272: Natasha Pickowicz & Claire Saffitz

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. The act of browning butter is something that I enjoy doing. Like, I don't need a shortcut to, like, get there already. It's like, if you were really into, like, knitting or gardening or something, you're not about just, like, eating the tomato and having a lot of socks. Like, you like knitting. Like, it's about, but it's, like, about doing the thing. It's not about, like, the stuff you get at the end. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel.

0:59here's an episode from our recent conversation with cookbook authors natasha pikowitz and claire saffitz live at risoli bookstore in manhattan natasha is a chef who runs the pop-up never-ending taste and the author of more than cake claire is a recipe developer and author of the best-selling cookbooks dessert person and what's for dessert i hope you'll enjoy our talk and stay tuned for more live tapings this fall

1:38Hi, thank you so much for coming to this live podcast event. We normally do these in a very small green screen room with nobody, so it's fun and a little nervous to be here with all of you. Thank you to Natasha and Claire for being here. it's super fun and we were talking backstage about some of the strange common interests that you have and I'm wondering if maybe you want to start by regaling me with them okay I was telling Eliza because when we were here a little bit early Eliza was saying that we're going to sit on this side and I was like oh that's perfect because Natasha and I are both lefties so Eliza's to our left and yet you're holding your microphone with your right hand I need to motion with my left hand as I talk and then we are cat lovers cat people we both lived in Montreal we both love pastry and we both imagined a future in academia for like a few minutes and then abandoned that so I think it was just I felt like when I first met Natasha which was years and years ago when we did the BA podcast I don't even know what year that was I immediately felt there was like a kinship between us right I mean I well actually I think the first time we met was when we did a layer cake story for BA.

2:52I think the podcast was before that. I don't remember. 2018. Yeah. And that was my last story as food editor at BA. Wow. Also like sort of near and dear. Well, the first like immediate observation and impression I had of Claire was we, she had to recipe test and put together these like very elaborate layer cake sets, which were kind of like the antecedent to what the layer cake chapter is in my book now is like an approach that I've honed from that moment up until my book coming out this spring. And there are a lot of moving pieces. And I'm like coming from a restaurant background. So I have like a very particular, like hyper organized list making way that I like to do things.

3:32And you know what I'm gonna say. And I came into the test kitchen. And Claire was like, okay, like my little pastry corner is back here. And she kind of like ushered me into the back. And on this like metal bench she had printed out and taped all of like the recipe sets and like instructions and all the lists with tape that she had cut perfectly with like clean edges so that the paper was like completely like flush and like smooth with the bench and I was like today's gonna be super smooth because Claire is running the show here. I love that story and I've learned a lot from making your recipes and assembling all those layer cakes.

4:13And that whole method, which maybe we'll talk about, or you can read Natasha's book, is something I definitely do now and have done it for like big cake projects. So I love that that was my last story because I went out with a bang. It's such a beautiful story. So that was how we really kind of got to know each other. The cats, I think I figured out the cats later. The cats came later. I came over and then I just like saw them all and then, you know, just like creeping around. That makes it sound like there are so many. there were two there's two how many are now still two two yeah i mean twice as many as me so i feel like you're so lucky i wish there were 10 more and they're all like backstage right now waiting to come out they're in my bag well the third part of your origin story that you two maybe don't know is that i was also working a bon appetit at the time so i was like five floors below you on the slack channel waiting to see when people would say that the tasting was done so that i could come upstairs and eat the cakes when you were done with them.

5:08So I too was there. I think it's such a crazy thing to go from working in restaurants where you're in complete control over making the food and like serving and selling it to people to then like the process of writing a recipe and sort of like releasing that recipe out into the world and hoping that people will make it the way you thought it would be done. And back in 2018, I had like no experience with that at all, like writing recipes for home bakers. So I think like that moment when we were cutting into the cake and like all of the layers were so even and so thin and so perfect. I was like, wow, okay, this is amazing.

5:46I wanted to be a good shepherd of Natasha's recipes. So thank you. And I guess while we're talking about your restaurant background and your kind of chess kitchen background, Claire, I'm curious when it came to, you know, maybe your first book even, how did you go about wanting to make baking recipes accessible for home cooks? And how do you think having a restaurant versus a Test Kitchen background affected that? I think for me, it was a pretty seamless transition from Test Kitchen to cookbook writing, because I was used to creating recipes for a kind of public audience and not, you know, in a restaurant setting.

6:22So that part wasn't really challenging at all. I was accustomed to the development process and the testing process and the writing process. What was a little bit difficult was like the time management because I was used to a production schedule that was monthly where we would be, you know, developing recipes for every issue. And so it was just, I think I still struggle a little bit with time management. It's just hard when you're working on something with that long of a timeline to really kind of, I don't know, I'm just always working on something last minute with a deadline is just how it's always going to be.

