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That's odoo .com. I'm Samin Nasrat.
And I'm Rishi K. Sherway.
And we're Home Cooking.
This is episode three of our four -part quarantine miniseries where we help you figure out what to cook with what you've got in the house.
Coming up, we'll be joined by Wesley Morris, my best friend in the entire universe.
Hey. way. He's the host of one of my favorite podcasts, Still Processing.
He's also a great culture writer at the New York Times.
Well, we're also going to be joined by my dad.
We all know your dad likes me better than you, okay?
That's definitely true.
My dad texts me about you all the time.
But before we get to all that, Samin, what's the best thing you made this week?
And is my banana bread in the mail?
I have not sent you anything in the mail because I'm still perfecting, but I did the thing I said I was going to maybe do, which is I made sourdough bread.
Oh. And it turned out so good.
But then I made it two more times and it was terrible both times.
But now I'm making it a fourth time.
Hopefully it'll be good this time.
Well, so did you figure out what went wrong the times it went wrong?
Yes. My laziness. this well i actually don't know what went wrong the last time which is both loaves burned so hard and like stuck to the um dutch oven so bad a lot of things went wrong if only there were a podcast you could call into to ask some advice if only and you'll notice i didn't post instagram pictures of those terrible failures but here i am telling you all about it yeah you're outing yourself now Yeah, I did call my own version of me for bread, which are all my baker friends who have watched me fail for the years.
And I got some good information.
Basically, I just have to stick to the recipe.
And I was sort of being very liberal with my, my timing, let's say you can't be liberal with that kind of labor.
No, but there are two loaves proofing in the fridge right now.
I'm going to bake them tomorrow.
And they are looking very promising.
Knock wood. Okay, good luck.
Okay, enough about me.
What's the most delicious thing you made this week?
Actually, I made something that reminded me of you.
Because do you remember the last time you came to visit?
Before the quarantine, you came to visit and you went to the store and you brought back all these delicious vegetables.
Yeah. And then you chopped them up and we had them as a snack.
And pimento cheese.
Yes, and pimento cheese.
Well, we got all these great vegetables in our CSA box.
There were these carrots that were just unbelievable.
We just wanted to eat them raw because they were so good.
So I made hummus. Oh, awesome.
Have you made hummus before?
I have, yeah. it's been a little while but it's one of those things i feel like i can do pretty easily or i mean anyone can do pretty easily how did you make your hummus well i have a vitamix so i start you know with just a can of chickpeas in there and i realized like i part of the reason why i can neither follow nor create a recipe is because like all my measurements are just in the quantity of some i put in you put in some chickpeas yeah i put you put in some tahini the only measurement I have is it was one can of chickpeas and then yes some olive oil some tahini I think it was two spoonfuls
of tahini and some salt and some black pepper and uh maybe a clove of garlic or maybe it was two lemon juice yeah some lemon juice from a lemon from our tree and some basil oh you're going crazy with the spices yeah and then blended it all up and it was so good oh that's awesome Awesome.
Can I tell you how I make mine?
Yeah. I do some chickpeas and I do no olive oil, only tahini in it.
So, it's a lot of tahini, chickpeas, kind of a lot of lemon juice.
I push it on the garlic, I would say, and salt, but no pepper, nothing.
So, what is that? Tahini, garlic, lemon juice, chickpeas, salt, five ingredients and because i'm an insane person who makes my own chickpeas and i do the whole baking soda in the pot thing the skins are really really really soft and so then um if you once you blend all of that and i just let the blender go i do it in a food process i have a vitamix too but i hate using it because i hate cleaning it yeah even the food processor i hate cleaning for the yeah i mean i hate cleaning everything honestly yeah and then i just blend it but for a really long time until it's unbelievably smooth.
But I used to put olive oil in my hummus as well, and I think I read enough Israeli and Palestinian cookbooks to realize that they put the olive oil generally on top, and the tahini is just in.
I put the olive oil both in it and on top.
Oh, I love that. I love that.
Oh, and I put a little za 'atar on top at the end.
Ooh, delicious. I love a spice mix.
It's unbelievable the vast difference in quality between homemade hummus and store -bought hummus.
Absolutely. Well, for one thing, you're using olive oil.
You probably use more tahini.
And also you use fresh lemon juice.
And a lot of those store -bought hummuses have citric acid in it instead or in addition to it, which has just a different tang.
I mean, I eat a lot of store -bought hummus too.
It's not whatever, but when I make it at home, my mouth is just so much happier.
Yeah. I also made some nice cookies.
Oh, I saw pictures of them.
Were they chocolate chip cookies?
Is that what they were?
Yeah, they were chocolate chip cookies.
That's why I always make chocolate chip cookies.
That's pretty much...
I just make variations on chocolate chip cookies.
So like we're all living one great Groundhog Day right now, but you're just living a real Groundhog Day because the only cookie you make.
Every one of them is a little different.
I mean, these ones were different because I ran out of vanilla extract.
extract. So it gave me the chance to use vanilla bean paste instead.
That's basically a vanilla bean just smushed up.
I've never used that.
So you must use a lot less.
You must. Well, I've been influenced to go kind of heavy on the vanilla in general in my cookies.
Holy. Yeah. So if a recipe calls for like a teaspoon of vanilla, I might go like do a tablespoon instead.
What? Oh, of extract.
Of extract. Yeah. Okay.
But yeah, so here I did a tablespoon of vanilla bean paste.
You used a tablespoon of vanilla bean paste in your cookie?
Yes. Are you a monster?
It was so good. Are you a millionaire?
What is happening? Well, I don't actually know.
The vanilla bean paste was a present, so I actually don't know how much it costs.
It's very expensive.
Is it? Okay. That was like putting gold in there.
Well, this vanilla bean paste is like super powered vanilla flavor and it's really good.
That's because it's very concentrated and expensive.
Also, I ran out of light brown sugar, so I used dark brown sugar instead.
My preferred brown of sugar is dark brown.
Were your cookies better than ever?
According to Lindsay, she said this was her favorite batch so far.
Oh, really? Yeah. Could you please tell me you could tell there was a lot of vanilla in them when you ate them?
Oh, yeah. Okay, good.
I also used the Stella Parks trick of mixing different types of dark chocolate, like different brands with different levels of cacao, So with all of that, every single bite is a little different.
