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That's odoo .com. I'm Samin Nosrat.
And I'm Rishi K. Shearway.
And we're home cooking.
Like a meal that has more courses than you can comfortably eat, this is episode 8 of what was supposed to be a four -part series.
Coming up later, we're going to be joined by Anthony Porowski, who you all know as the guy who put yogurt in guacamole on Queer Eye.
i'm so excited to talk to him he's a delight we also have a bunch of questions to answer but before we get to them samin what's the best thing you've had to eat this week uh rishi it comes from you actually my friend it does yes this week has been rich in tapioca oh right yes this has been a tapioca celebration i am currently even drinking boba but i came to tapioca late in life.
I don't know that I ever had it as a child, but I just love the chewiness of tapioca.
But when we were recording episode five and we were answering a question from a listener about what to cook one -handed while she recovered from a roller skating injury, I suggested that she make a kitsudi, you know, which I have historically only known really as as rice and lentils cooked together.
I've seen it in many different versions of that across South Asia, but you told me that your favorite version of kizdi was made with tapioca, which in India is called sabudana.
So you told me all about sabudana.
So then I went on a sabudana journey and for the last several weeks have been testing it and cooking it.
And then I wrote a column about it and it actually is coming out this week in the New York Times Magazine.
That's so exciting.
So, this is the second time you're a character in my writing.
So, I never realized until embarrassingly late in the game that sabudana is actually tapioca.
Sabudana kitsuri is something that I loved growing up and still is one of my favorite things to eat.
And tapioca, in my mind, is something that I don't like.
Like, I can't drink boba.
I mean, I don't drink caffeinated teas anyway, so I don't normally have it.
But I have tried it.
And the squishy parts of tapioca, I was like, ooh, this is not for me.
me. Oh, really? I'd put it in a category of things that I do not like, only to find out that actually one of my favorites.
It's the same thing.
It's the same thing.
When I finally asked my mom, you know, how to make it.
And she was like, oh, you go to the Indian store and get the tapioca.
I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm asking about Sabadana Kitsidi.
And she's like, yeah, you get the tapioca.
I'm like, no, no, no, mom, let me explain.
I'm asking about Sabadana Kitsidi.
She's like, yeah, it's tapioca.
That's really funny.
Yeah. Do you want to tell people a little little bit about what it is?
Well, I think you should tell people what it is.
Okay. So Sub -Saharan Kids City is like, I think it's fair to say that it is a specialty of Maharashtra, which is the part of India where my family is from.
And it's really simple.
It's tapioca, potatoes, peanuts, green chilies, and spices.
There's a little bit of ginger in there.
Yes. Ginger. Cumin is the spice.
Yeah. It's super simple.
Yeah. And a tiny bit of little sugar and lime.
And I would say the main difference for me that I learned that I probably would would be helpful for our listeners is the first time I made it, because I was so excited when you told me about it, that I just went downstairs and I was like, I pretty much have all the ingredients.
I'll just make it with what I have. And it didn't work with regular American tapioca.
I had to go to the Indian grocery and specifically I had to get sabudana, which is Indian tapioca.
And it's a different size and it's kind of a different texture.
So I think for me, it was just really exciting to have a savory tapioca experience.
And I feel like this was a learning curve big time because it also, you know, it's been a journey for me both on this podcast and definitely in my column in my writing to have to figure out how to talk about cooking and write about cooking and give people advice and instruction when I don't have the like typical resources available to me to learn about things that I'm not familiar with, which usually would be to go, you know, stand at someone's kitchen counter and watch them make a thing over and over and over again and then call them 100 times afterward and be like, can you tell me exactly how
you made that thing?
What was all those things?
And, you know, like we did call your parents, which was very fun.
And we got some information out of them.
But like, your parents make this in the microwave, which is real great, but I'm pretty sure that's not the way it's been made in India for generations.
And so then when I tried to do research on the internet and watched like a million videos and read a bunch of recipes, I wasn't able to replicate it.
Every time I made it, it got really clumpy and sticky.
And so I ended up just sticking to the version your mom gave me because that was the best version I was able to make.
It's so simple and it's so delicious And I hope you do make it.
You will understand why Rishi, he requests this every time he goes home.
That's true. There was one day when I was testing it and I ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Exactly. It's just really tasty.
Yeah. I'm so happy that you are now on board, like that I have somebody else I can talk to about this.
Oh, it's so good. But now that I've like taken over your childhood favorite, what have you been cooking and eating?
Yeah. Actually, I have been making another dish from my childhood.
In the last couple of weeks, I've been making big batches of chole, which is basically like a chickpea dish.
And I've been trying to figure out things that I can make one day that will last for multiple meals.
And this is something that I think kind of only gets better as leftovers.
Yeah, for sure. It feels like it soaks up the spices and flavors even more so that, you know, There's some dishes that are better as leftovers, right?
I don't know the science behind this, but a hundred percent, like, I feel like all different cultures have different words for this, but it's basically a kind of like flavors coming together or resting.
And usually it's like saucy things or stewy things.
Yeah. And so anything that's a braised or stewy, and certainly when there's spices, I feel like anything that has tomatoes or wine in it usually tastes better the next day.
And this does have tomatoes in it.
I use canned chickpeas and canned crushed tomato and onions and spices and garlic and ginger.
It's easy and really delicious.
Do you use like a pre -mixed like masala mix from the Indian store?
No, I start by heating up the oil and then I do whole chili peppers, dried chili peppers, mustard seeds, fennel seeds, and I let those sort of get to be hot enough so that they pop.
top, and then throw the onions in, then garlic and ginger.
So I start with the whole spices, and then I add some ground spices during the onion stage.
Got it. That's when you might add cumin or coriander.
Yeah. And then what do you eat it with?
With rice, or do you may have little breads?
With rice and yogurt.
We've actually been using almond milk yogurt, which is actually really good.
Also, this is the real key, a little bit of Indian pickle.
I prefer a mango pickle, but any pickle will do.
I love a mango pickle.
