Culture
2 Babka 2 Furious
In this episode of 'Things Bakers Know,' hosts Jessica Badaelana and David Tomarkin dive into the world of baking, exploring the history, trends, and expert tips behind beloved baked goods. ...
2 Babka 2 Furious
Culture •
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Interactive Transcript
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I'm Jessica Badaelana, staff editor at King Arthur Baking Company.
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And I'm David Tomarkin, King Arthur's editorial director.
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And this is Things Bakers Know, a new podcast from King Arthur where we explore every corner
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of the Baking world.
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Every episode of Things Bakers Know dives deep into a different
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bake good.
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It's history and lore.
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Trends takes an opinion.
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A lot of opinions.
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And plenty of tips and tricks.
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Plus, we'll always leave time to answer your home baking questions.
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Along the way, we break red with the best bakers, historians, and restaurant
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towards America.
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And we always get their expert advice.
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So join us at King Arthur as we celebrate the wide world of baking on Things Bakers Know.
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Out now wherever you listen.
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Subscribe now so you won't miss an episode.
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Head to King Arthur Baking.com slash podcast to learn more.
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That's King Arthur Baking.com slash podcast.
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And until then, please, people, remember to follow the recipe.
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We're going to be in Nosrat.
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And I'm Rishi Kei Shereway.
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And we're home cooking.
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Kind of.
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I'm in your home after last night's event in San Francisco.
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And I guess neither of us are cooking.
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But yeah, it was the cook off.
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It was the cook off.
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Haha.
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It was the kick off for my good things book tour.
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And it was so fun and comforting to get to do it with you, Rishi.
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Yeah, last night was so nice.
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We taped the event, the conversation about your book.
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And so for this episode of Home Cooking, we're going to present that conversation.
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Thanks so much to KQED for recording it for us.
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But before we get to the actual event recording, Samina, I still have to ask you, what is the
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best thing that you've had to eat recently?
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You already know what the best thing that I ate is because you got it for me.
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I gave you a bobcat thinking we would share it like an entire loaf of bobcat.
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Yeah, where is that bobcat from?
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It's from my friends bakery, low-quat in San Francisco, and they're just extraordinary
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bakers.
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Can you actually explain what makes a bobcat a bobcat?
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A bobcat is an enriched bread, which means there's eggs added to the dough to make it richer,
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kind of like a brioche or a jala.
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And it's a braided loaf.
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I think the classic bobcat is sort of layered with cinnamon sugar, but also another classic
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flavor is chocolate, which is really decadent and delicious.
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And then all sorts of people doing all sorts of innovations these days with other spices
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and flavors.
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But it's just the yummiest dessert bread, breakfast bread.
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Did you ever watch Barry?
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No, I would like to.
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I love that show, and there's one character who at one point goes to get a bobcat for
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a party.
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And he says, you want that shit to go get a bobcat?
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Maybe two bobcat?
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It was one of those earworms where though I had never had a bobcat myself until today.
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Like I just will sometimes say, do a bobcat?
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It's kind of a nice phrase.
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Yeah, anytime I get two of anything, I'm like, do a bobcat.
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Well, I think now that you ate an entire bobcat, you understand why he ordered two.
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Oh, yeah.
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Okay, so this is...
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But I am really excited to tell you about my like best thing I've eaten recently because
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it might have been like a top five best thing in my life.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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So I got to go on vacation recently to Italy and we went to Sicily where I've never
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been before.
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And I, for probably 20 years, people have been telling me, when you go to Sicily, you
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have to go to this town called Noto and visit this pastry and gelato shop called Cafe
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Sicilia.
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And there's actually a chef's table episode about the chef Corrado Asenza.
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So we went there and there's a region in Sicily called Avala where they're just famous
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for the almonds.
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And I have to say the first time I had Sicilian almonds, I understood why almond extract and
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almond paste taste the way they do.
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Because before that, I never felt like there was a relationship between that like very
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sort of floral taste of marzipan or almond extract and actual almonds.
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I've always felt like they're two different.
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Yeah, they're very, very different.
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But then I had Sicilian almonds and they taste like almond extract.
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They're so floral and fragrant and amazing.
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And so all across the island, it's so hot there that a traditional breakfast is to have
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granita, which is kind of like shaved ice.
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Usually you have espresso granita on a brioche.
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Oh, we're both having brioche.
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On a brioche with a big dollop of whipped cream and that's what you have in the morning
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instead of drinking coffee.
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You eat espresso granita on a brioche.
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Is this not your kind of place?
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I'm a granita.
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Yes.
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I got too excited.
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I couldn't even make sense of that.
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Yeah, also because I was specifically told to order a glass of almond milk, which is
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not necessarily a thing one looks forward to anywhere else.
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Like not as a creamer or something like that.
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No, just a glass of milk to drink.
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So we got almond milk, we got almond milk, cappuccinos, we got almond milk granita.
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We got some other things too, but anything almond there was just like the most heavenly,
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fragrant otherworldly taste and it was just so crazy to understand all it had and it
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was almonds and sugar and maybe a little bit of salt.
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Like there was nothing else and it was just the purest expression of a flavor.
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It really felt like I had made a pilgrimage.
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And so if you ever get a chance to have almonds or almond milk or almond milk granita in
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Sicily, I encourage you to do that.
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Incredible.
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Okay, let's get to the live event.
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Also before we get to it, I just want to give everybody a fair warning that because it
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was your book event and I wanted to do a good job and be an appropriate interviewer,
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I did kind of go into my song, Exploder interviewer mode.
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What's an appropriate interviewer?
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Well, you know, like I want to, you put so much love and thought and heart into the
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book and I wanted to not just pepper you with silly jokes.
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I wanted to also, you know, create a circumstance where we could talk about the real heart and
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ideas of the book and that's maybe like a little bit more earnest than we kind of get
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on this show.
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Yeah, you were so generous.
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People might be shocked at how appropriate we both were.
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Hi.
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Hi everyone.
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Thank you so much.
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It's so awesome to be here at our home stage.
