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You're going to do all of it. You're going to do both lines.
Oh, okay. Hi, I'm Samin. And I'm Rishi. And we're home cooking.
Then I have to say, what episode number, Ron?
Oh, this is episode 20 of our four-part series.
Charming joke here. Or not so charming joke.
No notes. Oh, I did a great job? Yeah, that was great.
Wow, I'm so good at this. This is our new season.
It's our new season under the sun. Please don't put that in.
Oh, 100% that's going in. I don't know what came over.
It was the string cheese. It was a sing cheese.
I'm excited. I'm pretty excited too, honestly.
I was thinking about all the stuff I was eating because I knew you were going to ask me.
What are you eating? Oh, well, I've noticed that as my emotional state and psychological state crumbles, I only want to eat Crumbles.
I only want to eat crumbles. I only want to eat foods that are appropriate in a kindergartner's lunchbox, basically.
Yeah, yeah. So here's the remainder of the PB&J that I made this morning on soft white bread.
On white bread, yeah. Yep, with boom-a-mon jam and crunchy peanut butter, you know, not stir.
A kindergartner, but a fancy kindergartner.
I don't know. Well, I just mean it's gross restore jam as in it's not smuckers, but it's not like artisanal. jam where I picked the fruit or someone I know.
It's from Costco. Then I had a string cheese.
Those are the things I've eaten so far. And then as a backup, I have the salad.
This, I will say, will make some noise because it has cucumbers, corn.
And cabbage in it. It has cherry tomatoes.
It has only C ingredients, apparently. And cilantro.
Oh, my God. It really has only C ingredients.
Cacophony. A cacophony of C ingredients.
What have you been eating? Wait, excuse me.
I unexpectedly ended up at your house one afternoon.
Thank you so much for watching. So at least twice I went into your kitchen to try and find food.
Yeah. And I was really annoyed. that it was all whole ingredients.
There was just nothing. It was just like dry chickpeas.
Yeah, yeah. And like cans of, it was like, There was no food.
Oh no, it's a teenage me nightmare of a pantry.
And I am a teenage you because I truly was like, I just need a spoonful of peanut butter.
And there was a jar of peanut butter and I opened it.
And it just had like the crusty dregs of the part that you don't mix.
No, you must have been looking in the wrong place.
Were you looking in the big pantry? No, I looked in your protein shake area.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, we might have just been out.
Yeah, it was a bad day, Rishi. It was a bad day.
It was a bad day. Yeah. But... Other than protein shakes, which we all know about, what else have you been eating?
Well, the best thing that I ate recently that I wanted to tell you about was something that I had in Georgia.
For Father's Day. Yeah, it was a Father's Day trip with my dad and Lindsay and her aunt, and we met up with her mom and her mom's husband charlie and we all took a road trip to northern georgia And it was really sweet and very nice.
But the one thing that I wanted most from that trip was...
I wanted to recreate some version of a moment that I'd experienced with my mom.
I think we were dropping my sister off to... college and we were i just remember driving somewhere in georgia and my mom excitedly telling my dad to pull over because there was some dude with a sign on the side of the road selling boiled peanuts.
My mom was like, we're getting these. We went and then she came back with just a bag of hot boiled peanuts.
And then she ate them so happily in the car as a snack.
And at the time, I was allergic to peanuts.
So I could only experience her joy sort of vicariously.
But now... Weirdly, I've outgrown my peanut allergy and I thought, okay, we're going back to Georgia.
We're going to be on the road for an hour.
Can we find boiled peanuts? And we did. I wonder if you'll explain to folks what boiled peanuts are and about their texture.
First of all, these were not just boiled peanuts.
We stopped at this farm stand. And they had like four giant pots outside.
Two of them were regular boiled peanuts, but two of them contained Cajun boiled peanuts, which I never had before.
But I had those and I was like, this is really what my mom would have loved.
I don't know if she'd ever had them, but they were spicy.
So it's just like a big pressure cooker kind of thing.
They boil peanuts in salty, spicy water.
Yeah, my understanding is that I thought boiled peanuts are made with freshly dug peanuts.
Yeah, like green peanuts. Yeah, so they're not like the peanuts in the brown crunchy shell.
They're in a shell. Yeah, they are. But they're not the sort of roasted peanut that we're used to like at the ballpark.
Yeah, these have not been roasted or dried.
And so it's kind of like the equivalent of like a fresh shell bean versus a dried shell bean still in the pod.
And then they get boiled. And it's kind of delightful to like, It's kind of like eating edamame in a way.
Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so when you like squeeze them out of the... pod into your mouth they're like creamy almost like how would you describe it it's such a good texture they still have like a tiny tiny bit of it's almost like al dente but creamy and they've absorbed all that like seasoned water.
And so it was really great. And I ate them in the car and I thought of my mom and it was just, So nice.
That's awesome. I love a boiled peanut. I'm so excited for us to be doing another episode.
Me too. I mean, I generally dread anything to do with you.
But this morning I woke up and I was like, oh!
We get to do the fun thing where there's questions carefully selected for me.
I'm excited about these questions because there's something in your brain upcoming book that I was excited to talk to you about.
Oh yes. And I found a way, I think, to get there because there are some questions that we got that are going to lead us there.
Oh, I can't wait. I'm going to play you two questions, both of which have two parts.
Okay. Okay, here we go. We're going to start with Melissa and Alain.
