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That's odoo .com. okay i don't i don't i'm not gonna miss this coming up later we're gonna be joined by perhaps the greatest living cellist in the world yo -yo ma besides being a genius he's also that uncle that you wish you had he's like a hug personified to quote an episode of The West Wing.
It's true. He does.
We got a lot of great questions from all over the world for this episode, Samin.
But before we get to all of them, what have you been cooking?
You guys, I finally feel like I can come out of the lasagna closet.
That means you're finally ready to admit that you identify as a lasagna.
Well, I basically am 99 % lasagna now because for the past month, I have been making so much lasagna.
I've been living inside of a lasagna because I've been working on this project for the New York Times, where I thought it would be really fun if we have kind of a national dinner party.
So I had to test a bunch of lasagna recipes using different ingredients I could get at different stores.
If you had to guess, how many lasagnas have you made in the last month.
Yesterday, I jokingly said 40.
But I think it's probably like I've probably made eight, which is I just want you to know a lot of lasagna.
Yeah, it's just been a journey.
It's been a carbohydrate filled journey.
To go along with all this, you wrote a really beautiful article for the New York Times.
And I just wanted to say how much I really love it.
Oh, thanks so much. I really love this paragraph.
You wrote, I still miss setting the table for others.
I miss the the feeling of anticipation right before people arrive for a meal and relief right after they leave. I miss that inexplicable moment at the dinner table when any awkwardness washes away and a bunch of individuals, some of whom might have been strangers, becomes a unified group.
I miss conversations so vibrant that no one is tempted to pull out a phone.
I really love that.
Thanks. Yeah, I actually had a lot of, I've been living under the layers of lasagna.
And so I haven't had a ton of room to like mentally or emotionally process a lot of stuff.
but sitting down to write was really an opportunity to do that and I think it's actually part of why writing that piece was kind of hard for me was because I really had to sort of reckon with a lot of my feelings about the stuff that I really miss and how I really feel right now and I've had different phases I assume we all have like I was really lonely about the third week and now I'm just now I just feel like I've lost my mind which is exactly the right time for us to start recording Great.
Wait, there was one other thing I've been making that I kind of wanted to tell you about, because I think you would be into it.
So I bought some milk the other day, this like really delicious milk that has a cream top and it's super rich. And then when I got home, I realized that it had expired, like I bought it the day it expired.
Had it actually gone bad?
Like, did it smell bad?
Or it just the date was...
well so whereas typically the sell by date is a sell by date not a use by date on milk this brand because it's like from a small local farm yeah the expiration date is no joke so I kind of was like wow I got to use this up today you know but it was a quarter and a half was a lot of milk and I didn't know what to do so I made pudding I made two kinds of pudding oh wow yeah I mean tapioca and I made chocolate pudding and the tapioca was I mean they were both delicious but the tapioca was the best tapioca I've ever made.
It was so good. It was from a recipe from 101 Cookbooks, 101 Cookbooks, Heidi Swanson's website.
And we will, I think we should link to the recipe because I think everyone should be making, it was so good.
And then the next day we had a pudding party in the courtyard and all the neighbors, I was like, bring your own bowl and your own spoon.
And I put the pudding out so everyone else could eat it.
Cause otherwise I was going to eat it for like six meals in a row.
That sounds really good.
And I think you have already basically answered one of the questions that I had planned to play you.
Oh really? Yeah let me play it for you now.
Okay. Here's a question from Marion from Paris.
I'm currently in lockdown in my small Parisian apartment with no oven or no microwave and I miss sweets.
So my question would would be can you give me some sweet recipes some dessert recipes that can be done without an oven or a microwave thank you very much love the podcast bye bye i'm so sorry it sounds so lonely and i feel it i mean we're all feeling so lonely yeah i would definitely suggest in your case to make some sort of stovetop puddings or stovetop custards so tapioca chocolate pudding those are They're very American, but there's also plenty of less American versions.
You could also make a mousse of any flavor, but chocolate is a classic.
How does one make a mousse?
A mousse is basically a pudding that then has cream.
Mousses are made with cream.
Mousses, meeses, meises?
I would say mousse is usually made with cream rather than milk.
I'm not sure it will set without the cream.
and then it has eggs in it.
And then you take the egg whites and you whip them and you fold whipped cream and eggs in at the end to lighten it up.
So it's not so different from making pudding.
And as for a chocolate mousse recipe, there's a great, really simple one on New York Times Cooking that my colleague Tejal Rao wrote about.
It's from this amazing pastry chef, Natasha Pickowitz, who's the pastry chef of Cafe Altro Paradiso and Flora Bar in New York.
And she just basically came up with a very simple blender chocolate mousse.
The other thing I was thinking about this morning that's even simpler and I find it to be incredibly delicious, like I don't actually understand why it's so delicious, is this three ingredient thing called posset.
How do you spell that?
P -O -S -S -E -T. And it's almost a forerunner of pudding.
It's like a hundreds of year old British dessert.
I haven't actually made it in the States before, I was just thinking today that I wanted to go get some cream and try it.
But it's basically very lightly curdled cream, but it doesn't have curdley texture, it has a very smooth texture.
And the pausette that I had when I was in England last year was just so satisfying and creamy on the tongue, and so refreshing.
So you just take some cream and sugar, and you bring it up just barely to a boil.
And you have to use the richest thickest cream you can find in england it's called double cream and then you just yeah you sweeten it you bring it up and then you take it off the heat and then you add some freshly squeezed lemon juice and it doesn't even have to be lemon juice it could be the sour juice of any fruit so it could be like i don't know passion fruit or rhubarb it's so good and you're like i don't understand it's made with three ingredients i don't understand how this works okay i'm putting this question away i'm putting this question away oh god thanks for the question marion okay
here's another question i love this one hi this is jacob and julia and olivia and during the coronavirus we've been enjoying food where you wrap up food in other foods like tacos and summer rolls and like Like Japanese hand rolls.