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Thank you for coming out.
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It means so much to us to get to spend this evening with you.
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Yeah, it means a lot to me to be here.
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Thank you so much to me for having me here.
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Thanks to all of you for coming and letting me be a part of this exciting moment in your
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life and career.
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Oh, I wouldn't have any other way.
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I mean, who else is going to torture me?
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Yeah.
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I wanted to give you a little note about how tonight's going to go.
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Normally, I feel like with the book event, the author will speak about the book and talk
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about the themes and then at the end, there'll be a Q&A.
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But as some of you might know, on our podcast home cooking, it really is about the questions
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that we get from people.
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It was a show that we started in the pandemic when people had a lot of questions about how
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to cook and what they were going to do in the new reality of lockdown.
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And it really has that format of just answering people's questions or rather some mean answering
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people's questions and me presenting them to her.
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That has become such a part of the fabric of our friendship and our relationship, other
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people sort of in the middle of the fabric between us that I thought it would be nice if
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tonight's event was built like that as well.
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So we put out a call for questions from the audience and we got so many great questions
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sent in.
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And so I'm going to weave some of those in as we're talking about some in's book rather
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than have a separate section at the end.
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And yeah, like I said, we got some great ones.
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Apologies if we don't end up getting to your question tonight.
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Thank you everybody who did send in questions.
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Before we get to any of those though, I just thought we could maybe talk a little bit
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about the process behind making this book.
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I want to go back to when you finished Salt Fat Acid Heat.
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As everybody just heard, you went basically straight from that book into making the TV
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show.
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And then you had a pretty hard reckoning, right?
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I'm just wondering if you could tell me about the moment when you decided you were going
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to make another book because I think there's certainly an option where you could have been
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like, did it retired at the top going out like this?
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Yeah, I mean, and also in the last eight years, there have been many times I wished that
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I hadn't decided to do another one.
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But at the heart of it, I'm a person who makes things, I create things, I'm so generative,
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I can't not.
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And I think riding the incredible highs of just not only the praise and attention, but
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the part where interacting with people and seeing the thing that I made make its way
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into their lives.
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That was so gratifying and amazing that I knew I wanted to do it again.
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And so in some ways, I think I may be acted a little hastily, immediately sort of selling
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another book proposal and saying I would do it again.
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Because I think for me, I'm very slow.
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It's been eight years since Salt Fat Acid Heat was published.
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I need downtime and quiet to figure out what I'm going to say next.
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And certainly, I had the idea for Salt Fat when I was 19 or 20 and the book came out when
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I was 37.
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So the next one will be four years from now.
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Yeah.
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You're doubling your rate every single day.
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Yeah, that's true.
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I'm going a lot faster, yeah.
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But that was in my head becoming a thing for so long.
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It was my whole life was moving toward Salt Fat Acid Heat in a way that I could visualize
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what I was making.
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I always knew what it would look like.
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And with this one, that's not been true at all.
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And that's been a source of a lot of agony for me.
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At first, I proposed a completely different book that was much more ambitious, was kind
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of like a sister to Salt Fat in that it was another philosophical tone.
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And within a year, I kind of realized it would take me another 20 years to do that.
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And I just, I kind of melted under the pressure of it.
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And they said, it's okay, just figure out what you want to do and do that.
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And so it took me some time and a lot of writing and unwriting to get here.
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And along the way, you know, there was just a lot I was going through in my personal
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life.
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And also, it just, my own internal search for meaning and the role of cooking inside
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of that.
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Wondering if you could articulate what are the things about good things that are similar
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to Salt Fat as he and what are the ways in which it's different?
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What's similar first is me.
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I just mean my voice, like at the root of it, I'm a teacher.
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I want to share the things that make me excited, the things that I'm curious about.
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My goal in talking about cooking and food on the page is always to invite you in and
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to make it feel possible.
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And even though at many times I was like, I'm not going to complicate this.
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I'm going to keep it real simple.
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Of course, I complicated it for myself.
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Ideally, it's quite simple for you still.
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But that involves a lot of thinking, structural work, organizational work, and trying to figure
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out how to connect dots.
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So at its heart, Salt Fat as adheet is like a very intense distillation of my understanding
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of all cooking down to these four elements.
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And while this is not quite as distilled, the biggest chapter by far is the vegetable chapter.
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I love vegetables so much at the heart of my cooking.
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And I probably labored for about two years to figure out how to structure that so that
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I could give you the broadest possible understanding of how to use any vegetable.
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And so you'll recognize the kind of flow charts and matrices and that kind of visual explanation
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that we did in Salt Fat as adheet with Wendy McNaughton, who I believe is here.
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Her incredible illustrations.
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And so I tried to honor Wendy and everything that she taught me about organizational thinking
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in some of the flow charts in this book.
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So yeah, it's a little bit of like specifics and a little bit of generalities.
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So that's what's similar.
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But what's different is also me.
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I'm much more present in this book.
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It's a very personal book.
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It's very much a document of my life and my cooking in this time.
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And my home, you know, we shot all of the photos in my home, my neighbor, the wonderful
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photographer, I a bracket who lives 40 feet from me.
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She's amazing.
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She shot the photos in our like shared sort of, we live together sort of on a shared courtyard,
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not exactly at Compound, but she's very familiar.
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We've known each other almost 25 years.
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And so she knows me and I feel like that comes across in the photos.
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It's my stuff.
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We didn't rent props, you know, like they do a lot of times for photoshoots and things.
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It's really an accurate picture of my life and my cooking.
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And that feels really good.
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It feels nice to get to share that.
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I don't know if you did that intentionally.
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The thing that's similar about this book is me and the thing that's different about this book is me.
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I didn't.
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Yeah.
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Well, I wanted to also ask you a little bit about the systems thinking around just the structure of the book.
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How do you decide what's going to be the first thing that you're going to present in the book?
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And what is the first thing that you present in the book?
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I don't remember.
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Do you mean like the introduction?
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I mean the title page, the things that you can
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block out this later.