There's a little sea salt on top, and it's great.
Okay, well, now I'm annoyed that you didn't send me any.
Okay, this could go both ways.
So actually, for our first question, there was one that we got that I actually thought that I might be able to answer, but I don't feel totally confident about it, so I was hoping you could do it with me.
Okay, okay, okay. Well, then I'll sit on my hands and let you answer it.
And let me make a fool of myself.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, good.
Hi, I'm Miranda from Costa Rica and I would like to know why some recipes have granulated sugar and brown sugar as well.
I was baking some cookies, oatmeal and cranberry cookies, and the recipe says to use brown sugar as well as granulated sugar.
So I would like to understand why they use two types of sugar.
Okay, so can I, I'm gonna try and do this.
give it a try well there are a couple of reasons why you would want to have two different kinds of sugar granulated sugar which is white sugar is basically just sweetness it's just sucrose is that right correct and brown sugar is that sucrose but it also has molasses in it correct and that gives it a flavor besides just the sweetness so part of the reason why I liked the dark brown sugar in the chocolate chip cookies that I made is because it has that kind of that molasses -y kind of that flavor, which maybe not everybody likes, but I like it and it gives it a richness and a complexity.
But then also it's part of what gives the cookies their rise because the acidity of the molasses reacts with the baking soda in a chemical reaction that releases carbon dioxide, which gives your cookies the texture inside.
Correct. That's really, really good.
And And one more thing.
Yeah. You know how when you open a bag or a box of brown sugar, it feels different?
Yeah. It feels like wet sand.
Yes. Kind of, you know, whereas regular granulated sugar just feels sort of dry and you can pour it through your fingers.
Yeah. Well, I mean, that molasses is wet.
So brown sugar is actually more moist. And so what it does is it also will make your baked good, your final baked good, more chewy and moist. Chocolate chip cookies or, Miranda, like your cranberry oatmeal cookies, those are very typically American -style cookies that really want that chewiness.
And that chewiness very much comes from the molasses and the brown sugar.
Well, thanks, Miranda.
Thanks for the question and giving me the chance to look like I know something.
Miranda, the check is in the mail.
Rishi's mom is sending you 50 bucks.
She's sending it to you in the form of vanilla bean paste, which is apparently very expensive.
So, Samin, you had mentioned after my dad accidentally called us when we were recording episode one that you'd like to have my dad on the podcast again.
I would give anything to talk to your dad again.
Well, we got a few questions sent in to us about food safety.
And I thought this might be a good time to talk to him because he's actually a retired food scientist. So what do you think?
Should we give him a call?
OK, yeah, I can't wait.
I don't think it's recording.
Okay. Is she called new recording downloading?
No. Okay, dad, you don't need to download anything.
There's a red button at the bottom.
See the big red button?
Okay. So hit the big red button.
So it's recording. Yes.
All right. Now we can go.
Hi, dad. Hi. Hi, Sumesh uncle.
Hi, Samin. It's good to talk to you.
It's my pleasure. Nice to talk to you.
Okay, dad, here's a question that we got from our friend, Anna Sale.
mail. Okay. Hi, you two.
This is Anna. And I have a question about sharing food that I make from home with my neighbors right now.
I found myself stuck between this impulse to be neighborly and helpful and share things that we make at home.
And then I realized with horror, like, oh gosh, I don't want to be spreading germs from my household to my elderly neighbor next door.
Sure. So can you give me some guidelines and tips regarding food safety right now?
Like, what is a good, safe thing to make more of and share with people around you who aren't socially isolating with you?
And what is something to avoid?
Thanks so much. I really love this show.
What do you think, Dad?
The reference I'm going to be quoting from, which has got a lot of information and has been updated it today.
It's Food Safety and Coronavirus, a Comprehensive Guide, SeriousEats .com by J.
Kenji Lopez -Alt. Oh, I love that you're referring to that because that's the same exact thing that I refer to.
Yes. Now, coming to our friend, sharing the food is a very noble gesture gesture because I live also in condominium, which I do that.
I share with my neighbors when I make some food there.
But we had to follow the general guidelines.
Important thing in the food safety is the heat.
So, when they get it, they have to heat up the food.
I think in general, it makes sense to give people food that will be reheated rather than food that that they're going to eat at, you know, either refrigerated or room temperature?
Yes. Because from when I looked at Kenji's article, I remember one thing he said was that the virus is actually quite fragile.
So, for example, I think soup probably would be good, or stews, or anything that, you know, you can give in a clean container that can get wiped down and then reheated.
Is that right? Yes.
Now, I'm assuming that the family receiving may not have a thermometer.
If they have a thermometer, it will be great.
But otherwise, the one way to see, like you mentioned about soup or something, they heat it up, it has to come to the bubbling like steam coming out.
Like a simmer. Simmer.
If you don't have a thermometer.
Right. Not only the temperature, also the time.
So, simmer, say set your clock or something to about say five minutes.
Dad, you said that you've been sharing stuff with your neighbors.
What's something that you've made that you've shared with other people in the condo?
The one I've been sharing with them is a minced meat, which we call keema.
It's a turkey minced meat.
And then I use peas with it, a little bit of Indian curry and tomato sauce.
I love keema. I love keema in samosas.
I love keema with rice.
I love keema in roti.
I love keema. Right.
So, Dad, when you're making keema, what are the safety guidelines that you're following when you're making it?
So, first precaution you have to take now, anything when you're cooking, use a mask.
If you're cooking for other people.
Yes. Second, you know, wash your hand, keep your utensils in that area, clean it up, use sanitizer that will kill the virus.
Do you think it would be safe to bake cookies or a cake and share that with your neighbors?
You can share, but put the oven on for 400 degrees, and then you put your bread for a while, so like surface and all these things gets heated up a little bit.
So this is when you're receiving it.
If you're giving your neighbors something baked, they should heat it up after they've gotten it from you.
Right, right. Dad, the other part of Anna's question was if there are foods that one should avoid when you're making stuff for your neighbors.
I will avoid sushi because you're not in any way able to heat it up.
Maybe don't give your neighbor sushi these days.
That's probably a good idea.
I probably wouldn't accept sushi from a neighbor.
Samin, do you have any other questions for my dad?
No, I feel like I learned a lot about you, my friend Rishi.
I feel like when you see someone's parents, you learn a lot about your friend.
