Samin Nosrat's recipe for gathering with friends

0:00You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, it's Marielle. There's an inclination I think a lot of us have when we're hosting people for a gathering. We want it to be perfect. If it's at our homes, we want it to look like nobody lives there. If we're serving food, it's got to be picture perfect, all laid out like a spread from Martha Stewart Living. We want the food to be special, for people to remember it. And maybe, if we're being honest, for them to say, wow, they're talented. They really know how to cook. Samin Nosrat has had this experience too many times while hosting. I want to do everything and make everybody feel so good that then I get worked into a tizzy.

0:43And so then I'm like a Tasmanian devil of crazed energy the whole time. And people are like, oh, like, please sit down or you don't need to do the dishes or what can we do to help? And I'm like, nothing, nothing. It's fine. It's fine. I got it. I got it. I just want to be perfect for you. But actually, that's not relaxing or doesn't make anyone feel good. Now, Samin is a professional chef and the author of the highly regarded and successful cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. So you can imagine the added pressure she feels. But this is the thing, right? We want our gatherings to be successful. And so in a way, they become a performance, not an experience.

1:22What Samin has realized over time is that there's another way, a better way. The realization started after the massive success of her first book and her Netflix show by the same name. And my parents are immigrants. And there was a lot of pressure on me to succeed. And her family had been through a lot. Samin lost her sister as a child. And later she realized she had spent her life trying to ease that burden for her family by working harder. I had learned that I should be two kids worth of everything. Two kids worth of good. Two kids worth of everything for my parents. You know, in order to try to make up for their loss.

2:01though she eventually saw that was a flawed concept. And even though I was therapized enough to know like an achievement's not going to like fix my life, I think somewhere deep, deep, deep down, I still believed if I did something really good that it would somehow get me that like sense of belonging and happiness and fullness in my life that I've always lacked. And I think it was really crushing to get the big success and then still feel so lonely and so sad. So around this time, Samin's friend Greta started having a weekly dinner at her house. The food was never the point. It was the sort of ritual of it and the opportunity to see other people and the like making a space and a time to gather.

2:51That was the point. There's something different about these meals. And it's because here, what's important is who's around the table and what's happening around the table and not what's on the table. So she shifted. She committed to a weekly dinner with friends a few years ago. And it's still going. It's become an anchor for all of them. And it became like a grounding, very meaningful practice in all of our lives. At one point, one of the friends said like, Monday dinner is my church, you know, is my religion. Samin wrote about this in her new cookbook, Good Things, Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love.

3:28On this episode of Life Kit, we talk about how to break bread, how to create community meals, she's got lots of specific tips for that, and what recipes tend to work well for a group. Also, she shares a recipe for garlic bread that's so good, it should be illegal. That's after the break.

3:55In the book, you have a chapter on how to cook for other people or for your community. And you have takeaways that are basically your cardinal rules, right? One of them is make room for everyone. There always have to be enough seats for everyone to eat at the same time. Yeah, that moment of like coming together and sort of admiring the food on the table and sitting down and being like, wow, like we get to eat this, like we all worked on this is kind of very precious and almost sacred. And it's one of those things like, you know, in a way, it's of course it's sacred. That's people have been saying grace in every religion.

4:34You know, like what do they say in Japan? Itadakimasu. Like there's always kind of this moment of appreciation. Bon appetit. like in Farsi we say shokur hoda like there's just there's often that thing and so we live a much more secular life so there isn't a religious practice when we come together but there often is just this moment of admiration and gratitude even if it's just a silent sort of like noticing it creates that moment and then another one of your suggestions or cardinal rules is to make it feel holy can you talk more about that yeah I mean so like the way I wrote about this was the idea of creating like a regular eating and cooking together ritual with your community, whether that's your family or your chosen family or some of both, which I view as something slightly different from a dinner party, you know, which is like everyone coming over to my house and I've done everything.

5:33You know, I think of them sort of slightly differently. And I think by breaking it up so it's not a thing that's all on your own shoulders and it's a shared effort. But also I think by making it a regular effort and ritualizing it, that's probably step one of making it holy. There's community buy-in. All of us have it blocked on our calendars. And it becomes this thing that is special. It's special for the kids, it's special for the adults. And not because it's fancy, it's really not. Like last night, we had a big salad and a big noodle salad and a watermelon you know what I mean for 10 people like it was not it was not fancy so sometimes for us it's the ritualization is the like I don't know for a long time depending on the seasons we send the kids out to make flower arrangements for the table you know who's gonna set the table how did you bring out the special napkins we're not like huge drinkers but I could imagine that could be a way like if you have a special bottle of wine you want to share but creating any sort of habit to ritualize it and make it something sacred to look forward to I think is what will distinguish it from like oh just another like pizza night or something you know yeah and some other tips you have in the book which get at some of what you were just saying choose a day in time and stick to it so everyone blocks it off on their calendar, choose one location and stick to it.

