Missy Robbins, chef and founder of Lilia and Misi in Brooklyn, teaches a masterclass in making pasta at home—she explains why her noodle recipes include a copious number of egg yolks, why she often leaves salt out, and her secret to cacio e pepe. Plus, Romy Gill takes us on a food tour of Kashmir; Adam Gopnik explains the rules of time in the kitchen; and we make Zucchini and Chickpea Salad with Tahini Yogurt. (Originally aired August 5, 2022.)
Get this week’s recipe for Zucchini and Chickpea Salad with Tahini Yogurt here (http://salad-tahini-yogurt?allow_token=b6dc0d22-18cf-4fa9-a461-a99f07abd220) .
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[Music] this is milk Street radio from PRX I’m your host Christopher Kimble today Missy Robbins is here to teach us the rules of making great pasta and sauces at home lesson number one the most important ingredient is the one you leave out to do a mushroom dish I want it to be about the mushrooms if I’m going to do a fennel dish I want it to be about the fennel and I edit Myself by always remembering that cuz often you still have a tendency to kind of say like oh what does that need and often what it needs is for you to take something out of it first up it’s my interview with chef and writer Romy Gil for her book on the Himalayan Trail Gil traveled across Kashmir and L do in search of recipes and stories Romy welcome to Mill Street thank you for having me so for your book you traveled all over Kashmir uh so why did you choose Kashmir and then what did you find since I was a young girl I’ve always wanted to go to Kashmir because if you know India if you know the map of India India is a very big country we speak different languages we look different we have very different rituals uh food is very different so you know I used to watch as a little girl Bollywood films all these actors and actresses running around the snow and and you know where I grew up there was no snow I had never seen snow and and then when I met my husband he’s a computer chip designer so he used to travel on his scooter to all these places in Himalayas and he used to show me all these photographs so it’s very very fascinated with that you know one of the recipes I really loved was simple it was red kidney beans you actually you could use a can of kidney beans but you heat some ghee you add some whole spices you fry them add some ground spices and cook it for 15 minutes I just love the idea of infusing a fairly Bland ingredient like kidney beans with all these spices which I think in in some ways kind of summarizes what I love about this style of cooking thank you for saying that because I just think that the recipes in the books is I know somebody will say oh where do I find the black card or where do I find the Shahira the Shahira I have to explain which is the black human it you cannot overpower it you have to use it like a pinch it just smells like I don’t know if you know tonic water so it smells like that so you have to make sure you’re adding it less and then if you have these store covered ingredients if you buy these you can make so many different dishes with that so cooking goat or lamb in yogurt why cooking yogurt does it actually change texture does it change flavor what what is the yogurt doing for you so actually it not only tenderizes meat or vegetarian dishes but also it gives that creaminess uh and and also it yogurt is something which is used widely in India in very very different dishes but I think these spices when they used for certain dishes certain things like when they use in gushtaba which is a meat Bowl which is cooked in the yogurt and then added mint on the top it just works I think yogurt mint and the spices it works really well with the creaminess but also gives you nice kind of a sour taste to the dishes you know many cultures have beetballs and that includes cashmir Cuisine too but you stuff your meatballs with apricots which I thought was really interesting my friend who is a wonderful Chef called prati he’s kashmiri Pandit so his his mom said that you know kashmiri pundits use this as a meat ball and they add the apricots when they’re cooking it is the utterly most delicious dish because when you’re biting in the meat the sweetness comes and then the wonderful spices that has when we are cooking the broth I mean you know you can find any apricots in the world but those apricots maybe the soil is different it’s just the most delicious apricots in the world well you have the most delicious we have the worst so I I I haven’t had a good apricot in 20 years for whatever reason um you talk a lot about Kashmir saffron and you talk about the fact there’s a lot of fake saffron in the world or low quality so is kmir saffron the best in the world you think it is indeed the best in the world I’m the soil makes so much difference and the way they do it the fames still come together and you know work on the farm and as a whole family work together these saffron fills only bloom for a few weeks you know you get really few stigmas out of a saffron and they use each part of the flower but if you don’t know the right and the wrong saffron the saffron which is is from Kashmir it’s more floral it’s got the most lovely taste to it and I have tast there so many different saffrons from Iran and from Spain and from other parts where they grow I I still think the saffron in Kashmir is the best in the world hares you know most people think about chili paste but hares is also a mutton recipe in cashmere right it is it is um and it’s also in Hyderabad and India they have the Hara as well where there is a Muslim culture so when I went there you know I um tasted the Harissa it’s very heavy you cannot eat too much of it but it’s the most delicious and it’s a labor of love