Support for this show comes from Strawberry.me.
Be honest.
Are you happy with your job?
Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown or never wanted in the first place?
Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving?
Let a career coach from Strawberry.me help you get unstuck.
Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner.
Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
Support for this show comes from Odoo.
Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?
Introducing Odoo.
It's the only business software you'll ever need.
It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.
CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.
And the best part?
Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.
That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.
So why not you?
Try Odoo for free at odoo.com.
That's O-D-O-O dot com.
Hey, it's Francis.
Gift-giving season might be over, but it's still time to get yourself something.
Here's our cookbook roundup from 2022.
All still great books.
Have a listen.
I'm Francis Lam and this is The Splendid Table from APM year.
In the fall we come to an episode that celebrates some of the most exciting cookbooks of the season, and that usually means the most exciting cookbooks of the year, since most publishers release their hit cookbooks in time for holiday gift giving and you know, of course, we could never cover all the books we're psyched about in one episode.
So i do want to mention a few very cool books that we won't get to today.
The wonderful ukrainian british cookbook writer, olia hercules, has a new book called home food, The terrific Minneapolis chef, Gavin Kaysen.
He started teaching cooking classes online during the pandemic and it became so popular he's self-publishing a terrific book on the French slash Midwest food he makes for his family.
That book is called Gavin Kaysen at Home.
There's a very cool book of family Mexican recipes called Mamacita, by Andrea Pons, which she originally also self-published but to raise money for her family's immigration lawyer.
And if I can toot my own horn a bit, If you're a fan of Chinese food or have any vegans or vegetarians in your life who you have to get a gift for my author Hannah Che's new book.
The Vegan Chinese Kitchen is just absolutely beautiful.
And the food is super interesting and super delicious.
So with all that said, let's get into the books whose authors can join us today.
Later in the show we'll talk with Cynthia Shanmugalingam about the wildly delicious food of Sri Lanka and We'll have Ben Murphys, author of the most massive cookbook on British food you've ever seen.
And we'll talk homemade vinegars with wild food expert Pascal Baudart.
But first, Chef Chris Scott.
So Chris was a fan favorite and a finalist on Top Chef a few years ago.
What really made him stand out to me, aside from how incredibly calm and centered he was through the whole thing, was that he called his food Amish soul food, which you know might make you go.
What's that?
Well, we're going to find out.
Chris Scott's new book is called Homage, and he joins us now.
Hey, Chef.
Great to see you.
Hey, man.
Thanks for taking a break from making biscuits to talk with us.
Right on.
I actually want to start with the subtitle of your book, because that is Recipes and Stories from an Amish Soul Food Kitchen.
So I would guess the phrase Amish soul food probably turned some heads.
Of course, yeah.
So what does that mean?
Tell us what that means.
Okay.
Well, you know, to me, soul food is a regional thing, based on where you are in this country and the ingredients that you have access to.
You know, for example, my people are from Virginia, my ancestors and that's sort of like the tidewater region, you know.
So you have a lot of that Virginia agriculture, you have a lot of that seafood influence with that.
You keep on moving further South.
Gullah Geechee.
You know, down there with the Oprah, the rice culture, more African influences in the food.
Keep on going further south.
Now you're in the panhandle of Florida, you know, you have more creole influence.
Move a little bit to the west, some barbecue, but then you move back up to where i'm at.
You know, and my ancestors were.
After the emancipation they migrated north to an area where the german, the dutch and the amish already were, you know yeah, so.
So by the time that i was born, you know, this was the only food that i knew.
You know, and People always ask you know like, what makes an Amish?
What, like, go deeper into that.
So if you know sort of the flavor profiles of German food, you have high acid, you have a lot of sweet, sweet and sours and the Chow Chows really, you know, bring that forward.
You know, as far as the Amish soul food is concerned,
But if you could imagine Southern food that is brighter in flavor, higher in acid, more sweet in some areas, you know,
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so some of the.
So I mean, you mentioned the chow chows, but what are some of the recipes or what are some of the dishes that really embody this idea to you?
Right.
I mean, well, there's scrapple.
There's even a version of a sauce which I think in the book I call it a ham hock terrine, you know.
So there's a lot of of like low country sort of tidewater Pennsylvania, Dutch kind of charcuterie happening in there.
You know, like I always say, why do the French get to have all the fun?
You know, when when the southerners and the Amish folk were doing all that work as well.
And then you know, then there are, you know, the in-your-face ones, like the whoopie pies and the apple dumplings which my grandmother used to call roly-polies.
So there's a lot of food that you know and love already just from if you've ever visited the Pennsylvania Dutch country before, but a lot of the flavors are really pronounced in that German style.
Yeah.
Let's go to the scrapple for a second, because I know this is a big Pennsylvania Dutch thing.
Yeah.
For those of us who don't know it, what is it?
And then tell us what your version is like.
Sure.
The way that I describe scrapple to people that don't know.
So first I give them a taste and then they'll always ask, you know, what am I eating?
What am I eating?
And then afterwards then I tell them, because if you tell them like right away, they're not going to be down with it.
