Samin Nosrat’s 2017 debut “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” was a breakout hit in the cooking world — teaching people of all skill levels the building blocks of flavor.
Nosrat won a James Beard award and the book was adapted into a Netflix documentary.
After her massive success, Nosrat found herself in a low. She was diagnosed with clinical depression, and said the joy she once found with cooking, stopped being attainable.
But it was cooking for community, and for her found family, that brought her back. Nosrat’s new book focuses on bringing families of all types to the table, and building community through great food.
Nosrat recently joined us to talk about her book, and what’s inspiring her today.
GUEST:
Samin Nosrat: cook, teacher and author of “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” and “Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love”
Samin Nosrat’s 2017 cookbook debut, Salt, Fat, Acid,
Heat was a bestseller that taught cooks of all skill levels, the building blocks
of flavor and texture, including myself. But after her massive success
that included a James Beard Award and a Netflix documentary, Nosrat
was diagnosed with clinical depression and said the joy she once found
with cooking stopped being attainable. It was cooking for community and for her
found family that brought her back. This is Where We Live from Connecticut
Public Radio. I’m Catherine Shen. Today, Samin joins us in studio. Her new book is called Good Things
Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love. Samin,
thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. So your new book, a bit of a departure
from salt, Fatty Acid Heat. And for those who are not familiar with it there, you really encourage people
to embrace the idea of not needing a structured recipe per se, and that
any ingredient can make a delicious meal. So tell our listeners more about,
you know, what? What was happening in your life in between
then when you started thinking about what you
want next for your new book? Well, so I published the book, which was so successful, and then we turned it
into a documentary series for Netflix, which was also just like,
you know, Netflix is in 220 countries. So it went out to the whole world. And I was just sort of, responded to with so much love
and praise and acclaim and positivity, which is wonderful
and really in so many ways, all I ever dreamt of, like, I,
my parents are immigrants from Iran. I was born and grew up in California. I very much sort of was like
a very typical child of immigrants, sort of striving to achieve
and be recognized for my achievements. And so here I was,
achieving and being recognized for like the very biggest things
in my field that I beyond
what I ever could have dreamt of. And that felt really great. And also it was really destabilizing
and a little bit confusing. And, you know, once I had some quiet
after like almost three straight years of sort of working, putting things out
and traveling, I started to realize that the thing that had been driving me,
I think on some level, I believed if I did reach those heights,
I would feel okay. I would finally feel full and complete and happy and like this sort of sadness in my heart would be resolved and addressed, you know? And I always say, like,
loneliness is my oldest friend. Like like there
has just been a sense of loneliness in my in the like, in the core of my heart
since I was a little kid. And here I was in the aftermath of all
this attention, and I was still lonely. And I kind of was really disappointed to realize, like, all of this work that I’d done
hadn’t resolved this issue. And it’s not to say that I believed it
consciously that I thought it would solve it. It was just sort of an unnerving
to realize I was still where I, you know, there
I was, still where I always was. And that was really kind of it picked me up and like, yeah, uprooted me from what
little sort of grounding I had in my life. Because then I didn’t know
what I was supposed to do. Always I had been like,
achieve, achieve, achieve. And I didn’t do that
and it didn’t solve anything. And so and then alongside that, I had now this assignment
to write a new book. And, you know, I’m not an actor. I’m not very good at faking things. So the joy and sort of passion
that I express about cooking, both in my writing
and on the show is all very genuine and authentic,
but it’s also just one part of who I am. And so what had happened in LA,
in a big way, was I think I became an avatar of joy
for people they really like. Assigned this to me, and I felt a pressure to perform that. And here I was with the job to write
another book, but I didn’t feel any joy. And I certainly didn’t
feel any joy around food. And so I had to find my way back to, if not joy, then at least a sense of
meaning of why I was doing this. Because I didn’t have a why. And so the book, in
a lot of ways, is a story and a documentation of how I got there. Well, and I wonder if that process that you’re going through
is still going through. I imagine a lot of unpacking along
the way is a mixture of I think we get caught in the okay,
I achieve this one thing, all I have to do is get to the next thing,
then I will really be happy. And so you have that expectation
on top of the nuance of being a child of immigrants. I think growing up in certain communities
perhaps that can be isolating already. Right. And whether or not you knew it,
I think as a child I feel like as a fellow child of immigrants,
I feel like a lot of us experience that journey as children, but not realizing the layers of it
until you’re an adult. And then on top of all of that,
you have the added complication
of exposing yourself to the public. And I wonder
if it’s a mix of all three of those. And sprinkle on top of that. Perhaps we as the audience
forget that you are a human being and that you have
multitudes, you have joy, you have sadness,
you have anger, you have happiness. Totally. I think that’s exactly right
is it’s all of those things. And there’s definitely
the parasocial relationship is part of it, which I remember at times,
like I would get so mad about, you know, I’d be like,
they just want me to be happy, but I’m not happy, and I just want to wear
my pajamas and order a coffee at the coffee shop
and be a grumpy lady. But I’m not allowed to go. And, and. Yeah, and definitely,
I think there is so much that I, you know, I think all children,
no matter who we are, we only are like surviving and existing in the family
that we have because that’s all we know. So it’s not until you grow up and go
out into the world that you can start to contextualize,
like your own experience, and unpack it so that for me,
has been a long sort of process that I’m still I’ll be doing until,
you know, as long as I’m here. And, but I definitely think, yes,
it’s a multilayered thing. And I was for my whole life
caught up in the like, what’s the next thing I can achieve? What’s the next thing I can achieve? I think this, in a way, was a gift
to get such a huge sort of achievement. And like, maybe if that hadn’t happened,
I’d still be doing it. And it’s not to say I have had some like, I’ve seen the light
and I’m no longer ambitious. Of course I have goals. Of course
I have things I would like to accomplish. I think they’re just not the main driver
of my life, at least right now. And hopefully never again. Because I think the thing I realized I was missing was a sense of belonging. And I’ve always kind of lacked that. But it felt so stark in that moment,
partly because it was very highlighted
by the fact that now a pandemic was was settling in around me,
and I was literally alone in my house. Right. And so that was very much yeah, it
highlighted the loneliness because it was inescapable. Well, and I want to come back to
when you did find community and a found family,
but in between during the process, you know, you’ve been very open
and written and talked about not only your depression, bother
going through grief, and you’ve lost several people in your life
in a very short period of time. Can you tell us more about that experience
and how that informs you? Yeah, I mean, in a way,
the first sort of wave of grief wasn’t about a recent death. It was, like a very belated realization, a 40 year belated, a realization
about the loss of my sister, who, I when I was,
when my mom was pregnant with me, I had an older sister who was diagnosed
with terminal brain cancer. And so I was born sort of