if you’re going to make it at home it’s a labor of love because it takes longer time the meat is cooked on the bone and then once it’s low cooked for a long time then you shred it and then you cook it in the rice flour and then you Blitz it and then you eat it with a flatbread that’s how I tast it in chaii which is a really Modern Cafe and then I went to the old town which is a old city in Shri nagar where a lot of workers you know who go to work in the morning will go go at 5:00 and eat that and it keeps you filled for a whole day it’s so heavy you can’t it’s very rich and heavy but it’s the most delicious thing to have but it’s a labor of love so give me one recipe uh there would be a good introduction for people they they can make it home that would really sort of sum up some of the great ways of thinking about food in cashmir I think the tabak M which is super easy and the kebabs are super super easy but um in Chic kebabs say people might need saffron to have that flavor if you don’t have it’s fine too but tabak masas which are the ribs all you do is boil the meat and spices and then you fry them shallow fry them or deep fry them it’s up to you but it’s fried in ki which is so much nicer if you don’t know what ke is it’s clarified butter or if you can use oil as well to do that that’s the most easiest thing to do I would recommend people to do that Romy it’s been a real pleasure and now I have a new destination cashmir thank you thank you so much for having [Music] me that was Romy Gil author of on the Himalayan Trail next up it’s time to answer some of your cooking questions with my co-host Sarah Molton Sarah is the star of Sarah’s weeknight meals on public television also author of home cooking 101 [Music] Sarah are you ready I am so ready Chris welcome to Milk Street who’s calling hi this is Jill heric from Portland Oregon hi Jill how can we help you today hi I have a question about baking with frozen blueberries okay the recipes I’ve been using I notice always say if you’re using frozen blueberries to use them like keep them Frozen Don’t saw them out right and the challenge I have with it is that like just recently I was making a blue BL Berry coffee cake and what I noticed was the temperature was 350 in the oven for about like an hour because the blueberries were frozen I ended up keeping it in there for like 90 minutes which then just baked the sides the edges but not the center and then it took like another hour it was just a big mess so I was wondering if you had any recommendations for that wow I think something else is going on besides the blueberries have you ever made that particular coffee cake with fresh blueberri no first time everything I’ve ever heard corroborates what you just said which is you should use the blueberries Frozen if you don’t want them to sink to the bottom you can toss them in a little flour or something and you should increase the cooking time slightly but not by a half an hour to an hour I mean that’s crazy maybe you could tell us you know what were the ingredients in the cake and what kind of pan you cooked it in okay it was an 8 by 8 in pan and then for the cake it said cups of fresh blueberries fresh or frozen flour baking powder baking soda salt cinnamon nutmeg sugar grated um lemon zest how much flour two cups of flour well I think that’s the problem right there are you sure it said two cups of blueberries because two cups of flour and two cups of blueberries seems kind of crazy yeah it says one pint and then in parentheses two cups of blueberries wow yeah I mean I would normally expect half a cup blueberries or 3/4 cup or not more than a cup there’s just not enough batter and so you’re ending up cooking a wet mess in the middle right yeah I agree 100% I would just find a different recipe I would say that’s probably the problem you can thaw out the blueberries if you want toss them in flour and then make sure you get rid of the excess but I’m with you and Sarah I normally would just throw in the froz ones yeah I agree so it was supposed to be an hour you cooked it for an hour and a half or two hours and when you got finished cooking it what was the inside like after 90 minutes I didn’t want the sides to burn or overcook so then I just cut out the sides and I kept I kept stabbing it with a fork to see if the center was done and then after like two hours it was just this gross mess that just was stabbed with a fort to death so you made one terrible mistake you did not capture this for Tik Tok because this would have gone viral it’s not you it’s the recipe it is the recipe absolutely not your fault at all and it’s not the blueberry’s fault either so find a better recipe that’s all go to sirious eats for example I always trust their work and look for a blueberry recipe like that I think you’ll see a very different proportion yes yes Jill take care good luck thank you thanks bye bye welcome to Milk Street who’s calling and where are you calling from I’m calling from hot and humid Orlando Florida how can we help you so I love to cook especially if I have a glass of wine or like three but I have found myself not cooking as often lately I’m cooking for one and when I do cook it’s with a recipe and I’m stuck eating the same thing for a week or I’m stuck with all of these ingredients that I have no idea what to do with and they just go bad I’m wondering can you help me cook for one and help me get out of this recipe rut oddly enough I do cook for one my kids often don’t like what I make and my wife is eating yogurt for dinner or something so I like to think about three categories rice beans and pasta so on a Sunday if you roast a chicken like I often do or roast a pour tenderloin or whatever some protein you can repurpose that in different ways by