But basically, it's all parts of the pig.
Me too.
Me too.
It's all parts of the pig.
And, depending on who I'm cooking it for, you know, depends on what parts of the pig that I'm putting into it.
But it's basically, you know, you make a very flavorful, enriched dish.
Quote Bouillon you know I put smoked ham hock in there, a lot of sage carrots celery, the onions garlic, you know.
But then also in there will be your pork butt, your pork shoulder, pork livers snout, pig ears.
You know spleen, you know all of those things that are slowly poaching in that quote Bouillon.
Then you fish out all of those meats, chop them up very finely, get rid of all the veggies and all of that and just leaving behind just the broth.
You put that chopped meat back into the broth and now you thicken up the whole thing with cornmeal and buckwheat flours.
It sort of firms up into a cake, right.
And then you slice it and pan fry it.
And then you pan fry it where it's crispy on the outside, you know, very, very creamy on the inside.
Back in Philly, a lot of people would either eat it sweet with syrup or jelly.
Some people will eat it with ketchup on a Kaiser roll with an egg.
I like to make it a little bit more fancier.
I did a okra chow chow, you know, just to kind of highlight it and to give it, you know, more life than what it normally needs.
Yeah, tell us about the chow chows then because, a what is a chow chow?
And b okra is not a a typical chow chow ingredient right, but no no no yeah, start from the top.
Yes, so chow chow essentially is a relish, you know uh, very sweet and sour and you can basically make it from anything.
If you're in the Pennsylvania, Dutch country, and you just say the word chow chow, normally it's always going to be corn.
But there are other versions of it.
You have, you know, green bean chow chow.
There's a stewed tomato chow chow.
There's, you know, some people even do fruits into the chow chow.
It's basically, you know, like I said, some form of a pickled kind of relishy kind of thing that's cooked down.
A lot of sugar, a lot of vinegar, a lot of Very sweet and sour, right?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah.
In the Amish culture, whenever you have the spread, they have this thing called the seven sweets and seven sours.
And they're basically chutneys, preserves and different things that you can kind of put onto your food as you're eating it.
Yeah, right on.
And so your use of okra, that's like bringing the southern...
Bringing the black influence, the African-American influence.
So how does okra work in that?
Does it come out?
In your version, does the okra come out?
Do you bring that sort of okra slime or do you sort of cook out the okra slime?
Are you pro-slime or anti-slime?
Well, there's a technique that I do.
So as I'm cutting the okra, I'll soak it in salted ice water.
And that salted ice water or the salt really draws out a lot of that slime.
And then you just kind of wash it, maybe five or six times, until you're ready to do with it.
Whatever you're going to do, you know so by the time that you do cook the chow chow, there's going to be some slime, but it's not a lot, you know, and it sort of adds it it.
It gives it a little bit more character as well and adds as a thickener to where you don't have to access so much sugar to reduce okay, to get that desired thickness.
That's like almost like syrupy, exactly.
Oh, that's really cool.
Yeah, that's smart, All right.
So let's get to your biscuits.
I mean, I've had them.
They're wonderful.
But your biscuit recipe is unique.
I didn't realize until I read the recipe in the book that you have honey and butter in the dough.
Yes.
And the recipe actually came from your great-grandmother.
Tell us about it.
Yeah.
So it goes generations back.
And the one great thing that I like the most about doing these biscuits that every time that I'm making them, I sometimes imagine my ancestors doing the same thing, you know, with the same recipe, and who they were cooking them for, you know.
Or if they would even ever imagine, you know, decades later, you know, that one of their descendants would be making you know the same biscuits for the world, you know.
But I like that it's sort of a lifeline between me and them.
I think that with every single person that this recipe kind of falls into our hands, that we tweak it just a little bit.
I've added a bit more science to it.
But in the end, there's that flavor and everything's still the same.
So in the book, my grandmother did them the way that she did it, where they're more or less drop biscuits, and she would roll them by hand rather than cut.
So here at the restaurant, I cut them, but it's the same exact recipe.
You know, here I cut in the book or at home, depending on who I'm cooking them for.
I'll roll them by hand, but they are the fluffiest biscuits you know that are out there.
And I think that that touch of honey just kind of brightens it up just a little bit.
Yeah well, they're terrific and i'm super excited to make them, and the recipe is pretty big.
I don't know if i can take down 36 biscuits at a time, but well, i can assure you that neighbors exactly, exactly.
I think that when you make them, people will definitely come over right on, right on, right on.
Well, it has been a pleasure talking with you, chef.
Congratulations on the book.
Thank you so much.
Chris Scott is the author of Homage Recipes and Stories from an Amish Soul Food Kitchen.
You can find a recipe for his okra chow chow at splendidtable.org.
Coming up Cynthia Shan Mugalingam with her book Rambutan Recipes from Sri Lanka, and Ben Mervis, author of The British Cookbook.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from ABC.
Support for this show comes from Odoo.
Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?
Introducing Odoo.
It's the only business software you'll ever need.
It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.
CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more.
And the best part?
Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.
That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.
So why not you?
Try Odoo for free at Odoo.com.
That's O-D-O-O dot com.
Okay, so you may have heard.
New York City gets a new mayor this week.
34-year-old Democratic Socialist Zoran Mamdani.
Mamdani's election was one of the biggest wins for the left in 2025.
But since then he's been quietly going about a new task, trying to make sure his sweeping campaign promises can actually happen.
An agenda that will freeze the rents for more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants.
Make buses fast and free.
And deliver universal child care across our city.
I'm a little skeptical about how he's going to get everything done.
I think that's what a lot of people are.
Promise so many things.
Free buses, housing and all that.
Promises, promises.
Can this new kind of politics succeed?
Or is this Mamdani's high point the days before he gets into office?
On this episode of Today Explained from Vox.
We sit down with New York City's mayor-elect and ask him directly is he for real?
That's this week on Today Explained.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is the show for curious cooks and eaters.
We're spending this episode talking with authors of some of the cookbooks we're excited about this fall.
And next is Cynthia Shan Mugalingam.
She is a former economist in the British government and she left her job to start a nonprofit business incubator, working with grassroots food entrepreneurs until she got the bug too.
And then she decided that she wanted to open a restaurant to honor her family's Sri Lankan heritage.
Her debut cookbook is called Rambutan, and she joins us now.
Hi, Cynthia.
It's great to have you.
Hi, it's great to be on.
I am so glad to have you on to talk about your book.
Sadly, I do think that a lot of people who only hear about Sri Lanka in the news, in the States, in the West, often hear about its political and economic challenges and crises, but you have a much more intimate relationship with what makes it a beautiful and amazing place and since you just wrote a cookbook about Sri Lankan food let's start there what what are some of the dishes that you love the most So Sri Lanka was on the spice route, has been for centuries, and it has a quite heavy Southeast Asian influence in the food.
I would say I always say it draws as much from Java as it does from South India.
So curries are a big staple of what we eat and they're lighter.
They're often made with coconut milk.
They're lighter than the curries you might get, certainly in the north of India.
And in other places, black pork curry is one of our most famous dishes.
It's made with vinegar and sugar and toasted spices and toasted rice and coconut.
Or Jaffna.
King crab curry is also a sort of famous recipe which is made with roasted red chili powder which has got a kind of smoky quality.
We eat a lot of vegetables on the island and lots of vegetables kind of come from Sri Lanka.
We make them as curries, but also raw ensembles, which are kind of these unpickled condiments or side dishes, on the side of what you might be eating.
And you know I feel like many Sri Lankans are like part time vegans and the book is kind of half half vegan.
Usually for religious reasons, it'll be a festival and you're not supposed to eat meat.
And we also have lots of I don't know how to describe them kind of sundries or carbohydrates to eat, to mop up your curries and sambals with.
We're famous for these bowl-shaped pancakes which are called hoppers, but also dosas, which are a kind of fermented lentil pancake.
Lots of different rotis, stuffed, thin ones, laminated ones, and lots of different rice dishes.
And then there's I guess there's a whole category of I think Sri Lankans are very sociable and there's lots of little snacks and sweets to eat along the way.
Yeah.
I love that you just ran through this huge range of different dishes.
But let me dig in a little bit on sambals and the role of sambals on the Sri Lankan table.
Because when I was coming up, when anyone said the word sambal, the only thing I knew was, I think, an Indonesian or Malaysian condiment.
Usually it was just chilies fermented slightly and then crushed up into sort of a paste or kind of a loose sauce with garlic.
And it was a condiment.
But the sambals in Sri Lanka have a much – bigger role than that, right?
And it's not just like one chili sauce, basically.
Yeah, there are at least a dozen, maybe dozens of sambals.
Some of them are raw.
So like a green mango sambal is a green mango, which is like an unripe mango, which is very sour.
And you'd have it with grated coconut, shallots, maybe fermented fish and lime juice.
So it's kind of performing what a salad might be on the side.
You certainly do get pounded ones like there's pounded red chilies.
It's called cut to sambal, which is red chilies, shallots, maybe dried fish and lime juice.
And it can be super spicy and it can be performing a role a bit like ketchup, which is kind of a side dish to kind of add flavor to what you're eating.
And then I guess the kind of king of sambals is what I say in the book is coconut sambal or pole sambal, which is grated coconut shallots, lime juice and red chilies.
And we kind of have it with absolutely everything.
And so yeah, they're each kind of delivering, I guess, a concentrated hit of flavor in a different way.
And you could have more than one going on at the table at one time and should.
Yeah.
Oh, yum.
Okay, so let's get back to your story for a moment.
You were actually raised in the U.K., But do you remember going to Sri Lanka as a child?
What were your impressions?
What were the sights and sounds and smells?
Yeah, I mean, my parents left Sri Lanka in the late 60s, early 70s.
And I'm the youngest of three.
We were all born and raised in the UK.
But my folks were the first in their families to leave.
And so we used to write letters to our cousins that we didn't always know.
And we used to...