Yeah. I was looking in the fridge the other day at all the different varieties of like a jar of a red thing to make something spicy that I have from different cuisines.
Oh, I have so many.
That's basically my whole refrigerator.
Exactly. But I want more.
What are your favorites?
What are your go -tos?
Let's see. I love Tia Lu pita hot sauce.
Oh, I have like, you know, Korean gochujang, which I love using.
A fermented pepper paste.
God, I have some. I have Calabrian chili paste from Italy.
That's one of my secret weapons.
And then, you know, all the chili crisps.
I have a fermented chili paste from the cultured pickle shop in Berkeley where that has like some gingery bits in it.
I don't even know. There's like, I've lost track.
It's endless. Okay.
But of course, red spicy things aren't the only way to make things spicy.
This is a question we got from Mexico City about tomatillos.
Ooh. Hi, it's a minute, Rishi.
This is Chewy. And Tyler.
And we live in Mexico City.
so we wanted to ask about tomatillos or green tomatoes.
We get a weekly agriculture box from our local farmer's market and it includes always a lot of green tomatoes and we always make some salsa verde but we always have some green tomatoes left over and there's only so much salsa verde that we can eat and we're not sure what else we can do with green tomatoes because because, you know, they're more acidic than red tomatoes.
So I'm wondering if you have any ideas or suggestions for ways to use green tomatoes.
Thank you. Thank you.
Those guys are so adorable.
I didn't know that green tomatoes are more acidic than red tomatoes.
Yeah, they're not. I mean, they're related as in they're in the same, they're both.
So tomatoes and tomatillos, they're in the same family, you know.
Because they're the tomato's uncle, right?
That's why they're called tomato -tillo.
Exactly. That's why it's the tomatoes -tillos.
yeah they're not the same plant at all I think it's just a sort of a linguistic thing that they're called like green tomatoes you know and they're used similarly but they taste totally different for folks who have not tasted them they're really really acidic and they're so delightful they can be used raw or they can be cooked and often when they're cooked they are either like like charred on a really hot griddle or they're grilled to sort of get the outside really dark and then blended into a sauce or a salsa or something like that.
So I think that's probably how these guys are using them.
And typically that's what a salsa verde is.
And usually they're just mixed with really, really hot green chilies and some cilantro.
And that's a super simple salsa verde.
They probably honestly know much better than I do how to do that.
Another really simple, delicious salsa verde that I really like making is what one of my friends calls taco truck salsa or guacamole salsa, which is kind of where you kind of mix like a pretty ripe avocado in the blender with tomatillos.
And it's that kind of like thin avocado and tomatillo salsa.
So it's like a pourable avocado salsa so that it's kind of like a less expensive guacamole option, you know, at a taco truck.
Oh, chole went really well with guacamole, which I really, really love.
Guacachole. And so we made guacachole.
It's a great pairing.
I believe it. There are a lot of ways that Indian flavors and Mexican flavors really naturally overlap.
Oh, but then that leads us to the next thing that is one of my favorite Mexican dishes is using tomatillos, where you can use a lot of them up is this probably what's the simplest version of mole, which is green mole.
And there are dozens and dozens and dozens of kinds of mole sauces throughout Mexico.
Probably the lightest and simplest one is mole verde, which has a base of many different herbs, sometimes including even lettuce and tomatillos.
One of the main herbs used in it is called epazote, which is used fresh, and it's a really delightful, very fragrant herb that's really commonly, very easily found in Mexican markets.
It's something... Did we talk about epazote in an earlier episode?
We did. We did. Yeah.
I'll tell you what it says on the Penzi spice bottle because I thought it was a very diplomatic way of putting it.
It said, it's a spice that's often used to counterbalance the effects of a diet that is high in legumes.
epazote keeps out the farts is what we're saying in case you didn't listen to our first episode but fresh epazote is just incredibly herbaceous it's really delicious and that's a crucial ingredient in green mole and so luckily these guys already live you you already live in mexico city so you you would be able to get that really easily at one of your markets you can also just use you know cilantro and parsley and you know the way i've made green mole in the past is just you char your onions you char your tomatillos and then really it goes quite quickly after that you just work in all of your greens
and you blend everything together into a really light sauce with some chicken stock and you simmer and then you have this like kind of thin ish sauce and you can by then you've already cooked whatever meat if you're using some meat probably in that stock and then you add that back in and there you go you have this like incredibly delicious thing.
The whole thing probably takes maybe 40 minutes, just a little bit longer than it takes to cook the meat if you just use chicken thighs or whatever.
So it's one of my favorite mole and I think it's because it's so surprising and so light and so different than I think what most of us think of when we think of mole.
And I think that idea is what would then take me to the other suggestions that I would make, which is grilling or charring those tomatillos and then adding them to a braise of meat, or maybe even just making some sort of delicious cooked relish that then I would either spoon over fish.
I would add them into a braise and let it just cook away.
It would be this amazing, acidic, flavorful ingredient that I would add instead of having to add wine or tomatoes, but it's a fresh, vibrant, summery way to do it yeah so I feel like it's a delicious flavor bomb and you're really lucky to do it so go for it well Chewy and Tyler I hope that helps I hope that works for you speaking of parsley if you don't use the whole bunch maybe you should call it partially I liked it better when I couldn't see you when we were recording I liked it better when my camera didn't work Yeah, so Samin's camera used to not work.
And so we would just record our episodes over audio.
But now it got fixed.
And we switched to video FaceTime, apparently with mixed results.
Speaking of Parsley, I'm like, what is he about to say?
Is this like the transition to the next question?
No. I'm like gripping my chair handles.
I'm like, with terror.
Oh, you got to squash that instinct.
Oh, no. Well, speaking of squash.
Oh, no! Here's a question from Nelly.
Hi, Samin and Rishi.
I'm calling about squash.
This spring, I planted ten squash plants.
Oh, my God. And I don't mean to count my squash before they ripen, but I think it's going to be too many.
And I'm going to have a bit of a squash situation on my hands.