changing the base you can use beans as a base lentils or you can use white beans or black beans you can use rice as a base you can use pasta as a base so cooking a protein on a Sunday repurposing it with different bases is another way of looking at it another way to think about it is to reverse it and I I’ll make a big pot of black beans for example in a instant pot on a sunde that can go into all sorts of things right you can put that on Rice you can make a burrito out of it you can refry it I like basic things that pair with other things that work really nicely a Potter rice has a zillion possibilities you can add saffron to it you can add spices to it you can add protein to the top of it you can also start with a sauce you can do a classic soy sauce with some sort of vinegar or acid and a little bit of sugar or fish sauce that way with lime juice and make a bunch of that and that can go over udon noodles or soba noodles or just over the roast chicken so just having a simple sauce and a simple protein and some bases lets you mix and match that’s how I cook now Sarah’s going to tell you about her soup yeah you’re right you’re right uh but let me just say I agree with what Chris said you know in terms of all those starches are really great backdrops for protein other places you could repurpose leftovers is in soup also frittatas are fantastic that’s a good one you take overed vegetables and meats and even pastas and beans and just put it in a skillet adds some eggs start it on top of the stove till the bottom sets then finish it in the oven also burritos or just rolling things up in tortillas and warming them up but the other thing I was going to say there’s a couple books out for cooking for two which at least will help you sort of narrow it down so you’re cooking smaller amounts one was done by Joe yonan and another one Chris who was Julia Child’s editor Judith Jones Judith Jones Judith Jones did a cooking for two one final thing let’s say you have a whole big hat of broccoli and you know you’re not going to eat it all roast the whole thing or steam the whole thing because it will freeze beautifully once it’s cooked okay Milk Street did publish a book called cish which has six ingredients most of this stuff is half an hour or less and what it has is Big flavors it uses fermented sauces chilies spices garlic ginger Etc you get a ton of flavor and it’s quick so that’s exactly what I did all right okay thanks all right thanks pton all right thank you so much bye great talking to you bye bye this is milk Street radio SAR and I are here to save you from culinary disaster please give us a call anytime our number is 85542 6- 9843 one more time 855 426 9843 or just email us at questions at milre radio.com welcome to mil Street who’s calling this is Aaron vot hi Aron where are you calling from I’m coming from Arizona what is your question today how can we help you so I was wondering about chicken breasts how to make chicken breasts like to cook them moist because I I’ll cook them and they’ll be pretty dry on the grill so either the grill or oven stove top any suggestions on how to to make them a bit more moist the family because the kids they don’t seem to like dad’s famous dried chicken bread well chicken is really conundrum because you have to cook it well done or well enough done because of the issues with Sal Manilla and campy bacor so it’s not one of those ones where we could blly say Well undercook it slightly although there is always carryover cooking time so you can undercook it slightly but then let it sit and finish cooking okay so are you talking about thick chicken breast thin chicken breast boneless thick chicken breast okay what I do is I almost always coat it in flour and specifically WRA flour WRA flour okay which is an instantized flour it’s the stuff that our grandmothers used to thicken gravies because it doesn’t lump up but what it also does is it tends to protect the quote unquote white meat so I use it also for boneless pork chops and you’ll find that just that little bit of extra installation seems to help so what I’ll do is I’ll coat the chicken breast in that and then I’ll sauté them if they’re really thick you might want to let them finish a bit in the 350 oven for a few minutes uh looking for temperature about what Chris do you think 160 MH yeah in the thickest part of the breast and then get them out and let them rest but then I would make a sauce often I make a sauce in the pan add a little chicken broth and when you put the chicken back in briefly a little bit of the flour will come off and thick in the sauce and that helps another thing you could do is to pre-s Salt it you know dry brine it and let it sit covered in the fridge you know for an hour salt it on both sides and then Pat it dry before you cook it and that will help too okay that’ll help on the grill well the grill is a whole different ball game on the grill I think your best friend would be just under cooking it but salting it also would help there too and making sure you’ve P it dry and oil it before you get it on the grill and then let it rest before you slice it I mean really give it time like any other meat anyway Chris okay three things so first of all you are determined to grill the chicken or can we have other cooking methods that would be the preferable way to cook it but I’m open to suggestions I mean I’m sure you guys have tons of ideas so I’m open if you want to grill it which is you know Walking On The Wildside I’d brine it skinless boneless chicken breast you can do in like half an hour it’s very quick and make sure you Pat them dry and then chicken should never be cooked over high heat on a grill I use medium low heat and it’ll be fine the best way to do it is to poach it so get the chicken