into this already pre grieving family. And my sister died
when I was a year and a half old. And in our culture, in my family,
maybe just at the time, the norm very much was like not to assign any, psychological humanity to me
as a, as an 18 month old. I think it was it was very much like
my mother’s loss in our family. And so I it was not I knew I had a sister. That fact was not hidden from me. But there wasn’t really like,
any opportunity or space given to me as a, as a, as a human to grieve
that or to have any emotions around that. And so I’ve always kind of been
very matter of fact, like, oh yeah, I had a sister, but she died. That’s kind of the way
that I would talk about it. And in probably 2021, I was reading a draft of my friend Laurel Bateman’s memoir,
and she lost many, she just had the sort of loss
after loss in her book. And it was very much about grief. And after reading
sort of about the series of profound losses in her life, I felt so moved. And there was something
very familiar to me in, in this book. And I remember thinking to myself, like,
this is weird. Like, what about this is familiar to me? Like, I’ve never lost anything. And it took me a few weeks
before it occurred to me like, oh, maybe this feeling of loss
is actually about my sister. And again, also simultaneously,
this thing happened that was so, so beautiful and profound, which is I live in this little community
of four homes built around like a central courtyard,
and we have neighbors ranging in ages from, like, I don’t know, 6 to 80 right
now, like multi-generational. And so at the time,
our youngest was one and a half. And in the mornings
he would come knock on my door and say hi to me
and say hi to my puppy dog Fava, and he was just like,
so vibrant and alive. And it’s he was not incredibly verbal,
but he there was a whole person there, you know, like a whole personality
and a whole person. And so over time I realized like,
oh my gosh, like Nico’s the age
I was when my sister died. And if his older sister, who he loves
and worships, were to disappear tomorrow, then he and
nobody ever talked about it again. Then of course, he would be bereft
and have this like deep sense of loss inside of him that would be inexplicable
to him for the rest of his life. So I think by seeing someone the same age,
I was able to have compassion for myself. And so that set me off on a multi-year
journey of really processing and getting to know this grief, getting
to know my sister and understanding what like her presence and her loss
meant for me in my life, in our family, and because in again, in my family
and our culture, there’s so much that’s left unsaid
for for a lot of complicated reasons, like sometimes just information
is just willfully kept from from me. I didn’t have an opportunity
to ask too many family members for stories or for information, so I threw myself into
sort of a journalistic approach, and I started reading like studies
about what happens to a sibling when they’re older sibling dies,
what happens to a family system? I did multiple types of therapy
to try and sort of resolve or process this, and that was really sort
of the first step of my grieving. And then just
when I was sort of resettling after that, then my dad, who I was estranged
from pretty much my whole adult life, he had a traumatic brain injury
and ended up on a ventilator, likely to never wake up. And so that was this new level of like,
chaos and melodrama for me
and my brothers in our life. And that took about six months for us
to sort of advocate for him and care for him
and, and like, be with him as he died. And it was that was its own complication,
because it’s of course, there’s a grief in losing a parent. And then also there was a whole level
of like complexity and grief and confusion and pain
because this relationship with this parent was really complicated
and my dad was not, he was not always
a safe person to be around. And so there was
it was just so, so, so much. And so after this, like,
wave after wave of, yeah, loss and grief, I,
I really was left with the clarity of like,
oh my gosh, like, life is so short, you know, and this idea that’s been driving me
my whole life of like, put your head down and achieve
and be good, because then maybe one day someone will recognize that and reward you
and then you can be happy. I was like, oh no, that’s flawed. There’s a flaw in that. And actually, like,
I have to live my life as much as possible now because I don’t know how much time
I’m going to have. And so, and sort of
as that was sort of occurring to me and I was realizing how valuable time is,
I was also finding my way back to cooking and really started to understand
cooking as an opportunity to choose how I spend my time, who I spend my time
with and for and on and that like that. This, in fact,
that time is the most valuable and precious gift
that I can give to anyone. When I think time is a reoccurring theme
for you, right? In terms of how you see it,
how you treat it, how you use it, what’s given to us, right,
like you mentioned. And and I’m glad that you were able
to find your way back to cooking. What was it like finding that joy again
after losing it for so long? It was really incremental,
I will say. Like it wasn’t. There was not like a. Not like a. Moment. Yeah, there was not a moment. We all wish that happened that way. Yeah. It was really incremental. And I think a big part of what
really served me was narrowing my focus. You know,
I think I had gone through this experience that had sort of exposed me and,
and brought me into the whole wide world and introduced me to the
whole wide world and sort of given me that idea that I speak to the whole wide world, you know,
and which is a little bit flawed. But I in some ways, I had this
like false sense of grandiosity. Like everything I say
so many people are going to listen to. And so I sort of realized
I that was not serving me. And I really narrowed
like the aperture of the lens to I can’t think about the whole world. I can think about myself,
I can think about my neighbors. I can think about my friends,
my community. I sort of was like, I literally gave myself a three
block radius of my house, and I was like, if I can just sort of make choices
in my daily life that affect this three block radius positively,
like whether it’s a gardening, collecting my neighbor’s fruit, making a cake,
and bringing a piece of cake back to them. You know, like taking care of these,
like kids at this school nearby. Feeding my friends who live nearby, like,
those were. That was that felt doable. And so, in terms of food again,
it was very small. This was still also during the like,
you know, extended lockdown. And so I was gardening a lot. There was a lot of just like being
very present in my very local vicinity. And so what can I make out of this? Maybe not perfectly delicious cucumber
that I’ve grown, but it’s here, you know, and so. And it’s yours. Yeah. And it’s mine. And I think maybe I don’t need
to have the ambition of, like, making the best food in the world,
teaching everyone in the world the best techniques. But like,
how do I make the most out of this thing that’s presented to me,
make presented itself to me right here, like an opportunity I have to cook this,
these ingredients in my pantry or just make something
nourishing for the people around me. Well, and I think one of the things
that you’ve been talking about, I feel like I’m threading here,
is this idea that perhaps you give to yourself,
but maybe in a bigger sense, that society gave to you, that you have these
or you need to have these goals and you have to achieve them
to be deemed successful. And I think, I think this is
this was something you said in the in the 2020 New Yorker interview
that really stuck with me. Is, is I and you touched on how you’ve never had anxiety about age
in terms of time, but then you going into the sort of like
but if I focused focus on my community because I think part of the quote was,
you can’t solve world hunger. Yeah. By yourself. And I think that’s sort of what we grow up
to believing is, oh, you got to save the world, right? You’re here to save the world,
whatever that looks like for you. And I think in your case, you mentioned
world hunger, for obvious reasons. But then you you’ve kind of gotten
into the processes of, wait, maybe I can’t solve world hunger,
but I can feed my neighbors. I need my friends. So is that a complete change of philosophy
or or is that a new purpose that you found
