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Hey, it's Francis.
It's time to celebrate and indulge a bit.
So here's a show from last year all about gift giving, even if you're just giving it to yourself.
Have a listen.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.
With the holidays right around the corner, of course we want to give you some inspiration for your celebrations.
Later in the episode we'll be joined by my great friend Helen Rosner, a staff writer and restaurant critic for The New Yorker magazine.
We'll talk about last minute gifts from her annual gift guide and a special treat you're going to want to get for yourself even after the gift giving is done.
But the more we thought about this episode, the more we felt that you know it's pretty important these days to find celebration in the everyday.
I mean, yes, absolutely.
This is the time for gatherings, for special touches and our meals and gifts.
But I'm also leaning more than ever on friends, family, community.
And that made me think that some of the most touching experiences I've been able to have in food were with a company called The League of Kitchens.
Founded a decade ago by Lisa Keon Gross here in New York City, they offer cooking classes, but with a unique twist.
Instead of a school, you take the classes in the homes of their teachers, who are all immigrants from all over the world, either literal grandmas or grandmas in spirit, teaching you their traditional dishes.
I've gotten to go to several of these classes and not only are they delicious, but they almost always end in hugs and happy tears as you learn about their personal lives and how generous these women are as they share part of those lives with you.
And if you're not in New York, Lisa's just written with all of those teachers The League of Kitchens cookbook.
So hey, Lisa, it's great to see you.
Great to see you.
So great to be here.
It is such a pleasure.
As you know, we have been fans of the League of Kitchens for a really long time.
Even though I just said for a really long time.
I kind of can't believe.
It's been over 10 years that you've been offering these cooking classes.
So for listeners who don't know you, tell us what the League of Kitchens is and how you got started.
Yeah.
So the League of Kitchens is a culturally immersive cooking school in New York City and online, where all of our instructors are immigrant women who are exceptional home cooks and they teach their family recipes to small groups of students in their home kitchens.
And that's in person.
We also do online classes now.
And we've also really expanded into doing private events for companies with multiple instructors.
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
And I've actually had the pleasure of Doing three of them, actually.
I know, it's amazing.
I learned Trinidadian cooking.
I've learned Uzbek cooking.
I've learned Mexican cooking.
It's really a blast to be in the homes of these instructors and to really be in their lives.
Their kids might be walking through.
It's amazing.
It's very intimate.
And so because it is like very geared in the home, not just like because it's, I imagine it's not just because oh, it's like cheaper to do it instead of having a school.
I mean, it's nice to not have the overhead, but no, the heart of the experience is being in each instructor's home.
Yeah.
And you write in the book that just came out that home cooking is really the heart of every cuisine.
It's not really what you find in restaurants.
Talk about that idea.
Is that this idea that restaurant cooking and restaurant chefs are the apotheosis of cuisine is really a Western European 18th, 19th century invention?
And most places around the world.
The food that people eat outside the home is like street food or festival food.
But the full rich cuisine is what's cooked at home.
And, for instance, if you compare the food of our South Asian instructors who are, you know, from India Bangladesh, Nepal the detail with which they use spices, the quantity of spices they use, the number of techniques they layer, is just something that's very difficult for a.
So, for instance like, if you really want to fully experience South Asian cuisine and also to experience the full range of flavors and dishes that's traditional to be served in a meal, you really have to go to someone's home.
Mm hmm.
And so tell us how you got started in this.
Why did you have this idea to start this school 10 years ago?
So the idea came out of my own personal experience that my mom is Korean.
She immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1970s.
My dad is American of Hungarian Jewish ancestry, and his family came to New York City in the 1890s.
So two very different immigrant stories.
And when I was growing up, my Korean grandmother lived with my family and she was always cooking really wonderful Korean food.
But whenever I'd want to cook with her in the kitchen, she would always say oh, don't worry about cooking.
You should go study because studying is more important.
And I think for her, she really wanted me to have educational and professional opportunities that she didn't have and would have loved to have had.
And, in her mind, learning to cook and cooking at home was the same thing as being stuck at home and not being able to follow your dreams.
And so she didn't teach me how to cook.
Also I will say now that I have kids of my own, I see that cooking with kids is much more time consuming and kind of annoying.
So I think she also was like, just I need to finish dinner, like do something else.
Literally just don't be here.
Right.
But you know, after college, when I was like teaching myself how to cook, so I could, you know, eat and not always be eating in restaurants I wanted to cook the dishes of my childhood, all these wonderful Korean recipes.
And she had passed away by that time.
And so I tried to teach myself from cookbooks and from the Internet, and nothing tasted as good as when my grandmother made it.
And I realized that so often there are little details and tips and tricks and nuances that are often left out of written recipes or videos.
And those so often are the difference between something being good and something being excellent.
And so I had this fantasy of oh, I wish there was another Korean grandmother I could cook with and learn from, and cook within her home kitchen and learn her family recipes.