I think be very engaged with the idea of Sri Lanka.
And then almost every year we managed to go back on holiday.
We couldn't always go back to the area of Sri Lanka where my parents are from, because of the war there.
After 85, it became dangerous to kind of go there.
But I remember vividly, I think it was one of my first trips.
I was three years old, but I think I remember vividly like having red bananas which I'd never seen before.
Lots of little bananas and fruit and yeah, lots of dishes that I hadn't ever kind of seen before.
And that continued to happen every holiday when we went back and we discover new things I'd never eaten before.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I know that feeling so deeply from when I would go to Hong Kong as a child with my family.
Certainly, we lived near Chinatown.
My parents worked in Chinatown here in New York.
And we had Chinese food every night.
But yeah, the idea of going to this place where you think, oh, this is where my culture is from.
That idea of seeing things that are familiar but also totally new.
Um, like something that's totally new, but the very first time you see it like oh, i get it.
It's such a thrill.
So that was your experience as a child.
And then in the book you talk about how, as an adult, you started going back as well, with a kind of a different lens, like you weren't just absorbing, you were going there to look and to find things.
Tell me about that experience, and how is that different than going back as a kid?
Yeah, I mean, that's a great question.
I made a decision, I think, at some point.
My language skills aren't great, which I've always been embarrassed about.
You know, I don't speak great Tamil.
The other main language of Sri Lanka is Sinhalese, and that's non-existent for me.
And so, in some ways, my interactions in Sri Lanka were always like filtered through the prism of my mom and dad.
You know, when I got to being my late 20s, I was like I can't just ride on the coattails of mom and dad.
Man,
It's time for me to like grow up and have my own relationship with the place.
And so I began to go back and to try and forge my own friendships and relationships there.
Um, and then, after the end of the war in 2012, I went on my first trip back up to Jaffna, which is where my family's from, with my mom, which I hadn't ever been able to do.
You know, I hadn't done since I was, like, I was two or three.
And, um, I saw her...
Like cooking on firewood, which most people do in the villages in Sri Lanka.
Going to the market, buying fish and crab from an actual fisherman who just bought it.
Curry leaves from the garden, mangoes from the garden.
Seeing how they cooked when they grew up, which I hadn't ever really seen before.
And feeling like this is really special and it's actually not in London and people don't know about it.
And it's fresh and it's exciting and it's actually quite easy to cook in this way.
And I don't, I mean, I don't know, like my dad's 85 and he's cycling around the village.
Lots of other oxygenarians are doing the same thing.
It seems to be quite like a way of life that's working for those guys.
And yeah, that sort of began a kind of fire in me to want to share that and learn more about it and tell the story of Sri Lankan food.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Were there meals from those explorations that you really remember or like dishes that you ate?
You're like, oh, my God, I need to bring this back to my life in the UK.
I think like crab curry really is so exceptional.
It's something to do with the sweetness of really fresh crabs and this little dance that does with crab freshly milled curry powder like freshly toasted and milled spices.
Also, you know, that's a whole revelation.
It's a bit of a fad.
You have to like mess around doing it in the kitchen, but it's not.
It doesn't take as long as sourdough or whatever to do.
It takes like five minutes or 10 minutes or whatever.
And then, It's like a flavor explosion.
And that yeah, though making crab with my mom, buying them alive and then killing them, which I was frightened of at the beginning, that was definitely.
That's definitely stuck in my mind.
So let me sort of geek out about how you make that dish then, right?
So you have the fresh crab.
Yeah.
You have these freshly toasted spices.
Walk us through that a little bit.
So you just start with the base of the curry which is you fry or saute red onions or shallots, curry leaves and in this curry no whole spices and then you add like the crab shells is what i do and i leave the crab meat for slightly later because crab ticks is cooked so quickly um so you add the crab shells and coconut milk and the spices and you let it cook for not that long actually um and then yeah you take it off the heat you uh add this spice mix i call in the book meat powder which is a direct translation of irachito which is what it's called in tamil which is um mainly like fennel and cinnamon and kind of warm spices which just shifts the flavor profile right in the last moments um and you can cook it it's often cooked with like the leaves of moringa uh tree but you can also in the book i use rocket because it has that same peppery taste it's super quick and super simple um and it's yeah it's just it's just delicious Oh, God, that sounds so good.
Like the sweet crab with coconut milk and those sweet spices.
Oh, that sounds amazing.
Amazing.
Well, thank you so much, Cynthia.
The book is truly gorgeous.
And I'm so glad to have a chance to talk with you.
Thank you so much for having me on.
Cynthia Shan Mugalingam is the author of Rambutan, Recipes and Stories from Sri Lanka.
You can find a recipe for that crab curry.
She loves Jafna Crab Curry at splendidtableorg.
British food what's the first thing that comes to mind?
I'm you know i bet most of you said fish and chips.
That's what i said, and probably a few of us thought about the great british baking show and a few of us also thought about chicken tikka masala and i'm sure someone out there thought they made a very funny joke about how bad british food is.
But what do we really know about this cuisine?