We're a family of two adults and one six -year -old going through a bit of a picky eating phase.
plays so not even sure if you like squash at the moment right now my plan is just to give each of my friends a squash but maybe you have some other suggestions omg i love this question i love so much about this question i don't mean to count my squash before they rip it and then she said maybe i'm gonna give each of my friends a squash i'm like how many friends do you have i'm like like maybe she has like, I don't know.
I love it. I love you, Nellie.
I love you, Nellie.
10 squashes is a lot of squashes.
Like we planted in our garden maybe about 10 squashes, but many of them are winter squashes and they haven't, let's say, not been thriving.
So only one of them is a summer squash that has been really, really thriving and it has produced a lot of fruit.
So I can't even imagine how many 10 is going to give you.
Oh, I have some more information actually from Nellie.
Oh, tell me more. Specifically, she has one delicata.
Oh, she has winter squash.
She has one trombeta, two kabocha, one acorn, and then five question mark mystery squash plants.
Okay. I'm really happy to hear that you have a mix of winter and summer squash.
It sounds like you have zucchini and other summer squash, which are the things we grill on the old grill, or like eat as a kebab, or turn into like zucchini fries and that kind of stuff.
And then you also have the kinds of things that we would imagine in the old cornucopia around the Thanksgiving table, or like a pumpkin pie.
So that's nice, because you'll be able to stretch out your harvest over many months.
So that's good news.
So already, I'm relieved on your behalf.
So let's start with the summer squash.
So things that I think would be kid friendly are doing a little breading and oven roasting or breading and frying things like making a little bit of like squash fry, you know, like breaded and fried pieces of squash.
Or you could just use nice like buttered breadcrumbs and do that in the oven.
You don't even need to do deep frying.
I think that's a way to save yourself the hassle of deep frying.
Another way to use up a ton of them is to make a gratin, which is just slicing them thinly, layering them with cheese and cream or cheese and a mixture of cream and stock and baking the whole thing in the oven until it's like brown and bubbly and delicious, maybe topping it with breadcrumbs.
That would use up a lot of squash.
So that's really good.
As far as what your kiddo would love, my neighbor just made a really delicious double chocolate cake.
I think it's in Shauna Seaver's book, Midwest Made, but I think she has a double chocolate zucchini cake recipe, which is really tasty and uses up a good amount of zucchini.
So that's a great way to definitely kid -friendly, you know?
Can I tell you how we've been using up a lot of zucchini?
Yeah, tell me. A recipe from Yotam Atalengi from the book Jerusalem.
The title is turkey zucchini burgers, but they're really small.
They're more like meatballs.
They're They're like slider sized and nowadays we make them with the ground beef sort of style beyond meat.
But the recipe calls for ground turkey.
Either way, it's so delicious and the recipe only calls for one zucchini and that's really good.
But we've actually been getting so much zucchini, we've been doubling it and it falls apart a little bit more, but it's still like really, really good and totally works.
you shred the zucchini and combine it with the ground meat an egg some salt and spices and some garlic and you make little burgers and then you fry them in some oil and then you bake them and they're really really good that sounds really yummy i really am into i mean i know you're not using meat but i am really into these dishes that like sort of lighten the amount of meat meat with vegetable, you know, I like that.
I like that a lot. So, Oh, and there's also a green onion and mint in the burger too.
It's actually like both really sophisticated, but also something I could imagine a kid getting super into because it's like a tiny little burger.
Cute. I love that. Oh, I really love that.
Okay. But now Nellie, we have to face all the winter squash.
Yeah. She's probably going out of her gourd. it's a really i'm gonna cover your face for a little while there we go so delicata squash what did she say okay so squashes the nice thing for you is that the winter squash you're going to be able to keep for many months in a cool dry dark space so you're going to be able to space out the usage of them for a really long time So in a way, you're not going to be, it's not like you're going to need to use up 14 pieces, you know, in two weeks or anything like that.
That being said, we're still going to give you some ideas of how to use things up.
I mean, for one thing, I don't know if people know this, but most of the canned pumpkin in this country is not straight canned pumpkin.
So like the pumpkin pie we're all making out of a Libby's pumpkin, you know, has a lot of squash in it because the squash is much denser.
it's like much less watery, much more flavorful, much sweeter.
So I actually prefer when I do make pumpkin pie or pumpkin -y desserts to use my own either butternut squash, or these days there's a variety called like honey nut squash, which is a tinier little, like much more denser, sort of sweeter version.
So you can use perhaps like the acorn squash that you've got.
You can can use some of that for if you plan to do any holiday baking, you can roast and drain and use some of that for any of the pies that you might be making.
And then I would say a go -to thing that I make all sort of fall and winter long is a lot of roasted squash that I drizzle with agrodolce, which is just different versions of sort of sweet and sour dressings.
And then when I can pull my roasted squash hot out of the oven.
I'll toss it with this yummy vinaigrette.
It kind of just soaks it up, you know, like a sponge.
And so it's this delicious side dish that I can eat hot at room temperature, or it's really nice cold the next day too.
It sounds like this might be the first year you've grown all this squash, but when you harvest winter squash, you do need to cure it, which means letting it dry out for a few weeks and that's where that sort of final like maturation happens i'm sure you can read about this on some like official gardening website and we can even link to some i'll look some up for you but last year i made the mistake of i didn't know about that and i left the squash on the plant for too long and everything rotted so this year i learned you have to pull it a little bit earlier you know when it gets to the right size
it doesn't get to to that beautiful sort of color that you see at the store.
That doesn't happen on the plant.
It happens in storage.
Awesome. Thanks for the question, Nellie.
Thank you, Nellie. Good luck.
So there's one vegetable that we've gotten so many questions about that we haven't talked about yet on the show.
And so I made a little montage to play a few of them for you.
Oh, I can't wait. I recently bought kohlrabi from my drive -thru farmer's market.
So I've been sitting on it for a little bit, and I'm just not sure what to do with it.
whenever i see kohlrabi i pick it up and i bring it home and i try to figure out what to do with it and i'm never quite sure like i've roasted it a few times and i thought about mashing it but i'm not really sure but i just think i haven't cracked the code on what to do with it exactly hi it's uh tom and denner from north london here um we've just got a question about um Um, Kurobi.