7:08Yep. So by having the same time and day, we don't have to be like, oh, it's Tuesday. Is it seven? Do the kids have gymnastics? Like it just is what it is. Then it being the same place, that's one less thing we have to coordinate and check in about. And that also means everyone is familiar with that house, with that kitchen, with that space, with the pantry there. So you sort of know you're like, oh, yeah, she has this and this and this or anything to sort of create familiarity and steadiness just cuts out the constant sort of checking and communication, which I think is often sort of a big part of the overwhelm of setting up a ritual like this.

7:51Do you suggest that people cook at home and bring their dishes to the location of the dinner or that everyone cooks at the place where you're going to eat? I think it depends what you're making. So usually what we do is some or all of the stuff is done in advance and then what the finishing touches are done together. Unless we decide to do something which is also very fun and nice to save for this kind of gathering, which is tonight we're all going to make dumplings and we're going to set up a assembly line and everybody, all the kids, everybody gets involved. And I usually try to save some steps of anything I'm making for kids to help with, because I love involving them.

8:33And I think it's really exciting and fun to get them excited. You know, and I just an observation I have had over many years is that when kids help cook, they're much more likely to like, be curious and taste and eat stuff. Or they're like, which one was my dumpling? I want to eat that one. So I always try to do some of that. But I think you don't want to overwhelm the home where you're going. But also there's almost all recipes, not all recipes have a good stopping point, but many do. So things like dressing the salad can be done at the last second, or I'll cook some sort of more complicated thing most of the way, and then I'll finish it and I'll do the sort of browning or broiling at that house.

9:18and then something like, I don't know, fish, I'll cook from start to finish at that house. How do y 'all decide what you're going to cook every week? It usually starts with somebody like saw something on the internet or is craving something or bought a special ingredient. So usually one person has like an idea that often becomes the anchor for the meal. So it'll be something like, oh, I want to have banh mi. And then we all build a Vietnamese sort of ish meal around that. Or, oh, I've really been craving tomato soup. So then we're like, well, then obviously we have to have grilled cheese sandwiches.

9:57And that honestly is part of the fun is like we have a text thread that, you know, our dinners are on Monday. So usually like Friday, Saturday, someone will say like, is anyone thinking about anything? Like we're going to go grocery shopping or any ideas? Or often for me, it'll be like if, you know, Salmon comes into season. I live by myself, so I'm not out here buying whole king salmon for my own self, which is often really sad. But now I have this excuse to do it. It kind of makes it special for me to get to buy these special occasion ingredients because now basically every week is a special occasion.

10:32Yeah, I love that. How do you deal with differences in income within the group? Yeah, that's a great question. And I've thought a lot about this. I mean, in our group, we're not radically different in our socioeconomic classes. But, you know, for example, I don't have kids. So in some ways, like financial pressures are much lower on me. So there's like, if someone is single mothering all day and working, maybe they're not going to have a chance to like, make a really complicated dish to contribute. but it's important for us that you're all there. So bring whatever you can. Maybe it's just like stopping and buying ice cream or you're the one who swings by the grocery store and gets all the last minute things.

11:17So I think for us, we don't have to have a lot of super explicit conversations about it. But anytime like we have sensed resentments encroaching, which of course, like over time, you know, you're like, why doesn't that person ever do anything? I think you just If you don't have a pre-existing relationship with people where there is kind of this like understanding, I think you have to explicitly talk about it. There can also be a lot of differences in what food we buy at the grocery store and the quality of it. Yes. And like the hormone-free, humanely raised chicken will be more expensive than the other one.

12:01How do you have those conversations, especially if like there are some people in the group who are like, I only I only want to eat this stuff for health reasons or for moral reasons, but they can afford it? Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a good question, honestly. And it's in a way, it's not that different than other dietary preferences that people have and constraints. And I do think, to me, I would say if you only want to eat the finest pasture raised organic chicken, and you're hanging out with a bunch of 22 year olds who, you know, are on like a college budget, then I would say the solution there is to eat more vegetables.

12:42So we also like definitely eat much more vegetable heavy, plant heavy. A meat is definitely a luxury for us because buying enough chicken thighs for 12 people is expensive. Part of being in community is compromising. And I think a healthy compromise involves all people sort of being able to say what it is that they want to need. And then together coming up with a solution that works for everyone. next up i talked to samin about what to cook for a group and she shares a couple recipes that's after the break

13:23let's talk recipes what do you think makes a recipe good for sharing with a group ideally it's something you can make in advance and doesn't involve like a lot of last minute tending So I would say things that are braised or stewed or just are able to be served at room temperature. Like anything like that is going to be a great choice. And also anything you can make in a big batch, you know. So sometimes that is a project cooking. That is things like spending a Sunday making bolognese sauce. Other times it's just like a huge tray of roasted vegetables. that you then drizzle with a creamy dressing.

14:08And it kind of feels a little bit more special than just roasted carrots. Now it's like roasted carrots with this yummy yogurt dressing or something. Maybe we could walk through a couple of recipes from the book. Great. So, I don't know if I'm going to pronounce this right. Pane criminale. Oh, pane criminale. My friend named that, yeah. She's like, this is criminally good. So I first started making pane criminale, which is just like a big hunking loaf of garlic bread. When I had these dinners that I would cook at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. And so we started talking about garlic bread. And Chad Robertson, one of the owners of Tartine was like, oh, yeah, once I had this garlic bread, and instead of being sliced horizontally, the loaf was scored vertically.