And so I kind of stored that idea away.
I actually went on to do an MFA in participatory public art and social practice and I was doing a lot of projects around food.
And then I came back to New York and this idea came back to me and I thought well, what if I could find amazing home cooks from all around the world who could teach their family recipes, host these classes in their homes?
And it could be just as much about creating opportunities for meaningful cross-cultural learning and connection and exchange as it was about this really powerful culinary learning experience.
So I thought I was going to do it as like a three-month art project.
But then I did a small pilot.
I found two women who still teach with me, our Lebanese and Bangladesh instructors.
I kind of put together this training.
We wrote recipes.
We figured everything out.
We did these pilot workshops with my friends and family as the students.
And I realized, one, it was a lot of work to find the right people and train them.
And two...
Both the instructors and my friends and family loved the experience.
And it just seemed like a dumb idea to try to do this for three months.
And I realized that I could do this as a small business, as a kind of unusual recreational cooking school.
And so that's what I did.
Yeah.
So now it's been 360 months plus.
Yeah, it's wild.
Actually, i was pregnant with my oldest daughter when we opened for business, so she and the league of kitchens are kind of twins.
Oh, that's sweet, i love that.
Yeah also, that sounds uh, totally bonkers.
Yeah well, thankfully i opened the business before i had her, because i would not have been able to do it with a newborn.
Yeah yeah, i'm not kidding, it was like six months before she was born and it was enough to get things up and running.
Yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm glad it worked out that way.
And so now you've written a cookbook, the League of Kitchens cookbook.
And there's a great little note and this may interest like really only me, because I'm like a nerd for cookbooks.
Yeah.
But I think it's worth talking about, because you have a little note in there about how you wrote the recipes for this cookbook.
And there is an irony in it because the recipes in the cookbook are extremely detailed.
Uh-huh.
And yet famously, you know, when people say like oh, I tried to learn to cook something with my parent, or tried to learn something, cook something with my grandparent.
It was so hard because they never measure anything.
They say add enough of this or just a little of that.
And what does that mean?
Yeah.
And yet your recipes are so super detailed.
Yes.
So you forced these instructors to pick up a measuring cup for the first time in their life.
Right.
Exactly.
So all of our instructors are the kind of expert home cooks that never measure anything.
And as you're saying, our recipes are extremely detailed and extremely measured.
So we have everything in ounces and grams.
We have everything by weight and volume.
And That was because you know this experience I described when I tried to teach myself how to cook Korean food and just nothing tasted as good as my grandmother made it.
I wanted to write a cookbook that did not exclude those little tips and details that make the difference between things being good and exceptional.
So the way we wrote this cookbook actually is we mailed all of the instructors a digital sketchbook.
Measuring cups, measuring spoons, a ruler.
What's this?
Yeah.
And then a number of them too, like they didn't actually open the box until we were doing our first session.
And we did sessions on Zoom where they would send me a list of ingredients in advance and we would go through each step of a recipe together where, let's say, they had to chop an onion.
They would weigh the onion unpeeled.
And then they would peel it.
They would chop it.
I would ask them to measure a piece of onion with a ruler.
Like, is that a half inch?
Is that a quarter inch?
And then we would ask them to measure it in volume.
Like, is that three quarters of a cup?
Is that a cup?
And we went through every recipe like this, with me cooking at the same time as them, measuring as we went.
And then we recorded the videos and my co-writer, Rachel Wharton, who's a very experienced cookbook co-writer, she watched those videos over and over again and then wrote those recipes from there and then she sent me those written recipes like six months later.
I cooked through them again, had lots of questions.
We would ask the instructor, she would check her notes, we'd rewrite them and then we would send those finished recipes to the instructors.
That's amazing.
I'm glad they still talk to you.
Yeah, I know.
They were very good sports about this whole process.
But what it means is that if you actually follow the recipe and measure, the food will taste like the instructor's food and their food is like the best food in the world.
So we say in that note – of course, there's this irony, but also –
We recommend people actually measure the first time through, even to see what the dish is supposed to taste like, because many of these recipes may be unfamiliar to the people making them.
And then second, third time through, make it your own.
Do what you want.
But at least you kind of know what the aim is.
Yeah.
Lisa Kyung Gross's new book is The League of Kitchens Cookbook.
Brilliant tips, secret methods, and favorite family recipes from around the world.
More with her in a minute, including a cake recipe you're going to want to have.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.
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I'm Francis Lam, and this is the show for curious cooks and eaters.
We're talking with Lisa Kyung-Gross about the wonderful cooking school she founded and the book she just wrote about it, The League of Kitchens Cookbook.
Let's get back to it with her.
So let's get to the food in the book.
You know, it's winter.
We're in the holiday season.
Yes.
And with so much heavy festive food going on, I'm really looking forward to cooking some of these dishes.
They're like really everyday, simple dishes, a lot of them.
Cozy, cozy food.
Can we start with the Bangladeshi Kimakuri?