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You know, the stuff that you know that people can use then later for the recipes.
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Oh, my first chapter.
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I was chosen to moderate this because of our communication,
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rapport.
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I don't know.
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First, strictly, it's unrelative.
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Yeah, yeah.
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All right.
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So the book is called Good Things, which is a nod to a Raymond Carver quote, which is the epigraph.
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And the line is eating is a small good thing at a time like this, which really has become
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sort of a line that I've come back to over and over again.
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And I do believe in a way that represents the way that food is a source of meaning in my life.
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Food and cooking and eating together.
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So much of my cooking life, I was obsessed with what was on the table.
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And very much now, I would say, my focus has shifted to who's around the table.
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And I care a lot less about what's on the table.
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And so it's nice that what's on the table is an excuse for us to come together,
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but what's important is that we're together.
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And that that can be a source of comfort in a time like this.
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And the thing is, it's always a time like this.
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There's always something hard going on for somebody, whether it's yourself or somebody
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around you. And that this, if we just shift our mindset a little bit, can be this opportunity each
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day for connection. So once I realized how valuable that quote was, I thought, maybe I'll name the book
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a small good thing in honor of this quote. And then I thought, well, I knew it was going to be a big
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book, so that wasn't going to work. And then, and then I thought, maybe I'll call it small good
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things, like a collection of all the small good things. But then I knew that wouldn't pass through
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the marketing because they'd think it was top as recipes. And so I was like, okay, good things.
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And so I fell asleep and the next morning I woke up and I was like, oh, good things,
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good things, all good things must come to an end. And then I was like, good things come in
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threes, good things come in small packages. And I was like, there we go. Like, I see now my chapter
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titles. I see how I'm going to organize this book. It took me a long time and a lot of internal
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struggle to decide to write a book of recipes, which felt initially like being disloyal to myself
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and to my readership when I've written a whole other book teaching you how to cook without recipes.
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And also in the meantime, in the last eight years, I've written a lot of recipes, mostly for
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New York Times cooking. And that's been kind of a boot camp. I feel I've gotten a lot better at it.
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When I interact with people on the street or people communicate with me, they don't say like,
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I mean, sometimes they say salt fat acid. He taught me how to cook. It changed my life. But
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also they say, wow, I love that chicken. Wow, I love that focaccia. And so I've come to understand
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the recipe is a tool and it serves people. So even if I struggle with it, I want to offer the
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thing that will be the most useful. So once I decided to write a book of recipes, I was still being
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quite stubborn. And I was like, well, it's not going to look like every other cookbook. It's not
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a chapter deserves. And literally I ended up four years later with a chapter of salads and
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a chapter of desserts. But I had to get there my own way, which was through this award play.
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And then the first of those good things is good things come in small packages, which is what
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Rishi was trying to get me to. So yeah, can you talk a little bit about that first chapter?
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Yeah, I mean, so. Okay, I see it's all of you making fun of me. Okay.
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Finally. So I eat very simply at home is the truth. Like I have quite what I think is quite a boring
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diet. I could probably exist on quesadillas alone for the rest of my life. I always have the
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rice cooker going. I eat a lot of rice, some boiled vegetables, roasted vegetables, a fried egg,
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maybe a little chicken thigh. And then really what makes my food exciting is the condiments, some of
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which are store bought and some of which are homemade. And truly that's what turns like the bowl of
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rice. It makes it new again. It's not always the same bowl of rice because I might have garlic and
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oreblabin on at one night. And I might have chili crisps on at the next night. So nights I might
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have both. So the small packages refer to all the jars and containers in which you can store all
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of these condiments, which I want to teach you how to make. What made you decide to start the book
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that way? Because you know, I think you could easily imagine someone talking about those kinds of
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things almost like an afterthought. In a lot of ways, there are components that appear again later
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in the book. So that was I wanted to sort of set the stage with it. So I had introduced you to
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the preserved lemon paste that I refer to a million times. Or the green sauce, which is just sort of
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the very simple name I ended up with for an herb salsa or a salsa verde. Because I do refer to
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these components because it is truly a reflection of how I eat at home and how I cook for other
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people and with other people. And so these are those simple building blocks that make that possible.
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Awesome. I want to turn to a question that we got from Lexi.
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I mean, and wish you this is Lexi from Oakland. What kinds of things are just better when you make them
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from scratch and keep in your fridge in pantry rather than get store bought? We've really simply
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been experimenting with making my own chicken broth. Awesome. And soaking and cooking my own beans.
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And I just want to know what other pantry and fridge essentials are just so much better when
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you make them from home. But I'm specifically talking about low skill, high delicious kind of
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recipes. Something you can just make over a Sunday morning with a cup of tea and you know, your
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favorite aloe bling. Thank you. Awesome. Very good. I see what you were doing now. Really good job.
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Richie. I see you. Thank you, Lexi, for that question. Speaking for all of us in the low skill corner
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of the room. Yeah. Well, also like I know that your wife is an amazing sort of fridge stalker.
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So what are some of the things in your fridge? Well, right now actually courtesy of Samine,
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we have a mason jar of the green tahini dressing. And as good students of Samines, that just goes
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on all kinds of things. Sometimes, you know, like we'll be making pasta and we'll have a little salad
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with it and we'll use it as salad dressing. Sometimes it goes on some rice. Sometimes it just goes on
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some veggies. Yeah. That one's a really good one. But she's higher skill. She has higher skills.
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Okay, so let's go back to her rudimentary. Yes. So I do think that the green sauce, which I,
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again, like a lot of what's ended up in this book is a reflection of the fact that in my cooking
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career, I would say the arc of my cooking career has been a little bit upside down or inside out.
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I don't know. Maybe inverted because I grew up a kid in a house where my mom was cooking. She taught
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me how to make scrambled eggs, tuna salad. I don't know. Toast. English muffin pizza. I went to
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college where I really got very good at English muffin pizza. And then next thing I knew I was in
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this world-class kitchen at Shae Penis. And so I was learning how to make every single thing from
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scratch at the highest level. And that was how I spent my whole twenties and most of my thirties
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was always cooking at this incredibly high standard professionally and not very often at home,
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honestly. And since I've really moved away from restaurant life and now I spend so much more time
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in my own home and in friends homes who are not food professionals, I've just understood,
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oh my god, like I don't have to be holding myself to these crazy standards on a daily basis.