Yeah. All right. Thanks, dad.
dad. Thank you so much. Yeah, looking forward to the episodes and podcasts coming up.
Thanks, dad. Thanks also to Anna Sale for the question and also for lending Samina microphones so that we could record our first episode.
You can find her podcast at Death, Sex and Money.
You can't follow my dad.
Wait, no, actually, my dad does have an Instagram now, though he has never posted.
But if you want to follow him on Instagram, he's at Sumeesh Hirway.
S -U -M -E -S -H H -H -I -R -W -A -Y.
Let's see if anybody...
How many followers he gets.
I'm going to be stoked when his follower numbers jump.
Well, he only has 27 right now, so...
Okay, good, good. We have our starting number.
Yeah. Okay, so, Samin, we got a few questions on a topic that we have not yet discussed.
Fish. Okay. Specifically, we got a couple of questions about sardines, which I guess makes sense.
they're preserved fish which i guess makes sense they're preserved fish makes sense that people would have questions about yeah yeah yeah no no i get it because you buy it that was just very charming the way you said it is that the reaction that you have when somebody says something charming to mock them maybe charming's not the way i really took Yeah, I think the way you took it was, I had a flashback to seventh grade and people doing nerd voice at me.
Like I'd say something and they'd be like, technically.
Okay, here's a question from Charlene.
Hi, Sabine. My name is Charlene and I have a question about what to do with a lot of canned sardines.
I came home from the grocery store, put my canned sardines in my pantry and realized I already had a lot of canned sardines.
I thought I had a lot of canned anchovies at home already.
So now I have a ton of canned sardines.
I don't know what to do.
Thanks. First, did she call me Sabine?
She did call you Sabine.
What I really like about that is that it's Dear Sabine from Charlene about sardines.
Of course you would love that.
No, but I also loved the tone of her voice.
It was just so resigned to the sardine reality.
Like, oh, my God. What's the difference between a sardine and an anchovy?
Well, they're both small, oily fish.
But usually what happens in the canning, in my experience, and this is definitely not like an expert.
I'm not a small fish expert.
I'm just a cook. But in my experience, anchovies are salted in their preservation and sardines are not necessarily salted.
And so since there's so much, let's say, less meat on an anchovy, it really becomes like a much more concentrated taste of fishiness and saltiness, which I think of more as an accent flavor, whereas sardines have kind of significantly greater amount of meat on the bone.
and so they're not as concentrated in fishiness, in umami, or in salt, and hence make a better sort of ingredient, like a main ingredient, you know, and less of a seasoning, let's say.
So that's why anchovies are often chopped and dispersed in a thing, but a sardine you can just have on a cracker.
Exactly. So yeah, I do think the answer for you, like you're going to have a a long future in sardine toast, I think.
Oh, actually, before you go further then, hold on, I'm interrupting you with a question from Michael to complicate things.
Okay. Hi, this is Mike from Fairfax, Virginia.
I would like your ideas on how to serve sardines other than straight up on crackers.
Thank you. Okay. There's the wrinkle.
Well, obviously, there's the classic sardine on a triscuit, it, sardine on a cracker.
But what I think I would like to do if the cracker and or toast has been taken away from me is to replace those with some other starches.
So, you know, there's a classic sort of Italian, it's like usually tuna and white bean salad.
So you could make a delicious sardine version of that, of canned sardines crumbled up, not in too small of pieces, pieces, tossed with olive oil and vinegar and maybe onions that have been pickled lightly in some red wine vinegar, some fresh herbs like parsley and a little beautiful pile of white beans with olive oil.
So that would be really delicious.
That sounds really good.
I don't even like sardines.
That sounds really good.
No, it's super good.
And then the other thing I would do is I would use the sardines as a base for a pasta.
So there's a classic, oh, it's delicious, just sardinian so sardinia is an island you know one of the islands of italy named after sardines and there's a classic pasta there they're named after sardines it's not the other way around maybe it's the other way around okay i don't know i'm gonna guess it's the other way around well anyways sardines and sardinians go hand in hand okay i don't know which direction but there's a pasta there called pasta con la colesarde.
And you could make like a fishy tomatoey pasta.
I won't talk about that because I think you could probably figure that out yourself with like garlic and chili flakes.
This one's a little bit different and I really like it.
You could use tinned sardines.
Traditionally, it's made with pine nuts and currants.
So I would start with an onion that I maybe dice.
If you have any saffron, put a little saffron in that onion, get it sizzly and sort of golden and delicious and tender in some olive oil and then if you have the patience to toast some pine nuts do that otherwise throw the pine nuts into the pan so they can cook along with onions crumble some sardines in there if your currants or your raisins are already like moist and delicious just throw them in otherwise maybe rehydrate them in some warm water squeeze grease out that water, add that in.
And if you have some fennel seeds and chili flakes, you could grind those up and put those in and toss that with any freshly cooked delicious, you know, dry pasta.
I would maybe put in a little squeeze of lemon juice or white wine right at the end to add some acid and shower it with parsley.
And even if you wanted to, some secret Parmesan cheese, because traditionally cheese and fish are not found in the same pasta but i think you could sneak some in and it would be so good that's a really classic pasta that i love if you don't want to make it with pasta you can actually roast slices of cauliflower and make that same sardine curranty pine nutty chili thing and sort of spoon it over the cauliflower that would be a delicious combination and somewhat traditional too wow it's It's really yummy, and I have to say I haven't even thought about it until just this moment, and now I kind of want to
eat it. I'm not totally sure that I can picture what a sardine tastes like because I've had such limited experience with them or an anchovy.
I think they get a bad rap.
I mean, my first experience of sardines through my entire childhood was in cartoons.
Right, exactly. I feel like it's a thing like cartoon cats eat.
Yes, yes. So I didn't really taste them until I tasted fresh sardines as a cook, and I only got to to taste them because I had to clean 1 million of them.
And fresh ones are a lot milder than the canned ones.
But the canned ones, I really like the taste of.
And I recently had some in December, a friend showed up at my house on a road trip and she was like, I have these sardines, let's eat them.
It was like her car food.
So she pulled out sardines and we ate them.
And I was like, oh God, these are good.
And they are not so different from mackerel, which is a slightly bigger, you know, a mackerel is to a sardine as a sardine is to an anchovy.
So it's a slightly bigger oily fish.