So our question is.
What other foods besides those foods can we try?
That are foods where you wrap up something in some other food.
Thanks. Bye. Oh my God.
I love you. I also love the choreographed nature of that question.
It really felt like they had a script.
What I loved about it is that they wrapped their words inside each other's words for this question.
that was the cutest thing i've heard in a long time that was amazing well first of all you've come to the right place my friends i am obsessed with foods that are wrapped in other foods so am i you are i am and a couple months ago i went on a food expedition like a little well you know i love like themed food yeah it's like how we spent our first time together yeah we went on on a cookie expedition.
Yeah, exactly. So a couple months ago, I went on a stuffed foods expedition, basically what they're talking about, but fried, like wrapped and fried both.
We had stuffed foods on our food expedition.
We had a weird detour at the end of the cookie day where we had empanadas.
Oh, that's right. Okay, so this was the empanadas.
Plus, we also got samosas, and we got Jamaican patties.
What's a Jamaican patty?
It's right in the same family as all these these other things.
It's like a flaky stuffed turnover.
Okay. And then for dessert, we had McDonald's apple pies.
And then you went home and you're like, had indigestion.
It was a great night.
You know, the only thing I love more than delicious food is delicious food wrapped in a theme, especially when the theme is wrapping foods.
Okay, what are your suggestions for Jacob and Julia and Olivia?
you well i actually have like i wrote an article about this once but apart from that i had the weirdest idea yesterday and this is not exactly a food wrapped in other foods but it's so weird that i thought maybe i should show i can't wait and so i was like what if you took half an avocado you remove the pit and then inside the space where there's the pit you put in a hard -boiled egg uh -huh and then you removed the egg yolk and you put a cherry tomato or an olive inside then it's like wow an avocado version of a turducken turducken wow it's an aveg avegato avegato wow that's so good that's so good
and it's the perfect name okay see let's be honest you love wordplay too oh god yeah i do i do you hesitant to admit it yeah i'm just i'm shedding everything today avegado it's really good but that's not i know that's not what you were asking for i just thought i would share that yes worth it it's brilliant okay but back to the premise of the original question not quite this is more about wrapped foods yeah and so um here let me list off some of my favorites okay do you You want me to drop a beat?
Oh, yeah, do it. So you can rap these foods.
Oh, no! Okay, here we go.
So I think there's an entire world of dumplings that would be really fun to visit.
You know, our typical Chinese dumplings, which you can make with vegetables, with noodles, with bean sprouts, and almost always with some cabbage in there.
Or pork. You could also put pork and cabbage as a classic.
One of my favorite ways to cook dumplings, my friend from Japan taught me when we were in college.
It was the way her mom would always make them.
And then later I learned it's called winged gyoza.
So once you make all the dumplings, you fit them into a pan, into a frying pan, either a nonstick or a cast iron.
You sort of just put them in there almost as tightly as possible, with the flat side down, and you make a cake essentially.
And so the starch, as it cooks off of them as they're frying, sort of sticks them all together.
And so you put some oil in the pan, you put your potstickers in, you let them fry and brown, and then you put some water on there and put a lid on and let them steam the rest of the way to finish cooking.
And then you can unmold that whole thing, you know, onto a plate.
And you have this beautiful cake of potstickers that is super brown and delicious and crispy on the bottom.
them. So you want them to stick together.
Yeah, you want them to stick together.
And then you have the fun of like kind of pulling them apart.
Another version of that, the winged gyoza is where you put a few less in the pan so they're not all touching.
And then you just make a little slurry out of like corn starch or potato starch, and you pour that into the pan.
And then that sort of turns into the starchy wings that sort of hold the thing together.
And that way, it's also like like a little pancake.
So that's one of the treats I really love.
And I also think making like any sort of dumpling with kids is really fun.
It's just a nice thing to get little hands involved in.
Other foods that I love to make inside of other foods.
Yeah. And can you suggest one that's maybe for the lazy cook like myself, where you can just sort of take a bread or some container, plop the stuff inside, and then just wrap it up and eat it without having to do additional steps?
You're so lazy. Well, I guess you could always just take a piece of mortadella or turkey and put it inside some romaine lettuce.
Lettuce wrap is a real thing.
Yeah, lettuce wrap.
There's also like, you know, stuffed cabbage rolls are another classic that come from lots of different cultures that are really delicious.
There's also enchiladas, which are, you know, tortillas filled with, like, you could do cheese or meats, and then pour a delicious sauce over that you could either buy in a can or make quite simply out of peppers and tomatoes that you puree together and some spices, and then bake that.
Wow. This wrapping thing could go on forever.
If you want a real project, and I've actually been considering doing this myself, you could make tamales, which are not really hard to make.
they just take some time and some patience.
Really? From my perspective, they seem so elaborate.
I love tamales so much, but I could never, you know, they just seem like out of the realm of possibility.
They are not. I will say like, it's definitely, you have to make a time commitment to make them.
But the great thing is they freeze really well.
So you get to eat them for many, many, many days and meals to come.
And they're easy to share with And in this case, which it sounds like there are a lot of willing helping hands at Jacob's house, it's a really fun thing to do with other people.
I did it on Thanksgiving.
We made turkey mole tamales.
And I was having Thanksgiving with a group of people, some of whom were very avid and interested cooks and other people who were like, I don't want to touch anything.
anything. And I told everyone that the rule was you had to make at least one, just one.
And by the time everyone made one, even the like most negative, despairing people were like, this is so amazing.
This is so fun. I want to do more.
I want to do more. Because it is really fun.
It's just really, really fun.
So the hardest part is, in my opinion, making the masa, the corn filling, the corn part, the corn heart.