Firstly, we have inherited prolific rhubarb plants after moving to our house two years ago.
We love making jam and baking with it, but we were wondering if you had any other creative uses for it in vegetarian cooking.
And secondly, we are also enthusiastic but novice jammers and canners.
We've been working on water bath canning some of our GMs.
Our question is whether the sugar content only contributes to taste and texture, or is it required for successful preservation?
We prefer less sweet flavors and are willing to sacrifice some jammy texture, but want to make sure we are following safe canning practices.
Okay, and then here's Katrina. This is Katrina in Vermont, and I've got two questions.
One is about last summer's peach jam, which I made from yellow peaches and is not really jam.
It's like Gummy peaches floating in delicious peachy syrup.
The peaches themselves are not entirely gummy, but they're very chewy.
And the syrup is delicious and very syrupy, but not jammy.
Well, how would you enjoy six or more pint jars of such a concoction, I wonder?
My other question is about copper bowls. a beautiful copper bowl that I think she used to use for whipping egg whites into possibly madeleines or other things.
But I'm wondering what other... dishes really benefit from copper or what other reactions really benefit from copper and how I might use this beautiful bowl.
Thank you so much. As I was looking through your beautiful new book, I was looking at this one recipe that you have for jam.
Thinking about the jar of jam... that I got from you that I still have in my fridge.
Yeah, it's very rude, honestly. Because it's so special to me and I'm hoarding it from myself.
I know, but you just need to eat it. I do need to eat it.
It doesn't get better with time. I still have it in there.
And as I'm looking at the beautiful photographs that go with this recipe, I noticed that you have a copper bowl in one of the pictures.
Oh, there's a copper pot. Yeah, there's a copper jam pot for that.
Yeah. So... I see you linking all the things.
You're doing a great job. So let's start at the beginning.
Before we get into the jam of it all, Melissa and Alon first asked about ideas for reusing rhubarb.
Yeah. So when I moved into the home where I live now, in the garden, there was also a rhubarb plant, which was very exciting to me because I also love rhubarb.
I love how sour it is. But Our rhubarb here doesn't get red.
It sort of is like green with a tinge of pink.
Uh-huh. And part of that has to do with the temperature, part of that has to do with the variety of rhubarb and part of that has to do with exposure to sunlight.
And so it's always like very exciting to harvest my own rhubarb and use it, but it's a little bit sad because it's not the like bright, beautiful red. rhubarb that you buy at the store that you think of with rhubarb.
And I do think that when you go farther north, that rhubarb tends to grow more red.
So my hope for you guys is that you have the beautiful red rhubarb.
I have a question. I'm just realizing as I listen to you talk about that, like one, I was thinking Have I ever seen raw rhubarb?
I don't know that I have. Two, I don't think I've ever had rhubarb on its own.
Without strawberry. Without strawberry. And so when you said... That's a classic crime, I think.
When you were describing the flavor, I was like...
Is that what the flavor is? I just realized I know very little about rhubarb, so will you give a little rhubarb 101?
I mean, I don't know that I'm the queen of all rhubarb, but But the Duchess of Rhubarb.
I might be the Duchess, yeah. Yeah, enough to give us a 101.
Yeah, yeah. So rhubarb grows on a plant that looks a lot like a celery.
And the part of the rhubarb that we eat is the stalk, just like we eat a celery stalk.
Often the rhubarb that one can buy at the market or the store is is this kind of amazing bright red color.
And in fact, in England, you can do something called forcing rhubarb.
And that's basically like it's grown in dark greenhouses.
I don't know how to explain that. It's just grown in a warm, dark room.
Why is it forced? I think the forcing refers to the fact that it's done in this deeply unnatural way.
Sounds rue barbaric. I know, it's really cruel, yeah.
Wow, that was your reaction to that? Did you say rhubarbaric?
I did. Oh, I didn't hear the first part.
Oh, no. I just heard barbaric. Oh, no. Okay.
Oh, God. Okay. So forest rhubarb comes out a little bit sweeter because rhubarb is very, very, very sour.
And actually, the other thing to note is that the leaves are poisonous.
So if there's any leaf left on the rhubarb stalk that you buy, or if you're harvesting your own, make sure you trim away all the leaves.
So in my experience, if you want to make a dessert with rhubarb, it takes a lot of sugar, especially if you're a person who's like, I don't need tons of sugar in my food.
You kind of need a lot of sugar for rhubarb.
And also because there's so much water in the stock, adding sugar pulls all that water out.
And so if you don't do it carefully, you'll get just like a soggy pie. or a soggy galette.
So I do have a vegetarian recipe suggestion for them. beyond just like desserts and sweet things.
One is you can roast your rhubarb. You can like oil and salt it and roast it.
And it'll be this like tangy ingredient in something else that you could serve, you know, in early springtime.
You could also say like you probably have some butternut squash or winter squashes around, I would pair it with something sweet.
So you're having like a sweet and a savoury sort of roasted vegetable dish.
You know, maybe with some candied walnuts or candied pecans.
Is there something that you would compare rhubarb too if you were to treat it like a savory roasted salted thing No, because it's so sour.
I'm trying to think of another very sour thing.
Well, that's exciting that it's not like, oh, it's comparable to this.
It's its own thing. Yeah, it's really its own thing.
And then if you're up for a little bit more of a project, There is a traditional Persian rhubarb stew that's really delicious.