Our next guest is author of a book that is simply and declaratively called the british cookbook.
Ben Mervis joins us now.
Hey, Ben, it's great to see you.
Hey, Francis.
Thanks so much for having me.
So congratulations on this absolutely stunning, massive 600 recipe, 450 plus page cookbook on British food.
I have to admit to you though, that after reading it and just immersing myself in it, I was a little surprised to find out that you actually grew up in Philadelphia.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like home of the Liberty Bell, but... And cheese steaks.
Yeah, and cheese steaks.
How did you get so into British food?
I think, well, my first interaction with British food, it's actually a funny story.
I was in home ec class and I was, this was middle school, so I was probably 12 or 13.
And we had this assignment where we needed to pick, pick a country and then pick a dish from that country to cook.
And I had just seen Braveheart, which I was absolutely obsessed with.
And of course, I chose Scotland.
And so, I don't know, in hindsight, maybe I was always fated to do this cookbook.
You were just yelling freedom while making your Scottish food homework assignment.
Okay, so you didn't kill any English kings.
You, in fact, then eventually moved to Scotland, and you are a culinary researcher at heart, and so you really immersed yourself in this place.
And maybe this is from a vantage point of someone who didn't grow up with it, right?
But I also love the very first sentence of this book, and I don't have it committed to memory, but it's something along the lines of you know, the first thing you find so wonderful about British food is that it's so beloved.
And yet so many people like to make fun of it.
So why do you think British food got this bad rap?
I think it's become a bit of a joke that's kind of continued without people knowing why.
And I think that...
In part, it's because people haven't stopped to take it seriously.
And I think that that's one thing that I really wanted to do with this book.
I mean look through and you'll find depth and diversity and regionality and influences from all over the world.
But more significantly, I think you'll find a whole lot of delicious food.
I mean, this is for me, at least you know, the dream dinner the roast beef and Yorkshire puddings, the steak pie.
I mean, like, have you ever turned away a treacle tart or sticky toffee pudding?
No.
So I wanted to just be able to say like, let's stand up and be like.
This food is actually fantastic.
But I think there's also like a little bit of this inferiority complex.
I mean British people are maybe a little reluctant to take pride in in their food because you have this history of a globe-spanning empire and the home cooking of this major global power, which is really just humble food of peasants, of farmers, really modest kind of cooking which is great.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with it.
It's fantastic.
But I think that that kind of contrast has created a little bit of yeah, maybe reluctance to just be like.
This is great.
Oh, that's so interesting.
Cause it's so, I mean in terms of the mentality of a colonial empire.
It's like the idea of colonial empires.
No, we conquer and therefore we rule and therefore we're the best.
I mean that's, that's a simple sort of schoolyard way of putting it, but like that's, that's the colonial project, right?
It's like, Oh, you go in these places and you assert your dominance.
Um, but it's interesting that, like at the unlike just a human level.
Um, It sounds like your take is sort of the opposite.
But anyway, you said this really interesting thing too, and I think we'll certainly get into the British food that is influenced by, you know, people from the former colonies and or just contemporary immigrants, because I really appreciate that that's a big strain in your book too.
It's not just like waving the Union Jack, right?
But you're also very clear in this book about the regional diversity of British food.
You know that spans centuries or millennia.
So even for a relatively small geographic land, there's a huge diversity, from the north to the south, the east, the west that you write about.
Tell us about some of that regional diversity in the food, and what are some examples of these different regions?
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think one of the misnomers with British food is that I think people just lump it in together with say, British food is English food.
And the reality is that, well, two things.
One, that can't be further from the truth.
And then two.
English food itself has various regional cuisines from Cornwall and the Southwest to the Midlands, the north of England and so on.
But I think that Yeah, as you say, there's so much diversity and that's really reflected in what's growing and what's grazing throughout the country.
And one of the easiest divides to think of is between the lowlands and the uplands, broadly speaking between Northern England and upwards, so into Scotland and North Wales and the South.
And there in the North, the grains which grew historically anyway nowadays, you know, you can find anything but oats and barley were what people made.
They're, you know, barley flatbreads and oat cakes cooked on the griddle.
And then to the south is where you get more of the tradition of wheat flour and oven-baked breads and cakes and muffins.
And when you're thinking of, you know, the British Bake Off and stuff like that, those kind of elaborate Victoria sponge cakes.
They're coming a little bit more from an English tradition.
So that's one simple example, but it extends into meat as well.
Lamb, again in the upland regions, would be used in a Lancashire hot pot or, of course, the famous haggis.
And then in the south, southwest, a little bit more pork, sausages, and all that good stuff.
What's a Lancashire hot pot?
Lancashire hot pot is a layering of lamb and onions and and this beautiful um layer of potatoes on top with that sort of bronzes.
As it's cooking in the oven, it's absolutely gorgeous, oh cool.
So is it akin to like what we would call shepherd's pie?
No um, It's maybe a little bit more akin to a very thick stew.
But then it's topped with a layer of potatoes and baked, and the potatoes kind of seal it.
Yeah, exactly.