Yes.
Tell us about this dish and Yeah, I love this recipe.
Actually we have a lot of ground beef recipes because I just feel like ground beef is so fast to cook.
You can get grass-fed, high-quality ground beef at more affordable prices.
So this is sort of – I feel like it's almost like a Bangladeshi sloppy joe.
It's like ground beef in a sauce with cubes of potato.
Yeah.
And our Bangladeshi instructor, Afsari, serves it with parathas.
I also like to use high quality tortillas if I'm just rushing.
Sure, sure, sure.
And she has this very interesting technique where she actually blends the ground beef with water to like make a slurry.
Yeah, I noticed that.
And then cooks it and it makes it perfectly even without any clumps, like all the water evaporates.
Oh, that's so interesting.
You're stewing it with the spices that way.
Exactly.
And we have her family recipe with all the different spices she uses and ginger garlic paste, which is really central to all of her recipes that we have in the book.
And it's just such a delicious, homey, cozy meal.
And she'll also do a little salad, or even just raw onion cucumber with some lemon juice on the side.
And it's just so satisfying.
Actually, one funny thing about how we wrote the recipes is we give a big range for chilies.
So the top number is what our instructors do.
And the bottom is what I do, which for my seven-year-old so that there's like a little flavor but not much heat.
So some of the recipes are literally put in half to nine chilies.
Yeah.
So Afsari likes this dish quite spicy, but it's also super good with just a little bit of heat, just a little bit of the green chilies for the flavor.
Yeah.
And tell us about the instructor.
How did you find her?
So Afsari was one of the first two instructors I hired.
And she worked as a garment merchandiser in Bangladesh when she first came here.
And She actually didn't know how to cook at all until she left Bangladesh.
And she basically says she learned how to cook Bangladeshi food by calling her mom.
And she would be like, mom, tell me how to make this.
And then basically through her trial and error.
And then I think she also has a natural gift for cooking.
So like when she started, she just got it and her food tasted amazing.
And now she actually also does like catering for her community and And just all of her recipes are so flavorful.
And there's another very interesting technique where she uses both grated onion and finely sliced onion in the same dish.
And again, that's one of those very subtle techniques I haven't seen in other kinds of curry recipes.
So the grated onion just turns into gravy, like incredibly flavorful gravy.
It totally breaks down.
And then the very finely sliced onion, which she slices from root to stem, not across the equator because again, it cooks differently.
Those break down in a totally different way.
So I just love how the same ingredient, you know prepared two different ways, contributes two different things to the dish.
I love that.
I want to go to another recipe.
This is by Angie, who actually is one of your instructors who I took a class with.
Right, our Mexican instructor.
She taught me how to make the most amazing, yeah, most amazing chiles rellenos.
Yeah.
And she has a recipe for huevos con tocino y habanero, eggs with bacon and habanero chiles.
Yeah, yeah.
Talk about this dish.
And there's a really cool sort of a small but a really cool technique for how these eggs are kind of scrambled.
Yes, totally.
So this is basically a kind of scrambled eggs with bacon and habanero chilies.
Again, it's super simple, but I just never thought to do this.
And the heat of the habaneros and that kind of fruity floral flavor totally cuts that rich flavor of the bacon.
And we also mentioned and have a little recipe for her recipe for raw red onion, quick pickled in lime juice with salt.
And she will also put habaneros in that.
But sometimes when I do it for my kids, I don't.
Half to nine, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, perfectly balances and cuts the richness of the like eggs cooked in bacon fat.
And then you have it with tortillas.
And it's just such a quick, simple, satisfying meal.
And she has this very interesting scrambling technique where she cooks the bacon in a pan, then she cracks in the eggs and And first she breaks up the white and lets that cook.
And then she'll break up the yolks.
And so often you'll get overcooked yolks and undercooked whites.
And this way you have both kind of perfectly cooked.
Yeah.
Is that something that she thought of on her own or is that something that she learned?
I think this is how her mom did it.
You know, it's interesting.
Many of our instructors.
They'll do something the way they learned from their mom or their grandmother.
And they're like, yeah, I never really thought about it.
But then they have a conversation with me about it and they're like oh, I guess it's for this reason.
Yeah, right on.
Sorry, just to get back to the process.
And then the chilies.
Do they come in just at the end, or does she cook them as well in the bacon fat?
Yeah, so they're cooked in the bacon fat.
If you don't have habaneros, it's great too with jalapenos.
It's just that mixture of the heat of the chili and the green freshness of the chili with the bacon.
It's just such a good combo.
Oh, yum.
Okay, I want to jump to another one.
This is a really quick vegetable dish.
It's a Japanese cabbage that is called.
I think literally in the Japanese it's actually called addictive cabbage.
Yes.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, we had a whole conversation with the publisher about whether we should call it addiction cabbage, which is actually what Aiko calls it, or addictive cabbage.
And they were like, maybe addictive sounds better than addiction cabbage.