We received it in our weekly veg bag.
I didn't know what to do with it, so we tried to take it to my brother, only to find out that he had also received it in his weekly veg bag, and they have now given us another Kurobi.
Oh no, it multiplied!
And we're looking for things to do with it, any ways of cooking it, what is it?
And we wondered whether you guys could help.
what is it how do you how do you pronounce it how do you spell it and how do you cook it oh my god that's so funny let's start with what is it kohlrabi okay kohlrabi it's like spelled k -o -h -l -r -a -b -i so kohl comes from the department store kohl's uh which was of course started by a rabbi and so it's named for the founder of the kohl's rabbi exactly Exactly.
You don't even need me.
You don't even need me.
You got it. Okay. What's the real etymology?
Well, it's not Latin.
It's German actually.
But coal is like the German word. I think it's like related to the German word for cabbage.
And Robbie, I think is like related to the German word for turnip.
And somebody's probably going to at me because I didn't actually look that up.
And Rob, you know, if you think of like broccoli, rapini, all those.
those. So it's in that family.
It's in the cruciferous family, the brassicas, the broccolis and the cabbages and all those.
But it doesn't look anything like that.
It looks way more like a celery root.
It looks like the rooty part.
It looks confusing.
It looks like something that Mario would pull out of the ground to throw at a Super Mario Brothers villain.
It fully does. It does.
You're right. Once you remove the skin and leaves, once you peel it and trim it, It looks and tastes kind of like a radish.
But I will say that tough outer skin, it's got to go.
Get rid of it. Add it to the compost pile.
But then once you get in there, it's so sweet and fresh and crunchy and delicious.
And my favorite way to eat it is raw.
I think it's really, really delicious raw.
And I learned from a friend in New York how to prepare like a delicious kohlrabi slaw.
slaw i actually think it pairs really nicely with apples so you could add a little bit of chili into there if you wanted like a jalapeno or serrano i don't even put mayonnaise in this kind of slaw i just keep it really clean with vinegar you could use apple cider vinegar to kind of like double up on that apple -y deliciousness and add whatever herbs you've got on hand probably parsley would be nice and some olive oil and salt and keep it really simple and what do you eat that slaw with If it was lunchtime, you could have that with like some grilled chicken breast or a piece of grilled fish or something,
or it could be the side dish for your dinner.
Or, you know, what would be kind of cool, kind of delicious, was you could use the kohlrabi instead of like a daikon radish.
radish. And you could mix it with carrot, mix it with rice wine vinegar and sugar and cilantro and jalapeno. And then you could use it instead of the kind of traditional pickles in a Vietnamese banh mi.
And then you could build yourself a banh mi sandwich using either pork or chicken or tofu.
And that could be your like delicious kind of like the stuff that you would put in your banh mi sandwich. Oh, that sounds good.
So, I mean, I think just keep it raw is my favorite kohlrabi thing got it like odb i've never actually had kohlrabi it's quite delicious you're right it totally looks like a super mario brothers situation that definitely makes me want to eat it even more hey there hello this is just a quick psa to let you know that super soft home cooking sweatshirts shrimp jenga forever t -shirts and less soft home cooking magnets for your fridge are still Still available at homecooking .show.
Just click on the merch button to check it all out.
Or if you want to type the whole thing out, go to homecooking .show slash merch. If you're a fan of home cooking and the way it's all put together, but like me, you wish it had a little less Rishi in it.
Let me recommend Rishi's other podcast, the brilliant and magical Song Exploder.
Rishi's the host, but he cuts himself entirely out of the interviews.
He does with amazing musicians like Janelle Monae, Robin, Fleetwood Mac, U2, and more.
So you just hear them talking about the creative process behind the making of one of their songs.
I was actually a fan of Song Exploder way before Rishi and I became friends.
Two of my favorite episodes are the ones with Solange and Sylvan Esso.
The show is so carefully and thoughtfully made, and it's just really inspiring for anyone who creates things.
Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
Okay, so the next question we have comes from Bella, and it has two parts.
Me and my boyfriend really love having steak, so my first question is, what's the best method, in your opinions, on how to make the perfect steak?
steak. My second question is, I really, really love the taste of salmon, and I cook salmon quite often, so I would just like to ask if you guys have some fun recipes on what to cook with salmon or how to cook it.
That's so cute. I like this question because though I don't eat steak myself, I know that people get obsessive about sort of the best way to make a steak, and I imagine you have an opinion.
Yes, but also, best is so subjective.
There are so many different variables when it comes to cooking steak because the quality of meat is so different depending on what cut you're getting, how that meat was raised, depending on how fatty it is.
There's so many different elements.
So there's not necessarily one answer.
Yeah, for sure. These days I don't eat that much beef.
I think I've had maybe beef once in the last year, maybe twice.
But the last time I really was working regularly in a professional kitchen with some friends, one of us had watched a Jacques Pepin video of cooking steak in butter.
And it was so simple and so beautiful.
And I think watching that reminded us of this like very simple classic technique.
And so that was what we started doing.
And it was with a cut of steak that I think a lot of us kind of have been raising our noses at for a while, which is filet mignon.
Oh, really? As real chefs, you know, we're like filet mignon.
It's just not like a real chef's cut.
The chef Jeff's cut is the T -bone, it's the ribeye, it's the porterhouse, it's the New York.
And the filet mignon, it's for babies or for rich people or for old people or whatever.
Rich babies, especially.
These rich babies with their monocles, they show up and they want a filet mignon.
And like it has no texture or whatever.
And I have to say, like, when I tasted a bite of this like filet mignon that was cooked in butter in a cast iron pan, it was mind blowingly delicious.
And so the way that we did it was it was so simple.
It was just a really wonderful thing to just be reintroduced to a basic technique.
And it was one of those things where I was like, oh, I'm never going to forget this.
Butter is this very basic ingredient that you sometimes forget is so complicated.
