarket shopper and was so lucky and privileged to be able to have access to the amazing greenmarkets in New York with such an insane variety of food that’s grown locally there. I would go to the greenmarket week after week and new things would show up.

That’s what I would get most excited about, and just learning about those new ingredients by cooking with them and tasting them.

In the past year, I moved to the southwest and one thing that I tried when I first moved here that completely blew me away was nopales. Nopales, for folks who don’t know, are the flat, teardrop shaped part of a cactus. The cactus have flat paddles. So someone had prepared those smoked and it was so amazing. The texture was very meaty. The flavor was very smoky but also very tart. And I guess as an ingredient in general, cactus pads also just blew me away because they have a tartness that is really surprising for folks who haven’t tried them. I think I expected them to be more bland. Because I’ve heard people compare them to tofu, like, they can take on flavors and textures. But I found them to be very tart and very surprising in that way.

There are different varieties that have varying level of spikes on them. So they have the big long spikes, and then they have tiny spikes called glochids. And one of the ways that people will help remove the glochids is grilling them, and it burns the spikes mostly right off. I did a post on my blog about harvesting the prickly pair of fruit, and also a way that people get the little glochids off the fruit.

On Gluten-Free Foods and Misconceptions:

There’s a lot of reasons that people eat gluten-free. The reason that I eat gluten-free is because I have celiac disease. So I have to be pretty careful.

I think a misconception that I’ve encountered is, “Oh, you can’t eat the bun on this hamburger. Let me just take the bun off for you and here’s the hamburger.” I would be really sick if I ate that hamburger. I think there is just frustration, like, gluten-free people are a pain, that they don’t like to eat. That’s probably the big one, like, “Don’t you want to eat something?” And I love food, I just happen to need to eat gluten-free food all the time.

For someone who needs to eliminate or reduce gluten in their diet, my first tip is to always focus on foods that are naturally gluten free. There are just so, so many. When you really focus on that and really find things within that to get excited about and explore, you definitely don’t feel limited in your diet.

I am writing a preserving book right now, and that’s something that in very rare cases, encounter any gluten in those recipes. So that’s an area that I connected with, got excited about, and I’ve explored a ton. And I didn’t really have to worry about gluten in that arena at all.

I think trying different and sometimes a little more odd or less likely used cuts of meat because they’re usually cheaper, you can buy higher quality meat and explore something that you have not cooked before. Also, without having to worry about gluten.

On Her Podcast:

I started Alphabet Soup on my own. About halfway through, my friend Kelly from Kelly Bakes, joined me.

In grad school, all my poet friends were always getting together to cook, and it just seemed like most of my friends who were writers were also very into food. It was sort of the impetus for me to start a podcast – talking to writers about food and talking to food people about writing. That was how it started.

I started out with just myself doing interviews, and then it went into Kelly and I having conversations along that topic as it continued.

As I probably don’t have to tell you, producing a podcast is a ton of work. It wasn’t like I got tired of doing it; I would still love to maybe explore in the future. But I think at that time, Kelly and I were both ready to shift our energy towards other projects. I felt like it had come to a natural conclusion in a way.

On Her First Cookbook, “Beyond Canning”:

It is about preserving and it focuses on three main techniques, which is preserving with vinegar, fermenting and sweet preserves, like preserving sugar with jam. It’s really trying to focus on unique flavors, different textures, and something new to the conversation around food preservation.

I have no formal culinary training. I most definitely consider myself a home cook. And when I started with preserving and did it more and more, I learned what I liked.

I definitely see it more as a really great tool for home cooks, not something that should be separated to the side, like you cook and then you preserve, that they can really be incorporated together to make people more savvy home cooks. And of course my love for the greenmarket had a big part of it.

Almost all the recipes in the book are quite small batch. So if you are in a CSA or you go to the greenmarket and you find something beautiful but they’re quite expensive, you can buy a few and make something great out of them that you can enjoy later, and incorporate into your cooking and make your cooking better.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I have to say I’m not a big cooking show person. However, the last cooking show I watched was my friend Dan who has a blog, Renegade Kitchen, who’s also an actor, just joined…I think it’s Home and Family TV. It’s on the Hallmark Network, a whole new family show on Hallmark Network.

He does an awesome job of talking to people. So we were saying like black sheep ingredients… He talked about black garlic. I think he did a DIY corned beef. I have to give him a shout out and say that was the last food show I watched and I really enjoyed it.

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

There’s so many. It’s so hard to name. But my friend Elizabeth who has the blog, Brooklyn Supper, I think she is consistently making awesome food, seasonal food, and really accessible delicious recipes that are also unique, which is so hard to do.

I love the site, Wayward Spark. It definitely has some food but it isn’t just food. And then Southern Soufflé; Erika is a phenomenal writer and takes gorgeous pictures. As the name suggests, focuses on southern food and really is an incredible storyteller.

