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Special Sauce: The White Moustache’s Homa Dashtaki Makes the Best Yogurt in the US [1/2] Jan 10, 2019

Show notes

I have a confession: Until Daniel Gritzer told me about The White Moustache a couple of months ago, I 'd never heard of it, much less its founder, Homa Dashtaki. Now, after interviewing Homa and trying her yogurt, I can tell you that Daniel was right when he said it would change my life. First of all, the yogurt is so tasty, so thick and creamy, that I can't think of a reason not to eat some every day (which I've done ever since first trying it). Secondly, Homa is a force of nature, someone whose point of view and story might be better than her ridiculously good yogurt, as you'll find out in her two episodes of Special Sauce.

Homa even arrived on this earth in dramatic fashion. "I was born the day of the Iranian Revolution," she tells me. "So the day that the Ayatollah arrived in Iran I was born, and my mom had to go to the hospital in a police escort because there was a curfew, and that's probably why I'm so wired to like chaos all around me."

After emigrating as a child to Orange County, she ended up going to law school and, yes, practicing corporate law for a while. Why? "Oh, I loved the whole idea of it. You would tell me what you wanted, you'd put down on paper, everything would be clear," she recalls. "And I remember when I first found out about prenups, I remember everyone was very negative about them. I'm like, 'How wonderful! When you're getting into this really intense relationship that everyone would just be above board, you either know how great it's gonna be, or how fucked you're gonna be. It's all laid out.'"

Her legal career was cut short after she was laid off from her firm. And, after a period of self-described drifting, she found herself drawn to one of the foods that was a staple of her childhood. "We picked making yogurt because to me it was easy, I was being lazy about it," she says. "I'm like, 'There's only one ingredient, milk, right? Now how hard can this be?'"

It turned out that Homa fell in love with making yogurt. "I don't know if you've ever made yogurt at home, but it's a very magical process," she observes. "It's almost like you step into a time portal, and you have to slow down time. In order for your yogurt to take, it has to be coddled. You have to boil the milk, and you have to get it to the right temperature. That's actually no easy task. You have to pay attention to the milk, you can't just set it and forget it."

She and her father started out making small batches- eight gallons to be exact- of yogurt overnight at a nearby Egyptian restaurant and selling it at a farmers market in Orange County. She was in heaven, until the state of California shut her down. "I had finally found something that was truly my own, and it felt so- I know it sounds cliché and it sounds cheesy- but it was so authentic, and I was so lost, that to have this thing ripped away from me felt so incredibly unfair," she recalls. "And I just fought back after weeping for days. I mean, it was like somebody had ripped something away from me."

To find out how she got her yogurt groove back, you're just going to have to listen to Homa tell the story herself on Special Sauce. It's definitely a story you won't want to miss.

--- The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/01/special-sauce-homa-dashtaki-1.html

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Special Sauce: René Redzepi on Apprenticeships, El Bulli, and Being a Better Leader [2/2] Jan 03, 2019

Show notes

In this week's Special Sauce interview with René Redzepi, he describes his journey from being a 15-year-old novice cook to culinary visionary, which started when he was an apprentice at Pierre André, a Michelin-starred, classic French restaurant in Copenhagen. "I spent four years with [chef-owner Philippe Houdet], and it was an incredible time," Redzepi says. "I mean, I basically went from being a child to being an adult like overnight. Just like that you're working 85 hour weeks and with responsibilities."

Those four years were incredibly important to Redzepi. "I still think of him so much, when I think back to these moments that make you, and that give you the courage and the power to believe in yourself further on."

But what really blew Redzepi's mind as a young cook was a meal at El Bulli. "I was with a friend and Ferran [Adria] was there, we ate and it was just mind blowing to me at the time," he recalls. "So different to anything. I thought everything was French food and suddenly you see yourself in Spain and it's like, I cannot believe what's going on here. What is this? It broke everything for me. So I went up to Ferran immediately after the meal and said, "I want to work here. Can I come and work here?" And, after writing Adria a letter, he did.

Following a stint at the French Laundry Redzepi returned to Copenhagen and opened the original Noma in 2003. He believes that Noma's location has played an important role in its development. "One of the reasons why I think Noma's become what we are is we were lucky to be in a small town where nothing was really happening," he says. "We were the last stop on the subway, culinary wise, and suddenly all this attention started happening and everybody sort of chipped in...the community sort of embraced it."