But it's a very popular dish served at Japanese steakhouses alongside meat.
But it's a great... kind of salad almost.
And she likes to use the flathead Taiwanese cabbage, which you can't always find, but she likes to use it because it's not as tough.
I will say I've made this.
Yeah, I've made this with green cabbage.
It's still great.
But what you need to do is, so basically she salts the cabbage first.
And this is actually very similar raw to like making kimchi or other kinds of like Korean namul too, where you salt the cabbage raw, Let it sit for maybe like 10, 15 minutes.
It also works with Napa cabbage.
And then you rinse it.
So then you rinse off the salt.
But the salt helps the cabbage release a lot of water.
And also the salt enters the cabbage itself rather than just being on the surface.
And like softens it too.
Yeah, and it softens it.
Exactly, exactly.
And then it's basically just toasted sesame oil and fresh garlic.
And it's so delicious.
It's truly addictive.
I want to get to a dessert as well.
Yeah.
Because this sounds terrific.
The word cake, is it like the English word cake?
Yeah.
Cake jawari.
Yeah.
Okay.
So this is an Afghani cake?
Yes.
Almost like a cornbread.
Yes.
But it's cake and it's got cardamom and rose.
It sounds incredible.
Right, right.
Yeah.
So I always say that this is kind of like the most interesting, delicious corn muffin ever.
Because it has finely ground corn flour.
So that's different from cornmeal.
And then white all-purpose flour.
And it's flavored with ground cardamom and rose water.
And then there's obviously sugar in it too and eggs.
And then she has this very cool technique.
It's funny.
She actually bakes it and we say this in the cookbook in a roasting pan, like one of those kind that sort of slopes that has the grill insert.
Oh, yeah.
Sure, sure, sure, sure.
Yeah.
Like I've never seen anyone – Like you put a turkey in.
Yeah, yeah.
You put like a batter in there and also it slopes down but she says it works very well.
I tend to use like a casserole dish, and then she puts two different toppings, one on each side, so that when she serves it there are like two options.
And on one side, she puts white poppy seeds and black nigella seeds.
And the other side is walnuts and raisins.
Oh, cool.
And it's just so delicious.
And she actually will make these in muffin tins for her kids to take to school.
And she gets different shaped muffin tins, like hearts and stars.
So it's sort of interesting that's like the American touch.
But the way that she would make it, and learn to make it in Afghanistan, was to make a kind of tray and then cut it into diamonds.
And it's basically the kind of sweet that accompanies tea sometimes.
So central to Afghan culture is the continuous drinking of cardamom tea.
Like literally Nawida will make a whole large thermos every morning.
Like with the push top.
You know how they serve coffee, like at a deli.
So she'll make a huge thermos of cardamom green tea and then just drink it all day.
And when she was living in Afghanistan, she said it was extremely common.
People would just have a thermos like that near them.
And then anytime guests came, they would have hot tea.
And this cake goes perfectly with hot tea.
Yeah.
And so Nawida, tell us about her.
How did you come to know her?
How long has she been teaching with you?
We met through the IRC, the International Rescue Committee.
So a few of our instructors have connected with us through that.
So she came to the U.S. as a refugee.
She was one of the original six instructors I hired.
So I've been working with her for 11 years, which is pretty amazing.
And when I hired her, she was our youngest instructor.
At the time, she was in her early mid-30s.
However...
After she got married, at like age 18 19, she moved in with her husband's extended family of 35 people.
And for 10 years, she and her sister-in-law were in charge of making three meals a day.
For – she's always like – there were 35 people, but there were usually five to seven guests at every meal.
Oh, my goodness.
So basically for 40 people.
Three times a day, she and her sister-in-law would alternate who would cook, who would do the dishes and clean up.
But basically – She was a catering company.
Yeah.
She did this for 10 years and she grew up cooking with her mother and her grandmother and just loved cooking and always went to the kitchen and wanted to learn cooking.
So she was always very interested in cooking and had a natural talent for it.
But it was those 10 years cooking for 40 people multiple times a day that gave her this skill, where I always say not all of our instructors are grandmas, but they all cook like grandmas.
Sure.
So that's like 40 years of cooking condensed into 10 years.
More than that.
Yeah.
Seriously.
Yeah.
I mean, like, oh my goodness, 40 people a day for three meals.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So so many of these folks you've worked with and gotten to know and spent time in their homes with their families.
Because of the spirit of the season.
I'm curious what holiday traditions of these folks have you seen that really have stuck with you?
Yeah, well, I think...
Central to all of our instructors every day, but even more so in the holidays, is this incredible generosity and spirit of hospitality.
And that's what you experience when you go to their homes for a class.
Or honestly, if you go to their homes just like on a Thursday afternoon.
But I think for holidays, they pull out all the stops.
And it's just, there's so much, There's so much ease, like in the way that they welcome people and that, the way they put people at ease.