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

The one that I engage with the most and the most naturally that doesn’t feel like work for me is Instagram. The people who make me the happiest on there are ones who are very inspiring home cooks who aren’t just posting about composed pictures but are sharing what they cook every day. I know that bugs some people but I love it when people share what they cook everyday. It really gives me inspiration for what I’m cooking.

Folks on Instagram that really make me happy are Michele who is at Cider and Rye, who makes phenomenal cocktails and posts lovely pictures. Dan, who I mentioned at Renegade Kitchen. The Joy of Cooking, Megan and John, the folks behind The Joy of Cooking are always posting super inspiring stuff and gorgeous photos. Hector, who is at Mexicanity is a phenomenal example of someone who is cooking insane amazing stuff, and it is just super inspiring. My friend Julia Sforza is another person who is just always cooking and is an awesome home cook. And Nicole Taylor, who is at Food Culturist, who is also working on a book.

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

I think the most unusual, it’s not technically an item, but my home is a very old home and it has a cellar which is just literally a cave dug into the hill. A hundred year old cave is definitely the most unusual thing in the kitchen.

I want to track the temperature a little better. Because I’m wondering if I could use it as a cold storage. I do live in Arizona and it’s pretty chilly during the winter months, but I figure it probably wouldn’t be as chilly during the summer.

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

As a child, I really hated tomatoes. And I think it was partially a texture thing. And also just the issue of eating tomatoes out of season from somewhere far away, which is still to me not a very pleasant experience.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis is a favorite one of mine.

I’m a huge community cookbook fan, so like the church. I mentioned I was into casseroles. So huge big collection of community cookbooks which really make me happy.

And Saving the Season by Kevin West is one that I really look up to, and I think is a great book.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Definitely Beyonce. As I mentioned, I’m finishing up my cookbook right now. I just need to get motivated, get things done, it’s Beyonce.

On Keeping Posted on Autumn:

I’m probably most active on Instagram. I would love if folks joined me there. I am Autumn Makes on Twitter and on Facebook.

048: Brooke Conroy Bass: An Introduction to Cajun Cooking and Food

June 12, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Chocolate and Marrow

Today we’re celebrating rich, decadent and indulgent food. On Chocolate and Marrow, Brooke uses local and seasonal ingredients to create dishes inspired by growing up in New Orleans and from her current life in Portland in the Pacific Northwest.

I’m so happy to have Brooke Conroy Bass of Chocolate and Marrow joining me on the show.

UPDATE! Since our chat, Brooke became a finalist in the 2015 Saveur Blog Awards for Best New Voice for Chocolate and Marrow.

On Starting Her Blog:

I was doing a lot of research and a lot of scientific analysis for my dissertation and it got a little bit too much. I just felt like there was this imbalance in my life. While I’m thinking about all of that, I went to Italy with my grandmother who loves to cook. And we did this amazing cooking, culinary experience. I just found myself being so happy. I’m just really in my element, and that’s really how I realized I need to incorporate food in a more creative way throughout my life, more than just cooking in the home.

That’s when I decided, you know what, I’m going to start a blog.

Finding the time for it is a totally different matter. It’s more of a weekend thing. I just spend my Saturdays always cooking and photographing and at night I’ll do the recipe development and research and things like that.

On Her Interest in Food:

I’ve loved cooking ever since I can remember.

I was probably five years old and I don’t even know how I could write at the time. But I remember standing by my grandmother’s side and she was saying, she’s cooking catfish, frying catfish. And I remember saying to her, “I really want to learn how to do that so I can go home and cook for my family.” I don’t know what I was thinking at the age of five, they probably wouldn’t let me turn on a burner at that age. And so she got me a crayon and a piece of loose leaf paper and was like, “Well, here, write down the recipe as I cook and that way you can have it for yourself.” So I did and we actually still have that piece of paper that I wrote it on, which is really fun to pull out and look at sometimes.

She is one of my food heroes for certain. I have a number of them but she’s certainly the one that I think piques my interest in cooking.

She worked on a television show in the 80s and 90s called Great Chefs and so she’s always loved food. Even today, when she’s in town visiting for Thanksgiving and we sat and chatted in my kitchen for about eight hours after Thanksgiving while I whipped up some gumbo and some French bread. It’s just one of those things that’s really, really fun to do together.

On the Food Culture in New Orleans:

The food culture in New Orleans is really synonymous with the party culture. We cook food that can feed 30 people and be a big part of a celebration and that’s how we do things down there.

It’s like you can’t have a party without tons of food and you can’t have tons of food without a party.

There’s also some pieces of New Orleans cuisine that are kind of staples in ways of cooking and ingredients that we always use. So yeah, that’s definitely how I think of it at least.

On Cajun Food:

Cajun food, I think like anywhere else around the world, we work with the ingredients that we have available to us and that’s when in forms, different cuisines. With Cajun cuisine, it’s really working with what’s available on the land which is there’s a lot of rice. We see a lot of rice and beans and things like that.

But also there’s this abundance of seafood, so things like oysters and crawfish and shrimp and catfish. That puts itself into a lot of good food that we prepare.

