The Splendid Table is supported by Broad & Taylor, creators of tools for bread bakers designed by bread bakers.
Broad & Taylor is dedicated to innovating products that simplify the process of making wholesome food from scratch. Tools like the folding proofer offer home cooks perfect temperature and humidity control for consistent dough rise.
It folds down to less than three inches to keep your kitchen counters clear for other goodies.
Visit broadandtaylor .com slash splendid for recipes and more.
There's just something about family road trips.
Windows down, music up, snacks everywhere, and stories that turn into inside jokes for years.
And now there's one more thing to love, pulling over for a chicken sandwich that makes the whole car happy.
Culver's new lineup, crispy, spicy, or grilled, is made with 100 % whole white meat chicken breast. Taught with cool, crunchy lettuce, ripe tomato, Hey, it's Francis.
This week, we're taking you back to an episode So we did last year about island food with our friend Von Diaz and Joe Nathan's Life and Recipes.
Have a listen. I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.
You know, we have on the show today two guests who are at very different stages of their careers and lives, have focused on different subjects and views different media, but they have something deep in common. Joan Nathan is a living legend in the culinary world.
Her 11 previous books, going back to 1975, have almost all focused on the intricacies and global influence and reach of Jewish cuisine.
And her latest is a culinary memoir, it's about herself, called My Life and Recipes, where she narrates her own story.
Navon Diaz is a documentarian, a radio editor, a teacher, and a journalist, and she started her book writing career with a memoir cookbook called Coconuts and Collards about her upbringing as a Puerto Rican woman in Georgia.
But what they both share absolutely in common is that they both find the most important stories in food not on the tables of grand restaurants, but in the homes and lives of regular people.
They interview, they cook with, they connect, and they document the cooking and kitchen lives of anyone, from an activist in Guam to the mayor of Jerusalem.
I feel like they're kindred spirits in the way that they work, and I'm so glad to bring these guests to you today.
We're going to start with Van and her new book, Islas, a celebration of tropical cooking.
You know, first, I have to tell you that this is one of the most gorgeous cookbooks I have laid my hands on in a while.
and you just have to see it and take off the jacket and flip through it.
And, you know, certainly when you think of the places it covers, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Seychelles, and more, you think of beautiful scenery and, you know, island vibes.
And the book gets you there for sure in mood and look.
But, of course, Vaughn goes deeper on the stories and the history.
Reading this book is like being a traveler rather than a tourist. Hey, Vaughn, it's great to see you.
Hey, Francis, always good to see you.
Hey, I really have to start by asking this question because it's been like sort of ringing in my head ever since I knew you were working on this book.
The book is called Islas, right?
And it's the cuisine of islands from around the world.
And, you know, usually when, maybe this is just because I'm from New York and we have a big Caribbean community here, but when I hear island cuisine, I automatically think people are talking about the Caribbean, right?
Sure. And even in that, though, like the cuisine of Puerto Rico and of Jamaica are pretty different to the naked eye.
Even Haitian food and Dominican food are super different.
They're actually on the same island.
That's right. Let alone when you consider Guam and Madagascar as you have in your book.
So what inspired you to think about what island cuisines around the world have in common?
in? So for me, I feel like this book in a lot of ways has been a lifetime in the works.
You know, I was born in Puerto Rico, and have always felt very tied to Puerto Rico.
And, you know, as I went to college, you know, moved to different places and got to travel the world.
I got to go to a few islands, Cuba several times to do academic field research, I had the chance to go to Bali, and to Hawaii and, of course, to Puerto Rico.
And every time I would go to an island, I would have this feeling, right?
I would just have this feeling kind of in my spirit that I felt sort of uncommonly connected to people in a kind of a hometown way.
And so that's sort of how it began for me.
Like more than if you, and you grew up in the American South.
So a different feeling than that.
Exactly. Exactly. And so I think for a while, I kept making excuses to get to islands, right?
Because I was like, oh, I just I love being around islanders.
I love island temperatures.
And I love island cuisines.
And so when I had the opportunity to write another book, after Coconuts and Collards, which was my first book, I thought, can I write a book about islands?
And if so, how would it be organized?
What would I research?
And what would the takeaway be from the book?
What would be new about it.
And, you know, as you already said, there's tons of islands across the planet because this book really covers the globe, right?
Covers the entire center band of the earth, which is the tropics.
And there are tens of thousands of islands.
So I knew fairly quickly that I couldn't organize it by place.
And I wondered, okay, well, what about dishes?
Because there are some pretty unique dishes.
Things wrapped in banana leaves and steamed, for example, are really common across the tropics.
And so it's summer of 2020.
We know what was going on during that period of time.
I was spending a lot of time outdoors and cooking a lot outdoors, cooking a lot over open fire, grilling a lot, just in an effort to get out of my house.
And I remember one night I was prepping, I'm sure to grill some marinated meat, which is my favorite thing to do.