Redzepi is candid about the fact that the restaurant's original success was not due to his leadership skills. "I spent years being an outrageously bad leader," he confesses. "I was a screamer for many years, I was. I just didn't know how to handle things. You become so thin-skinned that the smallest problems become disasters and then at a certain point you're like, 'What am I doing? You go into work and you're not even happy...You go to work and you're angry. What's the point?'"

Redzepi says that finding a way to become happier in his work played a crucial role in both his and Noma's development, but to find out just how he managed to do that, I'm afraid you're going to have to listen to this week's episode of Special Sauce. -- The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/01/special-sauce-rene-redzepi-part-2.html

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Ask Special Sauce, Holiday Edition: Stella and Daniel on What They Hate About the Holidays Dec 18, 2018

Show notes

Stella Parks and Daniel Gritzer are back for the second part of our Ask Special Sauce holiday edition, and we tackle some of the most pressing issues many of us face when cooking during the holidays.

For example, take the sticky subject of royal icing, which, according to Stella, is great for making a bunch of holiday-appropriate treats far in advance."You can make a bunch of frosted snowflakes, and they'll keep for weeks, without any kind of loss of quality, because there's nothing really perishable happening," Stella says. "The high sugar content of the frosting ensures that there's not really any bacterial activity coming from the egg whites."

Mr. Gritzer offers up some advice for prepping and storing fresh herbs, including the importance of using a salad spinner to wash and dry them. The key to storing tender herbs like cilantro and parsley? "Treat them like fresh-cut flowers," Daniel says. For further instructions, you're going to have to listen, but I will give you a hint that the next thing to do involves herb millinery.

Daniel also answers the vexing question of how to cook a beef tenderloin to satisfy both the people who like their meat rare and the folks who like their meat medium, which I will similarly leave for you to discover.

Finally, I asked both of them to tell me what they don't like about the holidays. Daniel's answer won't surprise you; his is a fairly common complaint. But Stella's, on the other hand, is most decidedly not commonplace. In fact, it's a hilarious, Grinchian shocker. But this is one gift I'm not giving away. You're going to have to find out for yourself by checking out the episode.

Happy Holidays, Serious Eaters, from all of us here at Serious Eats World HQ!

https://www.seriouseats.com/2018/12/special-sauce-holiday-cooking-part-2-2.html

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Ask Special Sauce, Holiday Edition: Stella and Daniel on Combustible Artichokes and Making a Better Cookie Dec 13, 2018

Show notes

I had such a good time answering your Thanksgiving questions with Kenji and Stella on our recent installment of Call Special Sauce, we thought we'd do the same thing in a two-episode series leading up to the end-of-year holidays. This week and next, Daniel Gritzer joins Stella to answer your holiday cooking and baking questions, and I can tell you that I learned a lot. You'll want to listen to the episode or read the transcript to hear Stella's and Daniel's complete answers, but here's a preview:

If you're among the few Serious Eaters who haven't heard of roasted sugar, one of Stella's genius inventions, Stella offers a quick definition: "So toasted sugar is just plain, white, granulated sugar that has been tossed into an oven for some period of time, and that period of time, it's kind of like toasting bread crumbs or toasting almonds or something, where you can give it a little bit [of time] or a lot to pull out different flavor profiles, like a light toast or a dark toast.... The sugar starts to thermally decompose, which is to say, it starts to caramelize without ever melting, and so you end up getting this kind of dry, granular, lightly caramelized product."

What's in it for the baker, you might wonder? One advantage is that using roasted sugar in your holiday cookies makes them less sweet: "It's still mostly sucrose, so it behaves like sugar in any recipe that calls for white sugar. It's a total one-to-one swap, but because some caramelization has taken place, it doesn't taste as sweet, and it does bring a little bit more complexity, some toastiness, some nuttiness, and that sort of thing coming into a dough."

To improve on classic holiday sugar cookies- you know, the kind you roll out and cut into shapes and frost with colorful icing and pack into tins as gifts- Stella advocates a slight substitution: "Most cookies are all-butter cookies, but instead of using pure butter in this recipe, I substitute a little bit of it with refined coconut oil. And refined coconut oil is a style that has no aroma or flavor of coconut. So even if you're like, 'I hate coconut,' this is not something that's going to come into play in this recipe. It's just there for the added richness, because if you've ever made a rolled sugar cookie cutout, you may have noticed that they can be a little bit dry, especially over time, if you're trying to make a cookie that keeps well. So using a little bit of coconut oil in the dough helps it to stay more moist and rich, and it helps it seem more rich, because coconut oil is higher in fat per ounce when compared to butter."