Because you know, when I think of holidays and holiday food and holiday gathering, of course it's about the food, but it's also about the feelings, right?
The ideal is you want to feel love.
You want to feel connected.
You want to feel like you're sharing and joy and celebration.
And they're just masters at doing that.
I love that.
Well, Lisa, this has been so great.
Thank you so much and happy holidays to you.
Thank you.
Happy holidays to you too.
And to all those listeners out there.
Lisa Kyung Gross is the author of The League of Kitchens Cookbook.
Brilliant tips, secret methods, and favorite family recipes from around the world.
And she left us with that recipe for that cardamom and rosewater cake she talked about, Cake Jawari.
Find it at splendidtable.org.
And if you are in need of a gift to give, you can certainly gift a class at leagueofkitchens.com.
And they do virtual classes, so you can be anywhere.
Helen Rosner is one of my favorite food writers of all time.
She is a master stylist.
She is super funny.
And she constantly makes the most incredibly astute observations about food.
Like the time she made a video talking about how the secret ingredient in every perfect sandwich is air.
Like how the shape of the ingredients matters because it creates air pockets, and how that affects how everything feels when you bite down on it.
And I could not help the entire time I was watching this video.
But think one oh my god, she's totally right.
And two, is she just making fun of food dorks like me?
Like, is she joking about this?
Anyway, she is also the writer of an annual semi-unhinged gift guide.
So I am delighted to talk with her about that and about a new piece she's working on rounding up the best Panettone money can buy.
Yes, it's Italian fruitcake, but just wait for it.
Helen Rosner, it is wonderful to see you.
Hi, Francis.
So I always look forward to your gift guides every year, because I think you have the most exquisite sense of the sacred and profane.
Oh, that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.
Thank you.
But also the extremely practical and thoughtful.
So it is late in the season.
Say I am desperately looking for a perfect last minute gift.
What do you suggest?
I suggest that you don't buy anyone anything if it's that last minute.
And I believe this deeply.
I think that the perfect gift is better in the abstract, right?
Like don't go to the store and buy the first thing that you see or the first thing that hits your price range.
Figure out exactly what the person you're buying a gift for would truly love.
And then – and this is the secret.
This is the secret to the best last-minute gift giving in the world.
Write them an IOU.
Hmm.
And the thing that distinguishes an IOU that feels thoughtful and full of excitement and promise from an IOU that feels slapdash and last minute is that it needs to be an IOU for an experience rather than an object.
It's something that is at its best when it's given in the form of a voucher or a promise, right?
Like I don't want to say like –
We're going to Disney World right now because you might have plans.
I want to say hey, we're going to go at a time and a place that we will determine together and that will make you as happy as possible, because your happiness as the gift recipient is the most important thing in this interaction.
Okay.
I like that.
But you've actually written about this and the object lesson that you wrote about is an IOU for the perfect sandwich.
Oh.
So how do you know what is the perfect sandwich for your loved one?
Well, I think this depends on the nature of your love for your loved one, right?
Like.
I think that there are certain types of relational intimacy where you know somebody's perfect sandwich.
You know every single detail of it and that is the closest relationship any two people can have.
But if you have not yet sort of achieved that merging of souls where you mutually know exactly the bread, exactly the meat, exactly the vinaigrette that your loved one desires on their perfect sandwich, you have to do a little bit of sleuthing.
And the good news about talking about sandwiches is that everyone wants to do it constantly.
Like there is nobody on earth who is not just ready to throw down at one second's notice and enumerate the constituent components of their dream sandwich.
If I said, hey, Francis, what's your favorite sandwich?
You're ready.
You might not have the answer instantly.
You might have to do a little introspection, but your whole body goes into gear.
I know this is like an exercise and you just said that rhetorically and right away.
I'm like is it about me or is it a?
– it's like my brain started racing.
So you just initiate this conversation.
Pay close attention, maybe have like your voice memo app discreetly recording in the background.
And then, in order to make the IOU again not feel slapdash and last minute, but feel thoughtful and engaged – and this takes only marginally more seconds to do than to just write IOU a sandwich – write down in detail the sandwich that you will be providing for them.
So I would say, Frances –
I will be giving you the bami of your dreams.
It will be from this sandwich shop or this bakery.
I will be asking for extra pate.
I will be making sure that the cilantro has been plucked off the stem so that you don't pull all of it out in one big bite.
It will be your dream sandwich, and I will facilitate it for you because I love you.
I do feel loved right now, even though we're just doing this as an interview.
I would do this for you.
I will get you the buckwheat.
And I think this is a universal gift, too.
Okay, so we're talking about sandwiches.
But it actually makes me think of what is at the heart of truly great gift giving.
And I started a few years ago.
God, she listens to this show, so I probably shouldn't give away the secret.
But what I do when I'm getting ready to give holiday gifts for my wife say, hypothetically speaking.
I might have a note in my notes app that through the course of the year, if she happens to mention something that catches her eye, I'm going to write it down.