And it dawned on me, hey, you know, I believe that islanders cook differently.
I think they have a distinct way of cooking.
And I believe that that distinct way of cooking comes from a shared experience.
And fairly quickly, I started thinking about the shared experience, right?
Islands are small, they're isolated, they're colonized, they're heavily touristed, they're environmentally mentally vulnerable in ways that particularly amidst climate change, means that they are impacted annually by worsening storm systems that disrupt life for extended periods of time every single year.
And they're unpredictable.
So that's how it began for me.
Because when you think about it in that way, right, here are all these places, separated by vast distances in different oceans with different colonial entities, different origin indigenous cultures as well.
But yet, living in the same conditions requires that you cook in a way that is resilient, meaning you can prepare food for yourself and your family without electricity, without running water, certainly without internet, without access to gasoline, right, all of these things.
And those cooking techniques, which I've identified six in Islas, I describe as resilient ancestral cooking techniques because they're some of the oldest ways of cooking known to man.
So what are the techniques?
They are marinating, pickling and fermentation, braising and stewing, deep frying, grilling and smoking over open fire, and steaming, particularly inside of leaves.
And in many ways, the techniques, again, are the most basic, right?
They are ways of cooking and ways of preparing food that are easy to replicate.
They often produce food that'll keep for a while, actually, that's a pretty common thread, which isn't surprising when we're talking about ancestral cooking techniques, right?
That these are techniques that predate refrigeration and in a tropical environment where it's very hot and where you either have to preserve quickly or eat quickly.
Right. So that even those distinctions, I think really illuminated a lot for me about how similar the process itself was.
So let's start with marinating, right?
Most marinades are an aromatic, an acid, some spices, and some kind of fat.
And in the first chapter of Islas, which is centered around Guam and is the marinating chapter, I provide a little bit of a rubric, right?
Because that's really all you need.
Acid, oil, some kind of aromatic, some kind of spice.
And you can mix and match and create your own adventure, right?
You've got lemon today, you've got lime today, you got vinegars, you got orange juice.
And so that's what I saw across islands is that I saw people marinating things all over the place with slight variations, right?
So in Guam, the indigenous people of Guam are known as Chamorros.
And the Chamorros make this incredible marinade that has a ton of lemon, garlic, scallion, and soy sauce as the base and a little bit of sugar.
sugar so it really penetrates the meat and also when you marinate something and when you put it on the grill the marinade creates a bit of a caramelizing effect right so you get a little bit of sweetness whereas on the opposite side of the planet right in in puerto rico and also in i would say in cuba or the dominican republic we use a similar kind of marinade it's either either white vinegar or lime juice, also garlic, dried oregano and salt and pepper.
But the goal is the same, right?
The goal is let me infuse this meat with flavor so that actually I don't have to do very much to it when it comes time to cook it.
And marinating is a magical way to turn something inedible into something edible, right?
So oxtail is a perfect example.
There is no way to eat oxtail aside from cooking it and cooking it, cooking, slow cooking it, but you also marinate it, right?
So that the meat itself, these like oxtail bones that you're putting in have the flavor of the marinade and then develop the flavor as like all of the elements kind of meld together.
So I think marinating is like step one for a lot of island dishes and can ultimately be an incredible cheat, you know, an incredible way to, to make something really dynamic and fantastic with just a handful of ingredients.
Yeah. So what's your favorite Chamorro marinated dish?
I love their classic barbecue, what they call barbecue.
And, and I love it because like a lot of my favorite foods, it tells a story.
So, you know, Guam, much like Puerto Rico is a U .S. territory, right?
And when you call Guam, you call a regular US number, you send them mail like you're sending it to a postal address, right?
And it is part of the United States.
And there is a lot of US military presence on Guam.
And part of the reason why Chamorro barbecue became so popular, as I understand it from my research and from talking to folks on the island, is that when the US military increased their presence in Guam following World War Two, and the US military brought a lot of meat.
U .S. soldiers were accustomed to having lots and lots of animal protein.
And so a pipeline of protein started flowing into Guam, and suddenly meat in general became more accessible to a community that had historically eaten things that were native, turtles, seafood, deer, actually, which was brought by the Spanish, which is another other interesting story.
But beef and chicken at this level, right, that became available.
Yeah, yeah, from US military presence.
And so today, the Chamorros have what feels like this very kind of American pastime.
They love a cookout, they love grilling, they love a big outdoor fiesta, much like the Puerto Ricans, right.
But I would say the popularity of barbecue of Chamorro barbecue, which uses this same marinade, this soy, lemon, garlic based marinade.
aid. And that came about because of colonization and access to ingredients.
And you know, I guess I want to pause here to underscore this too, that one of the most common things that I saw across islands that's endlessly fascinating to me, is that islanders are scrappy people, and they will make deliciousness out of whatever is available.
So across islands, you see what might seem like like kind of peculiar, unexpected ingredients.