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Because often what ends up happening is I know what's possible. And so I'm disappointed by my own
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reality because it's not always the farmer's market freshest thing or the finest ingredients from
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the imported food market because I don't have the energy to go get it. Or also when I cook with
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friends at this previously mentioned Monday dinner, that's been a great lesson for me because
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people with kids, they have other priorities. And so even if you love food, which we all do at
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Monday dinner, still sometimes you're just running to the corner store to get the sour cream
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and the grated cheese. And still do I remember the quality of the cheese in the sour cream? Or do I
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remember that we had a great meal? I remember that we had a great meal. And so that's just, I've shifted,
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I've loosened up a little bit. And I think that's reflected. And so there's a whole part in
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Salt Fadass ade. Like in three different ways I teach you how to make mayonnaise by hand. There's
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a recipe by Wendy of whisking. There's my narrative explanation and then there's a written recipe.
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And then in this book I literally use an immersion blender for everything. You know, it's my favorite
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tool. So I have just sort of become more of a home cook and that is reflected. And so instead of
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saying you have to chop all your herbs and cover them in this way and do it in this order, I'm like
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dump everything into a thing and use your immersion blender or your blender to make the sauce.
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And guess what? Like of people who've already received the book, the green sauce is one of like the
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things people have said I put that on everything. I will never not have it in my fridge. So things like
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that, the dressings that are a different chapter, I always have jars of dressing in the fridge
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because it just makes it so much easier and it more exciting to eat salad. There is a little bit
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of a high effort thing which is the chili crisp which is definitely a weekend project. But that
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one again, I make it once or twice a year and I eat it all year long. So yeah. Yeah. If you were to
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imagine, you know, the lowest effort, highest yield thing that really surpasses the store bought version.
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It's what in this book I named house dressing, which is taken from Via Corota, which is one of my
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favorite restaurants in New York in the West Village. And I love their green salad so much that I
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wrote an entire column about it at the New York Times. And somehow I did not name as writers don't
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often put their headlines on their own pieces in newspapers and magazines. So some brilliant person
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called it the best green salad in the world or something. So then it went viral. And I'm like, wow,
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I took green salad viral. Like I feel pretty good about that. And it is at this point still one of my
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highest rated and most beloved recipes. And it really has changed sort of my own relationship to
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salad dressing. And many of my cooking friends, some of whom are here tonight actually, like who were
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professional cooks, they're the ones who named it house dressing because they kind of jokingly always
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have it in the kitchen so that they can serve it to the people they're cooking for. What makes that
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dressing so good that it gets that title? Why is it so much better than other dressings?
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I think they're very specific about the vinegar. It's a cherry vinegar. They dilute the vinegar
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with a little bit of warm water. But also what I think makes that dressing really good is it has
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a little bit of honey or maple syrup or sugar in it. And so there's just this tiny, tiny hint of
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sweetness that sort of balances any harshness that might be in there. And also you have to use good
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olive oil. But it just it's like even the other day I made it for a cooking class I was doing online.
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And you know kid walked by afterward and ate it and she was like, man this is good salad.
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Like I'm like if you can get kids to be excited about salad, it's a good dressing. Yeah.
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Yeah. Can I digress about via crota for a second? Of course. So I went there after you told me how
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good the salad was when I was in New York one time and I went there specifically to get the salad.
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And I got the salad but it was like to get the reservation is tough. So I got there at a strange
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time when I had basically already had to eat lunch. Oh you had to pre-eat. Yeah but I was like that's
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fine. I'm just going to have a salad. And then I did have the salad but I was a little bit hungry
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than that. I also thought I was being very virtuous by having a salad. So the other thing that I got
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was their French fries. Have you had their French fries? Oh. Their French fries are the sort of
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shoestring fry that is so thin that the only rational way to eat it really is by having about
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just jamming our handful into your mouth. 400 at a time. Salad in French fries. That's a good dinner.
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Yeah. I felt like I had the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Yeah. It was great.
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But if anybody does go to via crota for the salad I also recommend shoving 400 fries in your
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excellence. I would like to go back to your Monday night dinner and the thing that you said about how
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what was on the table for this book started to matter a little bit less to you than who was
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around the table. And I think you wrote about this really beautifully and I was wondering if you
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would read from the page that I've bookmarked there for you. Yes. This is a chapter called Good Things
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Are Better Shared. Several years ago my friend Greta Coruso began having friends over to her
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apartment in New York City every Sunday night for dinner. Even though she's a wonderful cook,
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the dinners were never extravagant. Instead each was an occasion for Greta to reconnect with close
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friends and a way for her to anchor her week. At the time I visited New York often for work.
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The dinners were so special that I started planning my trips around them. At Greta's table I
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witnessed whims evolve into traditions. I watched my friend take pleasure in creating beauty as she
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set the table with her favorite vintage linens, candlesticks, and flower arrangements.
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Each week when the bowl of Castell Vettrono olives appeared we'd all instinctively put our
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phones down. Not because Greta had decreed it but because it felt so nice to be together for a
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few hours no matter what was happening in the outside world. I've spent my entire adult life
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gathering at rowdy tables for delicious meals but something about those Sunday dinners was different.
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Greta's focus was less about what was on the table and more on who was around it.
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Though I sat there dozens of times I could probably tell you only a couple of things we ate.
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Yet I can recall scores of jokes and stories and all the times I was kicked under the table for
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being dense. I remember the buzzy thrill of being introduced to new romantic partners and the
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heaviness of consoling grieving friends. The deep sense of friendship and community I felt at
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Greta's dinners made me want to create a similar ritual for myself. At the time my career was shifting,
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I was traveling constantly and felt unmoored in my own life. Though I'd been cooking for decades by
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then it was rarely in such a casual communal way for the people closest and most important to me.
