Technology
Granny Smith Is Vile and Wretched! Apple Tasting Reveals Shocking Reviews
In this episode of Milk Street Radio, comedian Brian Frangi shares his unconventional apple rankings, revealing the surprising truths behind popular apple varieties. From the infamous Granny Smith to ...
Granny Smith Is Vile and Wretched! Apple Tasting Reveals Shocking Reviews
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Speaker A
Hey, Milk street radio listeners, this year for Thanksgiving, we want to hear all about your most unusual Thanksgiving traditions. Your antics, your games, your rituals, and unexpected foods that you think no one else makes. To share your Thanksgiving story, please leave us a voicemail at 617-249-3167 or send us a voice memo to radio tips at 177milkstreet.com radio tips@177milkstreet.com this is Mill Street Radio from PRX. I'm your host, Christopher Kimball. Is there such a thing as the perfect kitchen? Well, one model may have come close. It was called the Frankfurt kitchen. It was designed in the 1920s in Germany. It was sleek, it was supremely functional. And they even chose a paint color, an unconventional blue on purpose.
Speaker B
That's like the one unappetizing color, right?
Speaker A
So imagine making this beautiful food and.
Speaker C
Then it's in a blue kitchen.
Speaker A
But the reason it's blue is because.
Speaker B
It was thought to repel flies.
Speaker A
That was Jennifer Komar Olivarez, curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Later on in the show, we'll get a tour of the Frankfurt kitchen. But first, it's time for a lesson in apples. The good, the bad, and the just plain inedible.
Speaker D
Macintosh, the national apple of Canada. This dense curling stone has the refreshing, tart kick of an icy northern winter. Unfortunately, this tumor swollen reindeer nose has perhaps the thickest, most intractable skin of any apple this side of the prime Meridian. Final score, 45 out of 100. Horse food.
Speaker A
That's comedian and self proclaimed app list Brian Frangi. He joins us now. Brian, welcome to Milk Street.
Speaker D
Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker A
You run a website called Apple Rankings. So just to give our listeners the taste of your style, here's what you've written about. The Lucy Glow apple quote. The Lucy Glow is a circus freak apple with yellow skin and a red interior that shocks skeptics into submission. And here's the good part. Most would expect this to taste like an unhealed surgical wound since each bite resembles a freshly picked scab. So before we go any farther, I think this deserves some amount of explanation on your part, don't you think?
Speaker D
Well, yes. I mean the lucid glow. I wanted to depict how freakish it looked because it tastes so good. The Lucy Glow Apple. I rank 85 out of 100, which is excellent even though it looks so insane.
Speaker A
The opal apple quote, while the outside may be stained with a toddler's accident, in an ironic twist, the interior of the apple does not brown for quite some time. You actually rated this 82 points in excellent.
Speaker D
Oh, yes. This is one of my favorite new apples. And I have to say this is a controversial opinion, but I 100% believe yellow apples are greater than green apples.
Speaker A
Okay, so your rating system.
Speaker D
Yes.
Speaker A
You actually, despite the way you write about your apples, you do take this seriously.
Speaker D
Oh, 100%. I take my apple ranking seriously. So I created the 100 point ranking system to give a definitive delineation for every single apple I had. So there'd be no question as to how I felt about a certain apple.
Speaker A
So let's back way up. I mean, the obvious question is why? Why are you obsessed with apples? I'm glad you are, because nobody else is willing to say what you say, but what was the motivation here?
Speaker D
Well, yes, I do appreciate the fact that you are recognizing me as a trailblazer, speaking truth to apples across the world, but I was just fed up with the apple selection that was available to me in grocery stores, particularly obviously the Red Delicious apple, which I call coffee grinds in a leather glove. It is a 25 out of 100. It's a disgrace, and it's sad. It's really sad because there was a time back in the turn of the century when the Red Delicious apple was considered the number one apple.
Speaker A
So what's happened to apples? I mean, my take is that apple growers have really gotten into the super sweet. Like in corn, they're less interesting, there's less apple flavor. I'm not happy with the galas and the Fujis and the cosmic crisps because they're just too sweet and they're not complex enough. Are you going to agree with me or are we going to have a food fight here?
Speaker D
I think we might have a little bit of a food fight, But I do think that the people who grow apples are following what the market demands. And up until the, I'd say the 80s, people cared more about locally grown apples that had a specific flavor and attitude towards their region. And then growers started to mass produce certain apples. And the number one feature is how it looks. A beautiful, handsome apple that has a waxy glow is purchased more often than an old beat up one that might actually taste better. The second thing is crispness. People want crispness. It's like taste has become an afterthought in the apple world, where it's like, okay, does it look good? Does it crisp? Then I don't care what it tastes like.
Speaker A
Well, I love making apple pies, and I have to say, if you make an apple pie with Macs and Granny's, which is sort of a typical 50, 50 deal, right? I mean it's, it's okay because the granny holds its shape. Although I have to say, I just want to, you know, for the record say you cannot eat a Granny Smith out of hand. It is a vile, wretched, horrible flavor. It, it's not juicy, the skin is tough.
Speaker D
I have to warn you because you are treading in dangerous territory. The Granny Smith apple has an incredible fandom rivaling the Taylor Swift eras tour. If you disparage the Granny Smith apple, you are inviting a torrent of hate, which I have experienced firsthand. People love the Granny Smith and I don't understand it for eating out of hand. Eating out of hand?