And I had never done that on my own before.
I had always bought prepared masa that was already pre -mixed with the fat and the water so that it was already kind of this like creamy texture but I just made it in my stand mixer with some ground masa and warm water I added some chicken stock because I had it and then I used a combination of chicken fat and lard because I had both but you could also just use oil or butter if you don't have either of those and some salt and you can put a little baking powder in there and then you have whatever you're gonna wrap your tamales in i had banana leaves which i bought frozen at the like um at the mexican grocery
but they also have them a lot of times at the chinese grocery or any asian grocery stores or you could buy corn husks from a mexican grocery or a latin grocery and soak them so they're soaked and then you just smear a thin amount of that onto the leaf and then you put whatever your filling is and so we made mole ones but i also wanted to make some vegetarian ones so So I took poblanos and anaheims and I just put them directly over the flame on the gas burner until all of the skin was sort of black and charred.
And then I peeled that off and chopped those up and mixed them with big pieces of like Monterey Jack cheese.
And that was the cheese and chili filling.
So the filling was really easy to make, honestly.
Wow. It's a day -long project.
Yeah. But you can make it with your kids and educate them about Mexico and maximalization.
and all sorts of good stuff.
It's an edible lesson.
That reminds me of another early time from when we first were hanging out.
Do you remember when you were here in LA and you were going to make tortillas?
I know what you're going to say.
You were going to make tortillas and you got the masa and then it turned out to be a huge failure because they gave you tamale masa instead of tortilla masa.
That's right. We had a taco party at my friend's house and I invited all these people and i had done all this research to find out where to buy the best masa in la and i drove really far to the other side of town to get like prepared masa and then we came back and none of the tortillas were working and it took me a really long time like an embarrassingly long time to realize that i had bought the masa for tamales and not for tortillas yeah and so we ended up eating the entire meal on chips exactly yeah because you did try and make some tortillas was out of them and they uh forgive me did turn
out quite bad no they were so bad they were so so so bad i'm still living that down honestly like people still bring it up oh no but that was the thing it was actually a really really nice experience for me because i knew you a little bit but it just made me a lot less intimidated to be around you to have you know to have this experience where you know this like world famous renowned chef is here and he's like well this this didn't work out.
And I was like, okay, yeah.
I'm happy to fail to put you at ease.
Stars of cooking. They're just like us.
I learned my lesson, which was, if you're going to make your own tortillas, have some store -bought ones as backup.
Okay. Just to go back for one second, back to lazy person foods.
What about dishes that could be made where you don't have to create that dough, the outer wrapping?
Like say you had something like a lavash or pita bread or something that's more easily store -bought okay that you can then fill with something so like a sandwich wrap you're talking yeah or it could be like with the hand roll it could be seaweed it could be nori yeah i think nori's a good one i think tortillas are good ones i think lavash bread is a great one injera if you can get your hands on it, the Ethiopian sponge bread.
But those, I think, just lead to different forms of sandwiches.
And if you want to have a lot of fun with some kiddos, what I would suggest is making a variety of different rolled sandwiches on lavash breads or tortillas.
And then you can slice them into slices, so you get to see the roll -up, like the pinwheel.
And so, if you use all sorts of different colorful vegetables or like things like cream cheese or you could put a little slice of deli meat or anything in there then it's kind of a colorful way and a little bit more exciting and i think it's a that fun thing where you're making a surprise and you're not sure what it's going to look like yet you know it's like a bready version of maki of sushi cut roll totally yeah that sounds great it's bread sushi okay so thanks jacob and Julia, and Olivia for that question.
We love you. Okay. I have a few questions here, uh, that I have put under the category of meats and non -meats.
Um, I guess that counts.
In other words, everything.
Got it. Food. Let me just play you the first question.
This one comes from Sonal.
My question is about fear and chicken.
In about 2013, I got salmonella from eating chicken that was cooked in someone's home.
Since then, I have developed a fear of eating undercooked chicken and therefore don't cook it very much at home by myself.
How do I cook chicken where I can be sure it's done without it getting so dry.
Also, I do not have a meat thermometer, which would be probably a very simple resolution to this issue.
And what are some really good foolproof recipes?
Thank you. I don't know what the symptoms of having salmonella poisoning are, but I can imagine they suck.
So I'm really sorry.
And I can totally understand that you don't want to risk that again because i've had regular food poisoning that's been so bad i've been totally debilitated and i understand that that fear is real but we're gonna rid you of that and the way we're gonna rid you of that is with chicken thighs why is that so chicken breast is the thing that's gonna get dry if you overdo it and that's often a part of the chicken that gets undercooked if people are like so worried that they're gonna overcook it so i say just for now avoid chicken breast for a while and just stick to chicken thighs.
Because the thing about chicken thighs is they take a really long time to get to that point where the meat is falling off the bone tender.
But if for any reason you pull them out of the oven or out of the pan before that, they're still cooked through and you're not going to get food poisoning from them.
The only thing that's going to happen is like your teeth are going to have to work harder to get that meat off the bone, you know yeah oh samine guess what what chicken butt but more importantly guess why exactly okay you may continue now that i've gotten that off my chicken chest okay you had to really get that one out okay okay so you take your chicken butt you take your chicken butt i will say chicken butt is also quite delicious it's called the pork's nose oh my god the title of this episode might be guess what chicken butt is delicious oh my gosh we are monsters we're monsters i'm not the one
eating chicken butt i think there's only one monster here no a chicken okay i don't know if it's the butt But on the back of a chicken, like if you make a roast chicken and you flip it over, there's like this little pointy bit sticking out sort of where the tail feather would be, which one might consider to be the butt.
It is called the Pope's nose.
It is largely made out of cartilage.
Wow, Pope's nose. Rude.