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And something about that felt wrong. I made many excuses for it over the years but the one I relied
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on most was this. My apartment was too small for a proper dining table. Where would people sit?
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How could I host a weekly dinner without a table? On one level I knew this was irrational.
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I've always encouraged others to think more expansively about space and let go of convention.
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Sit on the floor I'd declare, sit on the couch, eat at the coffee table and yet I couldn't do it myself.
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My own hypocrisy weighed on me. At any rate I wasn't home. I was out in the world filming and
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then promoting a documentary series on book and speaking tours, out-reporting my column in the New
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York Times magazine. I didn't have time to institute any sort of ritual. And if I did, would my friends
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even come? I turned these thoughts over in my mind until exhausted I stopped traveling so much.
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I moved out of the tiny apartment into a hand-built house in Oakland with its own little dining area.
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The first thing I did after unpacking was a commission or woodworker friend to build me a table.
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Finally I thought I'd make my own Sunday dinners happen. But the pandemic shut down the world
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the week after the table arrived. It didn't help that I'd also begin to descend into an abyss of
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depression. Sitting by myself at my gorgeous table in my beautiful home I examined my life.
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What good was everything I'd achieved if I felt so unbearably sad and alone?
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One morning a year and a half later I was testing a recipe at home. I'd been working on a
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pork braise inspired by tacos al pastor. But whether I was depressed, unqualified, or the task
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itself was impossible, I kept failing miserably. And with each failure I grew sadder and more unsure
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of myself. My friend Sarah texted me to see if I was up for a visit. We'd known each other for
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more than 10 years. We were the kind of friends usually brought together by an outside force rather
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than of our own volition. She was at the farmer's market nearby with her kids who wanted to come see my
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pup Fava. Of course I responded. I'm just here ruining some pork. While the kids played with Fava
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in the yard Sarah asked what was wrong. I don't know I said I just can't get this braise right. It's
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haunting me. And to make matters worse I'll be stuck with six pounds of braise pork to eat by myself.
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Well will help you eat it she offered with a coy smile. Maybe it's because I was feeling so low
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at the time or so deprived of casual gatherings that didn't require complicated arrangements and
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COVID tests. But I was so lonely in starved for connection that I received Sarah's casual offer
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like a vile of life saving elixir. When I quickly asked worried that she might recant.
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How about Tuesday at our house Sarah proposed. Two days later I arrived at her door
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pork in hand. We shredded it into a dinner of tacos for which everyone was grateful. No one
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as much as me. The braise may not have been a major culinary achievement but it did just fine for
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dinner on a Tuesday night in Oakland. It was so natural and nice to be together that as the
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evening ended we all wondered should we do it again next Tuesday. We've continued gathering weekly
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ever since though Monday nights eventually became our standing date. It took nearly eight months
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of Monday dinners for me to realize I'd inadvertently built the ritual I'd so craved. It just looks
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different than I'd initially imagined. At our Monday dinners I've learned how to share both
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responsibility and credit. I've learned that if I let other people care for me they will. I've
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learned how it feels to build something sacred with people I love. We'll often say only half joking
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that Monday dinner is our religion. And while everyone in our group loves to cook and eat
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no one person not even me directs the menus or does all of the cooking. Sure sometimes I have a
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recipe or two I want to test and share but other people's desires interests and constraints also
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influence what we eat. When we can we take advantage of our many hands and make dumplings to Molly's
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Reveoli or another labor intensive assembly line dish. And when I encounter a special occasion
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ingredient while shopping a perfect side of wild salmon say or first of the season crab I snag it
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for us. Because while Monday dinner isn't a dinner party it is a special occasion. Four years in
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this ritual and the community that sustains it are at the heart of my life. These friends have taught
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me what it means to belong. And I've finally found the sense of meaning in cooking and in life
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that I've sought for so long. It brings me indescribable joy to share food with my Monday dinner
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family. Whenever I nail a new recipe or stumble upon a cache of ripe fruit I immediately begin
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planning how to incorporate it into our next meal. But this isn't to say that we always make fancy
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or complicated food. When it's hot we pull out the kitty pool and eat hot dogs and popsicles.
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When we're too tired to cook we'll order empanadas or pizza and throw together a salad.
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What we eat together matters far less than the fact that we eat together. So in the spirit of Monday
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dinner this chapter is a compilation of dishes best shared with others. Whether for the amounts
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they yield the time and effort they require or the communal pleasure they offer.
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And I got to call out that Monday dinner family is here in the audience tonight.
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So isn't that so nice? If you think everybody here is getting a copy of this book and I'm sure
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you were probably excited to get it anyway. But I don't know after hearing that like for me this is
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what makes this book so special. And I think of that bit as the centerpiece of the ideas of the book
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and it's so beautifully told and I really love it. Thank you so much for reading. Thank you, Rishi.
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Thanks everyone.
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Not only are we back with a new season of episodes we've also got brand new home cooking merch.
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We finally put our tomato can home cooking logo on a shirt. You can get it as a t-shirt or a
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sweatshirt or a tank top or even a onesie for little baby home cooks. Plus there's a tote bag with
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the drawing of the round salt can thing that has some mean and myself and our dogs Fava bean and
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Watson on it. It is the pinnacle of tote bags and there is a pun in there if you think about how
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pinnacle spelled. There's also a special shirt in honor of our special recurring guest,
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the man with hot takes and a surprisingly high pitched giggle my dad known to Simeen and all
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my close friends as Simeischenko. He has his own shirt that says team Simeischenko featuring
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three little jars of saffron and he undoubtedly has very strong opinions about their color and flavor.
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And of course there's also still the OG sweatshirt with the drawing of the can of sardines
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and the inexplicable shrimp jenga forever shirt and all of this stuff was illustrated by our
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wonderful Mamie Ryan gold and all of it is available at homecooking.show slash merch. Again it's
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homecooking.show slash merch.