6:51But that was a pretty easy transition. I think there was all the other parts of writing a cookbook that are a little bit more challenging. Like you have to kind of be your own creative director in a sense and decide how you want the photos to look. And so there's other parts that were a lot less familiar, but I definitely had a really strong background coming from food media working up on Epitih. Definitely. I feel like making a magazine is the group project. And then the cookbook is the group project where you do all of the work. And like maybe some people help, but it's mostly yours. And Natasha, I mean, you were doing this lyric story for BA.

7:23You'd contributed a little bit before, but as we talked a little bit on the podcast before, how did you transition from doing like fine dining restaurant pastry into making recipes for home cooks? I mean, as far as like the recipe writing process, that was a big challenge because I think when you're writing like an instructional or like a technical text, they're so, first of all, you have to like develop kind of a signature consistent language around like how you're talking to your reader. And that was just something I had never done before. and you know I think like when you're working in a professional kitchen you know I had teams of pastry cooks who already had kind of like a basic knowledge of what like certain words meant or techniques or what to look for for doneness and so there's kind of like a lot that almost goes unsaid because the way that I would train my pastry cooks was really like one-on-one the kind of opportunities you get where you're learning from somebody by doing it next to them and I would encourage people to like take notes, take photos, take video, like ask me questions.

8:27And those are all things like a reader can't do. So I'm like trying to figure out how to distill like all of those one-on-one moments into just like a page with just one shot of like one chance, which I think is why I wanted to include moments. And you do this too, which is like, if things go sideways as they like inevitably do, you know, what are the things that you can do to kind of bring it back? or how can you like understand when something kind of gets out of control like how can you understand what that moment was and like that's when I wanted to include you know like the side bars and the pop-out tips of like you know if you forgot your cake in the oven or whatever like don't throw it away you know because these are all things that I've done so I wanted to provide that structure and comfort to the reader but yeah it was intense some of the recipes um are from my time working in restaurants.

9:18So I realized that you can't just scale something down from like yielding 300 to yielding 12. So that was a learning process to kind of figure out like restaurant, like recipes don't always scale up and down that cleanly too. Why can't you just do that? I mean, it's like you're talking about different amounts of things, you know, appliances work differently, you know, the way your oven responds to something at home versus a restaurant is going to be different. Just, you know, creaming 12 pounds of butter isn't the same as creaming four ounces of butter, you know, because when we're writing a recipe, like I'm giving time cues, I'm like, 30 seconds, four minutes, like 20 minutes in the oven, like those things don't scale up and down either.

10:04So I think like, I couldn't just rewrite the recipe by dividing everything by 25 and like hoping it would come out the same. I had to like test everything again. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. As someone that has a lot of like fear and anxiety around baking, I like can't even imagine why you wouldn't be able to do that. I just know inherently that I couldn't do it anyways. I know I'm not I know I like I do a magazine called Cake Zine, but I'm not the pastry chef in my working relationship or in any of my personal relationships. I just eat the food and talk about it, which is a great job to have.

10:37And that's why I appreciate people like you that can make recipes that work. And the other thing I think about a lot is I think all kinds of recipe development, but especially dessert and pastry is about making things that are just so delicious sounding that people feel inclined to take the extra time and the extra ingredients to make them. And I'm curious when you think about developing a recipe, is it what you think sounds good? Is it something that you know that your readers are just really going to vibe with off of the name? Like how do you kind of hit on those initial flavor profiles? Claire, do you want to start you're next to me I mean I think the inspiration for a recipe or flavor combination comes from a lot of different places sometimes it's you're eating out and you taste something that you haven't had before and that sort of is a moment of inspiration or you're at the farmer's market I for me and I'm sure for Natasha and so many people it comes from seasonality from what's growing um and so I think that the more you eat the more you sort of understand And just without even testing it, like that's going to be really good.

11:36So I have enough experience to know when I know something is going to be great. And it's not like I'm reinventing the wheel. It's not that hard to combine stone fruit and cream or cinnamon and apples. You know, these are tried and true combinations. And I feel like in what I do, I'm never really going so far outside the box that it's going to sound like just a little bit too distant for someone, you know, who is just reading the recipe at home. So I'm pretty confident that something's going to work. Sometimes it's the other parts of the recipe that I'm not as confident about. And in What's for Dessert, I really did try to get away from more of kind of my core comfort zone when it came to desserts.

12:15So making types of desserts that I was less familiar with, like lots of custards, things that weren't as kind of flour-based but more egg-based. And there were so many recipe ideas that the flavor wasn't the problem. It was like the sort of concept itself didn't work. so I tested so much more actually for what's for dessert than I did for dessert person because dessert person was recipes I've been thinking about for years upon years and stuff that was like totally my wheelhouse and my perspective on pastry and desserts and what's for dessert was a little bit sort of pushing myself more so there were things that just like I never got proof of concept after five tests I was like well that's getting cut and you know it's just never going to be a thing so you know flavor combinations that inspiration I'm usually pretty feel pretty good about that it's sometimes just the execution and sometimes it has to be something else I have desserts in what's for dessert that started out as something else and the flavor profile stayed the same but it just needed to morph into a different kind of dish like there's the um there's an oat and walnut pie that was originally a cookie it's so much better as a pie so I think it's really about kind of making sure that all of the sort of parts of the recipe plus the flavor all kind of work together seamlessly.