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker D
I don't even people who bake it in pies. Go ahead, bake. It's a great baking apple. But a Granny Smith apple is thick skinned, dense, and it makes your gums bleed. There have been studies showing that the Granny Smith's acidic profile will make your gums bleed if you eat too many of them.
Speaker A
You obviously are not scared of the torrent of hate because you've now stirred up.
Speaker D
No, I mean I'm in it. I am deep.
Speaker A
So to enumerate your criteria, taste, crispness, skin, flesh, juiciness, density, beauty, branding consistency and cost availability. What does branding mean? I don't quite understand that.
Speaker D
Branding has been incredibly important. Ever since the Pink lady apple was trademarked, apple companies have been focused on making sure that their apples are proprietary. And now it's become a multimillion dollar marketing industry. Like for example, there's an apple out there that you've probably seen in stores. It's been around for a few years now, called the rocket apple. They're these little tiny apples that are pre washed like an astronaut's prefab lunch and placed into a little bottle rocket container that you can open up and snack on without even washing it. Now that is an incredible amount of marketing for an apple.
Speaker A
Now what about if you got a Cosmic crisp and you wanted to grow some and you took the seeds out of an apple that would not produce a Cosmic crisp, right?
Speaker D
No. That is the coolest apple fact that anyone will ever hear. Every single seed, and every single apple will produce a brand new variety of apples. So if I took a seed out of a Granny Smith and, and planted it, a tree might grow that produces a red apple. Because basically every apple tree has been the equivalent of sleeping with the mailman. Or really every mailman in town. Because every apple comes from a flower which is pollinated by a bee whose pollen packet comes from God knows where, so no seed will ever resemble the parent. It's a Maury episode every single time. But that's not even the cool fact. This is. If you can never get the same apple using seeds from that apple, then how do you get more of the same apple?
Speaker A
You graft.
Speaker D
Yes.
Speaker A
You take rootstock and graft on, right?
Speaker D
Yes. You have to clone it by cutting off a little branch or shoot and grafting it onto a living apple tree. In fact, you can graft multiple different apples to the same tree. So that means that every single Granny Smith or Macintosh or Pink lady, whatever apple you eat today came from the same exact tree as the first and only one that ever existed.
Speaker A
I never thought about that. Now I've grown McCowan's and you say any flicker of a long term relationship is quickly dashed as this actually quite disgusting dirtbag geez turns into a mealy, tasteless flesh sack within days of being brought home. Yeah, but if you pick it fresh off the tree, it's pretty spectacular apple, I think.
Speaker D
Yes, it is, 100%. But you have to get it like the day it ripens on the tree. And just if I'm ranking apples for the average consumer, they're going to get usually a mealy flesh sac that is not worthy of being eaten.
Speaker A
So what are a couple of apples you think most people can find that are to eat out of hand are probably make the grade.
Speaker D
Yeah. So I mean, first thing I would say is if you're going after a Pink lady, you like a sweet tart mix a little more on the tart side, that's great. But don't be fooled by grocery stores who are selling you Crips pink and telling you it's the same thing as a Pink Lady. It is not. The Crips Pink are the B team of Pink lady apples. But you know, you can never go wrong with the worldwide favorite available in every grocery store, the honeycrisp. I mean, the Honeycrisp is a great apple. The downside of the Honeycrisp is that it can be a little expensive, especially because a lot of them are huge.
Speaker A
You know, this reminds me of a discussion I had recently in Italy about saltless bread, which goes back to the 15th century and the Pope put a tax on salt and everybody in Umbria decided to not put salt and bread. Saltless bread is. Is vile. I'm sorry, it's just awful. But if you talk to people in Italy who grew up with it. They defend it to the very bitter end. Yes, but I finally realized that trying to explain why people should not like something they grew up with is really a fruitless exercise.
Speaker D
Yes, fruitless.
Speaker A
I mean, if you grew up with a Newtown Pippin or a McCowan, good luck telling people the cosmic crisp is on its way.
Speaker D
Right? I mean, that's why people love the Granny Smith so much. If you try to attack the Granny Smith apple, it is as if I am attacking a person's identity that they developed from childhood. You can't fight against people's emotions when it comes to apples and any type of food. But I'm trying to take the emotions out of the equation. I am making this a scientific ranked numbered system. There's no category for did your grandma use it in a pie when you were at your happiest?
Speaker A
Brian, thank you for your worldwide tour of apples and especially for your writing, which makes all of this worthwhile. Brian, thank you.
Speaker D
Thank you very much. It was great to be here.
Speaker A
That was comedian Brian Frangie. You can read more of his apple rankings@applerankings.com now it's time to answer your cooking questions with my co host, Sarah Moulton. Sarah is, of course, the star of Sarah's Weeknight meals on public television, also author of Home Cooking 101. Sarah, so here's my question. Are we going to get over French cooking? And by that, I'm not dismissing French cooking because I think it's fabulous. But do you think we're headed into an age when we finally cut the final bonds with culinary education and restaurants being rooted in that tradition, or do you think that that will endure forever?
Speaker B
I think what you're referring to is that French cuisine was considered the reading, writing and arithmetic to every other thing you did. So all the rules, how to use a knife, all that sort of stuff. Well, let me just say this. We both know, we both agree, particularly with what you're doing with Milk street, that every country has its own way to approach things, and they're all equally valid. I don't think French cuisine, listen, I love it. I think it's fantastic. There's a reason why it's been popular. I don't think it's going to continue to dominate. I think everybody's looking for new tastes, new excitement, new places to go, new toys to play with in the kitchen. So, no, I don't think it's going to continue to dominate. I still love it, though.