Like, you know, I've talked about this many times, but in the Caribbean, we love our tinned meat, Spam, corned beef, Vienna sausages, right?
And the way we prepare them, though, is in an island way.
We prepare them with our spices.
But we make these really unique dishes, I would argue like Chamorro barbecue, that couldn't have come about under any other circumstances.
We'll be back with more with Von Diaz, author of Islas, a celebration of tropical cooking.
And then, it's Jewish food authority Joan Nathan with her new book, My Life in Recipes.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.
Our show is supported by Broad & Taylor, dedicated to innovating unique products that simplify the process of making wholesome food from scratch. We We all know baking bread isn't simply a recipe.
It's a process. And when it comes to sourdough starter, temperature is everything.
Tools like the Sourdough Home will heat or cool your starter and adjust starter feeding times to meet your schedule.
The folding proofer provides perfect temperature and humidity control for consistent dough rise and it folds down to less than 3 inches so you can put it away and keep your kitchen clear.
And when it's time to bake, Broad & Taylor's ultralight baking shells trap steam, creating that perfectly crisp golden crust everyone can't wait to get their hands on.
No more lugging around a heavy Dutch oven.
Simply pop on a baking shell, no preheating required.
For recipes and more, visit broadandtaylor .com.
Support for this show comes from Pure Leaf Iced Tea.
You know that point in the afternoon when you just hit a wall.
You don't have time for self -care rituals or getting some fresh air, so maybe you grab a beverage to bring you back.
But somehow it doesn't do the trick, or it leaves you feeling even worse.
What you need is a quality break, a tea break.
And you can do that with pure leaf iced tea, real brewed tea made in a variety of bold and refreshing flavors with just the right amount of naturally occurring caffeine.
With a pure leaf iced tea in hand, you'll be left feeling refreshed and revitalized with a new motivation to take on what's next.
The next time you need to hit the reset button, grab a Pure Leaf iced tea.
Time for a tea break, time for a Pure Leaf.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is the show for curious cooks and eaters.
We're talking right now about the beauty and complexity found in the food of the tropics with Vaughn Diaz, author of the new cookbook, Islas.
Let's get back to it with her.
So how did you choose the islands and even more specifically, how did you choose the dishes that you wrote about in this book?
This was a, this, this is a big book and it was a big project to take on.
It was a, it was a big feat, but I was undaunted.
I always felt really excited to do the work.
And I approached this book like a journalist, which is – that's my main discipline in life is as a documentarian and a journalist. And the best way to learn about a place is to talk to people.
And thanks to the advances in social media and internet technology, increasing access to technology that people have all over the world, I just started reaching out and connecting with people on islands.
So I chose the islands through the people that I connected with.
So I first started to reach out and explore and get curious about people who were doing really interesting things, but not chefs, right?
Not, not necessarily cooks at all, just people who were on in these places doing things that felt meaningful or remarkable.
remarkable and as their stories unfolded I let them sort of guide which islands I would focus on you know because at first I was like I'm going to 20 islands I'm going to do it all and no that's actually well one it's of course it's expensive but more importantly it's a lot of wear and tear on your body like traveling by plane for 20 hours is really hard on your body and I thought about doing that multiple times in a year I was like absolutely no I don't think that but that's healthy for me.
So instead, I was able to watch YouTube videos to learn about people.
I looked at photography, I looked at art, I looked at social media, I did what's called snowballing, like I let one person refer me to another person, refer me to another person, and yeah, and just fell in love with the people.
So introduce us to a person who you met, whose story you really want to share, and what recipe did you get from them?
Sure, sure. Well, the very first person that I spoke to is Juanita Blass, who lives in Guam, and she is the hero of the first chapter of the book on marinating.
And Juanita is a lovely, lovely woman, grew up in a working class family, mother of many children.
And I was moved by her because I saw a YouTube video that was made by two young Chamorro women on the island of this really wonderful community garden project that she was running.
There's a community garden and a thrift store.
So there's a community garden and a thrift store.
And she was running a program for girls.
And at first I was like, oh, how lovely.
This is exactly the kind of story I want to find.
And when I spoke to her, I learned that, in fact, the reason why she started doing this work is because Guam is a particularly unsafe place for women and girls.
They have very, very, very high rates of violence against women there.
And so she wanted to create this garden as part of a way to give young women on the island something else to do a community to feel safe a place to go.
And on top of that, she wanted to grow these medicinal herbs that her grandmother had grown and taught her how to cultivate and use growing up.
And so that was the reason why she created this space.
And, you know, I'm thinking I'm just getting, you know, like a cool community garden story when, in fact, she introduced me to the reality of girls on the island, her own reality, her own fears for other young women on the island.
And she's a wonderful person.