And because butter has all of these milk solids, there's so many qualities that it has in there.
You know, those milk solids, they caramelize and then they create all of these really complex browning flavors in a dish.
It's so simple and it's so beautiful.
So I think you take a piece of filet mignon.
I would say you probably want it to be, I would say, probably an inch and a half thick and season it generously with salt.
If you like pepper, put pepper on both sides.
I like to season my meat ahead, you know, at least a half an hour in advance, maybe several hours in advance.
But you can also just do it right before and then get your pan, get your cast iron pan very, very hot.
And then you have to use a generous amount of butter.
Put that in the pan and you're going to want a spoon.
And what you're going to do is you're going to put this piece of meat in and you're constantly going to be basting it basically in this butter.
butter and you don't really move it at first because you want basically a crust to form.
And then once that crust forms, you start like sliding it around and you're just sliding it around in that butter.
So it's getting really evenly browned.
And then you flip it and you do the same thing on the second side.
And by the time it has a really beautiful crust on both sides, it's pretty much done.
And then you can turn it on its edge and get that crust on the edge.
And then it's really important to let it rest. You know, you probably just want to let it sit in a nice warm spot, sort of maybe hanging out near the corner of the stove or over the oven or whatever for about 10 minutes until it's ready to slice.
And then that's about it.
I'm going to try and find this video.
It was a few years ago, but I'm going to try and find this video for us to link to too for you.
It was such a thing of beauty and yeah, it's a really, really, really delightful thing.
Okay. And then how about the second half of Bella's question about salmon?
I know you have a great salmon recipe in your book.
Yeah. Unfortunately, Bella, I only know how to cook salmon one way.
I mean, I know other ways, but really, I only cook it one way, which is slow roasting.
It's really, I feel like I have the most control and it's just so delicious.
I actually just did it the other day.
When you try and cook it another way, does it feel like you're swimming upstream?
Yeah. That was a salmon joke.
I know. But you're not acting like it.
I mean what am I supposed to say yeah you're supposed to laugh with delight you're supposed to be like there it is I'll cut everything else out and just make it sound like that was your reaction to the joke originally what did I do to deserve this it's also you know I think the thing that people don't realize is that Rishi edits this show he also is the one who chooses so he has days to come up with a pun before he asks me the questions I'm just gonna take this part out and then replace it with you saying Rishi you are so smart Rishi you are so smart oh got those okay so the salmon you know I
definitely did not invent this but it's a I'm lazy and b this is really good so you know one of the beautiful things about salmon is that it's an incredibly rich and fatty fish it's so rich it only orders the filet mignon it's such a rich fish it only orders the filet mignon it shows up in the restaurant wearing its monocle after it swam all the way upstream to the restaurant okay as a cook i feel like my job is to preserve Observe that fat.
And so if I put the salmon into too hot of an oven or try to cook it too quickly, that fat's just going to get squeezed out.
Whereas if I cook it really nice and gently and slowly, that fat will baste the fish from within.
And I'll be left with basically like the most delicate, silky, delicious piece of fish ever.
So really the thing is to heat the oven to about 250.
And I like to use like a really fragrant bed of herbs or we have a fig tree here.
You can use fig leaves, whatever herbs you've got on hand.
You could also make a little bed out of lemon slices or orange slices or anything that you might want to sort of perfume the fish as it cooks.
But if you don't have any of that, you could just use a piece of parchment.
and lately I've been making this in my toaster oven, which is even nicer because it just preheats so quickly.
You just lay it skin side down.
If there's no skin, that's fine.
It's whichever side was the skin.
If there are bones, it would be nice to remove the bones using a pair of like needle nose pliers or tweezers, but you don't have to.
You can remove the bones after cooking if that's easier.
Season it lightly with salt.
Very, very lightly drizzle it with olive oil and rub the olive oil in, and then stick it into that very, very low oven and cook it until the meat is just translucent and just barely flakes apart when you prick it with a fork or with your fingers.
And so for a two pound piece, that's about maybe 40 minutes.
For a one pound piece, that might be like between 25 and 30 minutes.
And for a whole filet, that might be close to an hour.
But it It really just depends on, you know, your oven and your specific fish.
So you'll have to check on it.
But then, you know, comes the fun part, which is like this fish is so nice to eat both warm at room temperature and cold.
So I made a piece that was probably a pound and I ate it for an entire week.
Like I ate it warm with pesto and cherry tomatoes.
I ate it cold on top of salads.
I flaked it on top of a bowl of brown rice.
You could eat it with a tomatillo salsa.
Yeah, you could eat it with your tomatillo salsa.
I've only ever had the slow roasted salmon from your book once, but it was so good.
I still remember it.
Oh, that's awesome.
Okay, thanks, Bella.
Thank you, Bella. Good luck.
Simeen, as I mentioned in an earlier episode of this podcast, I secretly want to get relationship questions on this show as well.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know very, very well.
Well, here's one from Ruby.
me so I'm celiac and my partner is vegetarian um he'll have chicken on occasion but mostly veg um I've been doing a lot of cooking since quarantine but it can be a lot to cook gluten -free vegetarian food all the time I want to cook some meat and fish for myself but when I do that I find that I have to cook a lot of other vegetarian foods there's enough for my partner and it just becomes a whole thing.
I was looking for some suggestions for gluten -free vegetarian food to cook that would be substantial on its own, and then easy for me to add some other non -veg treats to.
Thank you so much. If you'll allow, Samin, I was wondering if I could take the first swing at this.
Go for it. My first recommendation really is not for Ruby, but for her partner.
Cook something Something for yourself, man.
Cook something yourself, dude.
Like let Ruby make a meal that is just the stuff that she wants.
Make a thing that is entirely just for you.
And she can make something that's entirely just for her one day out of the week.
Like pick a day where you kind of go on your own separate food adventures and the rest of the time you can work out this compromise.
But let's start with that.
One day a week. Choose your own adventures.
Thank you. I think you're being generous, but yeah.
Yeah. This is why I should not be the host of a relationship podcast is I'm too mean because I'm going to be like, dude, get off your ass.