Speaker A
You know, I'll say Two things. When I travel the world so many times I ask people that question, and 90% of the time, they said they were trained in a French restaurant, which.
Speaker B
Is what has been.
Speaker A
But the problem with French cooking, it seems to me, is it's devoid of spices. It's devoid of chilies, it's devoid of fermented sauces. It has an ingredient list that's fairly finite, and therefore its cooking was appropriate for that. But if you go across the world, people have so many more tools to play with. No, but the techniques are still solid. Yeah. Okay. All right, let's take a call. Yep. Welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling?
Speaker E
Hey, this is Tom Egan in Lambertville, New Jersey.
Speaker A
How can we help you?
Speaker E
So after our last chat about my baking problems with my well water, you're.
Speaker A
The guy with a haunted well, right?
Speaker E
I am the guy with the haunted well.
Speaker B
Okay, fill us in a little more. What is it you're trying to make and having a hard time?
Speaker A
Give us a recap.
Speaker B
Yeah, give us a recap.
Speaker E
The recap is that I've been baking for a number of years, but just in the last year, moved to a new house, and it's the first time I'm baking with well water, particularly hard water and so a water softener. So the water chemistry is very different than anything I've used when I've lived in a city with a municipal water supply.
Speaker A
Right.
Speaker E
Our first few bakes, we had very under fermented dough. Based on our last conversation, I basically took the police recipe that I usually use, which is 330 grams of flour. 330 grams of water, and then a pinch of yeast. Right. And trying that with three different water sources. So because I was only baking one loaf of bread, I wanted to divide it into three. So divided the flour by three. I did 110 grams of the well water with the softener, the well water with the softener bypass. So the hard water, and then another one with bottled water. And my findings were a little different than I expected them to be. The last thing I had to divide by three was my pinch of yeast. When I grabbed my pinch of yeast, I said, well, how the heck do I divide this by 3? So I started doing a little more research on how much is really a pinch. Right. Long story short, what I realized is, you know, what I'm doing in my typical ferment is I'm grabbing a physical pinch of yeast from the jar of yeast. Whereas that seems to be, by the measure of what a pinch is. Seems to be Pretty light.
Speaker A
It's a half teaspoon you should use. Right. Something like that.
Speaker E
The most consistent answer I found was a sixteenth of a teaspoon is a pinch. When I basically used more yeast in each of these experiments, by the next morning, they all had risen the same.
Speaker A
Didn't we mention that as a possibility, adding more yeast?
Speaker E
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaker A
Well, you know, when I do poolish, I use, you know, a cup each water, flour, and I use half a teaspoon of yeast. That's obviously a lot more than a pinch. So that's what I'm used to. But let's get to the good part. So you had the water that was through the softener. Does that add salt to it?
Speaker E
It does, yeah. It adds sodium.
Speaker A
Okay, and how did that do versus the hard versus the bottled water?
Speaker E
In my little experiment, they were all the same. And what I've realized since, when I've done my pre. Ferment now, when I've done the poolish, I got one of those goofy little sets that has little measures for a pinch, a dram, and, you know, whatever other little tiny measures are out there. And I've basically found that by using a little more, it ferments just fine now. So my suspicion is that at that very low amount when I was using like a physical pinch, it's possible that the amount of sodium added to the yeast softener.
Speaker A
Right.
Speaker F
Yeah.
Speaker A
As you know, when you make bread, you leave the salt out in the first part because it'll retard the actual yeast. Yeah, I think that's y. Yep. I don't know if that's true, but it sounds right to me. Sarah, that's.
Speaker B
No, that's a happy ending. I'm just sitting here and listening.
Speaker A
Yay. Nice test.
Speaker E
One way or another, I got an answer right.
Speaker A
I think the point is that he didn't need us.
Speaker E
You're giving me way too much credit here.
Speaker A
We got lots of credit to give. Thanks for calling.
Speaker E
Bye bye.
Speaker B
Yeah, bye bye.
Speaker A
This is Mill Street Radio. If you're stuck in the kitchen, give us a call anytime. The number is 855-426-9843. One more time, 855-42-69843 or simply email us at questionsilkstreetradio.com welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling?
Speaker F
Roberta Holzer.
Speaker A
How can we help you?
Speaker F
My daughter and her fiance have asked me to make their wedding cake. It's a banana cake with a salted caramel filling and buttercream. So I figured I was doing a White chocolate, cream cheese, buttercream. And I just can't nail the salted caramel filling. The main thing is the consistency.
Speaker A
So the problem is the caramel is too thick or it's too loose, too thick. When I do caramel, I just start with sugar and I put it in a skillet, in a saucepan, no water, it'll start melting around the perimeter. With a heat proof spatula, I start moving that in towards the center. I find that really works well because if I have a light colored stainless steel 10 or 12 inch skillet, I can see the color which is really hard to do in a saucepan sometimes. So that's how I do that. I get it up to the right color off heat, add the cream slowly and then you put it back on the heat because the cream will, you know, the sugar will start to seize. But the question is, to what temperature do you cook that caramel? What did you cook it to? Like 230, 225.