in yourself, in your cooking? Maybe it’s a refinement
is a good way to think of it is like I had maybe like a pretty clunky understanding
of like my, my purpose or the service
that I can provide and that, this is a refinement that also includes me
as a, as a part of the formula. I think, I think a huge part of what I’m trying to say in this book,
in a way, in so many different ways. And I think what I’m trying to say is, is actually just something
I’m trying to say to myself, which is like. Maybe you’re already enough. Like, maybe you don’t have to earn
and deserve everything. And so maybe the simple things
that we cook, like maybe the things we cook for dinner
for ourselves and the people we love, they probably don’t have to look like
a restaurant meal, you know, like it doesn’t have to be glitzy and glamorous
to be good and worthy and nourishing. Maybe like the amount of effort
or time or energy that you have to give
is enough in any given moment. Maybe like the thing that I get to be,
you know, I think thinking, thinking,
having the flawed self assigned assignment or society assigned assignment
of saving the world or fixing world hunger doesn’t actually incorporate me
as an element in that it doesn’t incorporate like what
I have capacity to do or want to do. And in a way, that idea that by narrowing the the view and seeing like I’m
an element in this, what do I have the ability to give,
I think is, is is a real growth for me because I’ve often just like self
sacrificed to such an extreme degree, and that ultimately doesn’t serve anyone, because then I hate that and I end up
being like resentful and hating everyone. So. Right. And then turns out it’s all like inside. And nobody actually asked me
to do those things. I just yeah. And they’re grateful. Yeah. Right. Well, and it’s interesting because as you were describing
your experience, I’m thinking like, yeah, I studied journalism, I went to journalism
school and, and was surrounded by that. And it’s interesting because I’m
now I’m thinking back, it’s very oh, you’re going to cover stories
about the world, and your one story is going to change. Everything is like,
but that’s not the case. And I don’t I don’t remember
if there was a crushing moment of realizing that, but
I do believe the burden can be crushing when you when you feel like your one story
needs to change the world. Yeah. Thankfully, early on
I think I recognized that. Well,
if my one story can change one person. Yeah, or maybe my several stories
can touch one person. Yeah, that will be enough for me. I’m never going to find out. Real. And those are the most profound to me. Like in a that’s been reflecting back
the most profound sort of things that make their way back to me
are the individual stories. Yesterday,
father brought me like a picture. He he he printed out like a still of, of a screenshot of, like,
one of the shows that I was on. I was on a show called Waffles and Mochi
with some Muppets, and Mrs. Obama, and it was about kids and food,
and he printed it out and he said, could you sign this for my son,
who is, autistic and has really? And I said, oh, is he a good eater? And he said, no, actually,
he has a lot of challenges with eating, but he loves waffles and mochi so much
because each episode allows him to really focus
and deep dive on his ingredients. So then he’ll come out of it being like,
honey, I want to learn more about honey. And so it’s been this amazing,
changing thing for him. And so when I get to hear like,
something I did is a positive force in somebody’s life in that way that feels that feels better
than, you know, any award basically. One I’m before we go to break,
I want to at least get to your dedication page because about opening your book,
that’s the first thing we see. And you dedicated it to your your found
family in the book to your found family. So can you talk a bit about about that?
Yeah. I mean, so it’s it’s a little bit twofold. One, is it for me the dedication
in the first book in salt, fat, acid heat is to my mother and to Alice Waters,
who is sort of like my kitchen mother. And so as for my two moms, you know,
and also I’ve, you know, like they both I kind of say, are like perfectionists,
sort of impossible to please moms. And I think reflective of the journey
that I’ve been through this, the list of people in and my dog in. very important. And very important
are the sort of the people you know and one of them is like my actual brother,
but like the people who have chosen to make me part of their family,
which feels really profoundly different and very like I’ve,
I finally, for the first time, have a place where I get to feel like
I belong and I’m a part of. And many,
but not most of the names on that list are a group of people
who I have a weekly dinner ritual with, and that has really been this force that came out of the pandemic,
came out of my grief, and sort of none of us planned to make this ritual or to create this group,
this group dynamic with each other. But it has become central to our lives. And I’m so, so, so grateful for it. More with James Beard Award winning
author Samir Nosrat after a short break,
you can join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter at Where We Live
From Connecticut Public Radio. This is Where We Live, I’m Catherine Shen. Stay with us. This is Where We Live from Connecticut
Public Radio. I’m Catherine Shen, Samin Nosrat taught a generation of cooks and food lovers
to lean into their intuition. Her book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat helped many understand
the building blocks of flavor. Her new book is a departure
that inspires a chef in all of us, not only to cook great things, but
to share them with the people you love. Today, Samin is with us in studio, so something we’ve been talking
a lot about food and people and how it’s sometimes it’s not just about
the food it’s about the people as well. And saying that a lot of people
really loved, salt, fat, acid heat was a provided both structure
and a lot of inspiration for creativity. And so how did you continue
that theme of providing recipes and guidance, but also allowing freedom
for your readers? Do you mean in this in. Yeah, in the new. Yeah. It was definitely a journey
to get to this new book. In large part
because I initially set out to write another sort of philosophical
tome like salt, fat, acid, heat that would help people
sort of navigate the kitchen and decide what to cook at any given time,
given a handful of constraints. And once I started to research that,
I realized it was such a huge undertaking and I kind of melted down under the pressure of it,
and I said, I can’t do this. Take the money back. I can’t write this book. It’ll take me 20 years and eventually somebody said, I don’t know why
you make this so hard for yourself. You know, you always feel like
you have to reinvent the genre. You can just write a book of recipes. And I was like, have you even met me? Like, I would never do that. I wrote a whole book teaching you to cook
without having to rely on recipes, right? Why would I write a book of recipes and
that feels so sort of constraining to me. And I actually in some ways have I kind of feel, I feel I feel like recipes are very
can be very trapping. Both to me as the person who makes them and to you
as the person who use them, uses them. And so I have this kind
of sense of pressure that I put on myself. If I’m going to give you something
to follow to the letter, I want the I want to guarantee that your result
is going to be so good, actually. Did you grow up with recipes? No. Okay. No. Because I also did not. Yeah. And so my mom didn’t really. We had one cookbook in our house,
which is sort of like the equivalent of the Persian
like joy of cooking. Okay, that was it. And then,
and my mom did not cook from recipes. She basically taught herself how to cook from taste and memory
and from calling her mom back in Iran. And I didn’t grow up in the kitchen, and
my mom wanted me to be doing my homework. She did not want me
to, like, end up laboring in a kitchen. Haha. And so, you know, and. So, and then when I started cooking in,
in a restaurant at Chez Panisse where the menu changes every day, you know, on the one hand,
the chefs gave me a stack of cookbooks, and they told me to familiarize myself
with them as the sort of foundational texts of our kitchen. But that was not what I saw
reflected at work. At work, I got to work every day and cooks
sort of knew how to make everything under the sun. And so the the chef would present a menu,