I don't know anything about his side of the story and why she's cooking all the food because who knows what he's doing.
But maybe he's carrying like a huge part of some other load that I don't know about.
But it does seem insane that like she has this crazy dietary restriction and is also like accommodating going out of her way to accommodate him so yeah and I also feel like in some ways you're being a little bit too lax like not only should he make his own thing like at least one day a week he should be making her thing too right good point yeah so that's one thing I would say another thing is sabudana because that is gluten -free isn't it yeah that's great okay next question yeah next I otherwise I'm gonna like explode with anger So, let's move on, please.
Good luck, Ruby. Good luck.
I hope he's worth it.
And if he isn't, you know, like salmon with monocles, there are other fish in the sea.
Oh, my God. Okay, so we actually got another question, another family recipe question.
Is this the Chef Detective?
It is, yes. I'm going to play Chef Detective music under her question.
Okay, cool. Is that what you think the music sounds like?
Hi, Savita Rashid. My family immigrated from Poland three generations ago.
My grandma only spoke Polish growing up.
But the crazy thing about it is Polish are known for their pierogis.
We don't have a family pierogi recipe.
I've never made homemade pierogis.
I've been on the hunt for a recipe that I really like.
And I haven't found one yet.
So I was just wondering if you have any great resources, because I want to make this one of my family recipes.
Thank you. Okay, you're a chef detective on the hunt for a pierogi recipe.
Boo, boo, boo. Aye, aye, aye.
Well, the truth of the matter is I've never made pierogi, and I've only eaten them once.
Oh, really? So I think we need to call in reinforcements.
We need backup. We got to call Antony.
Antony Porosky is the food and wine expert on Netflix's hit series Queer Eye.
And he's just a sweetheart who knows his Polish food.
In fact, he's got his own cookbook called Antony in the Kitchen.
And let's give him a call right now.
Let's do it. Hello?
Hello? Hello? Hi, I'm here.
Oh, you're here. Your hair.
Yeah. Antony, thank you so much for joining us.
What do you think about this pierogi question?
I kind of love how Ashley asked this question, you know, third, fourth generation Polish American, and it kind of got me to then get in touch with my aunties and all the Polacks in my family and like get in touch and try to like figure out what's going on.
Like, I love how it kind of this like train sort of like forms and like everyone trying to get intel from the past. Growing up, we definitely ate a lot of Polish food.
It was certainly more around the holidays, but we never made pierogies, not one single time.
So when was the first time that you actually had a pierogi?
So my auntie had a Polish restaurant in Montreal called Stash Cafe.
And I'm sure I had them before, but when I really fell in love with pierogis was at this restaurant.
So this restaurant still exists in Montreal.
It's where my father worked there as a waiter, all of my uncles did.
My sister worked there.
That's where she met her now -husband.
That's where I worked when I was in college.
It's like the rite of passage if you're Polish and in Montreal.
And if you go downstairs to the basement, sounds a little sketchy, but there would always be like three or four grandmas and they would be hand making pierogies.
I would have like 20 pierogies.
And even if they were really fresh, that's the only time where you can justify having them boiled.
But I would still ask them to pan fry them and then put two whole ladles of fried onion on top with the oil and then like a big heaping spoon of full fat sour cream.
And I would just I'd go to town on that whole plate.
Right. Wow. Sour cream is totally important.
It's so important. Could you explain what a pierogi actually is?
It's a dumpling. It's like a half crescent that's basically stuffed with a mix of different things.
I'm going to go real traditional and tell you about the three kinds as they are prepared in Poland.
The most common, which is not that you asked for my opinion, but my least favorite, it's pierogi ruskie, which means Russian pierogi.
And those are stuffed with mashed potatoes and twaruk.
Twaruk is like a farmer's cheese.
The second one is my favorite and those are pierogies miancem.
So those are meat pierogies.
This is why I called my auntie Magda now because I was asking her about how the meat was prepared when it was inside.
And so they would basically cook pork shoulder has the right amount of fat.
And then they put it through like a meat grinder and you put it really thin so that it has the consistency of of pate pretty much. So it's super delicate.
It's already cooked.
And then the third kind are the ones that I only got to really start enjoying as an adult because I hated kapusta growing up.
Kapusta is cabbage.
We put it in literally everything.
It's like our national food.
They're actually not made with cabbage.
They're made with kapusta zbechki, kishona, which means it's sauerkraut from a barrel.
That's how she explained it.
So it's like really nice and and you mix cabbage with mushrooms. There's also a dessert one.
Do not skip the dessert one.
The dessert ones are actually really good.
They're with blueberries.
They're really yummy.
So are there pierogi occasions or is this something kind of like a holiday thing or a Sunday thing?
Or do families typically eat them on any night of the week?
In Montreal, we would buy them and I would have them after swim meets, during the week on random nights when basically my parents were going out or they were just being a little lazy and they just wanted to cook something up real quick.
It's very much a restaurant food as well.
It's kind of like pizza in the States.
A lot of people go out for pizza as opposed to making it at home.
I feel like pierogies are something that you more commonly find in little grandma -type restaurants.
That makes sense. It's just a lot of work.
It is a lot of work.
But now's the time to make that stuff at home.
So get your children's little little fingers.
Exactly. Get them ready to start folding.
Wait a second. I just had a thought.
So Ashley, there is a thing called pierogi la nive, which translates to lazy pierogis.
And these, whenever I would show up at home and there would be like a plate sitting with these and saran wrap on it, I knew I met my parents were going out because they basically wanted to give me dessert for dinner to make me feel better about them not being around.
I promised my parents like raised me and they were around but they would go out they had a social life so pierogi are basically unstuffed pierogies they basically look like a traditional gnocchi sort of like cut on the bias and they're just like fluffy some recipes use mashed potato in the mix others don't i like it with the mashed potato it's just a little more delicate and with those you serve them with regular like granulated sugar and then toasted breadcrumbs toasted breadcrumbs are the thing that like americans have cheese whiz for like their kids to eat broccoli and all that kind of stuff.