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If you're a fan of homecooking and the way it's all put together but like me you wish it had
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a little less Rishi in it. Let me recommend Rishi's other podcast the brilliant and magical song
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exploder. Rishi is the host but he cuts himself entirely out of the interviews he does with amazing
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musicians like Janelle Monet, Robin, Fleetwood Mac, you two and more. So you just hear them talking
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about the creative process behind the making of one of their songs. I was actually a fan of
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song exploder way before Rishi and I became friends. Two of my favorite episodes are the ones with
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Salange and Sylvan Essow. The show is so carefully and thoughtfully made and it's just really
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inspiring for anyone who creates things. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
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I think the pandemic is still close enough in the review too that we don't take gathering
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for granted. I'm so grateful that we get to do this event and that everybody gets to be here.
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And I thought in the spirit of what you just read and your Monday Night Dinner crew,
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I put together this set of questions about cooking for groups and I thought what better way to
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present them than as a group. Hi Rishi Keshe and Samine. My name is Kelsey Shio Pronouns and I live
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in Oakland. Every Monday night I have dinner with a group of housemates and friends and sometimes
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guests. Hi Samine. Hi Rishi. My name is Laura and I am part of a terrific group of friends who has
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a stand-in Friday night dinner. My name is Alyssa. My close friends and I have decided to do
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collective dinners. Hi Samine and Rishi. This is Sarah from Concord, California. So one thing that my
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family really likes to do with friends and with families that we're hoping to condense to be our
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friends is to have a little room for dinner. We want to have one of our upcoming dinners
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themed around good things. What menu of dishes and a dessert with a two-view recommend for five-date
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people? Oh and I forgot to say that there is some dietary restriction. Something but not a ton.
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There are a few folks who are gluten free and we would love to hear your ideas for us. Thank you.
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Oh my god! It's so beautiful. And those are all people who I believe are here in the audience
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tonight. Oh you guys! That's amazing! Wait was there another dietary restriction besides
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gluten free? Well there's a bunch of dietary restrictions. They all listed all of the dietary
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restrictions that they've frankly too many to list but I thought it was a good thing to keep in mind
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when you do have to cook for big groups. You have the general principle of people have dietary
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restrictions. Totally. And so I think the spirit of all of those questions was really like how do
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you do that? What do you think about? But also I really loved this idea of designing a menu for a
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group of people out of things from good things. Yeah I love that so much. This is I'm like there's
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tears just right there. So okay, guide me. Is it more important for me in this answer to come up with
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the cohesive dinner menu or is it more important to come up with like the types of things that would
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work for groups and or people with dietary restrictions? Speaking personally what I would like
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to hear most. Okay. One cohesive menu. I want to know I want you to take me through course by course
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we're going to start here. Okay. Then you're going to make this then we're going to have this
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then we're going to head with this. Okay. All right so to me I also read about this in the book that
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something has shifted in me as a person who cooks for other people and sometimes hosts and
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sometimes co-hosts other people which is historically I've always felt like the way to show my love
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is by doing everything and kind of being like a Tasmanian devil you know no no no no no don't get
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up like I'm going to wash all the dishes and that that in some way is allowing everyone else to
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have a nice time and I've realized that that actually stresses everyone out including me
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and so I'm trying to do less and in that I'm generally thinking of like the simplest possible
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things to offer to people because like I say it's not about like dazzling you know this kind of
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thing especially in order to create a ritual that continues it can't kill you every week so one
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of my favorite things to make when people come over is popcorn I was eating popcorn during our
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sound check and the popcorn in the book is I call it my forever popcorn because I will never make
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it another way but it's very much influenced by the Bjorn corn which I consider to be a perfect
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snack and I ate many bags of Bjorn corn before I realized part of the reason why it's so good
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is that they grind the nutritional yeast and the salt in a grinder until it's a very fine powder
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and then they mix the popcorn with like massive amounts of it so the popcorn's totally coated because
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normally if you just add nutritional yeast to your popcorn you eat all your popcorn and then all
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the nutritional yeast is at the bottom of the bowl with some butter yeah let me just interrupt you
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for a second here because okay you're gonna make popcorn but I feel like you have
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jumped the ahead into a knowledge that maybe not everybody has which is that popcorn is better with
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nutritional yeast oh yes popcorn is very good with nutritional yeast why it's just like delicious umami
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cheesy flavor also it's vegan friendly also popcorn is vegan I like making it with coconut oil or a
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mixture of coconut oil and like sunflower oil you can add butter or not but I actually don't think
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you always need to add butter I think it's like in some ways if you don't add butter and you add
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just the right amount of oil when you're popping it the nutritional yeast sticks perfectly to it
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and then you you don't get the like cheese fingers which nothing gets cheese fingers but
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so the key is to grind the yeast and then I've created what I call the two bowl method
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so you put your popcorn and all the toppings in one bowl you put a second bowl on top and you shake
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until like there's just a cloud of nutritional yeast in the air and that's how you know you used
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enough and then it just is all coated and so delicious so like a big bowl of popcorn I think is a
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really fun and inviting way to start a meal and then I don't know I kind of like meals where
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you're not having to get up a bunch of times so you can kind of bring everything to the table
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and one of my favorite ways to eat is many salads so for example like you could have a hearty
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bean salad that had say house dressing on it and you know macerated onions and herbs whatever
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vegetables are in season whether that's tomatoes and cucumbers or bits of broccoli just a really
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like hearty delicious bean salad if dietary restrictions allowed for it maybe I'd put big crumbles
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of goat cheese or feta cheese in there and then something where you don't have to get up so maybe
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a side of slow roasted salmon people can add that to their salad if they wanted to I would have a
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big green salad it's nice to have a second salad and then I would have other condiments that you've
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already made because you thought ahead so you have your green sauce and your labne and your chili
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crisp and you just pull them out from your fridge you have a nice warm loaf of bread there's like the
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most extravagant and wonderful meal for people it's so awesome and then for dessert what do you
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want for dessert Rishi oh you want cookies obviously Rishi loves chargers of cookies so much but
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again I would make a dessert that's like made ahead in advance and not like something you have to
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really worry too much about so one of my favorite ones from the book is a delicious like flan or