So all three of them, I think you could use somewhat interchangeably.
By the way, when you Google Sardinia sardines, as if it were written directly to you, the first thing that comes up, it says sardines are named after Sardinia, not the other way around.
Wait, what did I say?
You said that Sardinia was named after sardines.
Oh, sorry. I already am confused and forgot.
Thanks for really laying it on me though.
Teaching me what's what.
Technically. Technically.
Sabine, technically, sardines are named after Sardinia, not the other way around.
We are like two eight -year -olds.
Well, let me roll into another question about fish that we got.
This one comes from Isabel from Canada.
Hi, you two. So just before all the craziness started, I was actually diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and one of the recommendations is that I should eat more fish to help me fight this and to be better in my body.
So when everything hit, I bought a lot of frozen fish, not knowing when I could get my hands on fresh.
So now I've got two bags of frozen fish sitting in my freezer.
What should I do with them to make them taste good?
Thanks. Bye. Depending on what kind of fish you have, because she didn't specify, did she?
In the email, she specified that it contains cod, salmon, sole, and pollock.
Okay. Well, cod, sole, and pollock are all similar in that they're white flaky fishes.
And salmon is not white, and it's quite oily.
So I think you probably want to treat salmon separately and differently than the other three.
But the white fish, what I would want to do is make a pot of fish stew, which I really love making.
And it's absolutely like fisherman peasant food.
And it's taking some things that you have that's valuable and stretching it with other ingredients.
So in this case, the fish is stretched with vegetables and tomatoes and all that kind of stuff.
The first step to making a delicious fish stew is having a delicious broth.
And since you you can't start with fish bones.
It sounds like you're going to want to make that broth out of maybe if there are any broken little pieces or little end pieces, again, avoid the salmon, but any of those white fish, you throw those in there, you throw some canned crushed tomatoes or tomato paste, any sort of tomatoey product.
You could start with some white wine.
You're talking about the little dregs of frozen bits that might be in the bag.
Yeah, just from the bag.
Then you want to make like a little vegetable -y base.
So I would saute some onion and I don't love carrot in my fish stew, but celery if you have it or leek, or if you have any fennel tops, those are really good.
So all of those things, throw them in a pot and you just want to make a stock.
The nice thing about fish stock or whatever kind of veggie stock that you're going to make for this is that it doesn't take all day.
It takes 40 minutes.
You basically bring it to a boil simmer it for 30 minutes and then strain it so that's going to be your flavor base what do you do with the stuff that you strain out adios that's compost one weird thought that i am having which is a little like molecular gastronomy and not very classically samin but i kind of think it would help make a really delicious texture in your fish stew is if you have any powdered gelatin or even sheets of gelatin after you strain your stock I would dissolve that gelatin just like a spoonful or one piece of one sheet into the stock because you're not having fish bones
and gelatin is going to make that texture of that stew just like coat the inside of your mouth in a much more pleasant way it's going to feel richer and be be a lot more delicious.
And that's really what fish bones add to stock anyway.
So you can sort of take a shortcut by doing that.
So once you have this delicious, fragrant, aromatic stock, did I say white wine?
There should be some white wine in there, maybe a lemon zest or an orange zest. Then that's the base of your soup.
Now you can do whatever vegetables you like.
So you could take a canned tomato and chop that up.
You could do onions, you could do garlic, you could do do celery pieces and fennel.
So if you're hearing, I'm repeating a lot of the same stuff.
So what I would do is have some nicely chopped stuff that I set aside for the actual soup.
And then all the ends and the bits and the skins and stuff like that go into the stock.
So that's how you can make use of every little bit.
And you cook those down until they're tender.
Pour your stock over.
At the very end, add your frozen fish fillets and let them cook until they fall apart.
And I think People often have this fear that they're going to overcook their fish, which is a good fear to have. But in a stew like this, you really want to cook until everything flakes apart and falls apart because you want those delicious sort of fallen apart flakes in your mouth.
You don't want it to be so tough that it's holding together.
And especially with cod, I think people tend to undercook cod when they're not familiar with it.
And then you get rubbery cod.
Oh, cod, no. Oh, and then what I would do, I don't know which autoimmune disease you have, because I have one too, but if you can eat wheat and eggs, then you make a beautiful piece of toast that you rub with a clove of garlic and you spoon garlic mayonnaise over, and then you float that in your fish soup.
And you just imagine that you're on the coast of Southern France with your glass of rosé and your fish soup.
Samin, has that been making things scarier for you having an autoimmune disease this whole time well my autoimmune disease is i'm hypothyroid so it's not quite the same as being immune compromised i don't think i mean i'm not no so i'm not i'm fine i'm just taking my pills living in denial you know living in denial is one of the most important ingredients to uh getting through the quarantine it's true let me turn your attention to another question that we got that is also sickness related this one comes from sarah Hi, Samin and Rashid.
This is Sarah in Brooklyn.
Unfortunately, I am home sick with COVID.
I have a mild case.
One of the weirdest things about it is that you lose your sense of smell and taste.
And this has really forced me to begin eating in different ways, like totally into Triscuits now because of the texture and pineapple is seeming really good to me.
So I wondered if you guys could tell those of us who are maybe sick and recovering and have lost a sense of smell and taste some things we could do to cook for texture or cook for things different than taste.
And PS, I've been sleeping like 13 or 14 hours a day.
And the other day, I was like in the middle of a fever dream.
And Samin, I totally thought we were hanging out together.
And then woke up and and realized that I had left the radio on, and you were talking on an NPR show.
So it was a wonderful little reverie, and this podcast is the next best thing to hanging out.
Thank you for keeping us entertained and inspired.
Take good care. Oh, Sarah, I hope you're already better by the time you listen to this.
Yeah, me too. Okay, so I have a lot to say about this.
Hit me. When a person loses the sense of smell, which I think the percentage of taste that is smell is something like 75 or 80%, so without smell you really can't taste much, that's called anosmia.
And I have a couple family members who are anosmic.
Like permanently? Well, one had an illness, and so there's a possibility where her sense will come back, but my mom's uncle has been anosmic, I think, for decades.
Oh, man. So this is something I've definitely thought about over the years.
It's a bummer. Absolutely.
I mean, even I think any of us can relate just from when we have, you know, a stuffy nose and you can't taste and how kind of not appetizing often it feels to eat.