a completely different menu every day and say, today we’re making this, today
we’re making that. And then the cooks would be assigned
their dish and go make it right. No matter what it was. And nobody was saying, oh, four tablespoons
this, two tablespoons that 375. I’m not gonna lie I did not have
any measuring utensils until college. And the only reason why I have
measuring cups is to measure my oatmeal. Oh, I. Was going to say, was it your rice? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so. Yeah. And so it was it. I spent a lot of time
figuring out how to sort of communicate what I saw happening in the restaurant
kitchen in a to home cooks, which was it became salt, fat, acid heat. And so the idea that
what’s on a single page, if I follow it,
will produce the same result for me in California,
you in Connecticut, somebody in France, you know, anywhere you are is kind of
I’m like that is a such a huge and flawed premise or that you’ll even get
the same result time after time, because so many things in our cooking
are constantly changing. You know, even the oranges that we buy at one time of year versus
another time of year tastes different. So how can the orange juice
even be the same and multiply that times
a million ingredients in a million steps? And so I just, I,
I don’t know if you can tell by at this point, but I’m very neurotic
and I really overthought this, and I put all this pressure on myself
to deliver a very good recipe. And also the other thing for me
is when I’m teaching people how to cook or like trying to guide them,
what I want to do is show you how you actually know
so much more than you think you know. And so if you’re learning
how to make a stew, you also implicitly know
how to make a soup and a braise and all of the different names
for all of that in all of the cultures around the world. Because to be totally honest,
like there’s only a handful of ways that humans have figured out
how to cook stuff all around the world. And there’s just our sort of like, spins
that we put them on, put on them, you know? And so it’s like,
I want to connect all those dots for you. So you understand, like today, maybe
you’re making something from Taiwan, but tomorrow you can use those same techniques
to make Mexican food. Right. And and what I’ve realized is people
don’t always want all of that information. It doesn’t actually help. And so what’s been interesting
is in the wake of sort of the show coming out and the book
coming out is so much of the feedback I get is, wow, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
really made me a much better cook. Like the change,
the way I look at cooking. But if an equal, if not greater
proportion of the feedback is I just made your chicken,
or we make your focaccia once a week at my house,
or that was on the as our special event dish
or this race means so much to me. And so as I started to see the feedback
and understand that like how people were actually interacting
with what I had offered was almost always a recipe, I was like, oh, maybe actually the way
I can be of the greatest service is by offering recipes, even if I
find them sort of innately flawed. But if I if I can explain
what my my tension and my friction with them is, maybe that’ll be,
if nothing else, helpful for me, and then I can choose
different structures of recipes to, to, to convey,
you know, to communicate this information. So for like a more complicated dish
that maybe has more steps or is a bake involves
baking or precise measurements, recipes in the book tend to look really,
you know, familiar. And they’re a step of a list of, ingredients
followed by a list of steps to follow. But there’s also sort of visual matrices
that we created. So I can connect a lot of those dots
for you. There’s some recipes that I write
in a sort of a multi paragraph story about a silly thing that I made once there
are, you know, and then there are just some sort of recipes almost in that joy
of cooking format where the I love the joy of cooking
because they cram so much information into so,
you know, in, in such little space, but they don’t separate out the,
ingredients list. They just sort of bold ingredients. And so what
what made sense for any one particular category of cooking
is what I sort of used in good things. So it isn’t actually the same page
after page. It’s very much like each
chapter has its own purpose. Well, it sounds like it’s
more storytelling, less like a manual. Yeah, right. Yeah. And also like I worked really hard
with my, like, very close collaborator, recipe tester
over the course of five years to test and retest them
to make sure that they would work. So the recipes do work, but
I just had to get to a place where I was, like, proud and comfortable, you know,
with what it was that I was putting out. Well, it sounds like the feedback helped you actually let go of the perfectionism
in some way because it feels like a mix. You’re like the stew
that you’re making here. Yes. Oh, yeah. It’s a mix of riffing and perfectionism. Yeah, for sure. And it’s not even, you know,
I think also part of my job as a recipe writer, I feel like, is to
give you the right amount of information and the right information, the right specifics to both feel confident. You know, like I tell you, the things that
are sort of like non-negotiable, right? But I also sort of
do my best to point out the moments when you can maybe veer from
what I’ve written or what I’m suggesting by giving sensory cues, by giving,
you know, very options or variations, by saying,
oh, this is where you can be loose, you can use any other herb
if you don’t have this one, and it won’t make that much of a difference or no, it’s
absolutely essential. Do not substitute the parmesan, you know. And so I want to ask you of, how did you end up
selecting the recipes in your book? But before we go there,
just because you just mentioned this is I think there’s a lot of experimentation
going on and you encourage that. Yeah. But when you’re experimenting
with someone, I think there’s an expectation
that you’re going to fail, even though when you do, you know, quote unquote fail, you’re still shocked
by your failure, right? So when you’re trying new things,
most of the time you have no idea. Yes. What’s going to happen, even though
you have a recipe right in front of you. So do you find joy in that process
or inspiration from that process? Or maybe it’s a little bit of a
like frustrated joy? Oh, I would say it’s both. I think it just
depends the mindset I’m in. So sometimes I like assume that I have to
like nail it the first time, you know, and that’s when I inevitably
am going to be disappointed. And often it’s because I’ve put some sort
of time pressure on myself or some other pressure
to, like, deliver a big the first time. Right? But when I am able to approach it
with like open mindedness and a sense of curiosity,
I think that that’s when sort of I’m, I’m able to actually see
what is special or good that I can then take instead of feeling
like the whole thing is a failure. So an example, and this actually answers
your question about how I decided certain things to keep and leave out
was, like, let’s talk about chocolate chip cookies, which is like everyone,
there’s yeah, there’s so many. And there’s endless sort of variations
on the chocolate chip cookie recipe. And I’ve always believed like that the Tollhouse recipe
is just a pretty frickin great recipe. And so to me, if I’m like,
if you are going to give me a chocolate chip cookie recipe
and it’s not going to produce cookies that are better than a tollhouse,
then I don’t want to do it. Because often it’s there are extra steps or you have to
do different kinds of flour. And so it’s not that I’m not willing to
do more, but the more better deliver more. And so somehow I got it in my head to include a chocolate chip cookie recipe. And I was like,
well, I’m just going to take the whole, you know, I’m going to do brown butter,
and I’m going to do all these things. And I learned, I learned this,
and it all started because I learned this really cool trick about, dry milk powder. So dry milk powder is just the milk solids from, from milk
and which is basically just protein. So when we’re making brown butter,
which is delicious and has that nutty flavor, and now brown butter
chocolate cookies are kind of everywhere. Smell it already. It’s kind of like hazelnut smell. So brown butter is so good. And a chocolate chip cookie