breast put them in water that’s at 175 Dees you could use chicken stock but that’s going to cost you more money I would take a quarter cup or half cup probably half a cup of soy sauce in a couple quarts of water because the soy sauce has some salt in it which is great and then put the chicken in and keep maintain that temperature 175 until the chicken breasts come up to 160 165 and that’ll give you really it’s sort of a soused without a SED machine that works really well the last suggestion I have if you want a grill the best way to do chicken is spatch cocket which means you get a a heavy pair of scissors or a knife and cut out the backbone and flatten it and cook that on the grill flattened dry it off oil salt medium low and then you’ll get perfectly cooked chicken but you really need the bones in the skin to protect the chicken cuz yeah boneless skinless chicken breasts on the grill is really you got to be really careful but I would definitely brine it if you do that or poach it is the best method Brian or poach okay very good yeah I will actually probably try all of that great to see which one I can do best thank you okay all right byebye [Music] byebye you’re listening to Milk Street radio up next Chef Missy Robbins teaches us pasta 101 that’s coming up after the break [Music] this is MIL Street radio I’m your host Christopher Kimble right now it’s my interview with Missy Robbins she’s the chef owner of the restaurants Lilia and Missy in Brooklyn she’s also the author of pasta the spirit and craft of Italy’s greatest food with recipes Missy welcome to Milk Street thank you so much for having me there are three reasons I love you in this book let me let me do them in order the first is and I’ve been fighting this fight for 30 years in Italy people flavor olive oil with garlic like a smash clove and this idea of mincing garlic and throwing it all over the place is crazy and and you agree with me which is great uh number two Tuscan is overrated yes and three stop throwing dried oregano in your tomato sauce oh so there we go uh no matter what else happens in this book I’m I’m on your side thank you thank you so let’s start with what is regional I mean it’s kind of a stupid question I guess but is there something that underlies or is foundational about Regional Italian cooking that is unique you think to Italy yeah I mean I think you know I grew up outside of New Haven Connecticut and and what I knew of Italian food was sort of the red sauce Southern Italian and I didn’t really understand that there was other food and I think at the time when I grew up if you went to a northern Italian restaurant usually that just kind of denoted that it was fancier um and it had a ve chop in the menu and when I when I really started getting into Italian cooking I I didn’t even understand what Regional cooking was I learned very quickly there were 20 regions in Italy and each one has a really distinctive Cuisine and that’s based on geography culture ingredients um you know what you what you find in the North is very different than what you find in the South it also has to do with sort of socioeconomic differences in regions but yeah I think basically what you have in Italy is 20 different Cuisines and I I think that’s what’s really kept me so interested in it for so long is that there’s always something new to discover let’s start with flower do you want to explain to listeners what double zero is and which because I think there’s some confusion about what that means and also whether you want a soft wheat you want some Molina some Durham wheat in there what’s the Right Mix so I I do two different things so for my fresh egg dough I use only double zero and let me preface all of this by this is personal preference this is years of making pasta and experimenting and tasting and deciding that this is my my thing and I don’t like shun anyone else for doing it another way but this is how I Do It um so double zero double Zer is a very finely M very powdery soft flow in its simplest terms and it just mixed with egg yolk which is also the only way I make my egg dough I don’t use any whites in it just creates this very very tender pasta and it’s what I kind of learned when I was in Italy and then what I learned when I went to work with Tony monsano in Chicago and that was really my my real educ in Italian cooking and pasta and I think that gets ingrained in you when you’re a young chef and you sort of pick up on things that seem right because more than one person’s doing them in a place that you learned and then for my extruded dough which is basically what what you make dried pasta with I use semolina and water and then um for sort of hand shaping Southern shapes so that orete troph things like that I actually created a dough for this book because I I had never used that in the restaurants and I I am so pleased with this dough but I I came up with a ratio of um semolina water and a little bit of double zero which is creates again a little bit more tenderness but also the semolina and the water allows it to have stretchiness which you need for those shapes you have to be able to like pull them in in a way that you don’t when you’re making you know a fetuccini for instance so let’s do some dos and don’ts uh just basic pasta making you mention you use egg yolks you don’t use whole eggs why why not the whites the yolks just make a richer less elastic dough and for fresh pasta I just want that like kind of I want structure in it but I I want it to be really tender and elegant and with like a little less bite than white yields and you also said that all of the moisture in the dough is provided by the egg Yol correct yes I get a lot of um DMS on my Instagram saying do you think you made a mistake in your recipe because how