No, just look. that's the sort of like cook's term for it i guess uh -huh because it's this kind of like funny shaped nose thing nose shaped like ancient rome nose yeah but why do you have to be why do you have to bring the pope into it yeah listen it's very delicious sure and it's often the part that like the cooks fight over in the kitchen okay sonal all right forget about the chicken butt forget about the pope's nose forget about all that stuff right now just focus on chicken thighs go buy yourself some bone -in skin on chicken thighs salt them preferably a day in advance but no worries if not the very
simplest way that you can cook them is to just roast them put them on a pan like you could use a catheter and pan or a baking sheet if you're using a baking sheet i suggest lining it with parchment paper stick those chicken thighs on their skin side up and throw them in the oven at 425 and they'll be done in about 45 minutes when they're like really beautifully brown and the skin is crisp and if for any reason you pull them out earlier they'll be cooked after about 20 minutes but they'll be really tender and the meat will be falling off after about 45 you know the way to check that that meat's
done like bone in meat is done is just to sort of prick it at the bone with a knife or a fork and see if that meat is peeling off the bone if it's falling off the bone the other thing is you don't need a thermometer what you can use is a fork but it has to be a metal fork so stick that metal fork right into the center of the chicken thigh right by the bone and then pull it out and then touch the tines of the fork to your hand to the skin on the top of your other their hand.
If it's warm or hot, you know, really you want it to be kind of like very warm or hot, then you know that the meat's cooked.
It's kind of like a sensory thermometer.
Right. And she's not going to burn herself if she does that.
No, it will never be hot enough to burn yourself.
It's either going to be cold, lukewarm or warm.
And if it's cold or lukewarm, it means the meat is not cooked.
If it's warm, it means the meat is cooked.
If it's hot enough to burn yourself, it means that the chicken thighs have been in the oven at 500 degrees for 400 years.
So, it will never get that hot.
And that's just the most basic way to start cooking chicken thighs.
And I think once you do that, then you can expand to things like braises.
You can then shred your chicken.
Anything where the meat is shreddable, you know that it's cooked through.
So, you can shred it for tacos.
You can can shred it for enchiladas you can shred it to put into like a noodle salad or anything like that i have a recipe that i really love in my book i'm sure it's online we'll find a version of it that's like these five spice chicken thighs that i used to make all the time and eat so much so we'll we'll link to that also yeah but um chicken thigh is the way to get you out of your fear awesome okay here's another question there's no audio for it but i'll just read it it comes from um someone who who ate undercooked salmon and got chickenella.
I'm going to kill you.
I can't even take it.
Okay, moving on. Here's a question we got from Heather.
I just moved into a new apartment right before the coronavirus pandemic hit, and my new roommate is vegan.
My boyfriend, on the other hand, is more of a meat and potatoes kind of guy.
So I'm wondering, what can I cook to please both of these people and myself, of course?
I love this problem because it's the story of my life.
I also want to say, even before I answer the question fully, which is like, as a person who eats meat and also is trying to like be a little more thoughtful and careful about my own effect on the environment and the world, I really am trying to limit my own meat intake.
take. So I think if you're a person who thinks that every meal should have meat, maybe rethinking that now that our food system is in such peril was not the worst idea.
But far be it from me to tell you what to do.
I'm just going to suggest some things.
So I think there are going to be some meals that are going to be really, really satisfying for everyone.
But I think there are things like making a whole roasted cauliflower that can be so satisfying and you get to carve it like a piece of meat and you eat that together with 1 million sauces, that can feel really filling.
And my two favorite modulars, maybe my three favorite modular areas, obviously, number one, I'm going to say tacos, where things like rice and beans are going to be enough to make a really satisfying taco with some salsa.
But then you can also make a little bit of shredded chicken or shredded pork or carnitas or whatever for meat eaters.
So things Things like that, I think, are really wonderful.
I love having a meal where it's made up of many parts on the table and every bite or every part of the meal gets to be a little bit different.
So having multiple kinds of salsas, you know, cheese, cream, any of that kind of stuff, cabbage, slaw, so that every taco can be slightly different is always really fun for me.
It's kind of a lot of work to make all of those parts.
Yeah. But then once you do, you have it for several meals and you can make chilaquiles the next day, stuff like that.
So that's one option.
Maybe you could do a pasta where the meat in the pasta sauce – you do two batches of the sauce.
You do one big thing of pasta, but then you do two sauces, one that has real meat in it and one that has vegetarian meat substitute.
You could basically be eating the same thing.
But then I realized this is not answering the meat and potatoes kind of requirement.
That's what really stumped me about it.
Oh, interesting. I think I am taking the meat and potatoes really quite loosely.
What I think of is more like you put many things on the table and you let people choose the parts that make sense to them.
So another idea that I had that I think is super tasty is to make sort of the Middle Eastern version of tacos of a taco dinner, which is to have like hummus and maybe falafel.
You could even leave the falafel out, honestly, if you don't want to make it, but you can make several like vegetable salads, like, you know, you can make a carrot and raisin salad, you can make a beet salad, just like marinated beets, a yogurt sauce, a tahini sauce.
And then you could make like chicken kebabs, or there's a really classic version of hummus that has like ground sauteed lamb on top, that's really, really tasty kind of like keema.
So that there would be like a meat option for somebody who doesn't feel like a meal is complete without that.
But then there's also harissa sauce and jugue and all of these other sauces that just add so much flavor into a meal and can give you a really colorful and vibrant plate without any meat and really without any dairy.
The idea that I had for them was just as simple of a switcheroo.
I was really trying trying to think about like okay taking the meat and potatoes part literally where i imagine you have some kind of potato side dish like french fries or tater tots okay and then for the carnivores you make burgers and for the vegans you have a meatless burger and then you do again you have your like plate of fixings like you were describing and so everybody can kind of make their own version of the burger and the only thing that's changing is what the patty is totally Totally.