and but the part that’s the, like, magical caramelly nutty part is the is the milk
solids that have browned in the pan. So what if you could get more of that
in your cookie without having to increase the butter? Because if you increase the butter or the whole, the ratios of the butter
in the flour go off. So the way to do that, I realized,
I learned, you know, is by adding some nonfat milk powder into your brown
butter when you’re browning it. So you’re just bumping up your brown
butter. Yeah, right. You’re going to get more of that
caramelly goodness. So I was like, I’m a genius. This. And this is not to say I know there are plenty of people
who have done this before me, but it was a very exciting thing to me. And I was like,
I can just share this with people. So then I started working
on a chocolate chip cookie recipe. I made so many chocolate chip cookies
and in the end, we even we it even got to the point
where we photographed them for the book. And again, a chocolate chip cookies have been photographed
every way from here to eternity. There’s not
something like really special and new. but they’re not your chocolate chip
cookie They’re not mine. And so. So in the end, I ended up cutting it
because I just was waffling so hard and I was like,
if I can’t stand up to my own criticism, then I can’t expect other people
to to go with this. And what’s interesting is right now,
actually, just today I was talking to my, recipe tester because we are like,
I was like, I’m not giving up. I know there’s a way we can still make it
better, so we’re still working on it. Like, I have a dream. So are you telling me your next book
is going to be the 30 Different chocolate? Yeah, it’s like. I think we will all be jumping on that. And I think we’re all running to, to put,
the, the milk powder onto our list. Yeah. Well, and then I want to talk about
ingredients because. So that’s a new one that I or at least
for me it’s going to be a new one to add to my list is what’s one ingredient
that you wish everyone had on here. Oh. Oh man. Wow. This is like
I feel so much pressure right now. And I was like,
oh, this is your favorite book. I suddenly you’re like, I never know. I will say, okay,
this is a real it’s a real simple one. And it’s it’s in some ways just been a revelation to me
in a belated way in my cooking career. But for some people that are going to be
like, duh, which is seasoned rice vinegar. So, so, so rice vinegar, is it like a common ingredient
in a lot of Asian cuisines? And the seasoned rice vinegar just means that they’ve put
a little bit of salt and sugar in it. And so it’s a very light tasting vinegar. And it’s you know, when I first sort of learned about it,
because I was trained in sort of European, Western European cooking,
and then I had my own sort of Iranian like sort of culinary expertise
that I brought into that. And, but but I am less familiar
as a cook with Asian cuisines and, and so seasoned rice vinegar was not something
I was like using or buying. I didn’t know the difference
between unseasoned and seasoned. And then at some point I realized,
oh my God, there’s salt and sugar in this. It’s what makes it’s,
you know, a lot of times I think sushi rice is seasoned
with seasoned rice vinegar. And so it has this little tang
but a little bit of sweetness. It’s so delicious. So because it’s quite a neutral vinegar,
it’s become my go to. It’s the one I reach for every time. So when I don’t feel like making a salad
dressing from scratch, or when I have not made one, or I’m just
feeling lazy, I literally just sprinkle a little bit of rice vinegar
and olive oil over my over my lettuces, and that becomes the tastiest
salad dressing because it’s already got like three of the tastes in there. It has acid, salt and sugar. And so, it’s just like it’s really
it makes everything better. It’s so good. It I feel like it tastes really clean. It tastes very. Clean.
But you don’t feel bad about yourself. Yeah, well, there’s no reason. No, there is no. Reason to feel bad, but, like,
it’s nice to because of that. But the word that I would use is. Yeah, clean or neutral. Like I agree,
it tastes very clean and neutral. And so a lot of times these are the base
ingredients that we choose in our cooking, be it the cooking oils or the vinegars or, cheeses or things like that. They will
even if you’re not thinking about it, they will direct the flavor of a dish
into a particular culture. And so if you’re using olive oil,
but you’re trying to make Taiwanese food, your food’s never going to taste right, because there’s no olive trees in Taiwan,
right? That I know of. Know of and not so olive oil is not,
like a, classic Taiwanese cooking oil. And so but what I love about the rice vinegar is that even though it is sort of more traditional
to Asian cultures and Asian cuisines, because it is so neutral tasting
and so clean tasting, it doesn’t necessarily make it wouldn’t necessarily
make something that I was trying to taste, make it taste Italian. It wouldn’t taste, quote
unquote, wrong. Sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, with the quote unquote
wrong, especially with your new book of things, recipes and rituals
to share with people you love. There’s you go around the world,
really the recipes. And why was that important
for you to be able to explore that? I feel like the world like
the food, is the best part of the. World,
you know, like. The universal language. Yeah. And it is. There are so many delicious things
that I have, you know, been exposed to, just whether by sort of physically
traveling to a place or by, you know, traveling through a cookbook
and getting to or going to a restaurant and eating their food. And so for me, I’m always
I kind of feel like I’m a little, I don’t know, a magpie or something
collecting like all of the little delicious things in my life
and all I ever want to do when I find something really good
is share it with people. And so I’m like,
oh my God, did you know this? Right? That’s the sentiment of this book is like,
oh my God. You know, like,
these are the things I’ve collected. And so they’re not just from one place,
they’re from sort of my broad experience in life. And sometimes it is a little bit of like
taking something, you know, 1 in 1 example is sort of there’s a, there’s a chapter
that begins the book that’s kind of these like pantry items that you can make
to sort of then use to, to. As condiments
or use to build other dishes on. So whether it’s things
like having a jar in your pantry of, shallots that you fried that, then you can sprinkle on top of a soup
or a rice, or making a Calabrian chili crisp, or having a green salsa
or a herbed labneh. And so one of these components
is, it’s a it’s a preserved lemon paste. And so preserved lemons
are, like a traditional sort of ingredient
in North African cuisines. And that was how I learned about them. And because I live in California
and there’s citrus trees everywhere, a thing I was taught to do as a young cook
was to make my own preserved Meyer lemons,
which is very simple. You just salt lemons
and you leave them on the counter for for three weeks until they’re really cured
and quite fermented. And then you transition it to the fridge. And then when you’re making a tagine
or a Moroccan inspired thing, you can add these, these lemons
into the dish. But the truth of the matter was like, I as much as I loved making the preserved lemons,
I was not very good at using them up because I’m not making that many tagines
in my daily life. Right. And so I often would be like, what? Why did I do this? And then they kind of sit there and turn gray over time
and it’s just less appetizing. And they start to taste a little bit
metallic. And I don’t know, now. You’re sad.
And then you’re sad. And so one day, my friend,
Chris Crawford has, vinegar and fermentation company,
and she has sent me something to try. And it was a jar of pureed lemon paste. So she had just literally taken the lemons
and then pureed them once they were preserved. And I realized, oh, of course, like,
you can take this puree and add a spoonful of it
to so many different things and get this kind of wonderful
kick of like, salt and lemon and umami. And it can I can stir it into my yogurt. Recently, I made a soda. Like I just stirred a little bit of the puree into fizzy water
and a little bit of agave sirup. It was like a salty lemon soda
that was so good for me. Yeah, or like I made frozen yogurt
where I stirred some of the paste into yogurt and froze it.