We talked for hours and hours.
but what really charmed me about her is that she doesn't cook and she doesn't she doesn't like to cook um she she says that she's not very good at it she's very um what was her thing that she likes to make she's like i'm a i'm an ulu person uh breadfruit breadfruit she's like i'm very good at you know i love making roast breadfruit and i was like oh i don't have a roast breadfruit recipe in this book so um and then the one thing that she shared with me was this she was like well i love I love making finadene, which is a condiment that's actually very similar to the chimorro marinade.
It's soy -based. There's chilies.
There's baby tomatoes.
There's garlic, herbs, whatever you want to put in there.
And that that condiment, like I've seen in so many other Asian cultures, actually, is just always on the table.
It's like a spicy soy with a little bit of sweetness.
So, yeah, that's Juanita.
And actually, the young woman, Kemi Aguirola, who shot the photography for Islas in Guam, was the young woman who shot the video of Juanita.
So it all came full circle and was a really satisfying experience in a lot of ways because people don't pay attention to islanders, right?
They pay attention to islands.
They want to go to them.
They want to visit them, tourist them.
But most of the time, people just come and go.
So people who live on islands don't often have the opportunity to celebrate themselves or talk about the things that are important to them.
Yeah. It's interesting too, to hear the way you research this book.
I mean, obviously travel is important, but it wasn't all travel.
And it was sort of like this thing of, you know, I'm not an Islander, but hearing you talk and I can sort of reading between lines a little bit, I feel like there's this sense of both isolation you feel as an Islander, but also very intense community and sense of community.
community so you're isolated from the rest of the world but the people who are your people like you kind of are woven tightly to and like it's amazing to hear your research for this book and you're sort of creating this connection this like web of communities around the world to islands are otherwise sort of isolated to themselves which i think is super interesting so let's take it to the other side of the world there's a particular recipe i want to ask you about from Curaçao, which is an island nation, sort of off the coast of Venezuela, right?
That's right. Quite small.
It's what the liquor Curaçao is named after.
I don't know if that's actually invented there or whatever.
But yeah, I have a story about that.
There's this really unique recipe that you have, and I'm not sure if I'm going to say it correctly, but quexiana?
That's right. Quexiana.
Tell us about this dish.
Yes. Yes. So Kishiyena is one of my favorite dishes in Islas for the story that it tells.
So yes, Curacao is a beautiful island.
It's quite small. And it saw multiple colonizers, but the most significant colonizer in Curacao were the Dutch, who stuck around for some time.
And the story goes that Kishiyena came about because Dutch colonizers brought with them wheels of Gouda or Edam cheese, right?
And would often when they would have enslaved people prepare their food, they would prefer to not eat the cheese that was up against the rind, right?
And so what would happen is that these rinds would get discarded, the enslaved cooks, which we know from so many projects now, like High on the Hog, the enslaved cooks were so creative, and really like had scraps to work with.
But they would make these really interesting creative nuanced things that couldn't have existed otherwise.
So the story goes that these discarded cheese rinds then became an ingredient for enslaved cooks who would fill the rinds with whatever they had chopped up meat, vegetables, spices, and then they would throw it in the fire, heat it in some other other way and have this stuffed cheese.
And it's, it's incredibly delicious.
Yes, it is rich. I mean, it's stuffed, literally stuffed cheese.
It sort of tastes to me like a fancy inside out hamburger.
And yeah, and I saw several variations when I was in Curacao, but it's one of those dishes that just tells a really rich story about a place.
And the thing that I saw in Curacao, that was really surprising to me is one curacao is a desert um it's it is it is dry it is desert like there exactly it's really it's a really cool different landscape um much more like brush than than rainforest you know um and that curacao because of the nature of dutch colonization and the way that they ultimately retreated um a and the the the strength of the various african communities that were brought there under enslavement.
African culture is super rich there.
It's remarkable. And you see it everywhere.
And the most classic dishes that are like the Kurosawa dishes that are beloved are all like deeply African dishes.
So in many ways, right, like this one kishina, this stuffed cheese represents that ingenuity and creativity of people making do with what they had.
I love that. So your recipe for cacienda is not a cheese rind.
It's sort of like an empanada with cheese instead of the dough.
So tell us about how you make it.
Yeah, so this recipe is also a really good example of the kind of work that I've been doing for years to adapt super traditional classic recipes into ones that work in home kitchens.
You know, I'm a self -taught cook.
I have an electric range at my house, right?
I have fairly simple tools.
and all of the recipes in Islas were designed for home cooks.
And I would say, you know, for the kinds of kitchens that we have in the United States.
So it's quite simple.
You take a ramekin, you line it with sliced Gouda cheese, you add the filling, you cover it with another piece of cheese, and then you steam it in a, bake it in a bain -marie.
And when it's ready, flip it onto a plate and put some sauce on it.
Can you just say what the filling is?
The filling for my recipe is a pretty classic picadillo, which is ground beef cooked with various spices and a little bit of tomato.
Yum. It is like an inside -out cheeseburger.
It's delicious. It's delicious.
Okay, so since you just mentioned ingenuity, and Curacao is also this liqueur, so what's the story of that?