I think that's a great idea.
And it's super simple.
I also think there are a lot of really satisfying non -meat burgers.
And I don't mean fake meat.
I mean, things like portobello mushroom burger.
Oh, for sure. The one I really love, the mushroom is sliced in half crosswise.
So it's like thin. So you're not biting into quite as much mushroom.
And then it gets battered in buttermilk and flour.
If you're or vegan you could batter it some other way and then deep fried whoa and so you have this like it's kind of like eating a fried chicken sandwich it's kind of like eating a burger that sounds amazing i hope that helps yeah thanks heather with the vegan and carnivore detente let's meet in the middle about whether or not to have meat in the middle so i mean we got some questions about some specific ingredients that i thought were pretty interesting there's one that we got from Morgan.
She wrote, I asked my spouse to order a piece of ginger to have on hand from our local groceries online ordering portal.
Instead of purchasing one unit of ginger, he purchased one pound.
Friends have suggested I make ginger ale, but that does not sound appealing.
Any tips? Yes, sister.
First of all, your first instinct, a pound of ginger, does that sound like a lot of ginger to you?
A pound of ginger is not a small amount, but it's also not like a world ending, what am I going to do with all this ginger?
I accidentally bought like 50 pounds of oranges kind of thing.
So also the good thing about ginger is it lasts for a very, very long time.
And I think we may have even said this earlier, but you can always peel and slice and freeze the ginger for future use if needed.
So there's that. But if you don't feel like doing that, what I would suggest doing is making some fresh ginger cake.
I have a recipe in my book that's based on the Chez Panisse recipe for the fresh ginger and molasses cake.
Honestly, the the Chez Panisse recipe is David Leibovitz's recipe, the great pastry chef and blogger and cookbook author.
So we'll link to his ginger cake.
It's so delicious. There's nothing like fresh ginger cake.
It's so good. And because it's made with molasses, it kind of has this dark acidity to it.
And you can use, I think, minimum four ounces in there.
And you make it with fresh ginger, not powdered ginger.
Yes. I mean, you bulk it up with some, I think it's really nice to add add also some powdered ginger as well, but the fresh ginger just makes it so spicy and lovely and delicious.
So that's one thing.
Another thing I think you could make some of and just sort of store and use over the course of a week, maybe not much longer, is you can make some ginger and garlic paste, which is a really sort of go -to ingredient in a lot of Indian and subcontinental cooking.
And if you don't want to make the complicated dish with 55 steps, you just make some ginger and garlic paste by either pounding it up or putting it in the food processor like equal amounts of raw ginger and raw garlic then covering them with some oil and keeping them in the fridge for i would say no longer than a week because then botulism enters the picture and i love using that at the beginning of when i'm about to saute some very fresh vegetables things like spinach that wilt really quickly or at this time of year you know we are starting to to see asparagus and snap peas and even English peas.
If you can't get fresh ones, you could use frozen English peas.
But you just want to sizzle that fat and ginger and garlic really, really quickly.
Oh, green beans is another really yummy place to do that.
And then you get this really flavorful, aromatic, delicious vegetable side dish.
So that's a yummy place to use it.
what do you got even though morgan said she is not so thrilled about the idea of ginger ale i would say as a non -alcohol partaker ginger has been like my go -to ingredient often when trying to like have a fun drink while everybody else is having their version of a fun drink you don't have to have ginger ale but you could use ginger in a beverage and make it really nice like ginger and and lime.
Ginger lemonade. Yeah, ginger lime.
Or the other thing, which I'm guessing if you don't like ginger ale, you might not like this either, but kombucha, you can use a lot of ginger in your kombucha.
We got another question about an ingredient that, like ginger, might be very commonplace to some people and very exotic for others.
I can't wait. This person did not leave their name, so mystery caller.
My question is, how do you incorporate kimchi in your cooking?
Any ideas or recipes for me because it's very healthy?
Thanks. I love kimchi.
I currently have three jars of it in my fridge.
And actually also one of them has ginger in it.
And ginger, I think really is a nice complement to kimchi and to Korean cooking.
So Morgan, if you want to jump in on the kimchi train, feel free.
What I do most commonly with it, I often just eat it as the like condiment to some sort of like quick fried thing, or put it on on top of eggs or something like that but i love it in grilled cheese i think it's a makes a delicious grilled cheese well i make a lot of kimchi fried rice with leftover rice and eggs and kimchi and whatever frozen vegetables i have like often peas make their way in there if i have leftover spinach or broccoli i throw that in there carrots i think that's a really really tasty kind of yummy quick breakfast or lunch just to go back to the grilled cheese for a second you
put Put the kimchi inside while you're grilling it.
Correct. Wow. It has precedent with like a Reuben.
Oh, right. Yeah. I was just thinking because of, you know, I normally eat kimchi from the fridge.
And so I think of it as a cold food, like a condiment, not something that you would cook and heat up.
No, there's so many things you can do.
You can put it in your grilled cheese.
You can put it in your fried rice.
You can chop up kimchi to return to an earlier question and put it in your dumplings.
plinks my thing that i am currently obsessed with and literally last night i was i went to bed thinking of this and how i was going to make this thing today i am obsessed with kimchi pancakes from my local korean restaurant it's so good my number one source for korean cooking recipes and and tips and information is Meng Qi.
I think she's a lot of people's number one source.
She is a YouTube sensation.
So in her kimchi pancake recipe, there's just kimchi, scallions, a little bit of sugar, flour, and water.
So you basically just mix all that stuff up and fry it in a nonstick pan in abundant oil, and it gets this really crisp exterior and And really satisfyingly chewy interior.
I think that would probably be my number one thing I would suggest that you make.