Oh, very cool.
And all that juice creates something really delicious.
So a main theme again is this idea of the diversity of regions, but also this idea that this is sometimes tricky, I think, for Americans to understand right.
England is not Britain, right?
We use those words interchangeably often, but England refers to a specific geographic and maybe cultural sort of part of the UK.
And Britain is the larger, what includes Scotland and Wales and other regions.
So there is actually...
It sounds like much more of a sense locally of oh, this is our region, this is our food, this is our culture.
In a lot of cases, this is our language.
But what are dishes that sort of bring those different communities together as well, that they all feel are, you know, British dishes?
Well, I think that there are... There's quite a few, really.
And sometimes they vary just a touch between regions.
I think, well, for starters, there is a stew called Scouse, which is popular in northwest England.
And then... also kind of seeped into the borders of Wales and is popular there too.
There's a lot of mash made of different root vegetables and potatoes.
That's made, you know, both in Wales and then in Orkney Islands, which are to the north of Scotland.
And Another favorite personally of mine is this sticky oaty gingerbread made in both Yorkshire and Lancashire, which are both regions of northern England, but do not confuse them.
And it's also made north of the border, but it's made as a biscuit, so as a cookie instead of as a cake.
So it varies slightly and the name has changed slightly to Perkins instead of Parkins.
So there's lots of similarities and differences and I think that that was a really important thing for me when doing the research on the book was to show that there are different languages and influences from different countries.
I think if you even just think about the...
My background is in history and just thinking about the close alliance between Scotland and France to kind of protect each other mutually against England.
And then you have the history of Norse rulers in northern Scotland.
And then, of course, many regions of England have a shared history, original shared history and language and culture with Wales.
They were the Celtic peoples pushed back into various regions.
So there's a lot of depth there.
And I think that when we think about the UK and think, oh yeah, there's just, you know, it's just English that's spoken or it's, you know just a couple of languages.
There's I don't know, I was looking at this the other day, I think eight or nine or 10 different languages spoken historically.
So it gives a sense of... all the different diversity that was once quite pronounced.
And you do see that in the food as well.
Yeah, totally.
We'll be back with more with Ben Mervis, author of The British Cookbook.
And then it's Pascal Baldar, author of Wildcraft and Vinegars.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is the show for curious cooks and eaters.
We're talking to Ben Mervis, author of the British cookbook.
Back to our conversation.
OK, so let's get to the sort of more modern day idea of diversity and really the multicultural Britain that I think we see reflected more in media.
And certainly, you know, when people talk about, oh, my God, London's a great restaurant city.
And like they talk about.
Well, they talk about Yotamotolengi or they talk, you know, Middle Eastern food and they talk about the great Indian food and they talk about all these great cuisines from around the world that have gathered in London.
So.
Britain obviously has a very intense colonial history, and it's also a modern center of migration.
So when we think of all these international influences and famously, chicken tikka masala was once called the national dish of Britain by, I think, some minister of parliament or something
When I opened your book, I randomly opened it and actually was to the page for the recipe for chicken tikka masala, next to it for chicken madras.
Tell us the story of these dishes and their Britishness.
Well, their origins have become something of legend.
I actually am from where I'm sitting right now.
I'm just a few miles from Shish Mahal which, according to the legend, this is the place where chicken tikka masala was invented, because the chef, dealing with a complaint from a customer, he poured some of the I think it was cream of tomato soup that he was eating to get over a cold or whatever into the chicken tikka that had been called too dry.
And I think that that story, whether it's true or not, you know Curries have become a real big part of British culture and British food culture.
As you say in I think it was 2001, the foreign secretary says this is you know, the chicken tikka masala is the British dish.
And I think what's interesting there is that that's actually not only modern interest in Indian flavors and tastes.
It goes back centuries.
And, interestingly enough, British interest in curry.
And the first recipe for curry actually predates the first recipe for fish and chips, even predates fish and chips themselves.
The first recipe, I think, for chicken curry is 1747.
I think it's a cookbook author named Hannah Glass.
And I think she uses a spice mix with, what is it, ground ginger and black pepper and turmeric.
But I think that That wasn't just a flash in the pan.
This was interest that sustained over time.
And then I think in a much, much bigger way, in the last I don't know how many 70 years or so see how bad my math is with the waves of migration of immigrants from India and Pakistan and so on, you have more of the authentic food quote, unquote authentic, sorry food coming from India and the huge explosion of interest in curries and Indian food culture.
And these dishes have been adapted to the British palate.
So they become, in some cases, much creamier, less spicy.
In other cases, like the vindaloo, they've had their heat factor dial it up to 11, really to kind of cater to a British audience.
All the while They're making use of, you know, whereas back in India they'd be made fresh.
You know the spice mixtures.
In the UK, historically, they were made with ground spices.
Like commercially packaged.
Yeah, exactly.
Like charwoods, which, you know, originates in the late 19th century.
They're doing their own, you know, chicken madras, as you say, comes from that spice mixture.
And today they do, you know, jars of sauces and paste and whatever else.