And usually it's made with lamb or chicken or beef, but you can leave those out.
And in fact... Naz Daravion, who is a wonderful Persian cook and recipe developer, has a vegetarian version of the stew.
We'll link to it. She sort of replaces the... animal proteins with beans, I think chickpeas would work really great.
But there's an herb base, like many Persian stews, where you chop up and saute a bunch of herbs.
And then you add this rhubarb and you could add canned beans or other cooked beans in and eat that with rice and yogurt.
And it would be so delicious. Persians love sour things.
And we love putting like. dried sour limes, plums, all sorts of sour things into our savory stews.
So I think that's maybe one of my favorite non-dessert ways to enjoy rhubarb.
Well, I want to go back to what you were saying about the sugar being necessary with the rhubarb.
The second part of Melissa and Alain's question was about the amount of sugar. that's used in jams.
Is there any part of it that is not for flavor?
Yes. In fact, this is... I'm so glad they asked this.
I was literally just... ranting about this to someone the other day.
The thing about sugar, sugar plays many roles in cooking beyond just sweetness.
It's hard for us to imagine because Sugar is just this simple single molecule that's only sweet, but it has so many textural roles.
In baked goods, it helps keep things tender, It helps create caramelization and browning.
And so there are all these different reasons why amounts of sugar in recipes are important to not super duper mess with. because it will affect all sorts of other qualities of your recipe besides just the sweetness.
So that's one thing to keep in mind. In terms of jams specifically, sugar is also an important preservative.
So if there's not enough sugar, your jam can go bad.
A lot of people here in the Bay Area love their low sugar recipes.
They'll give me a low sugar jam and by the time I've opened it, it's moldy.
So you can absolutely make a low sugar jam, but you need to know that it's not going to be shelf stable.
So that kind of thing you want to keep in the freezer or the fridge.
So when you're making jam, it's almost like in the way that I think about salt, fat, acid, heat being these four points on a compass.
With jam... There are also like sort of multiple elements on the compass that need to be in balance to create the right texture and to make sure that you're in the safety zone of preservation. elements are pectin, which is a sort of a vegetable form of a gelatin.
It's the thing in fruits that helps jam set, like apples have a lot of pectin and When you cook applesauce, there's sort of like a jelliness to it.
It's what makes things gel. And then the other elements of the balance are sugar, acid. which is why often jam recipes have added lemon juice, and the cooking time.
So those are sort of the four variables in making sure Hold on.
I'm just, I wanted to refer to my, this is one of my.
I thought a fly was buzzing around your head and you were trying to locate it.
That's so funny. No, no. When we record, I sit at my desk and above my head, there are cookbooks, many cookbooks.
And I do have a bunch of like jam-specific, preserve-specific cookbooks.
And I was like, oh, this is the River Cottage Handbook.
And I love this one because it has a really useful... chart of the various fruits and vegetables and their amounts of pectin and amounts of acid inherent and so it says rhubarb is low pectin and low acid So that means you need to add a fair amount of acid to get to the safety point.
And on its own, if you don't want to add pectin from another source it'll never get that sort of gel set texture which explains when people make like rhubarb pie or even strawberry rhubarb pie because strawberries are also low pectin Traditionally, they'll add a little bit of tapioca flour or cornstarch to help the pie filling set Because otherwise, once you cook it and cut into it, it'll just be super runny.
Yeah. And so these kinds of things you have to understand.
But a good rule of thumb that I like to sort of adhere by when making jam with any fruit is to start with 25% sugar by weight.
And that means like you clean your fruit, you weigh it, and then you calculate 25% of that by weight.
So if you had a thousand grams of rhubarb, you would add 250 grams of sugar.
To start with, minimum. Some things take a little bit more to set.
But you wouldn't just go rhubarb, right?
It would be rhubarb and something else? For jam?
Yeah. I'm not out there making a ton of rhubarb jam, but I do believe in the supremacy of the rhubarb pie. and the rhubarb galette, and the rhubarb tart.
I like a plain rhubarb. I also like strawberry rhubarb.
Don't get me wrong. I just feel like many people like you have no idea what this wonderful plant thing tastes like and that it has its own character, which is this amazing sort of sour quality.
And it's just a very specific type of tartness. that I find to be really special.
And so to me, I love all fruit a lot. But there is something for me about early spring fruits as they come that's very exciting because it's like for many months at that point, you've only had apples and oranges.
I mean, and which are great, but like it's the sign that times are a changing.
And soon the trees will be filled with plums and nectarines and cherries and apricots and the bushes will be filled with berries of all kinds.
So it's a harbinger of abundance. And so there is a way where that rhubarb in my mind deserves to have its own like moment of celebration.
Well, you mentioned just now the texture.
If there isn't enough sugar, that the pie mixture, for example, might be too runny.
I want to remind you of the first part of Katrina's question.
Peach jam, which I made from yellow peaches and is not really jam.
It's like... gummy peaches floating in delicious peachy syrup.
Gummy peaches floating in peachy syrup. I mean, I've done that.
There have been so many times I've spent so much energy preserving something and then you open it later and you're like, what did I make?
You're like, And just like, wow, what a waste of time, energy, money, everything.
And so I feel you. I mean, gummy is not often a word you really want to use to describe the texture of your food unless it's like Haribo candies.
I mean, ironically, a great candy is gummy.