Oh, yeah. I love kimchi pancakes.
That's obviously a place I've had cooked kimchi.
You know, kimchi is definitely, its probiotic benefits are much stronger if you eat it raw, but they're not, I did do some reading about this, and they're not completely destroyed if you cook it.
So I usually cook it with a light touch, but even just the fiber, that fiber, it's good for you.
You know, I have kelp kimchi in the fridge right now, and I ate it the other day not with a Korean pancake but a pancake that Lindsey made from the sourdough starter oh every time she goes to feed it she's been making just like one pancake that we share it's not very big but it's super good she puts a little it sounds like war time she makes just one pancake a little one that we share true but it's really good she fries a little bit of green onion and then she makes the pancake on top of that and then it gets topped with a fried egg and dill and then we have kimchi on the side that sounds super
good does she just use the straight starter or does she like add other stuff or you wouldn't know i wouldn't hold on let me ask her let me let me go get her okay we're back oh hello special guest lindsay herway come tell us when you use up the discard of the sourdough to make a pancake do you just cook straight straight discard or do you like mix it with other flour and other stuff?
No, no, no. I just do straight up starter.
That's amazing. I did not know that you can do that.
And now I want to try because you have to throw away so much flour.
Okay. Lindsay is so uncomfortable with being on the microphone.
She has already taken off headphones and she's...
Oh, Lindsay's gone.
Okay. Goodbye. Bye.
If you like home cooking and you want to hear more from the two of us, I wanted to tell you about a new episode of my series Key Change, where I interview guests about a song that changed their life.
It's a new part of my music podcast, Song Exploder, and I had Samin on as a guest. She told me about the impact that the song Untouchable Face by Ani DiFranco had on her.
Here's a little clip of our conversation.
Oh, I've bleeped out some of the words for this because we don't swear on home cooking, but it's a pretty important part of the story.
So when you go to listen to the full episode, you'll hear the uncensored version.
So we went, and the concert was Ani DiFranco.
Had you heard Ani DiFranco's music before?
No. I had no idea who this person was.
And she performed this song, Untouchable Face, which, in Untouchable Face, she swears.
She says, f*** you and your untouchable face.
And I had no idea what the song was about.
I just heard the f***, you know?
Yeah. Which, to me, was so scandalous.
Like, I'm just this, like, you know, good brown kid.
Like, I was like, ooh.
I was sort of scandalized.
What was the reaction of the other people in the room?
I mean, everyone else knew all the words and was singing it along.
And like they were this was like hardly scandalous music for them.
People were listening to way more intense stuff.
And so not only are you in a room where the singer is dropping an F -bomb, everybody around you is singing along with it.
Oh, yeah, totally. And so, you know, you kind of probably by the end of the song, I was also singing along.
Yeah. So that's the clip.
I actually think it's a really moving story and shows a side of Samin that you might not know.
To hear the rest of our conversation, look for Samin's episode of Keychange on Song Exploder, wherever you get your podcasts.
Or go to songexploder .net slash keychange.
I hope you listen. Thanks.
If you're a fan of home cooking and the way it's all put together, but like me, you wish it had a little less Rishi in it.
Let me recommend Rishi's other podcast, the brilliant and magical Song Exploder.
Rishi's the host, but he cuts himself entirely out of the interviews.
He does with amazing musicians like Janelle Monáe, Robin, Fleetwood Mac, U2, and more.
So you just hear them talking about the creative process behind the making of one of their songs.
I was actually a fan of Song Exploder way before Rishi and I became friends.
Two of my favorite episodes are the ones with Solange and Sylvan Esso.
The show is so carefully and thoughtfully made, and it's just really inspiring for anyone who creates things.
Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
Well, I hope that answered some questions for you about what to make with kimchi.
I'm going to try it in a grilled cheese.
It's my preferred fermented cabbage.
Don't at me, Germans.
Okay, joining us now is Yo -Yo Ma.
He's a legendary cellist who has 18 Grammys, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and an incredibly generous spirit, as I think you'll hear.
I met Yo -Yo a couple years ago when I made an episode of my other podcast, Song Exploder, with him.
And when the stay -at -home orders came down, he started posting videos on Twitter of himself playing cello.
He said, in these days of anxiety, I wanted to find a way to continue to share some of the music that gives me comfort.
Oh, wow. And, you know, providing comfort is so much at the heart of cooking and at the heart of what we wanted to do with this podcast. Yeah.
He said he doesn't really cook, but he'd be happy to talk to us.
Let's give him a call.
This is so much technology, I can't believe it.
I know. The video chat is happening on one device, and then you have to record on the other.
But you are recording.
Yes. Perfect. This is what Rishi did to his dad.
Rishi is a fanatic techno -perfecto maniac.
Coming from you, this is really, really putting things into perspective, because I definitely know him as a perfectionist, but if you're saying that...
Okay, let's talk about food.
Oh my God, those. For you, I'm so curious because I know you don't think of yourself as much of a cook, but you know, we all eat.
So I'm wondering what maybe is your comfort food during this time?
You know, I've been thinking a lot about how we imagine things.
And one of the things I know that we all do really well is that we can imagine food.
We can almost taste it.
And I know my wife jokes with me because if she starts talking about food, she'll look at me and say, aha, I see you salivating.
So it actually releases something physical.
It just goes straight into sort of like, I'm salivating right now.
I'm not even imagining a specific food.
I was thinking before our call how if someone were trying to sell a house, one of the things they do is say, you know, why don't you roast a chicken?
You know, people walk into the house and they smell.
This is all home cooking.
Here's our home, darling.
We're moving in. And for me, it's the smell of a bakery.
So because I was born in Paris, you know, where people kind of do baking on site, you know, the boulangerie, patisseries.