could you use 24 yolks and I’m like I’m fairly certain that after three and a half years three testers a writer an editor that I I didn’t make a mistake right um never put oil in water when you’re cooking pasta why not yeah that’s a big one that’s a that’s a very important one and the reason it’s not just like an old Wiest what happen happens is if you add oil to your water the oil slicks the pasta and the whole idea of pasta when you take it out of the water and put it in the sauce is that you want that sauce to absorb into the pasta and the oil will prevent it from doing that it’ll just slick right off you said something really interesting about adding the salt to the cooking water and that’s the salt for the recipe that you don’t really need much additional salt yeah I mean we we barely use I mean we use salt in our sauces so if we have a you know our pork sausage Sugo or our 30 clove sauce or our diavola sauce there’s salt in those recipes but when we’re cooking at the restaurant or I’m cooking at home we’re salting the water which gives the pasta itself flavor um if you don’t salt your water you’re going to end up with a very Bland dish but I’m very rarely adding extra salt to the pan you you’ll end up between like a lot of my pastas definitely are finished with cheese which has salinity itself and the pasta water you don’t really need it and that pasta water also ends up in the dish so it’s not that you’re just cooking the pasta in that salty water some of that water is is going into the pan with the final product so you reserve some of the cooking water and add it as you need to um a gentle boil versus a hard boil when do you use each of them gentle boil I use for mostly filled pastas and the reason that is is most of my fillings are pretty delicate they’re made with whipped ricotta they break easily and so I’ve come up with sort of this method where you know I think we’re all taught to boil pasta do not put it in and and and by simmer I mean a true simmer so there’s a slow a slow boil but it really prevents the the pasta the insides from breaking and allows the pasta to cook at the right rate so you undercook the pasta and then marry the sauce in the pasta and let them cook together how do you judge how much to undercook the pasta before you finish it with the sauce oh wow that’s a good question I mean I think it’s all feel like it’s hard to that’s the problem with writing a cookbook I wanted to write a whole book without recipes at all uh but I was I was denied that and uh yeah I think I I think part of it is kind of trial and error it also depends on you know if you’re buying pasta in a store or it every pasta Cooks at a different rate and so you have to keep taking a piece out and really testing it to feel where where it is uh ketu Pepe is really hard because it gets gluey or it’s kind of you know it congeals and sets up and it’s a difficult dish do you have some advice for people who want to make you know pasta with cheese and pepper yeah it’s all I mean that dish is all about balancing cheese and pasta water and the correct amount of heat or no heat it’s it’s again one of those dishes that appears to be so simple but really is so technique driven and and listen I’ve been cooking pasta for many years now and I have screwed up kaca Pepe many times in my own home kitchen it’s just you have to get that balance of the pasta water kind of creates the creaminess and when do you put the cheese in and taking off the heat to make sure that the cheese doesn’t Clump it’s complicated I commend people who put kacho peepe on their menus do you have any advice for people making home patience patience patience and like don’t just throw everything in the pan at once like you really have to add the cheese at the right moment and you really have to kind of use that cheese and pasta water as like a yin and yang to each other okay um what are a few pieces of equipment you mention a lot in the book but are there two or three things if you want to make your own pasta home you’d really recommend things that people might not think of well I mean I think number one is a is a pasta roller you know a a sheeter they’re very inexpensive and you know they’re kind of like the Workhorse of a fresh pasta dough there’s a lot of cool tools we use that are sort of antiquated Italian tools um there’s something called aara that literally looks like it has guitar strings and you roll a sheet of pasta over it and makes this really cool square cut spaghetti there’s something called a coretti which is a stamp from legoria and then like just a metal rod that you can make all these cool kind of Southern shapes that you roll the pasta around it like a a twig sort of and and I’ve just kind of gotten into that recently and that’s that’s really fun too there’s a saying in music that it’s the notes you don’t play that makes the music and you quote I guess originally marchella Huzan who said the most important ingredient is the one you leave out could you talk about that yeah I think I I learned that from my mentor Tony monano who who was the chef and owner of spa and I work there and um a great friend and he used to say that all the time and it’s always just resonated with me I think especially when I was a young chef and you’re learning how to be creative and to create your own food and I think any young Chef has a tendency to just add and add and add and add and this philosophy is really about subtracting and saying how do I get the most out of each ingredient and how do I make something Shine without overdoing it and so if I’m going to do a mushroom dish I want it to be about the mushrooms if I’m going to do a fennel dish I want it to be about the fennel and I think that’s just carried on to all of my cooking and I I edit