14:56And I was like, oh my God, that's genius. Because there's always kind of like dry parts, you know, don't have garlic butter on them. It's just sad. And so this way you guarantee that each slice of bread that you've scored, you butter it. So everything gets like plentiful garlic butter. And then I like to put also some Parmesan cheese. I like to put some herbs in there. But what I love is you bring this loaf to the table. And since it's scored, everyone just starts like you can just put it down at the center of the table and everyone pulls it apart. I made a bunch of them once for a friend's birthday party.

15:30I think we had like a big spaghetti dinner and garlic bread. And that was where it got the name. Everyone's like, this is criminal, like pane criminale. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you have another one in here called Cucucopita. Yeah. And so that one is the play on the spanakopita, which is the sort of Greek filo pastry that's stuffed with spinach and cheese, usually feta cheese, which I love. But I went through a real phase of sort of being obsessed with this Iranian cooking technique of sauteing your herbs and greens before folding them into anything, basically a Persian stew or Persian soup or kuku, which is sort of the Persian version of frittata.

16:18and the sort of classic Iranian cuckoo is cuckoo sabzi. Sabzi just means herbs or greens. So it's a very, very green frittata. Honestly, you eat it and you feel like Popeye. You're like, I'm just getting all my greens in here. The taste of the cooked herbs is really sweet and sort of deep in a way that when you just chop up dill and cilantro and parsley and mix it into eggs, it's just much fresher and lighter. And I really love that sweet developed herb taste. And so at one point I was like, oh my God, I could make a spanakopita, but instead of just like sauteing a little bit of spinach and putting it in there, I could make it with the cuckoo level of herbs.

16:59It does take some work to chop all the herbs and cook them all down. But then once you make the filling, you just layer everything onto a sheet pan and you can bake this whole thing off and show up at someone's house with an entire tray of like Popeye cakes. I love anything where it's just one tray. You know, you just show up somewhere one tray and there's not all 19 garnishes and stuff. I like a quinoa bowl. Oh, yes. With different stuff in it. I mean, like maybe some some roasted chicken breast, maybe some cherry tomatoes, chickpeas, parsley, raisins, vinaigrette, dill. Yeah, I mean, I think herb salad, like a big bean salad, grain salad, anything like that is also, I think, a winner for any kind of gathering like this because salads in general, we think of as something you want to make it last second.

17:56You know, you don't want to pre-dress your salad and bring it anywhere. It'll just weep and get sad. But bean salads, grain salads, any of these kind of big, like mixed things that sit and are hearty, they're only going to get more delicious as they sit and marinate. And often are better with time with at least 30 minutes, an hour or even overnight of the sitting. So everything can sort of marinate and come together. My one piece of advice on all of those things is restraint. Exercise restraint, like less is more. And so it's kind of like you want something from each category, but not too many things.

18:32You know, you want your legume or your grain. You want your sort of acid and fat or dressing. You want to have an herb. You want to have like a little special ingredient, whether that's cheese or an olive. But if you start adding one of everything, then it's going to start to taste like kind of kitchen sinky. Well, and don't forget the salt. Oh, of course, the salt. Yes, built in. Yes. Goes without saying. Samin, thank you so much. I've loved talking to you and learned a lot. Oh, thank you. All right. Time for a recap. Takeaway one is when hosting people, remember things don't have to be perfect.

19:08The point is to come together, enjoy each other's company, and share your lives. To that end, make sure there are enough chairs for everybody. You don't want to have one or two people doing all the serving while everybody else eats. Takeaway two, make it feel holy. Devote time and attention to it. If you pray or say grace, do that. But even if not, think about what rituals you can create to mark the event. Maybe you light candles before every meal or make flower arrangements for the table. have a special sparkling beverage, or roast marshmallows at the end. Make it special in some way. Takeaway three, choose a day and time for this meal and stick to it.

19:48Also choose a location and stick to that. Takeaway four, be willing to talk about money and food preferences and learn how to compromise. For instance, if you can't all afford the expensive cuts of meat, maybe you eat more vegetables together. Remember, the point is the people. and takeaway five try recipes that are particularly good for groups and that don't require a lot of last minute tending or assembling big trays of food and one pot meals meals that are braised or stewed grain salads and large fruits that you can cut open for dessert like watermelon and pineapple all right that's our show hey by the way have you subscribed to the life kit newsletter yet Every Friday, you'll get even more expert advice on health, money, and more, all curated by the LifeKit team.

20:36Think of it as a weekly check-in from your friends at LifeKit. Subscribe at npr.org slash LifeKit newsletter. This episode of LifeKit was produced by Sylvie Douglas. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Greed. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tegel, Claire Marie Schneider, and Margaret Serino. Engineering support comes from David Greenberg. I'm Mariel Cegarra. Thanks for listening.