Yeah, I mean, listen, Curacao is an incredibly beautiful place, and the Spanish were the first to colonize.
but they ultimately left Curaçao because they didn't find gold or jewels.
And at that time, that's what the Spanish wanted.
So the story goes that the Spanish brought with them Valencia orange plants and seeds in order to grow Valencia oranges, largely actually to combat scurvy on long ocean voyages.
And Curaçao is very much a port, right?
It's like a perfect port.
And that's ultimately why the Dutch took it over.
But so the Spanish brought these Valencia oranges, and they just withered in the desert.
The plants didn't grow right, the fruit was inedibly bitter, and the rind, the cascara of these oranges was like rock hard. So they couldn't eat them, they couldn't use them for the purpose that they had intended.
And over time, I believe there was one origin person who was like what if we steeped this with other spices and turned it into a liqueur and that's how we have the famous Curacao liqueur which traditionally is clear but in the U .S. and across the places often dyed blue.
Yeah and I'm sure there's a story of why it is that both incredibly beautiful and also disconcerting and somewhat sickly color and blue.
But Yvonne I mean I mean, to cover the entire tropical band of the world in 304 pages, and now for us in, you know, 20 something minutes is no small feat.
So thank you so much. Thank you, Francis.
Von Diaz is the author of Islas, a celebration of tropical cooking.
You can find that recipe for Chamorro Barbecue Chicken with Juanita's Funedine at splendidtable .org.
We are the beneficiaries of an incredible coterie of cookbook authors, starting from the 70s, who really laid the groundwork and opened up the understanding of cuisines from around the world for English -speaking Americans.
I'm thinking of what Edna Lewis did for African -American and Southern cooking, of what Claudia Rodin did for Middle Eastern cooking, of what Mother Joffrey did for Indian cooking.
You know, the list goes on, but honestly, for not that much longer.
And our next guest is as at home on that list as anyone.
So Joan Nathan didn't start out meaning to be the great scribe of Jewish cooking around the world, but decades of curiosity, hard work, and a can -talk -to -absolutely -anyone One Style, have made her that.
She's written 11 cookbooks, almost all of them about Jewish food, and now finally has a 12th that's about her.
It's called My Life in Recipes.
Hey Joan, it is so great to see you.
So great to see you.
And hey, I have to say congratulations to you for writing your 12th cookbook, I believe.
12th cookbook. It is an incredible achievement.
And, you know, I know how much work goes into a standard cookbook, but like the deeply researched ones you do, it's really an incredible body of work.
But I'm fascinated because this one is called My Life in Recipes.
And, you know, you're known as being this incredible chronicler and like, well, I'll stop myself from saying guardian because I'm sure that's not what you would think of yourself.
But this chronicler of Jewish cuisine around the world, you've always written like a reporter.
You've gone into people's communities.
You've gone into their homes.
You've interviewed them.
You cook with them.
And that's how you come up with these books.
But this one is about your own life.
So what made you want to write that way?
well I guess I figured that I had done what I wanted to do about Jewish food which is the the main thing I write about but I really love writing about ethnic food about people's food about homegrown food and I thought well this is the time to come to me I started thinking about this about 10 years ago, I would write about my life and recipes.
So I gathered everything.
I have letters from wherever I went to my parents.
I have diaries. I have my grandparents' wedding menu.
And I have memories.
And so that's what I decided to do.
And then the pandemic came came around.
And during the pandemic, before then, my husband had passed away.
And this was a really good time for me to be able to positively incorporate him into my life.
And so I would get up very early in the morning, like five o 'clock or so, wherever I was, and I would write for about about three hours, and then I would look at what I had written in the afternoon and try to find out what was my memory and what was reality.
And I just went from there.
Oh, that's really interesting.
I also wanted to write for people to show them how you can live your life you know, and how food...
I was just a regular cook.
You know, I had a master's in French literature and a master's in public administration, but I was interested in food.
And so I wanted to show sort of how I learned about the food world.
Yeah, I want to talk about that because we have a mutual friend, Ruth Reichel, and And, you know, you're contemporaries, you came up in the food world together when there wasn't really an American food world, so to speak, where there weren't that many people writing about food.
And one thing she's always said is that growing up, food was not, I mean, it was important in her family, but it wasn't, I remember like her mother was never a cook and it was thought to be impolite to be interested in food.
It wasn't something worth being interested in.
So what was your experience growing up?
How did you get into food personally?
and how did you get into it as a career?
Well, I grew up in Providence and actually all three went to Michigan.
We have a lot in common. And Ruth and I, we both had German fathers, German -born fathers.
So for me, going with my father Saturday mornings to my grandparents' house and listening to the Metropolitan Opera but having a German meal that my aunt would make every Saturday.
And I would eat things like brains with capers because you didn't get what you wanted to eat in those days.
That inspired me for the rest of my life.
I really believe that because they were different and yet they were me.