That was delicious. But also you can add it to vinaigrette or braises or soups
or like salad dressings, anything. And the one thing then when I was making it,
I was like, oh, you know what? If I added a little bit of fresh
turmeric root into my jar of lemons and then when I puree it,
the whole thing becomes this incredible sunny yellow lemon color,
sunny lemon yellow color. And so instead of sort of sitting
in the fridge and like turning gray and sad over the course of the year,
every time I open the fridge now there’s this like beautifully like,
you know, canary yellow paste. And I’m so excited to use it. And because of that, I’ve come up
with even more things to do with it. Like we made a preserved
lemon cake that’s so delicious. And so. I feel like there’s some sort of metaphor. There for sure. Well,
it sounds like to where I think you have favorite good things to put on everything,
and that seems like that’s one. That’s one of it’s what’s funny
is my relationship to the lemon paste really has like developed
since I finished the book. And so, so many of my ideas are post book
because I keep using it like this. That’s the other thing I really feel about
the book is that it is a very accurate sort of portrait of my life
in this moment. It’s a document about like who I am. It’s,
you know, pictures of my actual home, my actual stuff, the food
we actually eat and cook, the recipes that I really make
and share on a daily basis. And that’s why almost
none of them are like project cooking. There’s a small handful of things
that might take a whole day or a whole afternoon,
but almost everything else is just something that I make
because I had this laying around, you know, and I feel like
that is what I sort of came to realize. Going back to what I was saying
before, about trying to be a little bit nicer to myself and not beat myself up
as much, it’s a little bit of like, well, if I find pleasure in these small things,
like maybe you will too. So like instead of like spending my time
trying to control and worry about what you’re going to do with these recipes
or this book once I give it to you. If I shift my approach
and think of it instead of as like a gift that I’m offering you in sort of my, my,
my cupped palm, then like, then it’s up to you what to do, to do with it
what you will like. And you can take from it
what serves you and leave the rest behind. And that was sort of how I got to a place
where I was like, felt like I could give, give it, you know? Well, I feel like this kind of goes back to the feedback
that you were saying earlier. When you’re hearing from people like,
oh, I make your recipes every week, or we use this, is this for a party? And and you already answer this question. And in some ways, but clearly it’s
so intentional in terms of you really encourage people to use
ingredients are in their pantries. Yeah. You know, they’re not super duper
complicated I think I think we get it. Well,
we get it into our heads that we all do. If it’s a recipe, then that’s it’s a lot. Yeah, it’s it’s a very complicated it’s
going to take a whole day. But I think what really resonates
with both of your, your books is we can all do it. Yeah, that’s very much at the heart of it is and I think really hard about that
when choosing, you know, the recipes
and the ingredients in the recipes is I am very aware that I live
sort of in the, like, agricultural haven of the Bay area and that there are
there’s so much available to me pretty much year round, but I always try
to place myself outside of that when I’m when I’m choosing, when I’m shopping
for the ingredients to test with, when I’m choosing,
you know, how many steps to ask you to do? Because I am very aware, like, you know, as a person who’s also followed
recipes and other books for 20 something years, like I’ve had my own experience
of being like, oh, I’m really excited. I’m going to try and make this thing,
oh, I have to make two special trips to specialty stores
to get those things right. And then I have to spend
an whole afternoon making it. And then you do it and it’s not that good. And that’s a real disappointment. And a bit
like I feel betrayed and angry sometimes. And so I don’t want to cause
that feeling in anyone. So I will say, it’s
not that I have no obscure things, but if I’m going to ask you to do it, there’s a reason why,
and I’m going to tell you the reason why, and also give you the option
to leave that out if you want. Right. It’s
probably not only for that one recipe. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah. Well, and so you’re
coming to us at the cusp of fall, I think in Connecticut
it feels crazy because it’s still summer. It’s so warm. But yeah. Yeah. But you know. In a few days
it’ll be fall. Exactly. And so do you have any favors soups
or or favorite fall foods that you think our listeners to check out?
Oh, yeah. I mean, so, I, I will say I do love winter squash a lot and I especially, I love sort of
I love it a lot more at the beginning of the fall than at the end,
you know, when it’s still new. Okay. So we are going to need an early also
and or an early winter soup in a later winter. Great, great. And so there is like a,
there’s a recipe in the book that I make with with the they’re, it’s
a newer breed of squash called Sometimes Honey Nut and sometimes
it’s called eight eight squash. And it was developed in sort of concert
between a chef named Dan Barber in New York and the farmers he works with
who grew basically, Dan Barber at some point was interacting
with the farmer and was like, you know, I think the farmer was lamenting
how much water it takes to grow a squash. And then Barbara was like, that’s crazy,
because the first thing a chef does when he puts a squash, gets a squash in
the kitchen, is cook all the water out. You want to roast the heck out of it
to get it all caramelized and sweet. So what if there were a way to grow a less
watery squash? It makes the whole process
more efficient, right? And so you’ve probably seen them.
They’re like these. They almost look like miniature
butternut squash is. And so they’re
they’re more widely available these days. They’re maybe about ten years old. They’re like so they’ve kind of
infiltrated into the market. So I love them because they’re so
concentrated and sweetness and in flavor. And truly I just I just have them
and roast them sort of skin side up. And then you can like or maybe
even peel them and roast them in pieces. And then I would,
I would love making like any sort of, like I
call it a salad, but it’s really a side dish of roasted vegetables
that’s like served at room temperature. And from there,
now you can build on this thing. So you have this, like caramelized sweet
butternut squash or honey nut squash. And so what that what’s going to heighten
that is a little bit of acid. So you could put some pickled
onions on there. You could put any fresh herb to sort of perk up all of that dark
heavy caramelization. You could drizzle it
with a little maple sirup if you wanted, or chili
crisp would be a great topping. So that’s kind of like
and there’s a whole rubric in the book
for making all these types of side dishes. And I think butternut squash or carrots
also make a delicious soup. And there is a good recipe in the book
for like a curried carrot soup. And there’s a squash variation
to that’s super simple. And you just sort of basically
dump everything in a pot. And when it’s soft, you puree. And that’s that kind of thing is is just like so simple
and so warming and really nice. I’m a huge, what’s in the fridge? Just dump it on a. Yeah,
I have a person, so that’s perfect for me. More with author and cook
Samin Nosrat after a short break. Her new book is Good Things Recipes
and Rituals to Share with People You Love. You can join the conversation
on Facebook and Twitter at Where We Live. From Connecticut Public Radio,
this is Where We Live. I’m Catherine Shen, stay with us. This is Where We Live from Connecticut
Public Radio. I’m Catherine Shen. This hour, we’re speaking with James
Beard award winning author Samin Nosrat. You might know her from the bestselling
cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid Heat. Her new book is Good Things Recipes
and Rituals to Share With People You Love. It’s a collection of recipes and essays
that might just inspire you to gather with those people you love to share a meal
with, or perhaps even start a ritual. So rituals.
A huge theme in your new books. I mean, what was the process
like building your own sort of dinner party or dinner rituals
with the people you love? It definitely happened sort of by mistake. As most great things do. Yeah, or maybe not a mistake. But let’s say, serendipitously,
I would not say it was some like great intention,
even though for many years I did have my own dream
of creating a weekly dinner ritual inspired by some that I sort of
participated in with other friends. When I traveled. But my life was, you know,
I was traveling so much. I also really had this excuse that I felt was kind of hypocritical,
which I believed I was like, oh, I could never do that because I don’t have a place
for anyone to sit because I lived in a really little
apartment and I just, I was like, what? I’m going to make them sit on the ground
next to my coffee table. Even though I would always tell
people like, it doesn’t matter. People can sit on the couch.