And so at five o 'clock in the morning, you go out in the street and you can get this overwhelming smell of people making bread and French bread.
bread. And as a child, I used to eat those croissants.
And as an old man, I'm still eating those croissants.
But somehow, they taste best there for some reason.
So that's a really strong early memory.
And you just can talk to me about a baguette or a croissant, and you get this physical reaction from me, because it's right there.
If you can go back to that memory, that smell of the bakery and the taste of that Parisian croissant.
What's the music that you hear?
What's the music that goes along with that feeling?
Oh my gosh. I think of the apartment building that my parents lived in.
We lived right next to the Sorbonne in the Latin Quarter, so I could hear the bells that would be ringing every quarter of an hour.
So I could remember those sounds.
I remember the sound of the radio.
my parents would turn on a radio station where i think at six o 'clock or seven o 'clock in the evening there would be a piece i think it's appalachian spring and then it would say yes associations of the songs i heard jacques brell and edith piaf and And all of those, the chansonnier, that music is, if I listen to it, it's just, oh my gosh, I'm there.
That's so beautiful.
You know, I think of it for myself, I always talk about having a filing cabinet, like a flavor files.
I call them flavor files.
And so for me as a cook, I have this thing where I want to travel everywhere and taste sort of the real version of the thing in its place so that I can file that away.
and then try and cook toward that when I get home.
And a big part of that is all of these memories and these very specific sort of, you know, times that things brought me such joy or pleasure.
And that's what I'm sort of trying to recreate for myself and for the people around me, or now that I write recipes and try and communicate that to others through my writing.
And I don't know, it's so beautiful.
It's wonderful that you talk about those memories Because I think, for me, a piece of music is not about so much notes or playing it.
It's about actually creating or recapturing an emotional state of mind.
So every piece actually is almost like a pill that takes you to a very specific state of mind.
And if you're in that state of mind, you can recreate it.
And if something doesn't go right, that doesn't matter.
it means you don't worry about perfection if I'm playing for somebody it's very personal I think it's like if you're cooking for somebody I imagine it's the same thing it's like you're giving them love you're offering them something that you know might be useful in fact whenever I perform I think I am throwing a party everybody that comes into a room is my guest and I am the host so instead of food I'm offering them sounds.
And those sounds are designed for them to get to a certain state of mind.
And that's part of the communing.
I totally agree with that.
What about something for you?
Do you have incredible memories of smells from your mother's cooking?
Absolutely. My mom used to pack these amazing picnics.
Iranians are big into picnics.
And one of our biggest holidays in the year is sort of a national picnic day.
So my mom would just, she was really a master at like packing the cooler full of things.
And like there was always sort of flatbread and feta cheese and cucumbers, very, very cold fruit.
And those more than even anything that my mom cooked, and she's an amazing cook, I think are like the warmest and happiest childhood memories for me.
That's fantastic. What about you, Rishi?
Do your early memories comprise of foods?
Yeah, food was really the central language of love in my upbringing.
My mom is an incredible cook, and this was the way that she expressed her affection for us and for people who would come visit us.
Also, my house got the reputation for having the best food, so all my friends would always come over to my house, and we would hang out.
And then my mom would make us snacks or make us dinner.
And because of that, I've been constantly searching to find a way to replicate those kind of conditions as an adult.
I always want people to come to my place.
Comfort is being gathered with a bunch of people and really delicious food.
Did your mother make snacks?
Mine did. What did your mom make?
My mom, you know, she would make Indian snacks for sure.
But then she got just into all kinds of snacks.
My mom could make the greatest plate of nachos you've ever had in your life.
Wow. Tell us more. This was sort of like the Friday night hanging out movie snack in our house.
One of the things that was special about it too was she would use red kidney beans, but she would treat them sort of like Indian beans.
Like it would be rajma.
And that would be one of the layers along with the melted cheese and the jalapeno and the fresh tomatoes and the fresh red onion.
It was a level beyond what I think any of my friends ever expected out of nachos, which was like Velveeta and Tostitos.
That's fabulous. I want your mom's nachos.
Man, that sounds good.
So have you had any fresh baked bread while you've been home?
Yes. Well, actually, my wife started making some, and that kind of is amazing, because I get very hungry, and I have to resist immediately diving in and hogging the loaf, because it's not polite.
lately i think because there's less food when she's baking or making something i just feel so grateful for every morsel of food i put in my mouth thank you so much it's been so nice to chat with you samin rishi thank you so much both of you very, very nice people.
Thanks so much to Yo -Yo Ma for joining us.
You can follow him on Twitter at yo -yo underscore ma.
That's also where you can find his Songs of Comfort series.
This music is from the first video he posted.
It's Dvorak's Going Home.
You can find him with the hashtag songsofcomfort.
Also, one of my personal favorite interviews with him is his Song Exploder episode.
We'll put a link to that and to his Twitter up on the Home Cooking website.
When we were talking to Yo -Yo Ma, I noticed that I did something.
Well, let me ask you this.
How do you pronounce C -R -O -I -S -S -A -N -T?
Okay, so this has been a lifelong issue for me, also because there's a weird obsession with French in Iranian culture, and in Farsi, there's a lot of French words.
So there's a lot of faux faux French pronunciation.
So I'm like that fool who goes like, we'll be seeing an English.
I'll be like, oh, I'll take two cookies, three muffins and a croissant.
It just hurts me to say croissant, even though there are so many other French and words from other languages that I pronounce completely wrong.
If we were just talking, I'd be like, da da da da da, and a croissant.
I would sort of like make it C -W -S -S -A -N -T.
It's a tricky line to walk for me because on the one hand, I don't want to sound like a pretentious jerk.
And on the other hand, I don't want to sound like I am completely culturally insensitive to the correct way that things are pronounced.
Food is such a great ambassador to other cultures.