He's a gummy peach. It's true. But is this an instance of her not using enough sugar, you think?
Can you retroactively diagnose what happened there?
No, I don't think that that's what it is.
Also because I can't fully picture the gummy peaches that she made and the syrup.
But I would recommend you divide them and you use them separately.
So the syrup... to me sounds really tasty.
And I think that would be a great thing to add to like any sort of a drink, a spritzer, fizzy water, white wine. fizzy wine.
In fact, you could puree the whole thing and literally make a bellini, which is just peach puree. and some sort of fizzy wine.
Or just like use it as a base for some sort of creative, refreshing summer drink.
That's sort of what I would recommend to do with the syrup.
And then with the gummy fruit. I think you could further just like mush it down, maybe even with a little bit of the syrup, cook it for a little bit longer until it really does become sort of like a If, say, you're emotionally crumbling.
Yeah, you could also make, there are these wonderful cookies.
That Dori Greenspan first wrote about in Baking with Julia, which was a cookbook based on there was a TV show, I think, of Baking with Julia Child.
She would have all these guest pastry chefs come.
And they would share their sort of like best recipe.
Is that where she had Nancy Silverton on and cried?
Yes, exactly. Cried. Oh, such a good clip.
Yes, and she cried with Nancy Silverton.
Classic, right? Yes. And so Dori Greenspan, amazing, like legendary pastry chef and just wonderful cook and New York Times food columnist.
The recipe that she shared with Julia was something that she called Hungarian shortbread.
If I were shortbread, I would be hungry too.
Yeah. Okay. I got it. Shortbread hungry.
I got it. Yeah. And Michelle Polzin, the great pastry chef from 20th century... cafe in San Francisco, which is now sadly no more.
She adapted that recipe into something she called Bulgarian shortbread as a sort of a a play that had nothing to do with Bulgaria.
But both of these recipes, which are both wonderful, consist of a rich buttery cookie dough, You make the cookie dough, you let it rest, and then you take a large grater, like a box grater, and you grate the dough and you sort of pack, you just gently pack the this half of the grated dough into a nine by 13 pan.
You don't press it super hard because you kind of want there to be lightness and air pockets in there.
And then you spread jam in between, or in this case, you could spread gummy peach mush in between.
And then top it with the remainder of the grated dough and bake it.
And it turns into this incredible sort of, it really does look like it's a crumble texture.
But it has a really wonderful shortbread quality of like melting on your tongue.
But they're just these jam bars, basically.
Another thing to do is to make a classic Italian jam crostata, which is a similar kind of like short pastry, crumbly pastry. that gets pressed into a pan and then filled with jam.
And then you kind of make a cross hatch pattern with more dough on top.
So it kind of looks like jam squares, but, I think a jam square or a jam shortbread would be a great way to use up your mushy fruit.
There's this beautiful Rebecca Solnit quote.
Hold on, let me find it. Can I tell you the quote?
Making preserves is an art of stalling time, of making the fruit that is so evanescent last indefinitely.
Each container is a capsule in which time stands still.
It's true. Is that the quote you were thinking of?
It's so beautiful. That is the one I was going to look for.
Is this your card? Is this my card? Like a magic trick.
Oh, my card. It is my card. Good job. And thank you for pulling that up because that's how I feel about preserving fruit and making jam and sort of the act of like harvesting fruit and preserving it in a jar is for me, it's a time machine.
And so even when things don't turn out perfectly or like the best ever or as good as I could buy from somebody else, I get to return to a moment in time.
And so for example, three years ago I was making my annual apricot jam while my dad was in the hospital dying.
And so I really associate sort of this ritual that I do every year now that's been layered into it is like oh this is a thing that I did that year in July and I think that's why I wouldn't want to suggest you don't use that fruit or that it's not good enough or that you throw it away.
Even if it doesn't make the best cookies or the best dessert or the best anything in the world, there's a way for you to retrace your steps in time and remember something about your life. and the time that you spent for yourself to make it.
I don't know. That's part of the reason why I haven't eaten the jam that you made.
Oh my God. Because I look at it and I see, the label that you and I worked on together.
I helped you make the label. It's true, you helped me make that label.
And I think the jam is from 2022. Yeah.
Oh, it's the sad jam. I think it's from 2022.
And it was a meaningful time. And I did have a bite just before we started recording.
Am I going to be sick? No, it's not going to kill you.
Also, that's the other thing about jam in general.
The kind of mold that's going to happen on a jar of jam is not a lethal, scary thing.
So if there is mold, you just scrape it off and throw it away.
What can happen is if you don't catch that mold soon enough, the whole thing will sort of get moldy. or just start to taste fermenty and gross.
About every six months, I'll take a tiny, tiny little edge of a spoonful.
Oh my God, Rich, you just eat the jam. I should have eaten it when I was going through your fridge and needed something to eat.
And I thought it was all fine. But then at the end of your recipe here in Good Things, it says divide the jam into seven or eight half pint jars, cover and refrigerate for up to six months or heat process the jars for 10 minutes to seal and store at room temperature for up to one year.
And I was like, I am two years past that one year.
Okay, well, here's a secret, Rishi. A recipe writer's secret.
Pretty much all of the serve-by, use-by info you pull it out of your wahoohoo, and you make it up.
And so... I can't speak for anyone else, but I am very conservative.
With your fruit conserves? Yes. Stop it. because I would rather err on the side of caution.