It doesn’t, you know. And so I kind of had
this whole list of excuses. One of them also was, you know, I think the classic night
for this type of gathering is Sunday. People always talk about a Sunday.
Dinner, right? And I thought about my own life. And most of my friends
are parents of small children. And so thinking like, could I actually get people to commit
to coming over a week after week on a Sunday evening when,
like with their kids, when like that, it seems impossible getting people to put their kids in a car
or come over with or without food like it. Just anything with kids on a Sunday
before school night feels like a lot. A big ask. And so I just
I had a lot of doubt about it. And I was really sad. And that was honestly something
I really felt in that loneliness
that I was talking about, that like sense of loneliness
that I had, that I’ve like done all this work,
I’ve achieved all this stuff, and now I’m sitting here
and there’s nobody to share it with. So I really wanted a dinner ritual. I just didn’t know how to go
about making it happen. And then one day I was cooking. I was testing a recipe for, like, a
I was trying to make like, pork, al pastor, which is a complicated street
food that I was trying to sort of adapt for making at home,
which maybe was not the greatest idea. And, and so I kept failing. And every time I failed, you know, each time I’d make this,
like 4 or 6 pound pork shoulder. So then I had all of this pork
I had to eat. So my friend came over
right in the midst of one of these trials, and she saw that I was really,
like, down on myself. And she’s like, what’s going on? And I said, well, like, not only is
this going to be horrible and not work, but then I’m going to have to eat it
for the next 27 meals by myself. And she was like,
oh, we’ll help you eat it. You can bring it over to us. And this was sort of in the like, post
vaccine era, where I was just sort of starting to think about, oh,
I can go over to people’s houses again. So it felt in some ways like a lifeline. I was like, really? When, when can I come? Right. You got to think. The pork. Yeah. And so she. Said,
just come on Tuesday this. And so we, I like packed up
the pork and I came on Tuesday and we shredded
it and we made perfectly good tacos. They were not the thing I had imagined,
but it kind of didn’t matter. It was just like a very good meal
with her kids and our other friends who sort of lived in the backyard,
and it was so nice and natural that we were like, oh, well,
should we just do this again next week? Weekend, next week? So we kept doing it. And this group of friends
I want to stress, was not like the if you had given me
a, you know, a piece of paper and said, write down the people
you want to create a dinner ritual with, I wouldn’t have necessarily
thought of these folks. They’re my friends. I’ve known them for a long time, but they were not like my innermost circle
by any means. But what’s happened now? That’s been almost five years. I think it’ll be. Yeah, I guess we’re going on close
to five years with these dinners. Is that they have become
my closest family. You know,
they have become at the center of my life. And this Monday dinner, we always sort of
jokingly say is like our religion or it’s church. And in fact,
we just had our first book events like right before I left home last week. And the kids came and afterward they were texting me
and they were saying like, oh, wow. Like, I get it. Like,
you know, 42 isn’t the meaning of life. Monday dinner is the meaning of life like. And to see kids
like really sort of understand and look forward to this thing
is, is so special and it’s not I, you know, again, I want to be clear like sure,
some of the time I was testing recipes or I’ll cook something that I’m so excited
to cook and bring it over, but I definitely don’t do everything. I don’t determine the menu on my own. We all do it together. Sometimes I don’t even make anything
and I think that has given me a whole new understanding
of what it means to like, be, be like the hospitality,
what it means to be generous, how to accept generosity,
how it is to be part of something, and how it is to like, create
something together. And that has been like such a gift to me
in my life. What I was going to say,
following the theme of 42, I think Don’t Panic is another one
for what we’re talking about. Yeah, especially when you’re talking about not like you’re
making a meal for everybody. But then there’s a lot of there’s
a sense of consistency and communication. Everyone has to kind of be on
the same page in order to do this right. And so I think for many of us,
as you mentioned earlier, everyone’s busy,
everyone’s living their lives. And so it’s really hard to get anyone
together and fit everyone into a schedule. So I think you kind of touched on this in
in some way. But for listeners
that might want to try this out with their friend group,
you know, where should they start? Yeah, I didn’t have to be anything big. No, it doesn’t have to be anything big. And I thought, I’ve thought a lot about this over
the years, and I did put a rubric in the book
for like how to create your own, because I do think we sort of accidentally
stumbled into some things that have made it a lot easier for us
that seem a little bit, unconventional. So I think when people think of,
oh, let’s start a group meal, a lot of times they’re like, well,
it should be a potluck, and we should share the responsibility of hosting. And I would not call what we do
a potluck at all. And and even more importantly,
it has always been in the same house
on the same day, at the same time. And because of that, there is so much less
that we have to communicate about. There’s not the sort of you don’t have to do a spreadsheet,
you don’t have to do a doodle poll. You don’t have to figure out
when people are available. We all know that Mondays are holy for us,
and that is sort of cleared on our schedules.
It’s in our Google calendar. And so because of that,
then everyone is committed. And so I think having full buy in from
everyone is really important. And I think also just reducing
the amount of variables. And because of that, then that allows us
if somebody has a surplus of something, then they make all of the soup
for us that week or whatever. And so really the communication on the text thread
is almost entirely about fun stuff. It’s about what are we going to have? Who’s going to come join us at the table? What fun thing is happening this week
instead of like, does so-and-so have mayonnaise
or whatever? Like there’s so much less of that. And so, yeah. And because it’s in the same house now, we all are familiar with that kitchen,
we’re familiar with the place, and we’ve been able to create
sort of like a lot of things to look forward to,
which I also think is really key. I think if you think of this as a,
as something you have to do an a, like a chore, it’s
not it’s not going to work. It has to feel like a gift. And so however that is for you,
however, you can make it feel special and something to look forward
to is really important. So, you know, for us,
like we are all big gardeners and so we’ll send the kids
out into the yard to make a like a flower display or like a
just a vase of flowers, you know, or maybe your thing is music and you want to you’ve made a special playlist that you play every week,
or maybe like your big wine person and you’ve been saving all these
fancy wines and like, why save them? Like start drinking them,
you know, or whatever. But if it’s if each time is an opportunity
to look forward to rather than something, a chore you have to get through,
I think that is really crucial. And a lot of the things that I sort of
read about ritual and came to understand about ritual and understood that we had
sort of accidentally stumbled into are based on sort of the scaffolding that
a lot of the time religion will give us. Right? Religion. One of the beautiful
things of religion is that it’s it creates
a community where there is full buy in. And so if you know, everyone knows
they have to go to the the temple of Worship on Friday
or Saturday or Sunday. And so there’s not a convincing because you just understand
that’s part of your, your week. And so in that way I think having we
sort of have created that for ourselves. When I think, it’s amazing the
the buy in is also everyone with their children, and that’s one of our favorite things,
actually, about your new book. And it made me kind of,
I was trying to remember, you know, way back when, when I was,
when I was a kid. I don’t think I was ever not invited
to, like, an adult gathering. Right? Like, I mean, there might be, like,
the kids table, but that’s fair, right? So I, I was always in, in that environment
where it was welcomed and it seems like this is the case because it’s
not the case for, for a lot of people. Right. Or or I guess. Yeah. Like dinner party. You’re right. Yeah. There is a lot of leaving out of kids. But to me, one of the joys is like,
for one thing, it’s it’s sometimes a drag. I won’t be right. Like, I have to, like, I love spicy
food and I have to always sort of, like, hold back
the spice because of the kids, right? Like I
did witness one of our friends as kids who had no idea what he was eating. And then it was too late. He was. Crying,
you know. So sad, but kind of funny. But yes. But, you know, one of the beauties of children
is that they are, like, ruthlessly honest. Right? And so for me as a person, like, I’m
constantly sort of looking for feedback because I want to know
how I can make stuff better. You want to get that?