But yeah, it's interesting to see how it's been adapted here and then just really absolutely beloved to the point where it's surpassed fish and chips.
Yeah, that's such a fascinating bit of history.
And I think befitting because you are such a fan of history and such a researcher.
Thanks so much, Ben.
This was really, really great.
Thanks so much for having me, Francis.
It was a blast.
Ben Mervis is the author of The British Cookbook, and he left us with a recipe that sounds pretty perfect for the holidays.
It's called Yorkshire Parkin.
It's an oatmeal gingerbread, and according to Ben, it only gets better as the days go by.
You can find it at splendidtable.org.
You know that fancy vinegars are like a time-honored holiday gift.
But what about a book that teaches you to make your own naturally fermented vinegars?
That's the subject of wild food expert Pascal Baldar's latest, Wild Crafted Vinegars.
Hey, Pascal.
Bonjour.
Bonjour, bonjour.
Hey, so, you know, it's funny.
I'd always heard that vinegar making was super easy.
And a friend of mine told me oh yeah, just pour a bottle of wine into a crock and just let it hang out for a while.
And I did that.
Well, there must be more to it than that, I guess, because my vinegar was horrible.
In fact, I don't even think it became vinegar.
So why don't you start with telling us of the many methods you have for making vinegar in the book?
What is the simplest way?
So the simplest way is really just to go to the store and get some regular wine or good quality beer.
And I kind of already know the mistake that you make, probably made, is the fact that if you make vinegar at home, you actually want the alcoholic content to be anywhere between like five and nine percent alcohol, and most wine most wine actually anywhere between like 12 you know 11 to actually 14.
So the way to do it is super simple you buy a bottle of wine and then first you take a look at the label And the label will tell you the alcoholic percentage.
So I have a bottle of wine over here, and if I take a look at the label, it says 12%.
So I'm going to take a quart jar, and then I'll put like approximately like 40% of my wine.
And then I'm going to add water, the same amount of water.
So I basically diluted by 50%, and I end up with a wine that's really kind of like 6% alcohol.
And then you know, when you go buy your wine also buy some unpasteurized vinegar that you know like Bragg's.
You know you find that in the vinegar section.
Oh, Bragg's vinegar.
Yeah, yeah.
So that one actually has a culture that you can use.
So you put 40 wine, 40 water and then maybe like add 20 in the jar of your unpasteurized vinegar and you're good to go.
You cover it with a clean cloth or you cover it with pepper towels and you secure it with a rubber band.
That way you don't have any flies or anything that falls into it.
Okay.
And then you just wait for three or four weeks and you end up with a good vinegar.
That's wild.
So that makes a vinegar.
But when you're tasting different vinegars that you can buy in a grocery store, they have tartness, they have some brightness, but there may not be a lot of depth in the flavor.
And then you go and taste a really beautiful vinegar afterwards. often more expensive.
And often it's acidic, it's tart, but it's not sharp.
Often it's more mellow.
Sometimes it has a deep flavor, almost like a deep umami.
How do you make that kind of vinegar?
So basically what's happening is a lot of the commercial vinegar.
You know it's always about money pretty much.
So they're basically making vinegar extremely fast.
They use modern method.
They oxygenate.
I think they make vinegar in like a few days.
On my side, I use the all-in method that people used to use in France in the 1700s.
So it's a slow aging process whereby you basically take your vinegar, you cover it and you let nature do its things.
And if you take a very good quality wine or a very good quality beer and you let it age like that and turn slowly into vinegar, you end up with a superior product, in my opinion.
So is it really kind of you get what you pay for?
If you use a wonderful, expensive bottle of wine, you're going to get terrific vinegar?
Or if you use cheap wine, you're going to get vinegar that's not as delicious?
You know, I actually like to buy good quality, like medium wine.
I will not spend... too much money, buy a super, super, super expensive wine to make vinegar.
I think the process of aging is really what makes the vinegar much better.
And also the fact that we are using wild yeast and wild bacteria.
And I think that that is what gives complexity to the vinegar in a good way.
You know, you get very deep tone.
Sometimes you get even low surprise.
You know, some bacteria from a specific area may react differently.
You know, it's fascinating stuff.
I see.
Yeah, so that's sort of a level up.
It's like you kind of encourage natural yeast to get into it.
Yeah, totally.
There's a recipe for apple scrap vinegar that you can find online and you can make vinegar using apple scrap.
If you make an apple pie, you just save all the skins and all that.
While this is already present on the apple.
You just add a little bit of sugar, some water, you let it ferment and eventually, by itself, it will turn into vinegar.
Oh, interesting.
Okay, you just mentioned sugar.
Yeah.
When we have vinegars that do taste sweet...
Can you get that through fermentation, or is that oh, they've added sugar, or they've added grape juice or something like that?
They usually add something to it.
And I think the way they do it, they basically pasteurize the vinegar and then add sugar.
And that way, there's no way that the fermentation will restart.
I've done it.
But, you know, I do a lot of classes and I teach people and all that.
And very often I will actually add a little bit of sugar when I serve it.