Maybe it's April.
Maybe it's June.
And in December, that thing comes into play.
And it's that moment.
Where you open the gift and you realize that someone has been paying attention to you.
Like when I've been given gifts that said to me I've been paying attention to you this whole time, I immediately burst into tears.
And I think a sandwich is just as wonderful a way to do that as anything else.
You're exactly right.
I think that the secret at the heart of all of the best gifts, whether they're objects or experiences big small expensive, inexpensive is that they make the gift recipient feel known and seen.
I love that.
You have also brought a couple of things that you can use like in conjunction with a wonderful IAU.
I'm staring at this little tin box that is from a company called Bernal Cutlery.
It's a wonderful cooking supply store in the Bay Area in California that just produces the most beautiful cooking gear and knives.
Obviously, as the name implies,
Everything they sell is magical.
But this is one of the products that they make that I think is absolutely brilliant.
It is a knife wound first aid kit.
It's a little hinged metal tin and it contains things you'd normally expect to find in a knife wound first aid kit, like Band-Aids and finger cots, which are those little plastic sleeves that roll over your fingers.
But it also has a few really smart additions.
So you're holding right now a little tub of antiseptic salve.
OK, sure.
But if you look just to the side that bottle, there that is a traditional Chinese medicine, hemostatic powder, which means that it helps your blood clot up.
Oh, great.
And it's it's very cool looking.
And then look at that thing wrapped in gold foil right there for the treating.
It's a piece of chocolate.
It's a piece of chocolate for treating the worst wound of all, which is the wound to the ego.
And I just think this is a brilliant little collection of things that you might need if things – because things do go wrong in the kitchen, right.
Like I think that the dream of perfection can be so inhibiting and to be told here are the solutions right.
Like you're going to – we've all cut ourselves.
Like here's something beautifully prepared that anticipates the fallibility of the human experience.
And then what I would recommend, this is, I think, quite reasonably priced at about $25.
But if you want the gift to be even bigger than that, the IOU that I would attach to this is a promise to sign them up for a knife skills class.
This is great.
This is the kind of gift that can be extremely thoughtful, or the kind of thing that feels like wow, you're really judging me, aren't you?
Like a loving, loving insult.
A loving insult.
Helen Rosner is a staff writer and restaurant critic at The New Yorker.
More with her in a minute.
Panettone tasting on deck.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.
Go to splendidtableorg slash giveaway and have a great week.
I'm francis lamb and this is the show for curious cooks and eaters.
We're talking with helen rosner and we are digging into a taste test of one of my favorite foods on the planet, the luxurious italian bread slash fruitcake called panettone.
Let's get back to it with her Now.
I want to pivot with you because you're working on a separate article right now about Panettone.
And Panettone, I think, are actually an amazing gift because the good ones can be so amazing.
But at the same time, they can be a terrible gift, because the bad ones are like a lead weight, which is why i'm working on this article and why you have strong feelings about panettone and why everybody who cares about panettone has strong feelings, because it is so important, if you are committed to the panettone lifestyle, to make sure that you are having a good one.
Yeah, okay.
So first of all panettone, to set the sort of set the stage.
Panettone is an italian uh, it's.
It's presented and enjoyed like a cake, but it's technically a bread, It's a sourdough right.
A wild yeast, yeasted bread.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I think they're.
You know, we would call them fruitcakes, but they're not like the doorstop fruitcakes that you would think of.
Like a good panettone is rich and puffy and light and has like and often has.
Traditionally will have beautiful dried fruits, but sometimes they're chocolate and they're different flavors.
And you can find them in every Italian grocery store, like the mass-produced ones.
And again, not to be a snob about it, I don't love those typically, but the But the good ones.
The artisanal ones, which can be just ethereally good, but also can be screamingly expensive.
It's true.
Well, it's the holy grail in bread making.
It's one of the most difficult breads to create because it has a multi-day layered fermentation process that I don't even remotely understand.
But bakers work for years and years, and years to perfect their pen, which have a texture.
If you haven't tried one, this is bakers will be furious at me for saying this, but it's sort of like a brioche.
Right, it's a, it's a.
You're staring down.
How dare i say this?
You read that in my eyes.
Well yeah, But I think you know like it's a – Sure sure, sure.
Like it's yellow and it's puffy and it's buttery.
It's very airy.
I think like – and so let's talk about what makes a good panettone.
Yeah.
I think that the first thing for me about a panettone that marks it as an exceptional one is the texture.
Yeah.
And I'm looking for basically more air than bread, right?
Like we want the interior architecture to look like a colonnade, right?
Like we just like want arches and vaults and cathedrals within this gorgeous loaf of bread.
How about you?
You like a dense panettone?
No, I love them puffy and airy and spectacular.
Okay, so you brought three of them here.
I have.
Should we taste these guys?
Okay, so just to say these can be an amazing gift again, because they are something that is probably a little more luxurious than you would spend for yourself.