Yeah. So I can't imagine that sort of going on indefinitely.
And I have a lot of compassion for people.
But some weird factoids that I happen to know.
Yeah, you are. You can be our sensei.
Yeah. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Why did you have to do that right then?
I was being so earnest. Okay.
Please continue. Okay.
Some weird factoids that will help you.
Spiciness, like as in pepper, hot pepper, is not a flavor.
It's not a taste. It's a feeling.
So spiciness does something to your actual body and that has nothing to do with smell or taste so it actually causes you pain you know that's what like it's mild pain and that that we get used to and that that we come to love like this podcast for you yeah kind of like this podcast exactly i would say one thing that you could do is start introducing different kinds of chili oils and and jalapenos, and like spicy spices to create some sort of sensation in your eating.
Another really important part of our experience of eating that is kind of we often forget about is temperature.
So things like ice cream, you know, hot things, cold things, creamy things, creamy cold things, you know, boiling, swallowing hot things.
So soups, I think, would be kind of exciting to eat because you're having like a hot experience in your mouth or porridge or anything like that a hot experience in your mouth i'm surprised you didn't really just take that one sometimes it's better to just leave it alone this podcast is for children exactly i don't want to offend anybody except for you okay okay is there a hot and spicy or like a hot and sour egg drop soup kind of thing that you might uh oh you're just trying to combine all the experiences into one dish.
I'm trying to give her general tips for like how to spread out these things.
Okay. So heat is one.
Lack of heat is another one.
Spice is one. And then that brings us to texture, which is really going to be your best friend, I think.
I'm so curious about the pineapple one.
I wonder what happened with the pineapple that gave you a yumminess.
But yeah, one of the the most important way that we derive pleasure from eating is from having contrasts and texture and also in temperature.
So you want like that hot thing next to that cold thing.
You want that crispy thing next to that soft thing.
Put some pineapple on your triscuit.
You want that pineapple on your triscuit.
So what I think what I would do is have your own little arsenal of crispy things that you sprinkle on top of other foods.
So those can be all of those like Rishi's za 'atar or or furikake, or like toasted breadcrumbs that you crumble up into like little teeny tiny krispies that you sprinkle on top.
Sometimes I smash up some almonds in a Ziploc bag and then sprinkle those on top.
Yeah. Or I really like the sliced almonds.
They're kind of thin and brittle and ready to sort of break on top of stuff.
Yeah. Nuts are a great source of that crunch, for sure.
You can make all sorts of toasted little grains and toasted quinoas.
you can make fried crispy rices and fried crispy farro anything where you get an experience in your mouth other than just like soft and chewy is i think going to bring you some pleasure and some joy i love this idea that like you can cook in a way that still provides pleasure while thinking about things other than the sense of taste well that's a nice thing for you to say because i do think that that's what professional cooks are really trying to do is make food enjoyable on more than one sensory level.
You know, they want it to be something playful visually to look at or give you nostalgia when you smell it or remind you of a funny story that you read.
Yeah, they want you to have that hot experience in your mouth.
Exactly. I hate you.
Thank you, Sarah. Thanks, Sarah.
I really do hope you're better by the time you hear this.
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 available at homecooking .show just click on the merch button to check it all out or if you want 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 is the host, but he cuts himself entirely out of the interviews he does with amazing musicians like Janelle Monae, Robin, Fleetwood Mac, you too, 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, changing topics, we got questions from people who have a surplus of certain vegetables and they don't know what to do with them.
Hi, Samina and Rishi.
Valerie here from Riverdale, Maryland.
I'm definitely more of a gardener than a home cook.
And as usual, I've gone completely overboard with the greens.
I've got dinosaur kale.
I've got scarlet kale, lemon basil, purple basil, Swiss chard, and strawberry spinach literally coming out of my ears.
Please save me from turning these beautiful greens into a bunch of pathetic salads.
If she's got them literally coming out of her ears, she has problems that we we cannot help with.
That part you got to call your ear, nose and throat doctor.
What do you think? The dinosaur kale, scarlet kale, lemon basil, purple basil, Swiss chard, and strawberry spinach. I don't know what strawberry spinach is, but I got to try that.
All right. Two things come to mind for me.
There is a recipe by an amazing cookbook author named Paula Wolfert for herb jam.
She basically takes every random green thing that she's got, including and especially herbs but also all of those other things you listed are fine and cooks them down and so for the tougher things like the kale i might blanch them first or saute them first separately until they're tender you cook everything you chop it until it's super fine you could absolutely do this in a food processor to save you your arm what you chop it first then then you cook it down?
No, you have to cook it down and then chop it for the tough stuff.
And then for the delicate things like the basil, you could chop afterward. Although I think everything benefits from a sauté first, then a chop, and then a second sauté.
This dish gets cooked for a really long time.
You can add any allium you have. I like it with finely chopped shallots or onions that are cooked down also.
I love when you say things like allium.
Allium? Oh yeah, Yeah.
Sorry. Using fancy words.
No, I love it. It makes it feel like our podcast is so high class.
It's not high class.
This lies in deception.
It's an onion family.
Onion or garlic family is an onion.
Things like leeks would be really good in this.
And you could even use the green parts of a leek.
Green garlic is a garlic plant that's been pulled from the ground in the spring rather than the summer before the bulb has formed.
So you could use all of that whole thing, the greens and the whites.
And you just chop everything really finely and you just cook it.
You cook it, you cook it.
That's why it's called jam.
And it turns into some other thing.
This is, it won't resemble greens at all anymore.
It gets sweet and sort of jammy.
And it just has this incredible texture.
A lot of times people will finish it with pieces of olive, kind of make it like a tapenade thing.
You could squeeze a whole lemon in there or you could put lemon zest in there.
And then how do you eat it?
Is it the main dish?
You can't stop eating it.
No, it's not a main dish usually.
Usually it's something that you like spread on toast or crackers.
It would also be good.
Here I am again on a Triscuit or with white beans.
Jesus. It would be actually really delicious with some potatoes.
It would be so good with a frittata.
But it is something where you're like, how did this get made out of waste?
I don't understand.
It's so good. And a similar dish kind of with a different result is a Persian dish called cuckoo sabzi, which cuckoo is our word for frittata and sabzi is our word for greens or green things.