Speaker F
The first couple recipes that I was making, it was a little bit of water and the sugar. Now the last one that I made use castor sugar. You know, fine sugar.
Speaker A
Just a fine sugar.
Speaker B
Yeah, it's really. If you took regular sugar and put it in a food processor, you end up with caster sugar.
Speaker F
That one, the caramel came out perfect, but it's just too tight.
Speaker A
How do you know when it's done? Do you have a candy thermometer? Instant read thermometer.
Speaker F
I eyeball it. So when this recipe I put the sugar in the fry pan. They said a non stick fry pan.
Speaker E
Which I've never ever done.
Speaker A
No, no, no, no, please don't do that.
Speaker F
No, it actually worked.
Speaker A
Yeah, I know, but that's toxic. But you don't want to get that pan. If that pan gets over 500 degrees, it's not going to be good for you. So.
Speaker F
Gotcha. Okay. They said do it on a medium heat, leave the sugar undisturbed until it starts to melt into a dark caramel color. Swirl around like you were saying, turn the heat down and then add ice cold chopped up butter pieces. Then add the cream.
Speaker E
Right.
Speaker F
And then they say golden syrup or corn syrup. And then a pinch of salt.
Speaker A
And then how do you know how long to cook it after you've added the cream and the salt?
Speaker F
Well, the temperature is on low.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker F
And I'm just kind of mixing it around with the wooden spoon until everything is, is melted.
Speaker A
I think that's the problem. I mean you're obviously a great baker, but when you get to caramel sauces, you gotta have a thermometer because what's happening, I will bet you, is you're just either over or undercooking it. So if it's too loose, it's a 225 to 230. If it's too candy, like, it's over 235 to 240. What you want is 230 to 235. And you definitely want an instant read thermometer and make sure you're.
Speaker F
Which I have.
Speaker A
Yeah. And just tip the skill a little bit so you get the probe deep enough into the liquid.230.235. In that range.
Speaker B
Sarah, I agree with Chris 100%. I would take it to that dark color, take it off the heat, and I would just add cream. I don't understand the butter. You need the liquid that's in the cream, too. I would just go with three ingredients. And I agree with Chris about the temperature. After you add the cream and it seizes up and you whisk it and everything, and you cook it a little more, then take its temperature.
Speaker F
What I'm trying to get is a consistency, like a spreadable.
Speaker B
Yeah, but you gotta let it cool. I think Stella Parks, who's one of my favorites, who did Brave Tart, has a good caramel sauce recipe.
Speaker A
She's great.
Speaker B
And it's the three ingredients. I just told you. And I've made that and I've made others with just those three ingredients. And what happens when you cool it? It gets spreadable. You know, it will be liquid to begin with. And again, if you want it to be liquid, like say you want to put it on ice cream, then you go and warm it up again. But if you want it to be spreadable, like in your cake, you just need it to come to room temperature and. Or chill it a little bit.
Speaker F
Gotcha.
Speaker A
Roberta, thank you. Yes.
Speaker F
Okay. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate your help.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker F
Okay, bye. Bye.
Speaker A
This is Milk Street Radio. Coming up, the history of kitchen design. That's up right after the break. This is Most Street Radio. I'm your host, Christopher Kimball. So let's talk about kitchens. You know, they're hardly ever designed with a cook in mind. And a fishing kitchen should offer solutions for common cooking problems like the step saving kitchen, introduced in 1949.
Speaker F
To the left of the mixing counter.
Speaker A
Is the vegetable preparation and dishwashing center.
Speaker F
With knife rack and utensil cupboard at the right, vegetables in front of her.
Speaker A
And sink at the left.
Speaker F
This worker has a step Saving setup for preparing vegetables.
Speaker A
That's a clip from a US Department of Agriculture ad for their step saving kitchen. The mid century was a big era for kitchen innovation, but it turns out some of the first functional kitchens were actually designed in Germany back in the 1920s. We're joined now by Katie Thornton to share the story of the Frankfurt kitchen, which he originally reported for the 99% Invisible podcast earlier this year. Katie, welcome to Milk Street.
Speaker G
Thank you so much for having me, Chris. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker A
So before we get into all the details of this Frankfurt kitchen, let's back up and talk about the German kitchens of the late 1800s. So what did a middle class kitchen actually look like at that time?
Speaker G
Yeah, that's such a great question, because I think in order to understand how the Frankfurt kitchen comes around, we really need to understand kind of what it was a response to. And in truth, we don't know very much about kitchens before the World War I era. You know, kitchens, they were sort of hodgepodges of whatever surfaces you could slap together in a room. It was often a big open fire or possibly a wood stove, a big wash basin that you would have to haul into the room to sort of wash dishes, possibly also do laundry. It was kind of just another room in the house where all of this really unpleasant work happened. And all of this, of course, is not really a coincidence. You know, at this time, kitchens were primarily the domain of women and of laborers, household laborers. And so they did not receive much attention from architects and designers.
Speaker A
So let's get to the inventor who finally did pay attention. Who was she?
Speaker G
Margaret de Schuttelihacki was an Austrian architect. She designed the Frankfurt kitchen, largely considered the first modern kitchen. She had worked on some public housing projects in Austria when she was in her 20s. And in her late 20s, she was called by Ernst Mei, who was in charge of what was called the New Frankfurt. It was a large municipal project after World War I that was intended to get people housed and get them housed quickly. And so she was tapped to come over to Germany and spearhead the design of the kitchen. And her whole idea was that if she wanted to work to advance women's equality, women needed to be able to get their housework done as quickly as possible and move on with their lives. And so what she did is she designed motion studies, and she ended up laying out the design of the kitchen such that every movement was as streamlined as possible.