Besides advising a reader on how to successfully cook a big (and pricey) standing rib roast, Daniel describes his method for making crispy Roman-Jewish fried artichokes, a traditional Hanukkah dish: "It's a two-stage cooking process, where first you cook the artichokes in olive oil at a lower temperature.... That's to make them tender. They come out. You kind of smash them flat a little bit and open them up so that they kind of look l… Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Special Sauce: René Redzepi on Opening Noma at 25 [1/2] Dec 07, 2018

Show notes

It was a thrill to sit across the table from René Redzepi to record this episode of Special Sauce. The pioneering chef-restaurateur is the force behind Copenhagen's Noma, which has been declared the best restaurant in the world no fewer than four times. As you might easily imagine, our conversation was far-reaching and revealing.

Redzepi and I started off by talking about his new book The Noma Guide to Fermentation, co-authored by Noma's fermentation lab director David Zilber. Fermentation, he told me, is "basically adult Legos you play with. And then as we started fermenting, it was like two basketfuls of them and it's up to us as cooks to figure out how to build with them and what goes what, where, and how. And once you figure that out, cooking becomes easier and more delicious." René is a true believer in experimenting with fermentation, and recommends home cooks give it a shot. He told me that he thinks once people "discover and figure out how to use fermented products in their daily lives, [their experience] cooking will be better and easier."

Our conversation transitioned from fermentation to Redzepi's childhood, which was partially spent in Macedonia. "It was a very rural lifestyle," he explained. "If you wanted to visit a neighbor, you went on a horse....No refrigerators at home, every single meal was cooked. They were farmers, they worked the land. If you wanted a glass of milk, you milked the cow. If you wanted butter, you had to churn the cream." Redzepi said his extremely modest childhood helped fuel his passion, adding that "the reason why I have had the drive that I have is because when you grow up with nothing, and even going hungry to bed often as a child, this urge to make it was just a really, really powerful urge I had when we first started. I wanted to make it no matter what."

How did that drive propel him to open Noma 15 years ago, at the tender age of 25? And why did he close up shop at the height of the restaurant's acclaim? To get the answers to those two intriguing questions I'm afraid you'll have to tune into this week's Special Sauce. You'll be glad you did. I promise.

--- The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2018/12/special-sauce-rene-redzepi.html

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Special Sauce: Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook on What Makes Israeli Cuisine Unique [2/2] Nov 29, 2018

Show notes

In part two of my enlightening and heartfelt conversation with Chef Michael Solomonov and his partner Steven Cook, authors of Israeli Soul: Easy, Essential, Delicious we took a deep dive into- what else?- the soul of Israeli food.

First of all, I became really envious when they told me about the kind of research they did for the book, which involved going to over 80 restaurants in eight days. That's my kind of trip!

And, apparently, when you eat at that many restaurants, you end up discovering a lot about a place. Cook noted that in the book they try to explain where many of the culinary traditions in the country came from, and what makes them Israeli, by documenting "the stories of all these cultures that have come together in the last 100 years, and evolved the cuisine that was already there, and brought in new traditions." As Solomonov notes, too, part of what's unique about the country is that "most Israelis are a few generations away from their family coming from a totally different part of the world," which makes for an interesting mix of food traditions.

But Cook also had one observation that stuck with me about what makes Israeli cuisine unique. He said, "Because of the way that so many different cultures have established themselves in Israel, within the last several generations, I think that there's an attachment to tradition that is really special, and something that we see probably less of in America. As food obsessed as we are now, it's about what's new and hot. It's not about doing something, perfecting something over generations, doing one thing, handing it off to your children. And that's really an inspiring way, I think, to think about food, and I think it comes through in how it tastes."

I learned so much from these passionate, smart advocates for Israeli food, and I have a feeling that many serious eaters will feel the same way after listening to this week's Special Sauce.