So in Persian cooking, what we do typically is we cook the greens twice, just like I said.
So you'll cook the kind of tougher things things down first, chop them up, and then you fry them until they start to turn almost really dark and sweet and fragrant.
And then you crack the eggs over.
And the thing about a Cuckoo Sabzi is that the proportion of egg to greens is about inverse of what you might think of a typical frittata.
So it's really greens bound together by egg rather than egg sort of with some greens in it.
And it gets really brown and sweet on the outside.
It's just like eating a piece of healthy greenness.
You know, it's kind of like a quiche without a crust kind of.
And it's also not custardy like a quiche.
I don't know how to describe it.
It's just like its own special thing.
So I have a recipe for cuckoo sabzi in my book.
I have one in the New York Times.
I'm sure there's plenty of them free on the internet.
And also you can find Paula Wolfert's herb jam on the internet too.
We'll link to all this stuff.
Sounds great. Okay.
Here's a question from Naomi.
She's also got a lot of veggies.
Hi, Samin and Rishi.
This is Naomi. Like a lot of people, we're getting a veggie delivery box to cut down on our runs to the grocery store.
And like any farm share, we end up with some stuff that we might not choose and that we don't necessarily know how to use things like turnips and big radishes and beets, things that keep well and I'm sure can be delicious, but I'm just not quite sure what to do with them.
So any tips you have would be great.
Thanks so much. The last question specifically asked to avoid giving the advice of salads, you don't make friends with salad, but Naomi has not given us that restriction.
Are you going to tell her to make a turnip, big radish, and beet salad?
salad I mean doesn't seem like a easy answer is that what you want to eat I like uh what is a turnip I mean I know what a turnip is but I don't know how you would how do you cook a turnip all right when I think of a turnip I want it to be like roasted yeah given to me like a french fry yeah that's basically what I was gonna say I mean all four of those things would benefit from from roasting, maybe not together on the same tray.
And they all need slightly different treatment.
But I'm going to give you at least one thing to do with each of them.
Turnips, I would either make mashed turnips, kind of like mashed potatoes, make them super buttery and delicious.
Maybe even with some brown butter.
Do you know what brown butter is, Rishi?
Oh, yeah, you do because of your cookies.
Yeah. So it's just butter that you cook until it starts to sputter and turn brown.
you know, it's magic.
It's unbelievable. It is unbelievable.
It's a whole other thing.
That's not you're like, how did butter become this?
Yeah, yeah, it's nutty and delicious.
So I think that on some sort of steamed or boiled turnips that have been mashed would be really yummy.
So if it's like a sweeter sort of smaller turnip, I would probably just go straight into the roast. I mean, if it's really sweet and baby, I would boil it and just drizzle some salt and olive oil in it and eat it like that.
But I do think turnips really benefit from roasting with olive oil or coconut oil or any other oil that you have and salt.
That browning really brings out their sweetness and they're just really delicious.
So that's kind of like a turnip french fry, like what you said.
With roasting vegetables like that, I really think you have to sort of obey a couple things.
One is make sure all the pieces are approximately the same size.
to really do that thing that you don't want to do and dirty an extra bowl by tossing all of the vegetables with oil and salt in this bowl to make sure they're covered on all sides.
Then spread them out on the baking sheet in a single layer.
Make sure that they're not really touching because the more space that you leave between them, the more space there is for steam to escape and for browning to happen.
When you cram stuff onto a single tray and there's just no room between, that's when you get like a weird tray of steamed vegetables not roasted brown crispy vegetables so this is true for broccoli cauliflower anything else carrots all that kind of stuff spread it out and the ideal roasting temperature is probably 400 or 425 and also you know I baby my stuff that's in the oven and I turn it I flip it I rotate the pan I put the pan on a different rack as it's cooking to make sure it's cooking evenly but you'll be rewarded with delicious delicious crispiness and sweetness.
Radishes, depending on what kind of radishes they are and what you're feeling, you can treat exactly the same as the turnips.
If you're feeling like you just don't want to do separate preparations for all this stuff, you could actually combine the radishes and the turnips on the same tray.
I'm breaking my own rule because they're very similar in constitution.
And as long as you cut them into similar sized pieces.
If you feel like making different with the radishes, you cut them into like matchsticks pieces or very thin slices and make a delicious pickle, a light pickle by just covering them with if you have rice wine vinegar, rice wine is probably the yummiest for this particular thing.
And maybe some like a mixture of rice wine vinegar and salt and sugar and just letting them sit for anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes.
And then you have kind of like a little Japanese style pickle, which would would be really nice thing to put in a sandwich to eat with a hard cooked egg.
I don't know, just keep a jar of it in your fridge for when you want that little crunchy pickle.
For the beets, my favorite way to make beets is roasting them.
But it's kind of a combo of a roast and a steam.
So I wash all the dirt off my beets.
And then I put them in a roasting pan or baking baking dish and maybe like a quarter inch a centimeter of water in there some salt and then i always because i'm a freak and i don't like foil to touch my food when possible i put parchment directly over the beets and then foil directly over that and make as tight of a seal as possible and then you can throw that into that same 400 degree oven if you want or hotter you can go all the way to 500 and really what you're doing is you're steaming those beets until they're all the way soft and the thing about beets is they have to get cooked all the way
through. You have to cook them until you can pierce them with a knife and it's like, what's that saying?
Hot knife cold butter?
Like a hot knife through butter.
Like a hot knife through butter and then when they come out you can use a paper towel to rub and peel them, chop them into whatever size pieces you like, whether that's wedges or slices drizzle with vinegar of any kind rice wine red wine or white wine vinegar probably are the three I would choose and salt and olive oil and let that sit and those become lightly pickled beets that are delicious to eat with a salad with a hard -cooked egg with you know I had earlier said they would be really good in a lentil salad so those are kind of the things that you just keep in your fridge and you eat over the course
of the week can I tell you about a beet dish that i had recently that i was really excited about oh no no no it's not a joke it's not a joke it's a real it's a real okay i don't trust you lindsey roasted some beets and i was trying to figure out what to make with them and so i made a tuna fish sandwich to go with them and by the way the tuna fish sandwich was like a real triumph for me because i realized that we didn't have any mayonnaise and i made mayonnaise you made mayonnaise yeah how with an egg and mustard and a blender and oil i'm so proud of you it took so long but it worked i'm so proud
i'm like floored i couldn't believe that it worked i couldn't believe you did it yeah we did not have the right ingredients for it you know like i didn't have like a white wine or red wine vinegar so i used apple cider vinegar and it doesn't matter i didn't have dijon mustard that It doesn't matter.