However, do I eat stuff at my house that's way older and way past?
All the time. Yeah, yeah. But... No, I definitely learned the lesson that the use by date is really like...
A suggestion, a gentle suggestion. Sometimes it is very much about safety. but most of the time it's just about like the quality of something degrades over time.
Or with the jam in particular, because I don't make industrial jam, is yours totally brown.
No, sorry. I was just thinking about Nine Inch Nails.
What does that mean? Nine Inch Nails, they love to make industrial jams.
Oh my god. Are we ever gonna get past these two questions?
Nope, this is the whole episode. Do you know, I was reading your recipe and in my head, I was just like, what's so nice is that the writing of it feel so much like you you know like I hear your voice as I'm reading it and I have heard you narrating things so I know the Samin narration voice and I
Oh. I started doing it. Oh, are you going to mimic me in your... Are you going to read the recipe?
I'll just read the... Oh, well, I guess I earned it because I introduced the show as you.
That's true. Okay, only fair. A ripening fruit is no one's schedule but its own.
So my most sacred culinary ritual... begins in early May each year with a call to my favorite orchard.
Wait, wait. I check on the timing of their apricots.
Do you say apricots or apricots? That was one thing I wasn't sure about.
Apricots are a temperamental wonder. Oh, my God.
Stop. I'm crawling out of my skin. Am I totally wrong?
I don't know. I don't know. It's just really uncomfortable.
Will you read a little bit of it yourself so then I can compare?
Are you going to do like some sound magic where your voice melts into my voice?
Oh, that would be good. Unique among stone fruits for the way they ripen from the inside out.
It's true, from the inside out. They make us wait until it's nearly too late before revealing their secrets.
Oh, my God. What have I done? My two favorite varieties are Blenheim, sometimes called Royal Blenheim, and Bonnie Royal, floral and delicate...
These apricots don't travel very well and are quick to spoil.
I hate myself. I hate myself. Oh, so nice.
Thank you. Wow. Is this what it's gonna be the whole time?
Oh, get ready. Oh no, no, no. A second date just added in San Francisco.
You're going to be over this before we even leave California.
Before I even leave my house. And so the last part of this is the copper bowl.
You know, I saw the picture of the copper vessel.
The copper. I see. You were trying to create like a thread and I really appreciate that reach.
But I will say my copper jam pot is not the same as a copper bowl.
So a bowl is made of thinner ply. And so it's not something you necessarily heat.
But one of the amazing qualities of copper is its ability to conduct heat and evenly distribute it and get very hot very quickly.
And one of my goals as a jam maker is to cook the fruit as little as possible in order to try and preserve the sort of inherent fresh qualities of that fruit.
Oh, that's so interesting. It feels like the opposite of what you think of when you, I don't know, when I think of jam.
Totally. And you have to cook it enough so that it's safe and cooked.
But it's kind of like you want to retain that sense of the July day you picked the fruit instead of it being... this like super cooked taste.
Oh, I see the taste. Like you want it to still feel like a fresh strawberry or raspberry.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so there is a woman here.
Let me pull it down. Another of my favorite jam books.
Oh, here it is. There's this woman, Christine Fairbourn.
And she's kind of the modern mother of this method of making jam where you cut up the fruit, toss it with the minimum amount of sugar that you're going to use and let it. sit overnight in the fridge.
That's called macerating. The sugar starts to draw out water from the fruit.
So now you kind of have this fruit soup and your goal is to cook that liquid down without having to cook the fruit down.
So you can separate the fruit and the liquid, cook this like massive amount of liquid down so that it's to the right texture and temperature and setting point. and then add your fruit back in, and just barely cook the fruit.
And this is super messy, it's multi-step, it's a pain in the butt, and it's how I make all my jam.
Because to me, it makes the best, best jam.
And it's how this recipe for apricot jam in the book is also written.
One of the things that I've learned from this goal of cooking your fruit for as little time as possible is that you want a pot that is going to get hot and stay hot for so that you can boil off that liquid and cook the fruit as quickly as possible so that the total time spent on the stove is as little as possible.
And because copper is such a great heat conductor, it works very well for that.
Like sometimes I have too much fruit from just my one pot, so I end up having to put a second amount of the same exact macerated fruit. in a stainless steel pot that's a very similar size and shape on the stove.
And the difference is wild. Like it takes almost twice as long to cook in stainless steel as it does in copper.
So now I just borrow all the copper jam pots from all the pastry people I know when my apricots come in so I can just get it done as fast as possible.
And a copper bowl is another traditional French pastry tool because there is some reaction as far as I know. that happens between egg whites and like the copper ions to help egg whites whisk up more quickly and to hold their shape better.
But that literally is the only use of a copper bowl is whipping egg whites.
I have one. I love them. I think they're really pretty. but I really only use it if I'm going to make some sort of eggy thing.
I would encourage you to keep this beautiful copper bowl as a family heirloom, but there isn't a lot for you to be doing.
Her mom used it to make meringue, so maybe it's time to learn how to make meringue.
Eggnog. Angel food cake. A souffle, maybe?
Oh, a souffle is a great one. I only know about souffles from... the movie Sabrina.
Oh, I thought you were gonna say Ratatouille.
I don't know if there's any whipped egg whites in Ratatouille.
I will tell you in Ratatouille, the whole kitchen is full of beautiful copper cookware.
Oh yeah. Oh my God. Can I tell you something so awesome?