Myself by always remembering that because often you know you still have a tendency to kind of say like oh what does that need and often what it needs is for you to take something out of it what about let’s just take two or three basic things that people do make you know the obviously the red sauce and and I know there’s infinite versions of this could you just give us some tips on how to do that well since most people don’t do it that well you know the biggest thing for that is picking tomatoes that you really like I suggest some of my favorites but there’s so many tomatoes out there and you have to decide whether you know you like super acidic whether you like a little more sweet whether you like a balance I tend to like a balance and have picked specific tomatoes for that but so it starts kind of with ingredients are you talking about fresh tomatoes or canned tomatoes canned tomatoes yeah can we just say for the moment that that you know more than I do but the times I’ve been in Italy in someone’s kitchen they’re cooking with canned tomatoes I mean it’s very common yeah I mean the only time that I make tomato sauce with fresh tomatoes is in the height of the summer okay so uh you know you’ve cooked so many different types of pasta is there is there a recipe you just really love that you make all the time that maybe we wouldn’t expect that you you would love so much uh I I it’s pretty basic actually my favorite to kind of eat and cook is the ravioli with red sauce I’m sorry to break it you but that’s what I crave I don’t crave like Duck Ragu like it’s just not something I crave I I really crave raviol with red sauce and that’s Nostalgia and there’s nothing wrong with that it’s your Happy Meal it’s my Happy Meal Missy it’s been a pleasure an education and I can’t wait to get back in the kitchen and make pasta thank you thank you so much thanks for having me [Music] that was Missy Robbins her book is called pasta you know Missy admits that her favorite meal is ravioli with red sauce ja Pan’s ultimate meal is roast chicken with salad and boiled potatoes James Beard was fond of bacon potato chips and hamburgers and of course Julia Child loved pepp Farm goldfish so the word ordinary is usually offered up as criticism but Great Cooks are apt to find the extraordinary in everyday Pleasures as one Guru said the ordinary man seeks Freedom through Enlightenment and enlightened man expresses Freedom through being ordinary this is M Street radio coming up Adam gnik talks about time and relativity in the kitchen we’ll be right back I’m Christopher Kimble you’re listening to Milk Street radio now we’re heading into the kitchen with JM Hersh to learn about this week’s recipe zucchini and chickpea salad with tahini yogurt JM how are you I’m doing great so chickpea salads all over the Middle East I was in Lebanon a few years ago and had feta you know the yogurt and chickpea salad for breakfast but you um squirreled off to London as I want to do you found um a recipe for chickpea salad it’s a little more summery than what I had I guess I got to tell you this is one of my favorite restaurants in London it’s coal office and they do kind of modern interpretations of classic Middle Eastern cuisine and their chickpea salad I have to say it’s under build on the menu they just refer to it as cusa which is the Arabic for zucchini and very little other description in fact I almost didn’t even order it but it turns out it is this tangle of zucchini and chickpeas and fresh herbs like Dill mint and cilantro and then it’s all tied together by this creamy tahini dressing with sumac and olives and there’s just so much going on texturally and flavor-wise that’s all I wanted I just wanted the salad and I would be happy so what did you do with the other 20 things you ordered you just ate the zucchini chickpea Sal they must have been a little disappointed in you know they just are so inventive the chickpeas are tossed with zatar and red wine vinegar and aliam strong shallot and you know we think of zucchini salads as kind of watery frankly because well after all it’s a watery vegetable but not at all the case in this salad it is just so delicious and such a mix of textures and flavors and again that creamy yogurt tahini lemon dressing oh my God I would put that on anything so how are you prepping the zucchini is it just sliced or what it’s just sliced and salted to drain off a little bit of the water it’s very simple you know the chick peas that’s where the magic comes in we take the chickpeas and we briefly microwave them along with the shallot the zitar and the red wine vinegar and this is a trick we use at Milk Street all the time are these canned chickpeas or are you starting from oh please canned keep it simple and as those chickpeas cool after a brief stint in the microwave they absorb the flavors of the dressing and the other ingredients that they’re with so you get a much more flavorful chickpea that you then toss with all these other ingredients oh it’s amazing I love it so an under mild mannered zucchini and chickpea salad with he yogurt turned out to be the best thing you had at coal office in London thank you jam thank you you can get the recipe for zucchini and chickpea salad with tahini yogurt at milkstreet radio.com I’m Christopher Kimble you’re listening to Milk Street radio right now Sarah and I will be taking a few more of your calls welcome to Milk Street who’s calling uh this is Andy Leaf how are you good how are you good good where are you calling from Burlington Vermont oh nice excellent excellent I knew Chris would approve how can we help you today my grandmother used to make a a dessert and she taught me about vacuum with it and what you did you took a glass and turned it upside down and there was