Speaker A
So let's talk about some specifics. I mean, let's be honest. It was A very small kitchen, at least the one model I've seen pictures of. So no matter how you designed it, you weren't taking a lot of steps to get from one part to the other. That's true, but there's some really cool things here. The cook box, which is sort of like a crock pot, but you could use it to keep food warm, but you could also use it to actually cook food very slowly, Right?
Speaker G
Yeah, exactly. To slow cook grains, to slow cook meats. You know, a lot of the Frankfurt kitchens used electronic appliances, and that was quite a new phenomenon at the time. It was also quite expensive. And so there were all of these. These little sort of design techniques that were used to save on the cost of electricity. So if you were to use your stovetop to cook, you know, an item in the short term, you could use the residual heat in the cook box to slow cook meats or to slow cook grains that you could then have for later. There's another element of electricity saving design that I thought was really interesting. If you look at the top of the Frankfurt kitchen on the ceiling, there is almost like a. Like a track light. And the single light bulb could be moved throughout the kitchen. And so it enabled you to have your one light bulb do a lot of work for you.
Speaker A
And the measuring cups. 12 identical cups with spouts that fit into cubby holes in the wall. I love this. Each labeled with the name of a different ingredient.
Speaker G
Yeah. Rather than having a large bag or a large bin of flour on the ground that a woman working in the kitchen would have to then lift up out of this, you know, presumably low storage place where it would be susceptible to mice and other things like that. It had, you know, a squared off storage bin for different grains and different foodstuffs that also had notches within the unit itself to show you how much you have poured out. So all of a sudden, you go from having a bag and. And a measuring cup and a secondary bowl and all of this sort of backbreaking work, to pulling one storage bin out of the wall in front of you and just pouring the contents into your single bowl.
Speaker A
Yeah, it was two things about it. It was beautiful. I mean, it is. It reminded me of the old post office. Little boxes with the windows.
Speaker G
Yes, exactly.
Speaker A
And the other thing is, I said, like, why don't we do that now? I mean, that was what a great idea. I mean, I have to go find my rye flour, my whole wheat flour, and my cornstarch and everything else. They're all in different bags and different Places. And, you know, that's the story of history. Like two steps forward, four steps back.
Speaker G
Right. It's so funny. I mean, the Frankfurt kitchen, in many ways is both sort of revolutionary and at this point, very mundane because so many of its components really were so seminal that they became quite normalized. But there are some things that I would absolutely love to have in my IKEA kitchen, which is very much a descendant of the Frankfurt kitchen.
Speaker A
And then this is a nice little Jetsons touch. There's a button on the floor that closes the pocket door.
Speaker G
There are so many little Jetsons features. Like, there's one of the other ones that I really wish we still had, in addition to those 12 identical cubby storage containers, slash measuring cups, was there's a chute into the countertop. First of all, I should just say the entire idea of a single height, long, continuous countertop was really revolutionary at this time. But within that countertop, near the sink, there's a gap, a small hole where you can slide your food scraps in. And just below the surface of the counter is this small rectangular box. You can pull it out from underneath the counter and just pour your food scraps directly in the trash.
Speaker A
So what eventually happens to her and what happens to this Frankfurt kitchen? Did the innovations she came up with stick around? Did it influence future kitchen designs? You know what happened?
Speaker G
Yeah, so it did absolutely influence kitchen design in the next generation. But the Frankfurt kitchen itself was only produced from 1926 until 1930. This was interwar Germany. And as the Nazi party gained power throughout the late 1920s, they ended up cutting a lot of the public housing initiatives across Germany. And Margarete Shutteluhaci ended up leaving Germany with Ernst Mey, who was the planner and architect in charge of the new Frankfurt initiative, the broader municipal project. Along with her husband, who was also an architect, and, and I believe 14 or 15 other architects and urban planners, they ended up fleeing to the Soviet Union. So in many ways, she was not necessarily given accolades early on as the designer of this very, very influential kitchen, but her designs and her concepts of saving space within the housing unit very, very much lived on. And you see see echoes throughout Europe and throughout the US There were a lot of different kitchen designs that were really sort of premised on this idea of making life easier for the woman who was in the kitchen.
Speaker A
So she moves to Russia, but then what? Does she spend the whole rest of her life there?
Speaker G
No, she has a very, very interesting trajectory. So she moved to the Soviet Union in 1930, and she ended up Working there. The sort of record of her work is a little bit ambiguous in this, but it seems like she and her husband, Wilhelm Schutte, helped design collective kitchens in the Soviet Union, and she was also designing nurseries. So other things that were sort of in, at this point, crudely seen as women's realm, they ended up. Her and her husband ended up leaving there in 1937, and in 1938, they moved to Istanbul. And ultimately she joins the clandestine Communist Party and she works with this anti fascist resistance cell. And so she actually, she's sent on a mission to Vienna and she ends up being captured. And, you know, this is back to her home country of Austria, where she's from. And she ends up being captured and imprisoned in various prisons and labor camps in Austria and Germany for four years. She's in solitary confinement for a lot of that time. And finally she is freed by American soldiers in 1945, and a few years after that, she does return back to her home in Austria.