Tell me. I watched a movie that is so beautiful.
It is, I think, my new number one favorite food media of all time.
Okay, tell me. It's called The Taste of Things.
It's from 2023 starring Juliette Binoche.
Mm-hmm. Are you laughing because you told me to watch this and I didn't?
Yeah. Yeah. Classico. I like told you at length.
In fact, I wrote a whole newsletter about it.
Oh, you did? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like when I was like Rishi, I found the best show.
Yes. Better Things. It's called Better Things.
You're like literally, Samit, I told you about this joke.
Oh my God, what's wrong with me? Yeah. But anyway, the reason it popped into my head at this moment is that that kitten in this beautiful film is also chock full.
Of incredibly gorgeous copper cookware. Yeah.
In fact, the picture I posted in the newsletter has copper cookware in it.
Oh, am I going to read your newsletter where you wrote about the taste of things? the seventh paragraph okay the taste of the great start great start how do i channel i gotta find the most butter in my voice the taste of things is a quiet beautiful i can't do it i'm not you i can't do it I don't know who I'm making fun of right now, but it's not you.
That's great. pretty painful it's not fun yeah it's just painful in any voice to have somebody read your own writing at you I just keep thinking, I watched it maybe a week ago and everything I cook, I'm just thinking about it.
I'm like, wow, everything is like this act of love, which is also what sort of message of good things is, is cooking and like the time that you spend. is a way of sharing what's most precious to you, your own time with people.
And it's an antidote to this like, I just go into reality in the world and I feel so sad and so bad and so overwhelmed.
And then there was just this like ultimate. sort of sensory delight.
It was so beautiful. And so if you like food things, it's truly so special.
Like, please go watch The Taste of Things.
I'll check it out. Thank you for the recommendation.
Yeah, I thought you might like it, Rishi.
Yeah, thanks a lot. I'm so embarrassed. We should call this show EmbarrassingSameen.com.
Not only are we back with a new season of episodes, we've also got brand new home cooking merch.
We finally put our tomato can home cooking logo on a shirt.
You can get it as a t-shirt, or a sweatshirt, or a tank top, or even a onesie for little baby home cooks.
Plus, there's a tote bag with the drawing of the round salt can thing that has Samin and myself and our dogs Fava Bean and Watson on it.
It is the pinnacle of tote bags. And there is a pun in there if you think about how pinnacle is spelled.
There's also a special shirt in honor of our special recurring guest, the man with hot takes and a surprisingly high-pitched giggle, my dad. known to Sumine and all my close friends as Sumesh Uncle.
He has his own shirt that says, Team Samesh Uncle, featuring three little jars of saffron.
And he undoubtedly has very strong opinions about their color and flavor.
And of course, there's also still the OG sweatshirt with the drawing of the can of sardines and the inexplicable shrimp Jenga forever shirt.
And all of this stuff was illustrated by our wonderful Mamie Rheingold.
And all of it is available at homecooking.show slash merch.
Again, it's homecooking.show slash merch.
We all know that listening to Simeon's exciting recipe ideas can get you very inspired, but the fact is that stupid life might get in the way of your cooking ambitions.
I mean, stupid life gets in my own way all the time.
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Alright, you ready for the next question?
I want more. Give me more. Hi, Rishi and Samin.
This is Aria. I live in Oakland, California, but I'm actually recording from the Berkeley Bowl parking lot, the world's greatest supermarket.
I have a question for you. My wife is pregnant, seven months pregnant, and she's iron deficient.
And we are trying to find... creative ways to get more iron into our diets that are not sauteed spinach and roasted chickpeas.
So I wonder if you have any ideas for fun Little ways to add some iron into our meals.
Thanks so much. Love the show. Love you guys.
Bye. So cute. Also, my local grocery store too.
The shift detective in me. if you will, believes that they might be vegetarian because the examples didn't include beef.
So the reason why I do know something about this is that my girlfriend has been severely anemic for the last several months.
And we have been trying to work. iron into our food.
But I will say you're already on your path with spinach and chickpeas.
So if you do eat meat, One of the highest sources of iron is actually chicken livers or beef liver.
So I often will make some chicken liver pate and sort of have that. around for her to eat.
But in terms of non meat sources of iron, legumes have a lot.
So you're on it with chickpeas, but the legume with the most iron, like per capita, is kidney beans.
So I think, again with the Persian recipes here, There is a classic Persian stew.
Some people think of it as the national dish of Iran, actually.
It's called gorma sabzi. And it's a stew with a base of greens, like sauteed herbs of all kinds. and onions, and then often lamb, but you could totally just leave the meat out, and also kidney beans.
There's dried limes in there and it's kind of got this wonderful sour quality.
It's really delicious with rice. So you could make a big batch of korma sabzi with or without meat.
Another way I really like to use kidney beans is in chili.
So again, I made some beef and kidney bean chili. and that we just keep in the freezer, but you could make it with impossible meat, or you could just leave meat out altogether and make a multi-bean chili.
The nice thing about Gorma Sabzi is it incorporates greens.
And green things, whether herbs or like heartier green plants, leafed vegetables like spinach, but also collard greens and kale are quite high in iron.
And there are certain foods that help the absorption. of minerals.
So one of the elements that helps our bodies absorb more iron from our food or from our supplements is vitamin C. So you want to add citrus into a dish with any of these ingredients.