They're also exquisitely packaged.
And I don't want to downplay that, right?
Like we're going to be tasting these and talking about their flavor.
But part of the appeal of panettone as a gift is that they come in just gorgeous boxes that have like intricate illustrations, that have beautiful gold leaf, that are sometimes they're in reusable metal tins.
The gift is pre-wrapped and there's something easy and really appealing about giving a panettone.
Okay.
Yeah, and they are seasonal.
They come out now in the Christmas season, but they're not specifically for Christmas.
So you can find these really amazing Panettone through December into January.
And they also, weirdly, the really good ones... have like a month's long shelf life.
Like they're still light and delicate and beautiful, like four weeks from now.
So you can buy one and take a little slice and, just you know, exalt yourself and do it again in a couple of weeks.
Okay.
Let's try some of these.
What'd you bring?
Okay.
So to get to these three panettone, which are among my favorites that I've ever tried, I tasted many, many
All three of these, as it happens, are from very old, very venerable Italian businesses.
So let's start with this one, which is from a bakery called Olivetti.
And they've actually added the year of their founding to their name, Olivetti, 1882.
That's old.
So that puts us at, what, 142 years?
Yeah, something like that.
Um, they make a traditional panettone which um has raisins and candied citrus peel in it, but the one that i've brought in for us to try is a variant on the traditional that involves candied apricots and a ribbon of salted caramel.
Okay okay, so i'm digging my i'm sorry, i just dig my fingers digging in like bears, and it's almost like cotton candy ish when you pull it apart.
Yeah, that's that more air than bread thing, right?
And then it just collapses in your mouth.
Oh, my God.
Isn't that great?
I love that when we talked about doing this for the show, you're like we could just sit there and sound like a bunch of animals on the microphone for a while.
We can just make body noises for 10 minutes.
Beating Pentatone.
Okay, so the salted caramel, which is a flavor I love and often is very strong, is not super strong in this.
It's almost more like the dough is sort of there's a caramel flavor in the dough, but it's still very buttery.
Right.
So one of the things that I think people who have not yet understood the glory of panettone will complain about is that they can be bland, that especially a not so great panettone can just kind of taste like nothing.
And one of the things that the salted caramel does here is it adds both sweetness and salt.
So the flavor is being ramped up in two different directions.
And, like you said, the caramel.
It's not like there's a huge layer of salted caramel running through like it's a hostess cake, right?
It's just sort of ambient sweetness.
And there's that extra layer of salt which for me brings out some of the kind of toasty notes on the outside of the bread.
And then, once you get into the inside, that really beautiful floral, fruity flavor that the apricot is bringing to the whole game.
Yeah.
It's not too vanilla, like the actual flavor, not the social concept.
But it's got a little bit.
It's definitely sweet, but it's not chocolate cake dessert.
Yeah.
It's beautiful.
I love when you bite into it.
Again, it's a bread, even though you think of it as a cake.
But when you bite into it, it has like, you can feel the bread in your teeth and it compacts.
And then once your teeth come together, it disappears.
It just melts away.
It's a beautiful panettone.
Okay, what do you want to do next?
Well, the next two are – they both have little stories behind them.
One of them, which I think we should do next, is one that you recommended that I try.
I demanded that you bring it.
You demanded that I bring it.
It's from a bakery called Biasetto.
Why don't you tell me about it?
Well, okay.
So Biasetto is – I actually was not prepared to be asked this question.
But it's also a master pastry chef in Italy.
Also a very old house.
I forget how old, but like also a hundred year old house.
Family run and the baker is named, the current owner is named Luigi Biasetto.
And I should know more about this than I do.
I just know that it is one of the most exquisite things I've ever eaten in my entire life.
So you haven't tried this in a long time, right?
When we were talking about this before and you said you first tried it 15 years ago.
Yeah, I tried this 15 years ago and I wrote an article about it, about tasting it.
It was a gift.
And I was like, oh, it's supposed to be really special.
And so my good friend Chuck was in town, someone I've known forever.
We were friends in college.
We went to culinary school together.
And I was like, oh, dude, we should check this thing out together.
And I wrote about the experience of tasting it, eating it with him.
And then people started to email me like, I didn't know you and Chuck started dating.
Because you were so in love with the panettone that it spilled over into love for Chuck.
That's what it sounded like.
And I was like, guys, that's not really what's happening.
So let's try this panettone that moves us to passion.
Okay.
Oh, God, that is so good.
Isn't it?
It really is.
So it is more bready in the way that like, oh, bread has structure and bread has like integrity.
It's not the put in your mouth and it sort of totally disappears and falls apart.
But it is rich.
I mean, I feel like I could spread this on a loaf of different bread.
It's also much taller than the other panettone, which is a testament possibly just to the size of the tin that it was cooked in.
But one of the things that bakers strive for when they're trying to make a perfect panettone is height and height, and height and height.
And after panettone are cooked, while they're still warm.