Speaker A
So what happened after the war?
Speaker G
Yeah, so after the war, there was still deep antisemitism among many Austrian citizens and leaders. And so she was not necessarily warmly received when she came back. You know, she was somebody who had worked resisting the Nazis while she was overseas. She also maintained allegiance to the Communist Party of Austria for the rest of her life. And then, especially against the backdrop of the 1950s and the cold War, she was really sort of shut out from work. So even though she had all of this experience with public housing and kitchen design and also designs for children and children's well being, she only got two contracts from the city of Vienna after she returned back. And so she ends up doing a lot of her work in private homes and doing big public projects in China and in Cuba and in the Soviet Union.
Speaker A
Well, it's just a great example of knowing history is so important because you look back and think, oh, the 1920s, somebody sat down and really thought about how to design a kitchen.
Speaker E
And.
Speaker A
And most of that has been lost. You know, I mean, I would love to work in that kitchen.
Speaker G
Yeah, you know, absolutely. You know, like, at the time, there wasn't very many models for efficiency. And so she looked to ships and she looked to train cars to figure out how to maximize space in the kitchen. And I think that that's really telling of her motivations.
Speaker A
Katie, thank you. A fascinating story about the Frankfurt kitchen and what we have forgotten since 1926. Thank you.
Speaker G
Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for talking with me.
Speaker A
That was reporter Katie Thornton. You can hear more of her reporting on the 99% invisible episode. The Frankfurt kitchen. Have you ever noticed that industrial design just keeps getting worse? Back in the 60s, designers knew the dials with the best and easiest way to tune a car radio, Maybe adjust your stovetop burner, or even use the thermostat in your house. Today, you need a PhD just to set your oven. And please don't get me started on dishwashers. Why are there so many options? And why don't they have a little green light to tell you if it has been run or not? You have to be a kitchen detective to suss out whether the dishes are clean or still dirty. So let's face facts. There was a time post World War I when designers really did understand kitchens. A chair to sit at a low counter. Overhead lighting that moved on a track. A cook box for slow all day cooking. Wall storage for grains and flowers with built in measuring cups. And even a button on the floor to close the closet door. So, please, let's be honest. It really is game over. I'm Christopher Kimball, and you're listening to Milk Street Radio. Now let's head into the kitchen with Lynn Clark to talk about this week's recipe. Indian spiced smashed potatoes. Lynn, how are you?
Speaker C
I'm doing well, Chris, how are you?
Speaker A
I'm good. I visited London and Paris a few months ago. Fine. And one of the stories I was after was Indian cooking in London, especially the way it's been adapted, which is really interesting. But I went to Dishoom, it's a series of really wonderful restaurants in London. And I met with our head of R and D, former head chef Rishi Anand. And on the menu for lunch were gunpowder potatoes, which are potatoes which he essentially grills and then serves with gunpowder spices. A mix of spices and some fresh juice and herbs. It was delicious. And it was delicious because it was something simple with a great spice mix. It was just transformative.
Speaker C
Yeah. This is a kind of a classic milk street recipe. Right. It's what we do here. We take something that seems familiar or simple, like potatoes. Right. And give you ways to enhance it or make it much more interesting and exciting. In this case, we're gonna actually smash our potatoes. So we're gonna add a lot of textural elements here. I think. Chef Anand grills his potatoes whole, then splits them open and kind of roughs them up. Doesn't fully smash them. We fully smash our potatoes, and then we toss them with spiced butter. And that's where that gunpowder name comes from. It's a spice blend. And there's all different variations on this spice blend. I think Chef Anand's version is from the Parsi cuisine, which is Persian Indian. So there's whole cumin, coriander, and fennel seeds that are coarsely ground, two different types of masala, garam masala, and chaat masala, which are spice blends in themselves, and then chili powder and fenugreek. And all of that gets tossed with these potatoes. So that's a lot of spices. So we found we wanted to kind of pare that down a little bit to highlight our favorite flavors. And that was the cumin, coriander, and fennel and that fenugreek. And if you can find the fenugreek, I really, really recommend it. It adds a really distinctive, almost maple flavor to the potatoes. Really, really different and kind of adds something just kind of truly unique here.
Speaker A
It's interesting how all of a sudden, you know, spices that you weren't familiar with now sort of become part of the repertoire. And the last thing I'd say is also that coarsely ground spices. You know, that difference between powdered ground spices and whole or cracked spices, it does make a huge difference in flavor. And also the feel in your mouth is just great.
Speaker C
Right? Exactly. I mean, you've got so many textures here. We've smashed the potatoes, so you've got creamy and crispy parts of the potato. You've got heat from some jalapeno, and then you've got some crunch from these coarsely ground spices. All of these spices get bloomed in some melted butter to really enhance their flavor. And then that butter spreads all over the potato, so you're getting all of that spice flavor all over the potato. We add in a little bit of fresh scallions and cilantro for some herbal elements. And then I think at Dishoom, it was served with the classic raita Indian condiment with yogurt and cucumber. If you don't wanna do that, you can just squeeze a little bit of lime juice over the top. It really adds a nice kind of tangy balance to the earthy spices. Just a really nicely balanced dish.
Speaker A
So something simple, something new. Gunpowder potatoes, or Indian spice mashed potatoes. Part of my regular repertoire. Lynn, thank you.