fruit on the bottom and some sort of biscuit or pudding or something on top and you know was baked in the oven and all the juices from the fruit went up in into the glass I can’t remember the recipe I just remember the vacuum and I was wondering if you could help me with that I can’t visualize this the fruit goes on the bottom like a stone fruit I think maybe it was plums or sour cherries and this goes on the bottom sorry but a non by 13 pan No a loaf pan okay and then a glass cup upside down is in the center and the fruit goes around oh okay and then on top of that some sort of biscuit I got it when you bake it all the juices run up and are vacuumed into the cup this is reminding me of um I was looking for you know some sort of Summer Peach dessert recently and I came across a recipe from serus eats it’s called a peach cobbler and apparently it was based on some church recipe or old cookbook and what it is is so you have the haved peaches you know you pit them and you put them cutsside down in I think it’s a pie plate but leaving a gap in the middle and you put an inverted ramkin and then you make the cobbler dough and you put the whole thing on top and bake it this is all in a pie plate a ceramic pie plate when you take it out of the oven you invert it and you end up with cooked peaches cooked dough and the ramkin is filled with sort of caramelized reduced Peach syrup so you might I mean it sounded I was like wow I have got to try that’s amazing it’s like you got everything in one you know to ask the question what’s the point of separating the juices into the ramkin or the glass you’re going to pour them back into the cobbler when it’s done right right it’s fun I it’s a trick it’s a trick Hey listen stupid stupid dessert tricks like like stupid pet tricks it’s sort of fun no I I I’m into stupid dessert tricks but but it’s not there’s no flavor reason to do it it’s just a it’s a cool trick yeah right well you could add a little to the juice oh now you’re talking I like the way you think yeah there you go that would work yes yeah that’s pretty cool yeah that’s very cool have you made it I made it with my grandmother years ago right and I just couldn’t remember what went on top you could do a biscuit like you could with a cobbler a Pandy was just really a pie pastry the reason they called a Pandy was you would Dy it which means at the end you would cut the pastry into the fruit so it was mixed in together that’s what it was dying I guess that’s what it was and the vacuum is just a trick right as I recall there’s um you know other ingredients added to the peach is some liquid sugar and stuff like that I mean I don’t remember the recipe all that well except that I thought gez I’m going to make it and now that I’m talking to you I’m really going to make it you got to put that on Instagram or Tik Tok though that’s a social media recipe trick absolutely right from 1910 right that’s when the best kitchen tricks happen thanks for calling that’s great all right thank you very much all right be well bye bye bye bye this is milk Street radio if you’re stumped in the kitchen give us a call anytime 855 426 9843 one more time 855 426 9843 or email us at questions milkstreet radio.com welcome to milkstreet Who’s Calling hi this is Alicia from Rochester New York how can we help you I made a chicken pot pie a couple weeks ago and it’s just from a recipe that I found on the internet but it was from scratch minus the pie crust cuz I’m not ready for that it tasted good but I found that the flavor was kind of lacking like it was kind of muted well it’s interesting because I used to make chicken popey all the time and I think I loved it because it was so Bland oh yeah I mean it’s one of those things gravy gravy just sort of like yeah I kind of like the fact that it’s not balanced but anyway here are some things you can do you could add a little like a tablespoon of miso to it white miso and that’s gonna add depth of flavor and sort of perk things up a little bit secondly you could take some white wine like maybe half a cup and reduce it down or a cup reduce it down to a tablespoon or two and you could add that you know after you’ve made your Vel you have the r and then you’re adding chicken stock it’s a bell and you can whisk that into the Bell if you wanted a little bit of extra punch to it the other thing you could do is when you’re finished with the Vel taste a little bit you could add a little lemon juice to that you could add a little I would say white balsamic vinegar you don’t want a really acidic vinegar but something mild I know sometimes Sher is put into this dish too which you could add so I I would just taste the velet when you’re done and adjust it I agree with everything Chris just said I wouldn’t be surprised if your biggest problem is lacco salt but one other thing I thought when Chris was making all the suggestions is you could add a tiny dash of cherry vinegar cuz then you’d get both the acid and the Cherry taste that’s a high acid vinegar but if you were circumspect with it it might do two things give that nice cherry flavor which goes wonderfully with chicken and also a little bit of acid I think what you’re looking for in chicken pot pie is a pointer upper and the four pointer uppers that are most commonly used are salt acid sugar chilies I think we’re done yes I think we’ve run out of ideas so that’s a lot of different ideas to try so I will try that I think I might try the Cherry vinegar or the white wine first and look for the white miso Felicia thank you yes thank you well thank you so much it was a delight Take Care thank you bye bye bye this is milk Street radio right now it’s time to check in with Adam cnck Adam how are you this week I am very well Christopher how are you I’m well