It was my life. My mother never cooked.
We always had a cook in our house.
And the food that we ate at home was like steak one day, roast chicken on Friday night, spinach, liver, and onions.
It was very American.
And to me, that wasn't so interesting.
But the idea not only of eating was interesting because of the exotic Saturday lunches I'd have every week, but also hearing stories about About Germany.
And then living in Rhode Island, I learned about Portuguese and Italian.
My father loved going to restaurants.
And, you know, people didn't go to restaurants in those days.
And so I learned that.
And I learned the excitement of discovering a new recipe, a new restaurant.
But, you know, I never liked the fancy restaurants.
I like the earthy restaurants and cooks that had been cooking just because they loved cooking or they were, you know, taking care of their family.
You know, that's where I went.
We'll be back with more with Joan Nathan, author of My Life in Recipes.
So stick around. I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from 8 p .m. Fox created This is advertiser content from Iams Pet Food Hey humans, my name's Hero I'm a cat I'm here to give you a crash course on how we went from fierce hunters to the floofy friends you can't live without Although, let's be honest we could probably live without you Around 10 ,000 years ago humans started farming which accidentally created a rodent -hunting bonanza.
That meant full -time employment, and activity, for us.
Humans were like, okay, these guys are chill.
They can stay. So, unlike dogs...
Ew. Sorry. We basically domesticated ourselves.
We chose you. Fast forward to today.
Some of us may not get as much hunting in.
And, okay, I admit, maybe we can get a little chonky.
But you can help keep us healthy and active with I'm Healthy Weight cat food.
Now available in stores and online.
You're basking on a beach in the Bahamas.
Now you're journeying through the jade forests of Japan.
Now you're there for your alma mater's epic win.
And now you're awake.
Which means it was all a dream.
But with millions of incredible deals on Priceline, those travel dreams can be a reality.
Download the Priceline app today and you can save up to 60 % off hotels and up to 50 % off flights.
So don't just dream about that trip.
Book it with Priceline.
I'm Francis Lam and this is the show for curious cooks and eaters.
We're talking to the great documenter of Jewish food, Joan Nathan, about her new book, My Life in Recipes.
Let's get back to it with her.
you mentioned you like the earthier restaurants you're not you know wasn't about white table cloths and fine dining for you when you were really learning about food and not just restaurants but home cooks as well like in your writing you you would travel into the homes of people tell us I mean I'm sure there must have been literally thousands of these but what are some of those memorable stories of working with home cooks and being in their space and being in their kitchen that you can remember right now?
Honestly, I feel so privileged, Francis, and I'm sure you do too, that I've been able to spend a life discovering cooks.
Yeah, sure. And I remember one woman in particular, her name was Ada Bound Lipschitz.
And I wrote about her when it was my first article.
And she was a woman who made challah.
And she was in her 80s.
And I'm 81 right now.
And my hands are not arthritic, but her hands were arthritic.
And she would make challah once a week, lots of challahs, and she'd give them away to people.
And I thought, what a wonderful thing.
And she said, this is good for her to make the bread.
And I wrote about her in the Boston Globe, and I was so excited about it.
And I called her that day, and she was very upset.
And I said, what's the matter?
And she said, my sister is so mad that I got written about in the Boston Globe.
And I realized there are all these human things that happen, the jealousy of one person to another.
But I've always remembered that woman because the week that she died, she made sure, and she knew she had to go to the hospital, she made challah for her doctor.
And that keeps people alive.
You know, I think I have learned more about humanity than anything else from these cooks.
Oh, that's so interesting.
You know, and I know tradition is very important to you.
It's important in your own life, you know, having traditions around the table.
And when you meet a lot of these cooks, and especially older cooks, you want to make sure you're documenting their traditions for them.
But you've also talked to me how excited you get when you see younger generations taking up those traditions.
What are some examples of people doing that that you're really enamored with?
Oh, my gosh. There's so many.
Of the younger generation?
Yeah, sure. Well, the people like Jake Cohen, who's an Instagram star.
And he's taking, let's talk about Jewish traditions.
He's taking Jewish traditions and he's not the only one.
I mean, there's Mike Solomonov, there's Alain Scheuer.
All these young chefs are taking Jewish traditions and putting them to the next generation.
So they're prettier, they're sexier, they're the food that you want to make.
And I think that's really important.
But I like the fact that I was able to go and find these recipes and now they're going to the next generation.
And the other thing is not just people, but the idea of a Sabbath dinner.
I don't care if your Sabbath is Sunday or Friday or Saturday.
Saturday, having a dinner, it's not just a dinner.
It's not just a feed.
It's a communal gathering.
And I think we all are so starved for community, where you can have discussions, where you can slow down.
I don't let anyone have a cell phone at my table.
I actually remember I had to hide mine when I came over to your house.
That's right. But that lunch that we had is a perfect example, don't you think?
Of, you know, having pretty food, traditional food, food you want to eat.