The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2018/11/special-sauce-michael-solomonov-steven-cook-part-two.html

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[Rerun] Ask Special Sauce: Kenji and Stella Troubleshoot Your Thanksgiving (2017) Nov 21, 2018

Show notes

When I was mulling over what we could do on Special Sauce for Thanksgiving, I immediately thought about stress reduction. Making the big dinner can be stressful for any number of reasons, and while we design all our Thanksgiving offerings with an eye to making the holiday as hassle-free as possible, I decided to continue with that theme in this special edition of Ask Special Sauce. I invited Kenji and Stella on to answer as many questions from our community as we could, since they know a lot about a lot of Thanksgiving-related topics. The two of them delve into a myriad of tips and tricks, from figuring out what to do with leftovers and accommodating your guests' allergies and dietary restrictions, and they discuss the differences between stuffing and dressing. (Kenji even has an ingenious solution for people who would like to cook their stuffing in their bird without overcooking the meat.) We will also provide a full transcript of our conversation on our website, for those of you who'd prefer to read it, and have included highlights and links to the recipes mentioned in this episode below. There are so many people that I have to thank concerning Special Sauce. I'm thankful for everyone who makes the podcast a joy to create. Our producer, Marty Goldensohn, our associate producer, Marissa Chen, everyone here both at CDM Studios and the other Serious Eats' Special Sauce home, the Radio Foundation. And a big thank you especially to our listeners, whether you're new to the podcast or tune in weekly. Without you, there would be no Special Sauce. Happy Thanksgiving, Serious Eaters, from me and all of us here at Serious Eats!

3:23 Kenji addresses a question about make-ahead savory foods for the holidays.

Recipes: Warm Brussels Sprout Salad with Bacon and Hazelnut Vinaigrette, Make-Ahead Roasted Squash and Kale Salad

6:27 Stella’s tips for make-ahead desserts.

Recipes: Pumpkin Layer Cake, Pumpkin Pie, Cherry Pie

8:28 Kenji explains how to get the most out of kitchen space when planning your Thanksgiving menu.

Recipes: Mashed Potatoes, Mashed Sweet Potatoes

10:25 Debate: Should pies be re… Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Call Special Sauce, Thanksgiving Edition: Kenji and Stella on Good Gravy and Loving White Meat Nov 16, 2018

Show notes

For the last couple of Thanksgivings, we've done call-in episodes of Special Sauce with Stella and Kenji to answer the holiday-cooking questions stumping the Serious Eats community. We love producing these episodes, and our audience seems to love listening to (or reading) them, so we've decided to make it a Serious Eats holiday tradition.

This year, we were treated to a mini treatise from Kenji on gravy, which, I'm not ashamed to admit, has vexed me so much over the years that I've resorted to tubs of the store-bought stuff. Kenji broke down the basic process of making it, then described one of his favorite secret ingredients: "The other thing I like to do with my gravy, which some people consider cheating—whatever, I don't care—is that we add a little bit of soy sauce to it. This is actually something that my grandmother did, my mother did. This is an Alt family, a Nakanishi family tradition, actually.... When I do it, I actually put enough to make it taste a little bit like soy sauce, just because I like that flavor, but even if you don't want that flavor, even just a little splash of it, I find, it gives it a nicer color, and it also really deepens the flavor and brings out some of the other, more roasty flavors in the turkey."

Meanwhile, Stella had reassuring words for cooks who think the best-tasting pumpkin pie depends on fresh roasted pumpkin. If roasting your own sugar pumpkins and scooping out the flesh adds to the coziness of your Thanksgiving experience, she says, then go for it. But "if you don't enjoy that process, if you don't feel like, man, this is really improving my day and my dessert experience, there's not really any huge benefit, because the companies that make canned pumpkin are using the most delicious type of squash product, pumpkin product, that they can. They have scientists and engineers and farmers, all working together to produce this one glorious thing. It's like, let them do their job." The upshot of all of this being that "if you've got a recipe that calls for pumpkin purée, don't beat yourself up. Grab a can of pumpkin purée, and just take it easy."

Stella and Kenji's Thanksgiving troubleshooting ranged far and wide, tackling the most challenging questions with their customary aplomb and grace: How to time the many dishes that go into a Thanksgiving repast so that they all end up on the table together? What kinds of pies travel best? If you have to make your turkey in advance, what's the best way to reheat it? And many, many more that we're sure serious eaters will appreciate. If that isn't enough to entice you into listening, in the course of our conversation, both Kenji and Stella revealed themselves to be lovers of white-meat turkey and explained why. (I was skeptical, as you'll find out, but you'll no doubt render your own judgment about this controversial position.)