But then how do you treat that relationship respectfully while also making it feel like you don't have to be fluent in the language of the region where it comes from in order to be able to say the thing okay this is another podcast like that's a whole other podcast okay yeah yeah okay it's just very complicated the end well it leads me to one more question that we got that comes from jessica because the first part of her question is just how to pronounce the thing that she's writing about which I love.
She writes First of all how do I pronounce this word?
It's C -O -N -F -I -T Okay I pronounce it confit which is how I heard it way back when and I don't really know that there's another way to pronounce it.
It's definitely not confit Like if you said confit I would have no idea what you're talking about.
You'd throw a confit Yeah.
Second, she says, what does it taste like?
Isn't it really oily?
And is it possible to confit things that are not duck?
Related question, can you use confit as a verb?
Yes. Oh, this is fun.
This is fun. Okay. Well, let me answer some of your more simple questions first. Okay.
Jessica, you can absolutely use confit as a verb.
Really what it means is to cook slowly in fat, often the animal or ingredients own fat, but some ingredients don't come with their her own fat so we have to use another form of fat i just think of it as poaching very slowly in fat until the thing is sort of silky and soft and luscious in texture you can make tuna confit which is i think of as just like poaching tuna in olive oil you can make vegetable confits like one of my favorites in the summer is tomato confit which is tomatoes that are very slowly cooked in olive oil until they're falling apart yeah they actually don't look like they're falling
apart part, they look held together.
But the second they land on your tongue or on your plate, and your fork sort of hits them, they explode into like a delicious, juicy mess.
You can make artichoke confit.
You know, probably the classic form of confit is with duck.
In the south of France, in the mountain regions where let's say like butter is less used and other fats are more used.
Duck confit is a really traditional dish and it's made to preserve the duck, you know, for later use.
So the breast is usually eaten first and then the leg is cooked very slowly in rendered duck fat and then preserved, you know, pre -refrigeration, preserved sort of in the basement or in a cool cave under like a comfy blanket.
Did you say a confit blanket A blanket or a comfy blanket?
A comfy blanket. A comfy blanket.
Okay. It's a really tasty way to preserve your own duck at home and you don't even need to wait weeks or months to eat it.
You can eat it that same day.
So while there's a lot of fat involved in the preparation, you typically like melt off all of the fat and save that for another use like cooking potatoes or making another round of confit.
So it's not that the meat that you're eating is super greasy.
you know, it's of course rich, but it's not any fattier than, you know, any other sort of like pan fried or sauteed kind of dish.
You know, another version of this dish that comes from another culture that we're probably all familiar with is carnitas, which is pork shoulder that's cooked very slowly in rendered pork fat, also known as lard. And then once it's like so tender, falling off the bone tender, it gets fried at a higher temperature to get like crispies on the the outside.
And so same thing is my favorite thing for duck confit is once it's cooked, you cook it skin side down to render all of the fat out of the skin and get really crispy duck skin.
And then you have the sort of melt in your mouth bits that come from the leg and fall off the bone and it's super tasty.
So is that our last question?
No, no, no, I don't want to end.
How are we going to end this thing?
It's a good question.
I just feel like we have to take a break on the podcast because if I give one more bean recipe, people are going to start calling me a has -been.
Now I know what it's like.
And I like it. It just doesn't feel very good, does it?
It feels great. I appreciate it.
Well, that's it for this episode, Samin.
And I guess this is the end of our four -part miniseries.
You know, when we first started talking about doing this show, the future was pretty uncertain.
It did not seem like the quarantine was going to last this long, that we'd be stuck in our homes for this long.
So four episodes seemed like plenty.
I know. And yet here we are.
There's a lot of uncertainty in terms of what our lives are going to look like.
And there is also a little bit of uncertainty in terms of if we're going to do more episodes.
But puns notwithstanding, I've had fun.
You don't have to say it with so much enthusiasm.
I mean, I've had less fun hearing the puns.
I've had more fun hearing from people all over the world about how they're cooking and what obstacles they're facing.
And I have loved the idea that our stupid jokies have brought people some comfort and joy and relief.
And I hope that we get to do it again in some weird way and maybe under better circumstances.
Yeah. But don't leave us because you never know what we're going to put in the feed.
That's right. Thanks so much, Samin, for doing the show with me.
And I also want to thank all the people who helped us make the show.
Zach McNeice, our mixer, Margaret Miller, our editor, Gary Lee, and Casey Deal.
And Mamie Rangold, who made us our wonderful logo and all of the episode art.
Thanks to Richard Parks for the sound design in this episode.
And thanks to the Radiotopia Podcast Network for taking us under their wing.
And thanks to everyone who's sent messages and questions.
If we didn't get a chance to answer your question, I'm sorry.
But every single email was really appreciated.
We're going to leave the website up with lists of resources and every dish that we talked about.
And also links to buy the magnet and support our fundraiser for No Kid Hungry.
Our website, again, is homecooking .show.
If you want to support the show, you can leave us a rating or a review.
on Apple Podcasts. Five stars only.
It's what I say every time I like put food out for my neighbors.
Yeah. I put out like tapioca pudding.
I'm like, leave us a review on Yelp.
Five stars only. That's great.
Follow us on social media so we can stay in touch. I'm at Chow Samin.
And I'm at Rishi Hirway.
Rishi, happy cookies.
Samin, happy lasagna.
If you say happy lasagna, I'll kill you.
I said lasagna escape.
Okay. Well, I hope to talk to you soon.
And in the meantime, stay healthy, eat well, and take care of each other.
Thanks so much for listening.
This has made quarantine so much more bearable.
I hope you have lots of great meals and snacks between now and when the quarantine ends, which will hopefully be soon.
Until then, I'm Samin.
And I'm Rishi. And we'll be home cooking.
Radiotopia from PRX.