Speaker C
You're welcome. You can get the recipe for Indian spiced smashed potatoes@milkstreetradio.com.
Speaker A
This is Milk Street Radio. After the break, Adam Gopnik experiences culinary alchemy. That's coming right up. I'm Christopher Kimball, and here's the Whole Foods Market. Fall Flavors Hotline, hosted by Milk Street Creative director Matt Card and sponsored by Whole Foods Market.
Speaker H
Welcome to the Whole Foods Market Hotline. Who's calling?
Speaker F
Hi, my name is Claire.
Speaker H
Hey, Claire, thanks for calling.
Speaker A
What's your question?
Speaker F
Well, I love a baked potato, but I'm wondering, do I really need to cook it in the oven for the hour or whatever it takes? Get crisp. Is there any downside to using the microwave?
Speaker H
Claire, this is a great question because we have all been there. So the short answer is yes. You certainly can cook a baked potato in the microwave with a couple caveats. First of all, you really need to pierce it well with a fork to allow steam to escape. If you don't poke it, it can explode in your microwave. But it can also turn gummy. So poking it allows steam to escape. And then you want to cook it until it's just about tender. And then I. I will say you do have to stick it in the oven to crisp. It's never really going to crisp in the microwave. So a very hot oven, about 450 degrees, rub that potato with a little bit of olive oil, 10, 15 minutes, you're going to get a really crisp exterior, which to me, of course, is the best part of a baked potato.
Speaker F
Right. Okay, that sounds wonderful. And then another question I had is I'm pretty tired of the typical sour cream and chives. Do you have any more creative topping suggestions?
Speaker H
I've got a great one here. Creamed leeks. It's sort of similar to the sour cream chives, but totally different. So cook leeks down in a little butter real slow and low until they're very soft and sort of jammy. Add a little cream, and that's just fantastic on a baked potato. Now, I love topping that with a really bold accent note, and I love smoky flavors with that cream leek. So I love something like salmon. Now365 by Whole Foods Market has a terrific cold smoked Atlantic salmon. Great silky texture that's just perfect on a baked potato. Now, if fish isn't your thing, smoky cheese can be great here, too. Now there's a 365 by Whole Foods Market hickory smoked cheddar that I love over potato with the cream leeks. It just ties together beautifully. So give those ideas a whirl and report back.
Speaker F
I definitely will.
Speaker H
Happy cooking.
Speaker A
That was the Whole Foods Market hotline. Harvest the season with big sales on juicy apples, crisp grapes, sweet potatoes, and a variety of gorgeous winter squash. Find the best of fall flavors now at Whole Foods Market. I'm Christopher Kimble and you're listening to Milk Street Radio. Now it's time for some culinary wisdom from one of our listeners. Hi, it's Dave from Alexandria, Virginia. On a recent episode of Milk Street Radio, I heard a question about how to keep pizza from sticking to a pizza peel. Chris suggested using semolina flour to lubricate the peel. My trick, which eliminates the mess of semolina flour in my oven, is to use parchment paper. I form the pizza right on the parchment, then transfer the pizza and parchment to the baking steel using my peel. After about two minutes, the bottom of the pizza is set and releases easily from the parchment. Then immediately slide the pizza back onto the steel while holding onto the paper. The pizza slides right off and finishes cooking perfectly since it's now on the steel and there's no semolina mess. By the way, if you'd like to share your own cooking tip right here on Milk street radio, please go to177milkstreet.com radiotips. You're listening to Milk Street Radio. Now let's hear the latest from our friend Adam Gopnik. Adam, how are you?
Speaker I
I am very well, Christopher. How are you?
Speaker A
I'm good.
Speaker I
I'm particularly well, I should tell you, because I am finally back cooking in my kitchen, and I have been away from it for more than a month, which is about the longest break in cooking that I think I've had in 25 years. And so coming back to the kitchen after being away from it, I took a kind of new registry, took stock in a new way of what it is we love about cooking. And do you know what it is more than anything else? Christopher?
Speaker A
Oh, boy. I could come up with 20 or 30 things. I would say it's the joy of using your hands to do something useful. That would be my very Vermontese version.
Speaker I
That's a beautiful one, actually. And of course, it's profoundly true. One of the things we love about cooking, especially if we do mind work all day, as writers are condemned to, is exactly that. Our attention shifts from our heads to our hands at 6pm but the thing that struck me when I went back to my kitchen was the pleasure of transformation. Just the way things changed in your pan under the force of heat is genuinely a kind of everyday magic whose power I had forgotten simply by having become so habituated to it. And I began making lists as I went back to cooking of what were the most satisfying, the most philosophical and the most mystical of those everyday kitchen transformations. I wonder if you'd be interested in and Hearing me enumerate each, you've turned.
Speaker A
Into an alchemist in your dotage, which I like exactly.
Speaker I
Well, that is alchemy. That's the alchemy that is available to us. So the most satisfying transformation in the kitchen, I find is. And this will startle you, rhubarb. Rhubarb is something that is completely inedible and unappetizing when you get it, and yet all you have to do is chop it into pieces. You don't even have to add water to it, only a miniscule bit of sugar. And under the pressure of heat, it transforms itself into one of the most velvety, complex, and intriguing of all forms in our family. The ideal dessert is rhubarb fool. You simply mingle. Stewed rhubarb with whipped cream, and there's nothing better in the world.