When they're directly taken out of the oven, they're often sort of skewered on thin dowels of metal and then flipped upside down so that as they cool they retain their loftiness and they don't collapse into themselves like a souffle.
And this is a...
This is a tall freaking panettone.
Well, you just said the perfect word, souffle.
It's almost like a bread souffle, in the sense that it's such a rich dough that they take so much care to ferment and, like you know, get the sourdough going.
So you get that good loft, but it's such a rich dough with so much butter and so much egg and sweetener in it that can collapse back on itself after it's come out of the oven.
So what they do with the turning it upside down, is it when it cools.
That way the the, the dough, you know, the cooked dough, can actually set and like, give it solid shape and form and not like fall back in on itself.
So, Use gravity as a tool.
Use gravity as a tool.
Not an enemy.
And this is – you taste the vanilla in this.
It's so beautiful.
But also it's sweetened with like a local mountain honey.
So there's a little bit of that like sort of honey kind of spiciness in it.
But it's – The candied citrus that's in this too is also just so tender.
I think sometimes with candied orange peel or citron peel, it can be a little bit –
Not crunchy, but like there's a little bit more of a give, right?
Or less of a give and more al dente than you might want.
And this is just – again, it melts.
The word is melt.
Like everything about it melts.
Yeah.
So the baker doesn't suggest you necessarily toast it.
I mean, we're just eating a cold Revenger.
It's delicious.
He doesn't necessarily suggest you toast it, but he says it's best if you put it on your radiator so it warms up slightly before you serve it.
And all the flavors, I'm sure, the aromas just go wild.
Yeah.
Like I'm literally tasting like flowers from the honey right now.
Oh, God, get this away from me.
Okay.
The third panettone that I brought in when I was picking up the Biasetto panettone.
I picked it up from a wonderful food shop and bookstore here in New York City called Arcistratus that sells incredible Italian products and also every rare cookbook you could possibly want.
Um, the owner, Paige Lipari, basically forced me to get this additional panettone, which it turns out I'm so glad she did, because it is one of the best of all the ones that I've tried.
Um, this one is not made by a centuries old Italian baking operation.
It is made by a centuries old Italian balsamic vinegar operation.
Um called um leonardi, and they make a panettone that has a ribbon of balsamic cream running through it.
Okay, let's try that.
Let's see this guy.
It's like ripping, it's so good it's oh my god, i got a ton of.
Oh, there's like these these um, these cherries in it too, and the cherries are like melting into my hands.
It's like it's like cherry jam.
Almost think that's the balsamic cream or the cherry.
You know, it's impossible to tell.
At a certain point balsamic vinegar just becomes fruit.
But oh boy, oh my god.
Yeah, it's like cake, that's bread that's already spread with jam.
Yeah, that's balsamic and cherries.
It's beautiful.
So they have.
They have a version that doesn't have the cherries, but i think the cherries are what really knock it over the top.
Um, you know, balsamic vinegar, if it's old enough and it's aged enough and it's concentrated enough, is basically jam.
Right, like it sort of has crossed the line.
I think at a certain point it stops becoming vinegar and starts becoming like honey.
Yeah sure, and This starts –.
This panettone is made with a balsamic vinegar that is already aged and concentrated and whipped into a cream and folded into this extraordinary enriched dough.
And then baking alongside the sugar and the eggs and the butter and the flour, it transforms into, as you said, almost a jam or a caramel.
But it's also savory and it's weird and it's deep and it's –
It's like sour, like in a really awesome way.
Yeah.
Well, so you know, these are breads that are cakes and they are, you know, to be frank, very expensive.
But you know there are such special experiences that you know if you're into this sort of thing, I think you could still be very happy.
But tell us what's the price range on these?
You know, at a local Italian market, you might be able to find panettone for $18, $25.
These range from $60 to $80.
So they're a little bit of a dearer gift, but you really get your money's worth.
Yeah.
I mean, these can serve eight people easy.
Oh, sure.
And they can last like well into January.
In all seriousness, like the Biasetto, like I've kept on the shelf for six weeks.
You just put it back in the plastic bag and maybe a very slight toast and it's amazing.
Absolutely, yeah.
And if you don't think you're going to eat them quickly, you can just wrap them up and throw them in the freezer.
It's a perfect baked good.
The platonic ideal.
Well, I'm glad you came today, Helen.
Thank you.
I think we learned something about breads that are cakes.
I think we learned something about ourselves.
About ourselves.
The other great thing about Panettone is that they mail really beautifully and all of these are available for mail order to send to your friends and loved ones all across the world.
Well, Helen, thank you so much for coming with all of these gifts.
It was wonderful being here.
Thanks, Francis.
I mean, I just love them.
And like once a year as a holiday treat, I kind of can't help myself.
And that is our show for the week.
Thank you for listening.
And from all of us at the Splendid Table, have a wonderful holiday.
We'll talk to you next week.
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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.