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there's also a burnt honey ice box cake and it's inspired by the wonderful Michelle Polzine the
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pastry chef her famous burnt honey Russian honey cake amazing 20 layer cake which I wrote about
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at one point for the New York Times and it took me like days to test it because you have to bake
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every layer of the cake separately and then you make this amazing burnt honey dulce de leche frosting
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and you layer the whole thing and you let it sit for a day and it's so awesome but it was so much work
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I've never made it again and so actually one of our Monday dinner friends one day I said I don't
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know why you wouldn't just make that with graham crackers and I was like oh my god so I asked Michelle if
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I could adapt her recipe and I adapted it with graham crackers into an ice box cake and it's so easy
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and it's so good so that's probably what I'd make for dessert yeah that sounds great
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in your capacity as a teacher and as a provider of recipes I think that what's so nice about
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this book and everything that you talked about so far and you talk about in greater detail in the
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book itself is this idea of lowering the stakes for home cooks and it almost feels like in every
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recipe in this book there's an invisible like step a zero that you've put in which is don't stress
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yeah and then all the other steps yeah that's as much for me as it is for you I think so much of what
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I had to do for myself during the making of the book was reassure myself that things that I thought
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were so simple that didn't require a recipe were worth mentioning like one of them that we talked
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about recently was something I call kid cruditez which I learned about from my neighbor Ia who shot
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the book I was over at her house one night and she was just trying to get her kids to eat some vegetables
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and she like cut up some carrot and cucumber sticks and drizzled a little season rice of vinegar
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and some flaky salt on top and we started eating them and I was like these are the best cruditez I've
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ever had and I am like a person who has spent my life making very beautiful crudite platters
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in the tradition of Alice Waters for people up and down the world and this was so delicious
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that I was like I'm never making this any other way and also I was like how am I going to write
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that down like carrot sticks cucumber sticks salt rice vinegar it seems insane so yeah it is
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insane so I didn't write that as a classic recipe I wrote it in a different format with a story
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to sort of say this is this thing I do all the time think about doing that all the time but I had
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to really like trust myself that other people would find that worth including because if you open
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up the internet or if you open up other cookbooks or magazines so much of it is filled with like
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glossy you know dazzling sort of attempts to recreate what's happening at a restaurant at home
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and that's not what I do and that's not what this was and I really doubted that it would be what
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people wanted but I think in some ways maybe hearing that that's the kind of encouragement I have
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to give to myself and I'm always telling myself less is okay that maybe hearing that from me will
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become hurting to you so yeah there are things like the cruditeis they're presented in story form
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the recipes take all kinds of forms in the book but there are also very traditional recipes
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and all of the recipes in your book I know went through hardcore testing trying to both
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ensure that the results are consistent but also that they're comprehensible for people who are
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going to read them given all of that effort that you put into making this thing where you do have
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some result in mind what are your feelings when you hear someone say I made your recipe but I
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changed it I did this thing instead of this thing or I how do you feel about that way I actually feel
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in general that's my hope for you my hope is that I've written it in such a way that it's clear to
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you upon reading what is crucial to know which is often like sensory cues like smells browning
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you know crackling sounds things like that and often the way I write it is very loose to say you
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can use this herb or that herb you can do this or this so I actually am stoked when people change
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stuff what I don't like is when they're like I changed 90% of the things and this recipe sucks and
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I'm like wow I don't know what to tell you like you know so I actually tried to test with a lot of
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that flexibility in mind with a lot of availability geographical availability of ingredients in mind
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my testers are not here in the Bay Area which is literally the easiest place to get any ingredient
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you ever wanted so I very intentionally make sure it's achievable and I do feel very much a
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responsibility that if you follow my recipe to the letter and it doesn't work that's my fault
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I did something wrong I didn't communicate something essential to you but if you're taking like
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an extraordinary amount of liberties then the responsibility shifts yeah not to rub salt fat
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acid heat into the wound but here's a question from Mandy hi Sunin and Rishi this is Mandy from
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Berkeley California my local grocery store sells a delicious curry tofu salad with currents and
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cashews my girlfriend wanted to recreate this but she's chicken and she didn't have currents
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so she used dried blueberries and I was gonna make the same recipe but I didn't want to separate
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my cashews out of my sort of nut mix so I just use almonds so the cashew tofu current salad
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became an almond chicken blueberry salad so let's not be thinking what are your hot tips for
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making substitutions in recipes without completely changing the identity of the dish actually
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into that one that when I feel like kind of I would feel like almost everything except the blueberry
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doesn't sell blueberries are so sweet do you that's one where I'm like I don't know but all the other
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parts I feel I could work I was appreciating Mandy's question and had a thought about it and then she
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emailed again oh with the follow up echoing what was already in my head which is that there's like a
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ship of theses metaphor in substitutions where like eventually you can substitute every single part
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out and make a completely different dish so you end up with a tofu blueberry dish instead of
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that's amazing based on the chicken it's like kind of incredible so what is the most flexible dish
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or recipe in good things that you can think of where people can change a lot and they won't make you
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upset well I actually feel like I did my best to like create rubrics for this in the vegetable chapter
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there are multiple matrices meant to encourage sort of expansive thinking and so we took pictures
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of specific dishes that I made with the different elements here's one actually that I think I even
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put in the title oh I had to change the title to make it fit but it used to be creamy one pot pasta
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with ricotta and any vegetable and then in order to make it fit on one page I had to change the
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format so now it's called creamy one pot pasta with ricotta and peas like I had to create a
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base one but then there's a gazillion variations this recipe is endlessly adaptable substitute any
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of these vegetables for the peas but at the base of the recipe is pasta and ricotta so I think if
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you took out the pasta and the ricotta that one's on you yeah like could you make it with rice and ricotta
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you could I don't know what that would be but yeah I would like to encourage everyone to try and
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break yes I actually encourage that too because I think that's also where good new things come
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from but this is also a very funny trope I make a practice of not looking at comments on the