Speaker A
Well, if I may push back, please. Rhubarb is about disintegration. It's zombie like. It goes from this crisp. I think it's gorgeous in the garden, and then it devolves into this gooey mass, which tastes great, but from a visual, it's sort of like what happens after you get buried. No, it doesn't. You're not going in the right direction with rhubarb. You know what I mean?
Speaker I
I hear you. But nonetheless, I find that hugely satisfying. Now, the most philosophical kitchen transformation is, of course, the classic chopping and sauteing onions, because that's the most essential one. It's the one you can't avoid. And it's the most philosophical, of course, because it is the one where you're taking something that is actively and aggressively caustic and unappealing, that brings tears out into your eyes that you don't like doing, and turning it into something that is sweet, essential. And it left me with a question which you may well have the answer to, Chris, which is, why is it that with all of the extraordinary breeding and changing and even genetic engineering that's gone on, why has no one been able to breed out the substance in onions that makes you cry?
Speaker A
I have an answer to that. Guess which onion turns out to be the sweetest when cooked? White, red, or yellow?
Speaker I
I'm going to guess the white.
Speaker A
Yellow. And the reason is, the more sulfur compounds you have in the raw vegetable, they transform and become sweet. So the most acidic, the most sulfurous, the most objectionable, raw onion turns out to be the sweetest when cooked. So you want to get rid of the one thing that lends itself to the greatest transformational power of the Onion, which is those sulfurous compounds.
Speaker I
Well, isn't that exactly right?
Speaker A
There we are. That's very philosophical. Right.
Speaker I
The onion is the philosophical transformation. Exactly. Because, as you have now explained to me, you have to have sulfurous and caustic onions in order to have sweet, sustaining onions. And now what? Do you know what I think is the most mysterious, if not the most mystical of those transformations I felt as I was going about my everyday work in the kitchen?
Speaker A
Something with eggs, perhaps.
Speaker I
That's a good choice. And certainly there is something about scrambling eggs that is like rhubarb. You can't believe you're going from the raw to the cooked state so simply and so pleasingly. But for me, it's mixing anchovies and garlic. Because the anchovy, which is a distinct flavor and is a powerful little animal you've got in the pan, just vanishes, just melts away and turns into this wonderful and mysterious flavor which no one can quite identify in your marinara sauce or in your puttanesca sauce, but which is absolutely essential to its effect.
Speaker A
Well, it's the same thing as using, like, a fish oil or something like that, which, you know, has deep umami to it. Yes, but once it's cooked, it loses the fishiness. You know, fish sauce is good. Fish sauce is not fishy. And the same thing. You're right. Two anchovy filets with the onions to start a stew or soup is brilliant way of developing, you know, foundational flavor.
Speaker I
It is. And yet people who don't like anchovies will never know that the anchovies were there. They are anchovies when they start, and they are then mysterious agents of flavor when they're finished. So I vote for the anchovy as the most mysterious or mystical of the kitchen transformations. Now, follow me, if you will. I realized that the subject that I was on was one of the classical subjects of poetry and mythology. And of course, the greatest poem ever written about the act of things changing from one state to another is Ovid's Metamorphosis. So I thought, I wonder what Ovid has to say about the transformations of food. It turns out. Did you know this? I was unaware of it, Christopher. That Ovid was one of the great evangelical vegetarians of antiquity. That he made the case passionately and strongly against meat eating. And yet. And here's the fascinating thing, his case rested on the idea that the transformation by fire of all of the vegetable world was intrinsically beautiful, but that you couldn't transform by fire the animal world. You could Only rip it apart with your raw teeth and hands. Are you up to hearing a little, Ovid?
Speaker A
Absolutely. You're an actor, sir. Go ahead.
Speaker I
I shall. This is Ovid as translated by Arthur Golding. You have both fruits of trees and grapes and herbs. Right? Good. And though some be harsh and hard, yet fire may make them well, both soft and sweet. You may have milk and honey, which doth smell of flowers of time. So there you see, Ovid, making the case that the key to being a civilized person is that we take vegetables and with fire we make them well, both soft and sweet. Isn't that beautiful?
Speaker A
Adam Gopnik, you are a mysterious agent of change. You seek to transform me every time you speak. I'm not sure I agree with Ovid about that, because I think meat does get transformed. But thank you so much for this lesson in philosophy.
Speaker I
Thank you, Chris. See you soon.
Speaker A
That was Adam Gopnik, staff writer at the New Yorker. His latest book is the real work on the mystery of Mastery. That's it for today. Please don't forget you can find all of our episodes@milkstreetradio.com or wherever you get your podcasts. You can learn more about milk street at 177milkstreet.com there you can become a member and get full access to every recipe, access to all of our livestream cooking classes, and learn about our latest cookbook, Milk Street Simple. Check us out on Facebook @ Christopher KimballsMilk street, on Instagram and Twitter at 177 Milk Street. We'll be back next week with more food stories and kitchen questions. And thanks, as always, for listening. Christopher Kimmel's Milk Street Radio is produced.
Speaker C
By Milk street in association with GBH.
Speaker G
Co founder Melissa Baldino, executive producer Annie Sinsabaugh, senior editor Melissa Allison, producer Sarah.
Speaker C
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Speaker G
Help from Debbie Paddock. Additional editing by Sydney Lewis, audio mixing.
Speaker C
By Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media.
Speaker G
In Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Speaker C
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Speaker G
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Speaker C
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Speaker D
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