And I think that we really all need that in our lives and we don't have it.
And that's what I like to take these hometown cooks and celebrate them.
And the game for me is being the first one to find them.
Yeah. Yeah. I can't tell you what a high I get.
Well, well, I mean, we spent most of this time already talking about other people, you finding other people.
And again, your book is about you and your recipes and your life and what they've meant to you.
I know. Yes, it is a collection.
The title of the book is My Life and Recipes.
I know you have some particular favorites in there.
And you had mentioned to me the other day the rugelach. Tell us about your rugelach recipe and why it matters.
Oh, well, my mother actually made rugelach. Actually, for those of us who don't know what it is, how would you describe it?
Well, it's a crescent -shaped butter cookie, butter and cream cheese with a cream cheese dough, which actually was made famous probably by Philadelphia Cream Cheese Company by made Heda Header, in her cookie cookbook, she put it on the map that it became really an American cookie.
Oh, that's so interesting.
But in Eastern Europe, there was no cream cheese in it.
And it was just a different, often a yeast dough made into crescent -shaped cookies.
Okay. And it wasn't particularly good.
They weren't as buttery and as creamy.
made the dough wasn't it it's a rich dough yeah sure yeah and and what you do is you roll it out into a circle and you smear really good either raspberry jam or any other i like i particularly like raspberry jam and then i sprinkle nut toasted walnuts on top and then you roll it up like a jelly roll and you can either cut it with your hand with the side of your hand like a knife knife, because that's what they used to do when they made knishes in bakeries.
And I thought, oh, good, I'll just do it like that.
And then you can sort of patch it together.
And when it's baked, the raspberry oozes out.
Or you just take a sharp knife and cut.
It's much easier. But I like the idea of what they used to do.
Anyway, so my mother would make it every year.
That was one of the few cookies she'd make.
Once I was in Montreal, and I went to a kosher bakery called Holf Kalkstein.
And I looked, and there was this roguelike.
It was strawberry jam, but I like raspberry better.
And I tasted it, and it was the best roguelike I ever tasted.
So I went home. I asked the guy for the recipe.
He wouldn't give it to me.
And then I figured, he told me what was in it, and I realized what it was.
It was the cream cheese dough, and I went home, rolled it up, and I made these cookies.
And I brought them to a potluck dinner of very thin women.
And everybody snuck a few to take home.
So I knew this was a great recipe, and I've been making them ever since.
That was your quality control survey?
Right. But I have never, the first time it's appeared in print is in this book.
But it's, you know, if I find a good recipe, I like to find the story behind the recipe, and then it becomes part of my life.
Yeah. You know, it's funny hearing you talk about, you know, the history of this recipe and the technique, you know, really getting into the technique.
unique um it's funny because i know you had relationships with julia child who famously you know really immersed herself in the techniques of french cooking and you made a whole career teaching americans about french cooking and i knew you had a relationship with diana kennedy who was famously almost like an anthropologist who happened to look at food and she was of course in mexico um it's sort of funny because it feels like you're you have like both sides of those people in how you approach writing?
Like, what was your relationship with them like?
Well, I met Diana Kennedy early in the 1970s in New York when I was working doing the Ninth Avenue Food Festival.
Which is a festival you helped start, right?
Yeah. Right. It started.
It's 40th year this year, in May, 40th year.
Anyway, so she She invited me – or she told me about the Cuisinart that she had just gotten this amazing machine, and I immediately bought it.
And I still have the original one because she said it's great for making coleslaw.
It's great for making – grating potatoes, and I thought, of course, latkes, and great for pie crust. us.
Those were the three things.
Anyway, so we had like a bond.
And later, I interviewed her for the New York Times in Mexico.
And she just amazed me because she was the real deal.
I mean, she was abrasive and she was whatever she was, but she was smart.
She loved going to the hinterlands of of Mexico on a horse if she had to, to find authentic recipes.
And I don't know, who else did that?
Who else did it as a passion?
She didn't care how much money she got or anything like that.
She just did it because of a love of that.
And that was something that I really, it was something that I kept with me.
All these women teach you something.
And that was something that she really taught me.
And Julia I met a few years later in Cambridge at a Harvard -Yale football game cocktail party.
And she invited me over to her house.
I understand there's tradition involved, but as an actual football fan, I can't imagine that was actually that fun.
Well, except you know who they were.
I mean, John Kenneth Galbraith was there.
Tom Lear was there.
And he pinched me, I have to tell you.
Like in an okay way?
Well, sort of. And Julia was there with her husband.
I mean, it was the who's who of Cambridge of the time.
And, you know, I was a young bride.
I was thrilled with this.
Anyway, so Julia said to come over.
And I didn't – I thought, Julia's child, I'm not going to come – I can't just come over there.
there. And then when Diana came to town, she asked me to pick her up and take her to a TV station.
And I did. And she came out.
She was very angry.
She said, you know, that Julia Child, she told me to wear makeup on TV.