you know I love Shakespeare and one of my favorite bits of Shakespeare is the one that rosin speaks in As You Like It where she talks about how differently we experience time in different places and how differently different people experience time you remember time travels in different Paces with different persons she’ll tell you who time ambles with all who time trots with all who time gallops with all and who he stands still with all and it got me thinking Chris about how time moves at different Paces in the kitchen a kitchen it seems to me is a kind of laboratory where time warps and changes depending on what we’re doing you know that’s the basic einsteinian idea time is relative yes time is relative and time warps according to what we’re spatially doing and how we’re spatially inhabiting it what AM talking about well what’s the single slowest thing that ever happens in the kitchen when does time moved most slowly well it seems to me waiting for the pasta pot to boil waiting for the water in the pasta pot to boil always takes what feels like hours even if it only takes 5 minutes it feels psychologically exponentially as though it’s taking forever the other slowest thing is when you’re pitting sour cherries I was not expecting that have you not had that experience no no you you need the $8 Gadget I have the $8 Gadget nonetheless basically what you’re doing when you’re pitting sour cherries is you’re enumerating them you can only experience them one by one by one by one by one so even if the act of pitting the quart of sour cherries only takes you 10 minutes it feels as though it’s taking you at least 20 on the other hand chopping onions and garlic makes time go by far faster right because you’re engaged in the act of Destruction dissolution dissolving of course the fastest time of all in the kitchen is when you have two dishes two pans on side by side and no matter how masterly you’ve ever been at doing these things you still find yourself in a Charlie Chaplain likee mode racing from one to another you know the one exception I could think of to the rule that time is always faster than you expect it to be or slower than you imagine it’s going to be in the kitchen is is with a sule A sule has to bake for exactly the amount of time that it needs to bake usually in my oven 15 minutes and it can’t go for 16 and it can’t go for 14 it has to go to 15 that’s the one place where I think physical time and psychological time match in the kitchen but we can always Escape time itself in the kitchen which is ultimately what we seek to do and we do it with two einsteinian AIDS one is wine and the other is music when we step into the kitchen and we feel the time is going too fast or too slow we only have to pour another small glass of red wine and put on Sinatra or Bach or whatever your temptation is and suddenly time is neither too fast nor too slow it’s exactly at your own Tempo let’s expand on this T time in life is connected to all the things one has to do deadlines there are hundreds of ways of measuring time when you step into the kitchen all of a sudden that Clockwork stops it’s just the recipe it’s just the water it’s just the knife it’s just the pan it’s like scuba diving right you’re just thinking about breathing at the time the rest of the world dissolves in with it all the ways we measure time that’s beautifully said Christopher I think that’s true and it’s certainly one of the reasons why I love cooking it’s because as somebody who is writing to deadline 7 days a week when I’m cooking I don’t feel that I’m ever cooking to deadline even if I am even if in fact people are waiting for the food or we have company or there are guests I think that’s true we don’t feel the deadlines of cooking and the way we feel the deadlines of our other work I do feel that the time it takes me to pit cherries even if it’s only 10 minutes is twice as long as the time it takes me to chop onions even if that’s physically only 10 minutes but I agree with you that we cook in part to step outside time it’s always the dish and the food that is in control in the kitchen not you and and so it’s not about how long it takes to get there it’s about the taste you’re going to have when you do get there on the process so yeah I I think I think cooking is Beyond Time Ah that’s beautiful that’s a title for a book beyond time I worked on that for hours I just want you to know I will continue with my notion that there are different pockets of time that we pass in and out of within the kitchen but I will agree with you that whatever the time is in the kitchen it is not the normal time of life Adam thank you more Timeless thoughts from the master of culinary poetry thank you thank you Chris that was Adam gnik staff writer at the New Yorker that’s it for this week’s show you can find all of our episodes on Apple podcast Spotify Amazon music or wherever you get your podcast you can learn more about milkstreet at 177 milkstreet.com there you can become a member get full access to all of our recipes and free standard shipping from The Milk Street store we’re on Instagram and Twitter at 177 Milk Street on Facebook at Christopher kimbles Milk Street we’ll be back next week and thanks as always for [Music] listening Christopher kimbell’s Milk Street radio is produced by Milk Street in association with gbh co-founder Melissa baldino executive producer Annie sinah senior editor Melissa Allison producer Sarah clap assistant producer Caroline Davis with production help from Debbie Paddock additional editing by Sydney Lewis audio mixing by Jay Allison and Atlantic public media in Woodall Massachusetts thee music by cheab crew additional music by George Brendle egof Christopher kimbell’s Milk Street radio is distributed by PX [Music] oh [Music]