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internet especially in New York Times cooking recipes because that is like so painful actually
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I'm kind of a hypocrite because I never look at the comments on my recipes
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because my fragile ego can't handle it but I always consult the comments when I'm looking for
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someone else's recipe but often it's truly a trope that you get like three down and someone's
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like well I'm a vegan or I only use margarine or I did this this and this and this thing turned out
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horribly so I don't know man yeah we got this question that I love and I was also curious about
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hi Samina Rishi my name's a partner I have a question for Samina about the cookbook and curious
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if there is a recipe you really wanted to put in there but couldn't and what is that recipe
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and Rishi I have a question for you if you had a cookbook what would it be called thanks so much
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oh you go first it's very nice to include me absolutely not that surprised when you're the one who
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I question for the audience for me oh god okay let me think about this this is the look at Rishi
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gets on his face when a pond is coming and it's really really painful no I mean I this one came
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just today so I didn't have a lot of time to think about it but I was thinking that you know as
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living in a vegan household as I do a lot of times a lot of sort of vegan food is like a
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delivery method for condiments the veggie patty or the veggie burger sweet potato it's just like
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you can switch the brands or whatever but essentially it's really about what else
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goes on it and I think it would be nice to have a book that's only for the ways that you might
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dress your burgers like all the different things because I love when I go to a restaurant and they
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have like you know all these different burgers where you can get like the mushroom Swiss burger and
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California burgers but they're all like beef burgers so I thought it would be nice to have could
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you have a cookbook that's just all the ways to do the veggie burgers and then you could call it
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only burgers in the building they liked it
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okay what's the recipe that you
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what's your recipe you would have you would have liked it but that we had to cut for a variety of
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reasons space was one sometimes a lot of my food is brown so it doesn't like photograph that well
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so there were things that I thought maybe I just couldn't include because they were ugly
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on behalf of your food I'm so excited actually and one of the ones that got cut that is really
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good and I still make all the time is I got really into ground turkey speaking of burgers and so
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I was like oh how do I just make like a turkey burger or a little turkey patty just like as
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moist as possible and I was trying all these different things and at one point I was like oh wow
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like let me try grating some zucchini into it because zucchini is just all water basically
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so I did that and I added soy sauce and toasted sesame oil and ginger and garlic and it kind of had
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this like Korean-ish flavor and you could eat it on a little bun with gochujang and kimchi and I
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brought them over to Monday dinner and I was so proud I was like I really nailed this guys
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and Sarah took one look at it and she's like oh it's just like otolenguys iconic turkey and zucchini
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meatballs so I actually did keep that one in with that story saying like I tried but in the end it
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didn't make the cut but it's a good one I highly recommend otolenguys turkey a chicken in
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the bowl it's yeah I'm glad that happens in other mediums I mean there's so many times when you
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write a song and you work so hard on it and you're like oh and the melody it just came to me it's
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so catchy you're like oh god I'm a genius and then you wake up the next day and you're like oh
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that's a good song yeah yeah we have this wonderful question that we got that I'm very excited
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this is the one question that I did tell you about beforehand a little bit oh a little bit
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I tried to keep the questions in home cooking and for these events try to keep them a secret from
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Simeon but she needed a little bit of preparation I have no game face so I like can't pretend
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so I got to be surprised on stage I was trying to structure this as you know the beginning of the book
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and end with the end of the book you saw how the first part of that one we'll see how this goes
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but here's a really lovely question we got this is Maria I was talking to my friend Lauren
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who should be an audience of me and San Francisco on Saturday about an episode where you had a
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question from David in Chicago who had a two kilogram jaw of Margino jays and Simeon
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or the Paul called refrigerator in a nineteen fifty-seven I think about that episode a lot and it
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converted me to the Sardo jays I was wondering if you could share with us another poem about food
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that you really love hmm when a lovely question that poem refrigerator nineteen fifty-seven is by Thomas
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Luxe one of my favorite poets and that is probably my all-time favorite food poem I asked I mean if
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there was another food poem that she loved and she said yes in fact there's a poem that I was
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considering ending the book with yeah this is one of my favorite poems I actually have it printed
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and pasted right behind my computer and it's called perhaps the world ends here it's by Joy
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Harjo our former poet laureate and it's so beautiful and in so many ways it captures
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how I feel about cooking and the feeling that I wanted to convey in this book the world begins at
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a kitchen table no matter what we must eat to live the gifts of earth are brought and prepared
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set on the table so it has been since creation and it will go on we chase chickens or dogs away from it
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babies teeth at the corners they scrape their knees under it it is here that children are given
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instructions on what it means to be human we make men at it we make women at this table we gossip
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recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms
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around our children they laugh with us at our poor falling down selves and as we put ourselves
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back together once again at the table this table has been a house in the rain an umbrella in the sun
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wars have begun and ended at this table it is a place to hide in the shadow of terror
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a place to celebrate the terrible victory we have given birth on this table and have prepared
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our parents for burial here at this table we sing with joy with sorrow we pray of suffering and
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remorse we give thanks perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table while we are laughing and crying
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eating of the last sweet bite thank you all so much thank you
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well that's it for this episode thank you so much for listening to this special live one and
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we're gonna have more of these soon because we're doing a bunch more of these events i'm really
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grateful that you came to do this event with me and that we're gonna do so many more and
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just like always home cooking is made by us with help from Mary Dolan Amalia merino and
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Zach McNeeds and Mamie Rangold does our original episode art we're proud member of Radio Topia
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from PRX a collective of independent listener supported artist-owned podcasts you can learn
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more about our shows at radiotopia.fm you can find recipes transcribes and resources at homecooking.show
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or shrimpjenga.com and we also have new merch at homecooking.show slash merch including a team
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summation uncle sweatshirt. Also order some means book if you haven't you silly's.
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oh thanks well until next time stay healthy eat well and take care of each other i'm samine
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and i'm rishi and we'll be home cooking
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you