For me, Cajun cuisine, though, it’s like eating home. I mean, I probably cook at least one or two Cajun dishes just for dinner for my husband and I each week and it’s something that always makes me feel comfortable and at home in my kitchen. I just don’t even have to think about it. It just kind of happens.

People love their King cakes and their beignets and their po’ boys and things like that. But most people don’t know about our festival food. You know how most people like spring, summer, fall, and winter as their four seasons. Well, in New Orleans, we don’t have those seasons. We’ve got Mardi Gras, we’ve got festival season, crawfish season, and Saints season.

During festival season, everyone has probably heard about Jazz Fest. I think probably one of my favorite kind of off the map food is crawfish bread from Jazz Fest.

It’s this two kind of flat bread, sandwiched around this melty cheese with crawfish and olives and all these spices. It’s just one of these foods that I think if you’re able to go to New Orleans at the end of April or early May for Jazz Fest, you cannot miss the crawfish bread because it’s absolutely amazing!

On Key Elements in Cajun Cooking:

You know how the French have mirepoix, which is onions and carrots and celery. Well, in Cajun food, we have the holy trinity is what we call it. That is basically like a mirepoix but sub out the carrots and put in bell peppers.

That kind of gives it that spicy kick that New Orleans food is really well-known for. And I think also, New Orleans food is known for being fried. I won’t say fry anything but something in a nice cornmeal batter with just a little squeeze of lemon is probably a real classic New Orleans food.

I think that probably a really great dish to start with would be a gumbo. I know that sounds intimidating but it’s really basic. It just involves a roux and a stock and some kind of protein like chicken or turkey or seafood even, and then the holy trinity, sautéed with some spices and a bay leaf.

Then you throw it all together in a pot and just let it simmer and it’s pretty much heavenly. I think it’s a great way to start introducing yourself to Cajun techniques and also flavors.

On Some Good Resources for Learning About Cajun Food and Cooking:

One of my favorite cookbooks is actually called Cooking Up a Storm.

That is a book that came out after Hurricane Katrina because as you can probably imagine, when Hurricane Katrina hit, one of the things that people lost that they loved the most is their cookbooks. When people lost their homes, their cookbooks went with it. And so Cooking Up A Storm came out. It’s produced or created by two of the writers of The Times-Picayune which is the local newspaper there.

They actually found all these old recipes that have been published in The Times-Picayune and that readers were writing in and inquiring about, saying, “I lost my recipe books and I really want to get this recipe or that recipe.” So they published a collection of readers’ most requested recipes and I think that’s just a really great book for so many reasons.

As far as blogs, I actually just recently discovered a blog called the Acadiana Table and I have absolutely fallen in love. They have so many phenomenal Cajun recipes, just really authentic. I love the way that they do Cajun food.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

The only cooking show that I watch is actually Top Chef.

I was really stoked this year because there were two Portland chefs on it, so it’s really a fun season to watch.

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

I’m a sucker for writing, good writing on blogs, and so my favorite would probably be Cynthia of Two Red Bowls, who has really short, fun, engaging posts.

Erica of Southern Souffle, who I think her words are just super soulful and inspiring and I just really connect with her over what she usually writes.

And then Beth of Local Milk, who is known for her photography but her writing is just as beautiful and eloquent, so I definitely recommend checking those bloggers out.

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

To be honest, I’m not a huge Facebook or Pinterest person, but I am addicted to Instagram.

Some people that make me happy, I would say Martine Cooks is the handle and she’s amazing. She lives in New Orleans, she’s a photographer, and just posts the most beautiful photos with inspiring captions of things like oysters and crawfish, which I can’t get enough of.

And then probably some of my local chefs like Ian Wilson of Fenrir, post just really beautiful food all the time that’s super artistic. And Ryan Roadhouse of Nodoguro who does these most amazing Japanese-inspired dishes and I love looking at the crazy ingredients he gets flown in.

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

I don’t think I have a bunch of unusual things but I do love my cast iron skillets. I have way too many of them but they are like my little babies.

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

I have to say clams. I used to hate them and then I met a friend who–actually we met on Instagram, which is a whole, different, long story. But I told her I hated clams and she convinced me to try making them with her and so I did and they were absolutely phenomenal, so now I’m addicted.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I absolutely adore The Flavor Bible when I’m looking to create new recipes, I’m looking for inspiration on what pairs well with what. And then I think Sean Brock’s Heritage, I’m really crushing on hard right now.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I can’t really think of a song or an album. I’m more of a Pandora person, so I have my Pandora stations.

I’d say my favorite ones are probably Louis Armstrong radio, which I use on mornings if I’m baking or something. Milky Chance, which I use to cook with during the week, just like on a random week night. And then Bob Marley is my go-to for the weekends. He just kind of gets me, you know, feel loose and inspired in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted on Brooke:

Probably Instagram. I usually post at least once a day and it’s either recipe testing or ingredients that are inspiring me. I would love for people to check out Instagram and see you on there.