So that's why the chili is a great idea because then you've got tomatoes in there.
Yeah, and tomatoes have a lot of vitamin C, so that's a great thought too.
Yeah, or just make sure that you're also taking vitamin C along with your iron supplements and your iron food.
I have a feeling because Rishi and I are criminally behind with our questions that your baby will be born.
The anemia will have passed. But I hope that these recipe ideas serve you in some way.
And I hope I get to see you at Berkeley Bowl sometime.
Yeah. For those of you who don't know. Add Berkeley Bowl onto any travel itinerary when you come to the Bay Area because it truly is just like the most incredible grocery store. of all time.
The thing about the sort of companion ingredient that helps the benefits of one ingredient get more fully absorbed reminds me of this other thing that I had recently.
I tried making my own golden milk, like turmeric tea.
You Haldidud, as you will. Exactly, my Haldidud.
Yeah, I tried to... make it on my own. Because the other day I went to go get coffee with someone and me being a non-coffee drinker was like... Ooh, did you go to Go Get Em Tiger?
That's exactly where I was. They have the best...
Turmeric milk. It was really good. It's so good there.
It is so delicious there. And I was thinking about, you know, the anti-inflammatory qualities of turmeric.
And you're like, I'm about to talk to Samin and get inflamed, so I need to pre-
So I was like, okay, I can do this. And I put black pepper in there.
Oh, yes. So your body can better absorb the turmeric.
Yeah. I think the beneficial element in turmeric is called curcumin.
And yeah, I looked it up and it's something like... you get 400 percent better absorption if there's some black pepper along with the turmeric.
Isn't that wild? Wild, yeah. But the problem was, and I think the reason why I will never make it again at home, is that it stained everything.
Everything. The pot that I made it in, the mug that I had it in.
You know what works in my experience with removing turmeric?
Ye old magic eraser. I wash my pots with them all the time, and then I just wash them with soap.
Oh, okay, great. I have those. Yeah. It was delicious, but it made me think, I should just go out of the house for this.
Well, if I lived as close to Go Get Em Tiger as you do, I would just drink that.
We have a special segment for this episode.
We've got a chef detective question that came in.
Hit me. Hi, Samin and Rishi. My name is Angie and I have a question for the chef detective.
So for background, I'm Chinese American.
My parents are from Beijing and I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.
Growing up, my mom always made this braised beef noodle soup.
The base was brown in color. I don't really know what was in it and I'm hoping you can help me figure it out.
There were kind of big hunks of beef. There were the fat noodles. that you got from the Chinese grocery store and my mom would put in carrots and that was kind of it, only carrots in the soup and we would top it with cilantro.
I'm pretty sure the base had soy sauce, maybe star anise, maybe some clove, definitely some ginger Whenever I had friends over, one of them would call it licorice soup, if that is a little bit of a hint.
When my mom passed away about 10 years ago, the recipe unfortunately died with her.
She never wrote it down. I never made it with her.
And in the years that have elapsed, I haven't really sat down to try to figure it out myself because I'm afraid it's going to make me Too sad if I get it wrong and I don't have anybody to give me any feedback.
I was hoping that the chef detective could help me figure out maybe some regional recipes. flavor combinations that could have inspired my mom in creating this recipe.
I'm pretty sure it was from her mind. She didn't cook from a cookbook or anything like that.
It would be so meaningful to me to be able to recreate this going into this next chapter of my life.
And I really appreciate any help you can offer.
Thank you. So for me hearing this question, I also feel overwhelmed because I don't know anything about braised beef noodle soup from China.
So I couldn't begin to tell you China is a humongous place with many different regions, many different cuisines.
So this would require, I think, an inordinate amount of research that I don't even necessarily know how to conduct on my own.
So I think we have to call in Oh, like call in a consulting detective to the chef?
Yeah, we need a consulting detective. Okay.
Exactly. And so who should we call in? Well, the first person that comes to mind for me is my friend Emily Su, who is of Taiwanese descent.
We've been cooking together for over 20 years.
She's one of the most extraordinary cooks I know and she knows so much about so many cuisines, including many Asian cuisines that I know nothing about.
So often... when I'm curious about, say, scallion pancakes or just anything with five spice.
I call Emily. As long as the recipe has four or fewer spices, you're fine.
But otherwise, you have to call Emily. It's true.
Five spice Rishi is a spice mixture. And how did you two first meet?
We used to work together at Chez Panisse.
Okay, great. So let's call up Emily. Ring, ring.
Hi, Emily. Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me. Hi, Emily. Hiya.
How are you? Good to see you. Off the bat, what's your initial reaction to Angie's question here?
Oh, it sounds like a relatively classic dish. called 红烧牛肉汤 or 红烧牛肉汤面.
It just means red braised beef noodle soup.
What's the red? Yeah. Well, you know what?
For some reason, Chinese people don't really have a good like succinct word for brown.
So very often it's brown, but sort of like tinged.
Sort of red, not really. Things that are braised with soy sauce are often called red braised, even though it's not actually red red.
Oh that's so cool. And do you have an immediate understanding of where the licorice flavor that she described might come from?
Yeah, totally. She said like star anise.
And so that's a common… ingredient when you braise meat, like I think Chinese people think it kind of takes away some of the gaininess of the beef itself.
Is this a recipe from any particular region in China? or beyond?
Or would this have been a common thing you grew up eating, for example?