None of that matters.
So made the mayonnaise and then made the tuna fish sandwich with that.
And then we ate the beets with that magic unicorn salt.
No way. That magic unicorn sea salt sprinkled on top and it was so good.
Anyway, yeah, this was supposed to be a story about beets, but it ended up being about mayonnaise.
Thanks, Naomi. Thanks for calling in.
I hope that we gave you some inspiration to get through that box.
I hope you have some good square meals with your roots.
Some square roots. No. No. Okay.
Thanks, Naomi. we're we've lost our minds uh the marbles are gone yep honestly that's what is up this week marbles gone let's go from the vegetables themselves to something that you might put on the vegetables we got a question from kim let me play for you hi smeen and rishi this is kim calling from arizona my question is about vinaigrettes i love a good vinaigrette and And, Samin, you talk about them a lot and putting them on all kinds of different things.
But I am just really not good at making them at home.
I somehow get the ratios wrong.
They taste too oily.
And so I want your instructions and maybe a recipe or two on making a really good vinaigrette.
Thanks. Oh, this is good.
I want to know this as well.
Okay, I'm ready. I'm so ready because I have the best vinaigrette recipe in the whole wide world.
Hit me. me. It's not even mine.
And the thing about it is I can speak so confidently about it because it's not mine, because it's the salad dressing from my very favorite salad in the whole wide world, which is the green salad at a restaurant called Via Carota in New York.
And I was so obsessed and am so obsessed with the salad that I wrote an entire column about it.
And I don't choose the like headlines the new york times uses and so i feel like they what was the headline that they used for this they said the best green salad in the world the best green salad in the world and i was like i did not say that but okay cool like i was like i do agree i do support this so it really is so so so delicious and the secret is oh side question before you tell us the secret was there any kind of issue and get extracting the secret from the restaurant um honestly no No, I just called and asked.
I mean, I've known the chefs for a while.
And like, I begged them to share it with me.
And they did. And what was so amazing was that I was in New York the week after the story ran.
And when I went, they were like, Oh, we have to get salad deliveries twice a day.
Now we go through 200 cases of salad lettuce a week now because of the article because of the article.
Wow. That's awesome.
And it's a really popular restaurant.
I mean, it I mean, I really didn't think anything I would say would make such a big deal, but it was so funny.
I was like, oh, sorry.
Yeah. Okay. What's the secret?
So the secret to most people at home, I think it's twofold.
One is maybe not something most people can do anything about right now, which is I do think the quality of your olive oil makes a big difference.
So having good fresh olive oil that's not rancid and by fresh, I mean pressed in the last year really is really what I mean.
Can I interrupt you there again, just on olive oil?
As you know, I don't drink wine.
And so I know nothing about wine.
And, but sometimes it is my job to go like get a bottle of wine for a party or for my wife or something like that.
And I feel like I'm just choosing blindly based on the label on the price, the label on the price.
Exactly. And then I feel similarly with olive oil.
I don't know what is a high quality olive oil when they all say extra virgin, totally other than the price the main thing that i can tell you that's gonna make a difference in the store is to look for a date i'm married already oh my god i can't wait for this podcast to be over okay i'm back all right so you go to the store you find someone cute you ask them out you find Find it, yeah, you find it.
Well, I don't know how to do that, so.
Step one. What's step two?
Once you have your partner, no, really to find a date of production on the label, either it's the expiration date or it's the date of production.
If your olive oil has one or both of those dates on it, it's already a good olive oil.
Certainly you want it to say that it's extra virgin, nitrogen but having a date and making sure that it's not expired so if it's a date of production know that olive oil has about a year to 14 months in it so if that date of production is you know older than 2019 fall also because olive oil is pretty much unless it comes from the southern hemisphere it's almost universally pressed in the fall so if it's later than fall or winter of 2019 then it's old oil and it's probably bad okay so that's one really helpful way to know So start with that when you are able to go back to a store and look at all
the olive oils. But the other thing I think that's the main mistake that most people at home make who, you know, are not like trained cooks or really sort of active home cooks is they don't put enough acid in their vinaigrette.
And by acid, I mean lemon juice and or vinegar.
And for me, I like to layer my acids.
I like to use more than one form because I think it adds dimension, but that puckerness is certainly a big part of what makes salad really delightful to eat, especially if the salad is rich in any way, if there's cheese or anything in it, or if it's very starchy, like if it has a lot of croutons or it's a bread salad, or you're pouring your vinaigrette over potatoes or beans, you really want to make sure it's acidic so that it sort of gives you a pucker.
It should make your eyes kind kind of open up, you know?
Is that maybe what Kimberly is lacking in terms of why it tastes too oily?
Yeah, definitely. Definitely.
And the nice thing about this recipe, which I'm going to link to, it really only has one form of vinegar.
It just has sherry vinegar in it, but it has two kinds of mustard in it.
And actually what's kind of really weird and delightful about this is that the chefs temper that acidity with a little bit of water.
So there's just, I don't know why this recipe works.
It kind of is the opposite of everything I've always believed and understood, which I don't know, maybe that's why it's so good.
I don't know. I really couldn't tell you.
It is addictive though.
It's so good, this dressing.
I pour it on everything.
I pour it over just boiled asparagus.
I pour it on grain salads.
I use it on my green salad, but it makes me want to eat salad, which is why I think you will like it too.
So the nice thing about it too is that you You don't even have to do the step called maceration, which is letting the shallot or allium sit in vinegar or lemon juice for a long time to sort of tame its fire.
For whatever reason, this doesn't have that and it still works.
It's so good. So you just take a shallot and you mince it.
And then this has two tablespoons plus one teaspoon of aged sherry vinegar.
So in these dark times, if you don't have sherry vinegar, you might be able to get away with red wine vinegar.
a tablespoon of warm water, one cup extra virgin olive oil, one and a half teaspoons each of Dijon and whole grain mustard. You could also, if you don't have both kinds, make do with one or the other.
One and a half teaspoons of honey.
She puts in two sprigs of thyme that are stripped.
If you don't have fresh thyme right now, that's fine.