Yeah. Kids will always give that to you. But sometimes you’re like, come on. Like you ate chicken enchiladas last week. Why are you not liking them this week? Like, so it’s just I think it’s it’s a very good reminder that, like, the this whole thing is an experiment
and it’s a live, it’s a living experiment. And so that,
I think, is another part of what makes it crucial to have the like, full buy in
and the consistency. Because that way, like
if one of the dinners is a bust or a kid throws a tantrum or this week
they’re like, I’m now a vegetarian,
I don’t eat whatever. And you’ve like, shown up with a roast
chicken. There’s kind of the pressure
is not as high to have a great night or to have a great meal
because you know that there’s next week. Whereas I think in our very busy lives,
when we have created this thing where you decide in four and a half weeks
that your friends are going to get together and everyone’s
going to cook, there’s so much pressure for that night to deliver, you know,
socially sort of connective, connective like maybe culinary
and that that’s a lot of pressure to put on one evening,
especially if there’s kids there, especially if like just
we all have feelings. Everyone has feelings. And sometimes feelings are big. Yeah, totally. And so I think having
having the consistency means it’s okay. It’s okay. Like it’s okay if this one’s a bust
and sometimes they’re bust. Like. What does it mean for you to be able
to find that especially, you know, adults? I mean, looking back at maybe kids,
I mean, when you felt lonely, I mean, even when you were an adult,
you think only. But now that you found your community. And I hope that it’s continuing.
Yeah. It does. Yeah. I’m missing a few for this tour, but,
I get the updates. I’m like, I find out
I know what they’re all eating. No. And I’m so happy to have this thing
that I get to be a part of and get to celebrate and get to sort of
feel like I have a home to return to. And I, I will say, like, I did not approach this, book tour
without a fair amount of anxiety, in large part
because the last time I sort of returned home with my life
sort of turned upside down and, the other day,
as I was leaving my house to sort of embark on the first stop,
I closed the door and I, like, said a little prayer to myself. I was like, okay,
it’s going to be different this time. And I really do think, like,
I have done a lot of work in my life to create something that I’m grounded in
and rooted in and that, you know, I have this home now
that’s part of this little community. I have this amazing group of people
I have dinner with every week. I have, you know, my dog
and my girlfriend. Like, I just have other things other
than work that are propelling me in life. And I think that that is
is so helpful as well. And I think we live in a world where
we’re very much reliant on certain labels and or our personalities are revolved around the work that we do
or the hobbies that we like. Is it refreshing that
perhaps in some ways, I mean, this is very much a part of you. Of course, cooking and food and whatnot,
but are you able to sort of shed that for a. I am very much trying to, and I think
sometimes to some people’s chagrin, because they expect me to show up
and be the food person. Right? And now I’m like, but I just want to talk
about feelings like kids, you know? And so it feels in
some ways like a great burden lifted from, from me
for sure to have I also, there are a million other things I love,
you know, and I want to be able to have room to explore those
and talk about those and share those too. Well, then we’ve been talking a lot
about perfectionism, too. And so whether or not you’re cooking
for a group or for yourself, we can put a lot of pressure on ourselves
regardless of what the project is. Right? You want the dishes to be right
and perfect. What are some ways that recovering
perfectionists can can just let go and just enjoy being in the moment and
enjoying that very simple, delicious food? Yeah,
I mean, I think anything so I would 100%, call myself a recovering and sometimes
not recovering perfectionist. But and certainly in terms of like hosting
or cooking for people, I’ve always sort of historically had this idea that I have
to do everything, take care of everything, make sure everyone is happy,
not let anyone do anything. And, you know, often
that ends up with me being this like kind of whirling dervish in the house
while everyone else. And I’m like, I’m like, no, no, no, don’t
get up like you sit down and enjoy. But I’m just going to be a chaotic
Tasmanian devil, like washing all the dishes while you’re
four feet away or something, you know? And so this pressure
that I entirely put on myself to do everything, and then I get resentful
and become like martyr complex. And so that’s no good. And I think I’ve realized that
in a big way, actually being part of Monday dinner where I’m not able, like, it’s
not my house, I’m not the host. I am not responsible for everything. It’s taught me a lot about sort of
actually, it’s much more generous to be present at the table with people. And frankly,
that’s all we ever really want from anyone is someone’s time
and focus and attention. And so if I’m like, insisting
that I’m washing the dishes right now or getting up and doing 900 things like,
I’m not at the dinner with you, and there’s a sadness,
there’s a loneliness that I was often left with in the wake of dinner,
when people would come over because I’d be like,
I didn’t even experience that. And I didn’t realize,
like I was doing it to myself. So a big thing that I do now is I’ve just lowered all my expectations
and standards. That’s a great way to do it. And I may. And truly, especially when it comes
to people coming over, I just make much simpler things
that can as much as possible, be made in advance and either heated
or not heated and served. And so truly, it’s stuff like,
barely marinated, gently warmed olives. You know, a bowl of popcorn. Yeah. Like, you know, other things that, you know,
just room temperature, roasted vegetables, like a simple
one pot pasta, that kind of stuff. Which is just as, like, truly just as comforting and nourishing to eat
as anything more grandiose. And also, you know, as I reflect upon
sort of a lifetime of dinners at table like tables, very rarely
do I remember the things that I eat. Almost always do. I remember sort of what was happening,
who was there. They were making fun of me for being dense
or whatever, you know, like it’s. It’s the memories.
Yeah. It’s the experience. Yeah. So it sounds like keeping it
simple is a good way to go. Well I appreciate your time
focus and attention. Oh and the generosity of your,
your your storytelling. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Of course
you’ve been listening to Samin Nosrat. She’s a cook teacher and author of the James Beard Award
winning book Salt, Fat, Acid Heat. And her new book is Good Things Recipes
and Rituals to Share With People You Love. Listeners can find our full conversation
with her on CT public.org slash. Where we live I’m Catherine Shen
today shows produced by Tess Terrible. Our technical producer is Dylan Reyes Downlow where we live
anytime on your favorite podcast app. And thank you all so much for listening
and happy cooking and happy eating, everyone. Yeah. I.
Dining and Cooking