Yeah. I mean, I grew up in Taiwan partially, and there is a Taiwanese beef noodle soup that's relatively famous.
It's probably similar to that, although probably not quite as spicy since she said her parents were from Beijing.
Could you talk us through how you would prepare this dish?
Yeah. I mean, please take this with a grain of salt because just from how she described it, Probably her mom would start it with a little bit of rock sugar at the bottom, to kind of start the coloring process and also the caramelization process.
This sounds really crazy, but sometimes you kind of start sugar and melt it in the bottom to create like the caramel color and then kind of sear your beef in this caramel.
That sounds delicious. Yeah, it's cool. And it like creates this kind of flavor base that's really interesting.
And then probably on top of that is probably ginger, garlic, and scallions. with the meat.
What kind of beef? I think most likely like a shank.
Shank. Okay, great. her mother was feeling, you know, extra, like some fennel.
Sometimes there's like three different colors of cardamom that can... Green, black, and what's the third one?
White. Oh, I had no idea such a thing existed.
Yeah, I had only ever seen it in Chinese cooking.
I've never seen it anywhere else either. which is kind of weird.
I thought white cardamom was just what Americans use to make chai tea.
Talk about shots fired. Dang. Sorry, do you have any cardamom or do you only have white cardamom?
Oh, my God. Just to be clear, we make the caramel base with the sugar and then we put the meat in and brown the meat and then we put all these aromatics or the aromatics are also in the pot when the meat goes in?
I mean, like... If you're saying like how my mom does it, sometimes she just throws it all in.
Okay, throw it all in. Yeah, it seems like that seems very home cooked.
Throw it all in. You just throw it all in.
And then probably like once things are brown, cover it with water.
Like add some dark soy as well as light soy.
Light soy for flavor and salt. Dark soy for color.
Probably some sort of alcohol. Like the Chinese cooking wine?
Yeah, yeah. Shaoxing, Chinese cooking wine.
Or like if they're from Beijing, maybe they use Baijiu, which is kind of like...
I want to say it's like a sorghum wine or something like that.
I've seen my grandmother use vodka. You just use what you got.
Whatever you got. Exactly. Whatever you have.
It doesn't have to be strong. And it shouldn't like most of those wines. are not acidic, not like white wine or something like that.
So yeah, and it's again, like all to kind of tame the gaminess of beef or whatever meat that you're using.
And then you just simmer that until it's tender, which for something like shank would take upwards of three hours.
Yes, yes. You want to skim it really well because you don't want scummy soup, although they do tend to like a little layer of oil on top of it.
And then you taste it again for sweetness as well as for salt.
That's pretty much it. And then you cook the noodles into it at the end?
No, you cook the noodles separately and then ladle the beef and the soup over the noodles.
So if you have any greens that you're serving with your noodles, you throw it in when the noodles are halfway done or something like that.
And then you like pull it all out. Like she said that her mom put carrots in it.
That must be her family curveball. Yeah, I mean, I've definitely seen like, you know, sometimes they put daikon in it.
It gives it like a very like specific flavor.
Carrots are not unusual. Sometimes there's tomatoes in it.
Like, which I guess, like, ramps up beefiness, or I mean, you know, just like, every home cook has their own thing, right?
Like, all the moms have their different way or their different spin or twist on or like depending on what you've got in your refrigerator.
Angie, I hope that helps. And please let us know if you try this recipe.
And if it gets close. If it works for you, yeah.
Does it bring back the taste of growing up?
Thanks, Emily. You're welcome. Emily, thank you so much.
You're a lifesaver, man. Thanks for having me.
Yeah. Licorice-flavored lifesaver. Yes. Delicious.
Thanks so much to my longtime friend, Emily Sue Bowden, for her wonderful suggestions and advice and helping us solve this chef detective mystery.
Can you say that last part in the gravelly voice?
And helping us solve this. How does it? I don't know.
Are you going to use sound effects to make my voice gravelly, please?
Nope. And helping us solve this chef detective mystery.
Can you just finish the rest of the episode with that voice, please?
Okay. Sometimes I just listen to you on Song Exploder and I'm always like, wow, that guy's voice is real good.
And I'm like, how come we don't get that Rishi?
You think that I sound different? Yeah, you sound like professional Rishi.
Oh, sorry. Should I be more professional?
No. Okay. Thanks, everybody, for listening to this very unprofessional episode.
Totally unprofessional. Oh, Samin has a new Substack.
It is already delightful. It's at chaosamin.substack.com.
Also, I didn't know this, but Rishi apparently has a sub stack he's had for years. he wrote about the taste of things and some cookies ah samin my best friend truly caring so attentive Right there with me every step of this journey.
So yeah, subscribe to our newsletters. You'll just get lots of charm and joy.
And come see us on tour. We're going to be near you.
In so many cities. Come visit us. Anyway, all the information's at my website.
You can find recipes, transcripts, resources, and merch at homecooking.show or at shrimpjanga.com.
We made this episode with help from Mary Dolan, Amalia Mourinho, and Zach McNeese.
Mamie Reingold does our artwork, and Rishi made our music.
Home Cooking is a proud member of PRX, a collection of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts.
Learn more at radiotopia.fm Stay healthy, eat well, and take care of each other.
And thanks for listening. I'm Samin. And I'm Rishi.
And we'll be home cooking. nailed it so dumb Radiotopia from PRX