Polish people have breadcrumbs.
You cook them until, again, they're almost burnt.
And then you just like douse it over anything and it makes anything taste delicious.
Wait, so that's basically the filling.
It's like a pierogi without the outside.
It's just the inside part.
Exactly. I would suggest like start out with the lenive with the lazy pierogis, then work and like learn what the tradition is like the super traditional way of making it.
And then you can kind of mess around and put like whatever the heck you want and just kind of make it your own but I think it is nice to know how it was originally made especially if you're trying to like get in touch with your heritage and you know do you have any tips for the dough for the outside I think it's flour egg and water just watching my mother and my sisters make it I weirdly wasn't allowed to cook with my mother growing up and I would watch her from like the other end of the island but I did study a lot and I remember it was always really she was always complaining about like how sticky
it was but that's how it had to be.
That's awesome. And my only tip is like, make it thin when you go to a restaurant, like if you go to like a place that's like a little they just put too much dough.
For me, it's all about the filling.
It's all about the ratio of filling.
Yes. And do either of you have a go to cookbook or authority when it comes to Polish recipes?
Is there something like published that we could point Ashley to to follow religiously or just based on the first attempt off of?
There was a website.
It's called Kwestiasmaku.
So it's K -W -E -S -T -I -A -S -M -A -K -U .com.
Oh, I cannot wait to go look on there.
The recipe I wanted to share for pierogi comes from a new cookbook, actually.
It's Michelle Polzin's book called Baking at the 20th Century Cafe, which is one of my favorite restaurants in San Francisco.
And she's a really brilliant pastry chef who is kind of obsessed with recipes from all over Eastern Europe.
And though her focus is mostly pastries and cakes, she also makes a few savory dishes, including pierogi.
And she has a really beautiful recipe in her book, including a really thorough sort of instruction for how to make the dough.
So she puts flour, baking powder, salt, and sour cream in her dough with eggs.
And then once the dumplings are made, she boils them and then pan fries them with butter and tosses them with poppy seeds so that they're like at once chewy, crispy, and just a little bit pillowy.
And then the traditional sort of recipe for this basic version is the potato version with onions and like has a little bit of coriander and mustard and caraway seeds and stuff in it.
This is the version I've had at her restaurant.
And she makes her own jam.
She makes like plum jam or damson jam that she serves it with, with a big dollop of sour cream.
We love our plum jam.
Yeah, it's so good.
Wait, poppy seeds? That's a plot twist. Oh, it is?
Yeah, I've never even heard of that before.
Oh, well, then that must be her little twist. Yeah.
So I think what we'll do is we'll post a bunch of these recipes.
And I don't know if I'll have permission to post Michelle's recipe, but I'll post a link so you can pre -order her book and we'll definitely post a link to Anthony's Auntie's website recommendation yeah I'm looking on Questia Smaku right now and there are so many different pierogi recipes oh my god it's amazing unfortunately the one that looks like it's gotten the most comments and reviews is the one that is your least favorite and the pierogi ruski I don't dislike them but it's kind Kind of like, sorry to be controversial, but it's like a carb on a carb.
I just want, like, they need to complement each other.
You already have the carb with the dumpling itself.
I want it to be stuffed with something else.
Give me some, like, wild mushrooms and some, like, tangy sauerkraut or, like, some delicate meat.
Oh, he's delicate. I'm like, give me the two carbs, please.
I'm like, rice and potatoes?
Yeah, thank you. Well, I hope that answers Ashley's question.
Can I ask just how you've been taking care of yourself and cooking for yourself?
Yeah, we were wondering if is there one dish that's been your own personal source of joy and comfort during lockdown?
Yes. So I was at the beginning of lockdown.
I was actually in Austin in Texas where we were filming a new season of Queer Eye and production shut down.
We hadn't even completed the first episode.
We still had one day left. and my boyfriend came to visit me and we ended up just kind of like staying there and moving in together.
And I was creeping on Martha Stewart 48 Instagram page.
And I always saw she has this beautiful bowl of farm eggs.
So I started ordering farm eggs because I eat four eggs every morning and I started making a soft scramble.
And when I was a kid, the way that I made eggs, I would basically take six eggs, but I would I would throw out four yolks.
So it would be six yolks, and two egg whites.
And then I would put Borson or creme fraiche or some kind of a cheese.
Basically, it was like a cholesterol bomb.
And I would make the most delicious soft scramble that way.
But then when you're in your 30s, you realize it's not so good for your heart.
So I was talking to my collaborator, Mindy Fox, who co -wrote my first cookbook with, and we were talking about scrambled eggs.
And she taught me, she's like, no, the key to a perfect soft scramble is for every two eggs, you add a teaspoon of water.
So I've perfected soft scrambled eggs.
And my boyfriend loves having them with everything bagel seasoning.
And I get mine from St. Vita in Montreal, which are the best bagels in the world, better than New York, because New York bagels are basically the shape of a large bread.
And in Montreal, they have a nice pull and they're sweet and they're just delicious.
And he puts ketchup on them.
But I just put a lot of really good Jacobson black garlic salt and fresh cracked pepper.
That sounds so good.
You were telling the story so passionately that I got very confused for a second.
And I thought That I was picturing your boyfriend putting ketchup on the bagel.
Oh, no. This is just me being manic.
I was like, that is just, I was like, grounds for dumping.
He's taking the everything bagel to new places.
Yeah. Exactly. That long answer, all to say that I have been obsessed with just making scrambled eggs every morning, and it's just part of my ritual.
and having the perfect soft scramble when you take it off of the heat.
It still keeps on cooking, but it's still runny.
I just I've been loving my scrambled eggs.
Do you use a little butter in the pan?
Oh, butter. Absolutely.
Just to close the loop on your story, because you said that this all started with you creeping on Martha Stewart's Instagram.