If I create a sauce or a vinaigrette or something like that.
Usually when natural fermentation is done, there's not a lot of sugar left.
So you kind of end up with, in my experience, more like a dry vinegar, but not in a bad way.
It can be, you know, you can still have like some fruity flavors and all this stuff.
And then you can also infuse all kinds of different interesting plants and flavors into your vinegar.
That will give some sweetness too.
And one of my favorite one is white fir vinegar.
White fir vinegar.
Yeah.
Yes, it actually tastes like tangerine.
That's so interesting.
Oh, cool.
And it gives a little bit of sweetness.
And I make a mountain vinegar, which is a blend of vinegar infused with probably like 20 different plants that I collect in the wild.
It's just absolutely incredible.
I use pinyon pine, white fir, a plant called mugwort.
It's so complex.
Mm-hmm.
So, when you're infusing a vinegar, do you have a guideline as to what infuses well, what doesn't?
If we wanted to start with that,
First of all, what type of vinegar should we use?
Should we use a red wine vinegar, a white wine vinegar?
You know, it's like creating a dish.
It really depends what you are going to make.
So red wine vinegar may work with, for example, mushrooms.
But I would use a white wine vinegar if I was using my white fur, for example.
Okay.
So when you're infusing, do you just drop the flavor into the vinegar as it's during the maturing process, or do you create the vinegar first and then you just stick the herbs in, or whatever?
Yeah, for a food safety perspective, it's much better if you create the vinegar first.
And then, once it's very acidic, then you can start infusing your plants and roots, mushrooms.
One of my favorites was smoked mushroom and seaweed, for example, into a mugwort beer vinegar, which is an old beer that I make the way the Vikings used to do it.
Oh, wow.
That sounds extremely Viking-like.
A mugwort vinegar. with seaweed and mushrooms.
I used to work with a lot of chefs in Los Angeles a few years ago and one of the chefs was completely in love with that vinegar.
I made, I think, like two or three gallons over a period of a year.
Oh, it sounds incredible.
Okay, so let me ask this last thing.
You have these really interesting complex vinegars.
How do you like to use them?
So I like to feature it.
I mean, I do a lot of wild food dishes.
I make a lot of vinaigrette for sure.
I do a lot of condiments.
For example, in Los Angeles, we have a lot of mustard and I can collect the seeds.
And using my vinegar, I make all kinds of different mustard condiments.
You know, I make hot sauce.
I use vinegar in my soups too.
There's a lot of soups that actually use vinegar.
Hot and sour soup.
I love to use vinegar in my soup.
It's a very European thing to do.
In Belgium, we used to do that a lot.
You can make jam.
You can make salsa-like stuff.
I'm studying a lot of seeds right now, and I love to do pickled seeds.
So it's kind of like a caviar, but it's made with seeds that are collected in the wild.
There's probably like 200 edible seeds you can collect in the wild today.
So you can create, I mean, the amount of creation is just mind-boggling.
But you can do also canning.
You can also make a lot of quick pickling.
I do so much quick pickling.
I make like all kinds of different tapers.
I quick pickle edible roots like wild radish, herbs, mushrooms, olives.
We have a lot of olives in Los Angeles.
And I think I have like two or three gallons of olives being cured with vinegar right now.
And canning and drinks.
Nobody thinks about drinks.
People drink kombucha drink, but what about vinegar?
Vinegar drink used to be extremely popular in the old days.
And I think if you take my mountain vinegar, which has very complex flavor of pine tangerines, and then you add a little bit of sweetness and water, my God, this is an incredible drink in my opinion.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, like a shrub.
Yeah, like a shrub.
Yeah, totally.
So, I mean, you can make so many interesting drinks if you make your own vinegar.
Well, right on.
Well, this sounds super fun.
Thanks so much, Pascal.
You're very welcome.
Pascal Baudart is the author of Wild Craft of Vinegars, and you can find his recipe for seaweed infused vinegar at splendidtableorg.
It sounds maybe a little bit odd, but it's really, really cool.
And that is all we have for our show today.
I hope you check out the cookbooks we've talked about.
And if you can buy them from your local bookstore, whether an indie or even a bookstore chain, it really makes a difference.
We'll talk to you next week.
Our show is produced by APM, American Public Media, and supported by The Slowdown Podcast.
Join acclaimed poet Maggie Smith for a handpicked poem and a moment of reflection every weekday.
Take a breather with The Slowdown, available in podcast apps.
And hey, be sure to check out our free amazing newsletter, Weeknight Kitchen.
We share a new recipe every week from the best and brightest food writers working today.
When you sign up for our newsletter this month, you can be eligible to win a copy of a brand new cookbook from this season's crop.
Go to splendidtable.org slash giveaway.
The Splendid Table was created by Sally Swift and Lynn Rosetta Casper and was made this week by technical producer Jennifer Lukey, producer Maria Wartell and managing producer Sally Swift.
Jordan Turgeon is our digital producer, and Lauren Humpert is our senior podcast production manager.
Thanks for listening.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is APM, American Public Media.