This special episode of Special Sauce is our way of thanking the millions of readers and listeners who have welcomed us into your kitchens and your stomachs over the years. Happy Thanksgiving, serious eaters.

The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/preview?record=439838

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Special Sauce: Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook on True Partnership [1/2] Nov 08, 2018

Show notes

When we booked multiple James Beard Award-winning chef Michael Solomonov and his business partner Steven Cook on Special Sauce to talk about their new book [Israeli Soul: Easy, Essential, Delicious](a%20href=%20) and their restaurants ([Zahav, Dizengoff, Federal Doughnuts, among others), I thought they'd talk a lot about a typical chef-restaurateur partnership and contemporary Israeli food. I couldn't have been more wrong. What I heard instead was an incredibly moving story of a friendship made stronger by struggle. Zahav was no overnight sensation, Cook is no ordinary restaurateur, and Solomonov is not your everyday rock star chef. For example, here is Solomonov speaking about the nature of his relationship with Cook: "It is a true partnership and we are equally on the hook for things when they go wrong. We've learned how to grow together and how to remove ego...and at this point we've done this long enough where if we don't like something we're comfortable talking about it. Like it's safe. We encourage it. With our team and certainly with our managers. The last thing that we want are for people to just agree with us." Zahav's success was by no means assured at the outset. Israeli food was not exactly trendy in Philadelphia, or anywhere else for that matter. The first year was fraught with peril, but the peril ended up inspiring Solomonov and Cook to experiment with the cuisine and be less hemmed in by tradition. As Solomonov says, "We had no salaries and we were going to close the business and we were squeaking along to really make payroll, to stay open. It forced us to be really diligent and to think about our priorities. And actually, in a way, it freed us too. That was when Zahav, the food or the way that we cook now, sort of came to fruition." Or, as Cook puts it, "There's nothing like the desperation of impending failure to sharpen your focus." Solomonov and Cook were incredibly candid about Solomonov's well-publicized struggles with substance abuse; Solomonov describes how Cook found out, three months after Zahav opened, that he was keeping secret his crack and heroin addiction. Solomonov says, "Steve, as a friend and business partner and brother, was the first to be supportive and to say, literally, you know, you have a problem and we want you to get help." The Solomonov-Cook episodes of Special Sauce are so full of life, love, pain, and redemption, they should not be missed. Be sure to tune in next week for the next installment.

--- The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2018/11/special-sauce-michael-solomonov-steven-cook-1-2.html

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Special Sauce: Sam Sifton on Food in the Internet Age [2/2] Nov 01, 2018

Show notes

In part two of my repartee-filled interview with New York Times food editor Sam Sifton, we delved into the intersection of food and technology. When I asked Sam how he thinks the internet has impacted the food media landscape, he said "I think it has changed food for the better and for the worse. You know, there's something kind of delicious as a critic, at least in the first years of being able to go to the internet, to get the photographic notes that you would've taken if you weren't raised like a gentleman....You know, this is everybody obsessively photographing their food but, after a few years of that, now chefs are creating dishes that are meant to be photographed. That's a problem, right? The sort of Instagram-bait platings are a problem, so you've got to kind of be careful about it but, on the whole, I can go on my phone and get a reservation in two seconds and order a car and get there and take pictures of the food and then get a news alert or have the president send an alert to my phone, as he did today. That's amazing! That's cool! That's great!"

And, since Sam wrote a cookbook exclusively devoted to Thanksgiving, I also had to ask him for his top tips for the notoriously challenging holiday meal. "Okay, three things that you need to know about Thanksgiving that you don't really know already," he said. "Number one: everything is going to be fine. It really is. I promise you. It's going to be fine. Two: you need more butter than you think. You really do. Three: Thanksgiving is not the time to litigate that issue [Whatever the hot-button of the moment happens to be]. It really isn't. Let it go. Let it go for the meal."

For a whole lot more New York Times food wisdom, including the origins of the newspaper's cooking app, and a great deal of fun food-gabbing, check out this week's episode of Special Sauce.

The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2018/11/special-sauce-sam-sifton-part-2.html

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