Even before I was a cook, I think I was watching like the old, old Martha Stewart show that was, you know, just once a week where she had to like the good things segment or something it was like some sort of episode about like hosting others for brunch and she was doing tips for how to make really good scrambled eggs i was probably 12 years old like when was i gonna host somebody for brunch i don't know we had the same taste in television as 12 year olds i'll tell you that yeah totally but the little like the secret was she gave the same exact tip which was instead of adding milk or cream to your
eggs when you're you're scrambling them to add just a tiny, like a little half teaspoon or a teaspoon of water.
And the reason is that it creates steam and it makes for really, really fluffy and soft scrambled eggs.
Because when, then when the eggs cook, the water steams away and it fluffs them up.
And so I never add milk or cream or anything in my scrambled eggs.
I just add the tiniest bit of water now.
Totally. Wow. All right.
I'm going to try it.
And Anthony, I'm going to think of you when I make my eggs.
You're the best. Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me.
You really made my day.
And it's like, you know, getting to talk to other people who are just as nerdy and obsessive about food.
I don't know too many people who get as excited as I am about it.
So I'm grateful for you both.
Oh, thank you. Thanks, Anthony.
You can find Anthony on Netflix's Queer Eye.
And of course, in his book, Anthony in the Kitchen.
You can also follow him on social media.
He's at Anthony on both Twitter and Instagram.
So, I mean, before we go, I have one more question I wanted to play you.
This one comes from Lucas.
Hi, I'm eight years old and I love creamy foods and I also love cooking, but unfortunately I'm lactose intolerant.
And so what can I make that's creamy but doesn't involve lactose?
Oh, I love creamy foods too.
One really cool creamy thing that you can make that will be really fun to make with your parents is mayonnaise.
That has no dairy in it.
And you can turn it into all sorts of different kinds of sauces and put it on all sorts of different kinds of things.
And you can do it by hand or you can do it in a food processor or a blender.
You just use one egg yolk and then you very slowly drizzle some oil.
So you can use canola oil or avocado oil or rice bran oil or olive oil.
And you just just drop by drop, drizzle it in and whisk it in.
So this is really, if you're going to use a whisk, it's really important to have an adult because you definitely need a second set of hands to help stir or drizzle because it will take a lot of muscle to do it.
But it's also pretty easy to do it in a mixer or a blender or a food processor.
And then comes the fun part where you get to work in whatever flavorings you want to work in.
You can do garlic, or if garlic's too strong for you, You could do herbs or you could mix mayonnaise and ketchup.
You could do mustard and mayonnaise.
The other thing that I think is probably going to be your very best friend in the creamy department is an ingredient called tahini.
That's what I was going to say.
No, I said it. Okay, okay.
Tahini is kind of like kitchen magic.
So tahini is made out of crushed sesame seeds.
It's kind of like sesame seed butter.
If you think of peanut butter as crushed up peanuts, this is crushed up sesame seeds.
But for whatever reason, when you mix tahini with other ingredients, they just turn creamy.
It turns into like a creamy, creamy sauce.
Tahini is kind of my little secret superpower ingredient in my kitchen for when I want to make a creamy sauce and I don't want to use dairy or I don't even have dairy.
Samin, have you ever thought about having your own line of tahini and you could call it Samini?
Not until this moment, but now I feel like I have to.
Don't you think I have to?
I hope so. Yeah. What food product, if you could put something out into the world?
What would I make? Let's see.
You know, I've never really wanted to have a restaurant.
I mean, I guess there was always the ice cream shop, right?
Right. Did you ever go to all -you -can -eat soup and salad restaurants as a child?
Yes, there were a couple.
there was augustine's and ponderosa ponderosa was like my family's place in southern california there was soup exchange and the very unfortunately named soup plantation yep and i loved them very much you know and it was like i just couldn't wait to have the soft serve like that's all i wanted and it was just very deeply exciting for me to have all you could eat anything yes and so like oh that was the thing about ponderosa was like food food whatever did you know they have have a sunday bar and you could go up as many times as you want totally so i think combining my like adult sort of career
love of fresh ingredients and food and the fact that like now as a cook and also a person who's 40 and like understands digestion and fiber and wishes that there were just like a place i could go eat delicious salad and also as a child just loves the salad bar my dream restaurant is that i wish like i could make like a bouge you know soup and salad joint if i could have like fancy like i actually wish it existed and i could go eat there that's my dream yeah yeah yeah that you don't have to be responsible for yeah like i don't actually want to make it yeah but that's my dream restaurant i could go
somewhere and like every day just eat like heaps and heaps of like you know moroccan pickled beets and like freshly made focaccia yeah and then of course like soft serve but yeah and you can call it the bougie buffet the bougie buffet tote well unlike a great buffet our show is not all you can eat and this brings us to the end of our episode and the end of our second batch of episodes Bye.
So Samin has left. But meanwhile, I'll tell you that we're going to take a little break.
We already know we're going to come back.
We're going to come back for batch three.
So please stay with us and stay subscribed to the show.
We'll be back soon.
And we're so thankful to everyone who's listened and sent in questions.
Please send in lots more questions.
Yeah. Keep sending in questions.
Send us your family recipe, mysteries, questions, and then any other questions you have. you know it actually doesn't have to be about just about food you can just send us whatever questions we'll take them oh yeah Rishi really wants to solve all your relationship issues so Rene Rishi Brown we make this podcast with the help of Margaret Miller Zach McNeese Gary Lee and Casey deal and Mamie Ryan gold does all the illustrations for our episodes we're proud member of radio topia from PRX a collective of independent podcasts you can learn more about all of the the Radiotopia shows, at radiotopia .fm.
If you do have any cooking -related questions, just record a voice memo and send it to us at alittlehomecooking at gmail .com.
Our website is homecooking .show, where you can find transcripts and recipes and an animated gif of our tomato can logo, if you ever want to decorate your Instagram stories.
You can find Samin on social media, at CiaoSamin, on both Twitter and Instagram.
And Rishi's at RishiHirwe.
Stay healthy, eat well, and take care of each other.
We don't know exactly when we'll be back, but we'll be back soon.
Until then, I'm Samin.
And I'm Rishi. And we'll be home cooking.
Radiotopia. From PRX.