One large clove of garlic and salt and freshly ground black pepper the garlic is finely grated or pounded in a mortar and pestle into a paste so if you just mix all that up and shake it it should taste delicious you might need to adjust it one tiny bit one way or another with either salt or vinegar or olive oil but the way I test any vinaigrette is I dip a piece of the lettuce that I'm going to eat it on or a piece of whatever whatever I'm going to eat it on, in it.
And I eat them together because there's no way that you're really going to be able to make that judgment without the thing that you're dressing.
Right. Is this something that you could make a lot of and then keep in your fridge, or does it have to be used pretty quickly?
This recipe does make kind of a lot, actually, because it has a whole cup of olive oil.
So this is definitely enough for two large salads for a family, two big sort of dinner salads.
and I think I've kept it in the fridge for up to like let's say four days successfully after that you gotta make it fresh that sounds so good it's like honestly sitting here and looking at this recipe and this picture of this salad makes me want to go downstairs and make salad and it's 9 48 p .m. thanks Kim so now we're gonna give our friend Wesley Morris a call he is one of my favorite writers at the New York Times.
He writes all about culture and movies.
And I've heard he's a really good cook.
All right, let's give him a call.
I have right now three cookbooks open on top of each other and one of them is yours.
And I have been, I don't have a great food imagination, but I have a real eagerness and a determination and an openness.
So if you give me the the manuals i can put the meal together but i can't handle these large portions it's like large amounts of food that some of these recipes leave you with it's not because i can't eat it it's because i can't oh same same yes totally what's the best thing that you've made so far that you both love and hate well you know i had never baked a cake before the last month i have this beautiful stand mixer that I had been using to make pie crusts.
I've heard about your pies.
It's the only thing I can say unequivocally.
I'm pretty good at making a pie.
I've learned. It's gotten a lot better since you came into my life.
Oh, thank you. But you made cake.
Tell us about the cake.
I made the Times' I don't know whose recipe it is.
Melissa Clark. It's Melissa Clark.
So it's her pantry crumb cake.
oh yeah that cake is so good it's very good and it's very easy rishi have you made this no but i love crumb cake i mean it's a relatively very simple recipe it's just like all the things that you need to make a good cake except you know she is into the ground spice portion she gives you the option of having cinnamon ginger cardamom nutmeg or some combination of those things do you use like yogurt?
Which thing did you use?
Oh, great question.
I used creme fraiche the first time I made it and yogurt the second time.
So you've made this cake twice so far?
When you were asking if I had ever made this, my problem is I'm going to make it and then I'm going to eat the entire thing in one sitting.
So it's really dangerous.
Oh yeah, me too. Well, that's the other part of it is I just become a bottomless pit.
So I just have to give everything away.
I'll make it, eat one slice, and then give the thing away.
I actually have been that person where I've like, I feel like this is like a classic moment from some television show, but I put the thing in the compost so that I would stop eating it.
And then the next morning, I was like, this is on top.
I fully have done that.
So like, the only way to not eat it is I have to put it out of my house.
I'm the person that when I'm in my bedroom, there's a little voice calling me from the refrigerator.
Like, Samin, I'm that last piece of pizza.
Samin, I'm the other peanut butter cup.
Come eat me. I'm lonely.
Yeah. Listen, I hear you.
I saw something about you, Rishi, over the weekend.
You made cookies and you made them like extra large so that you could say you just ate two cookies or something.
It was four. I don't know.
nice try. Okay, wait.
So Wesley, you've made the crumb cake twice so far.
Do you think you're going to make it again?
Oh my God, yeah. It's really good.
And I will add more nuts to it.
And it keeps really well.
Some things I just get nervous about eating after a week, but this is, it's not very good out of the oven.
It is delicious with one day behind it.
All right, I'm going to try it.
You should definitely try it.
You should definitely, definitely try it.
I'm going to make it again.
Awesome. Thanks so much, Wesley.
Thank you. Take care.
Stay well. Oh my God.
This was a pleasure.
It was a real pleasure.
You can follow Wesley on Twitter at Wesley underscore Morris, and you can find Still Processing wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay. What else you got?
Okay. Here's a question that I love that we got from Tim.
He wrote, when boiling eggs, should you start with the water cold or on a rolling boil, like with poaching?
Okay. Okay. There are as many answers as there are eggs in the world to this question.
So, there is many ways to boil an egg.
And in fact, Kenji Lopez -Alt wrote a whole thing about how the best way to boil an egg is to steam an egg.
So, you can find any answer that you like out there.
My guaranteed way for boiling eggs is to start with the water at a boil and to gently lower the eggs in with a slotted spoon one at a time.
Because I just know how to set.
But that's the way I was taught how to do it.
That's how I know how to set a timer.
I know what 1 minute, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 6 minutes, 8 minutes all look like.
And the timing will also depend on whether or not your eggs are at room temperature or refrigerator temperature when you start.
But I have a really fun drawing in my book that we'll post a picture of on the website.
Oh, I love that drawing.
Yeah, it's my favorite drawing from the whole book.
That's sort of an egg boiling chart.
But I do start with boiling water.
and I go straight from the boiling water into a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking.
But under no circumstances do I ever boil eggs longer than 10 minutes.
I've never in my professional cooking career ever done that.
So I think 10 minutes is your max.
And if you want like a real sort of glossy, perfect yolk that, you know, leaves a clean knife but cuts cleanly, I think eight minutes is really nice.
And then less than that, you get into the jammy state.
You know what's good when things get jammy?
Beets. Oh, God. Hot beets.
What did I do to deserve this?
Well, that's it for this episode.
Thanks to Margaret Miller for editing, Zach McNeese for mixing the show, and Gary Lee and Casey Deal for their help too.
Thanks so much to Dad, Dr. Samay Shirwe, and New York Times critic -at -large Wesley Morris.
Let us know if you have any cooking -related questions.
Call us at 201 -241 -COOK.
Or send us a voice memo at alittlehomecooking at gmail .com.
You can find instructions on how to record a voice memo on our website.
Which is homecooking .show.
You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram at Chow Samin.
And I'm at Rishi Hirway.
Stay healthy, eat well and take care of each other.
We'll be back soon with another episode.
Until then, I'm Samin.
And I'm Rishi. And we'll be home cooking.
Radio -topia, from PRX.