And it's none of her business to tell me to wear makeup.
I'm never going to wear makeup.
I just remember that.
But then Julia... Oh, God, I love that.
That's That's awesome.
Then later, Julia and I became pretty good friends because we both had the same editor, Judith Jones.
And I would see her on the circuit, speaking circuit, whenever a book came out.
And what I really loved about Julia was she was so down to earth.
And I remember this one time there was a conference.
And, you know, you've been to these conferences where people save seats at their tables for their friends.
because they just want to sit with their friends.
But Julia said, come sit with me.
And she picked a table where she didn't know anybody.
And I thought, you know, that's a great thing to do, because to meet new people, that's why you're really at a conference, not necessarily to be all - But that was Julia.
Julia was open to anything.
And then at one conference, I was doing a Jewish tour of Philadelphia?
And who would appear in my group but Julia Child?
And I said, you know, why are you here?
And she said, well, I wanted to know about it.
Oh, that's amazing.
And so she asked all these questions about why is this kosher?
What does this mean?
And I explained what OU meant.
And she was amazing.
And the other thing that I loved about her was she was a a lifetime learner and not a lifetime complainer, at least not in public.
And she told me that she had to go for an operation.
And she said, you know, this is a great time to learn the computer.
You know, you remember things like that about people.
You know, you remember the graciousness and also the thank you notes.
I think about her every time I do something and I realize, I realized, oh, Julia would do a thank you note.
Now I do a thank you email.
One thing I totally forgot about, Julia, that you will appreciate because you have a young daughter, once she was coming to Washington and she said, let's get together.
And I said, well, I'm going to a potluck at my kid's school.
And she said, oh, I'd love to go to a potluck.
So she came. And I totally forgot about that and didn't put it in my memoir.
But one of – the teacher remembered it.
She was there eating everything that everybody else.
Oh, I like a potluck.
At first I was imagining being the person having got, like, you know, whatever, like your potato salad to a potluck and having Julia Child show up.
And nobody knew that she was coming.
And, of course, everybody knew who she was.
Oh, man. One other thing I'll just tell – I have this in the book.
I had met her with my son in Cambridge once.
And I remember I said we were going to come to Cambridge and have lunch with her.
And she said, well, I have canned tuna fish or we can go out for lunch. So, of course, I took her out for lunch. So at the time she said I'm coming to Washington for my 90th birthday to open the kitchen at the Smithsonian.
So I said, well, I'll give you a small dinner at my house if you want to the night before for your family.
And she said she'd love it.
So I thought, what did I get myself into?
So my son and I, he had been working at a restaurant on the vineyard all summer.
So we drove back the whole time thinking about what we were going to cook for that dinner.
And we realized we were going to do it simple.
And the fish recipe that's in the book came from that dinner.
And she loved the whole menu.
I remember I made a health bread that I always like to make.
and I made corn on the cob with a basil butter.
And this is because I was doing my American Folklife cookbook at the time.
And I did fish, which I love to make with preserved lemon on top and za 'atar.
And she loved that.
Baked salmon with preserved lemon and za 'atar.
It's so easy and so good.
And a beautiful salad.
That's what my son did.
And it was a wonderful dinner just for about 15, 20 people.
Just like casual. Well, okay, Joan, it has been a blast talking with you, and boy, you have a lot of stories.
A lot more, believe me, in the book.
Joan Nathan is the author of My Life in Recipes and many more books.
You can find her recipe for rucola with raspberry walnut filling, which she brought to the studio, by the way, and it was fantastic.
My Life in Recipes is at splendidtable .org.
And that is our show for the week.
Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next week.
APM Studios are run by Chandra Kavadi and Joanne Griffith and The Splendid Table was created by Sally Swift and Lynn Rizzotto -Casper.
It's made each week by technical producer Jennifer Lubke, producer Eric Romero, digital producer James Napoli and managing producer Sally Swift. subscribe to our podcast on spotify apple or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review it really helps us out i'm francis lamb and this is apm studios nobody knows your customers better than your team so give them the power to make standout content with adobe express brand kits make following design rules a breeze and adobe quality templates Complets make it easy to create pro -looking flyers, social posts, presentations, and more.
You don't have to be a designer to edit campaigns, resize ads, and translate content.
Anyone can in a click.
And collaboration tools put feedback right where you need it.
See how you can turn your team into a content machine with Adobe Express, a quick and easy app to create on -brand content.
Learn more at adobe .com slash express slash business.
Support for the show comes from Mercury.
What if banking did more?
Because to you, it's more than an invoice.
It's your hard work becoming revenue.
It's more than a wire.
It's payroll for your team.
It's more than a deposit.
It's landing your fundraise.
The truth is, banking can do more.
Mercury brings all the ways you use money into a product that feels extraordinary to use.
Visit mercury .com to join over 200 ,000 entrepreneurs who use Mercury to do more for their business.
Mercury, banking that does more.