13:26Yeah, I love that evolution. That's very like cute to me for some reason. Like a cookie can grow up to be a pie. Totally. And Natasha, I feel like you do kind of freak your flavors, but in a way that I love, like I say that as the highest compliment. I mean, I think, again, like coming from working in fine dining restaurants where it was like the sky was the limit for purchasing ingredients. You know, we were getting like insane olive oils from Spain and we were getting like awesome fruit from Japan and it was like you know the goal of working in the restaurant was just to blow the diner's mind every time with something that you could do for a day or a month or a week or whatever but when I was writing the book I really wanted to be sensitive to the fact that that's not the reality for like almost everybody and that things that I could get and source in New York City wouldn't maybe wouldn't been available to people in other parts of the country or the world or whatever.

14:20So in a way, it was almost a challenge to like not rely too much on something that like feels flashy or chefy or like seemed cool as like an ingredient because I think those things can kind of be like alienating to people too and will turn them off from wanting to like dive into a book. So it was more like things that spoke to me were things like, you know, a can of sweetened red beans that you could get at like an Asian grocery store or something or you know we shot a video for you that was from my book of the pineapple tart with the candied chiso leaves and for me that like that feels like a very like signature way of how I kind of examine like a dessert repertoire where you know maybe we've all made a gellet with like apples or stone fruit but I wanted to show that like a pineapple you could buy from the grocery store you know if you slice it really thinly and like roasted at high heat it's actually perfect for that kind of treatment of you know flaky pie dessert and that maybe shiso or like a perilla leaf could be an ingredient that maybe somebody wouldn't have thought of in a sweet context and you know kind of trying to push people to think about using ingredients in like unexpected ways.

15:32Yeah I really like that and I think that on one hand being in New York and having access to so many different kinds of ingredients is you know maybe something that everyone else has, but I feel like developing pastry in New York has an advantage in that you have a small kitchen and you maybe don't have a dishwasher and like you are being more practical when it comes to the appliances. Does that resonate for you? I mean, I definitely don't have a dishwasher. Do you have a dishwasher yet? This is really my question to you. You still don't. I don't have a stand mixer. Like, I don't know how, you know, like that.

16:01I feel like that blows people's minds, but like there was just like a rumble through the crowd when you said that. Like a ripple. I buy, my apartment is like so little and my kitchen is even more little. And so I didn't want to write a book where I was like, you need a Vitamix and like a RoboCoup and you must have a KitchenAid stand mixer. Like all of these incredible tools that cost thousands of dollars that are amazing. But I was like, I literally do not have space for those things in, in my home. And I want it to be like, like, I don't have a lot of cake pans of different sizes. So my whole layer cake method is informed by you have a half sheet tray and maybe you have like a ramen bowl or, you know, like pot in your, you know, oven, like you can make a cake in that.

16:47So I just, you know, I don't think you have to buy all this crap to like make something specific. Yeah. I think on your Instagram, you posted recently, you made a layer cake in a little like eight inch stove pot, right? Yeah. For my parents, 40th wedding anniversary. Congratulations. Yeah, I flew home for that. And I realized that they had never had a wedding cake at their wedding. And so I made them a tiered wedding cake because I wanted to go super traditional. But my parents don't have any of that baking stuff. So yeah, I made it in like a little sauce pot. It was so cute. What was the flavor profile?

17:22I did like a black sesame Genoise sponge, which my mom asked for. And I did like a coconut milk. soak I made a raspberry jam I made like a mascarpone mousse and a vanilla bean buttercream so actually very like straightforward for me I think well because I didn't want like all their friends because it was a big party for all their friends and I I didn't want there to be like you know I wanted it to be straightforward and like a crowd pleaser yeah it sounds like a crowd pleaser I'm curious like one of the interesting things about being a cookbook author on Instagram in this day and age is that you can see what people are making or at least what they want the world to know that they're making because they're tagging you and posting about it.

18:02And I'm curious, like, what are the dishes that you've been seeing people making the most clear, maybe from your most recent cookbook, what's for dessert? And are they the ones that you thought they were going to be? Yeah, I mean, I learned a lot from dessert person and the response from that book about what people are making. And it wasn't a huge surprise. It tends to be the kind of simpler, more straightforward things and also the things that are a little bit more familiar. So stuff like a chocolate chip cookie or a shortbread or that kind of thing. So I've definitely seen, and I have my YouTube channel where I'm demoing a lot of the recipes.

18:32So that, I think, video is just an inherently better format for teaching. So I think a lot of the stuff that I'm showing on YouTube, which I'm picking based on accessibility and ease of making, those things tend to be really popular. So stuff like the cookies in the book, for sure. There's an all-in shortbread that is actually my favorite cookie in the book that's really, really straightforward. That's been really popular. The tiramisu icebox cake, which was sort of, that was one that I pegged as like being a sort of a potential fan favorite from the book has been really popular. Yeah, I think anytime you're combining two desserts in one name, like cannoli cookie, like anything like that, you know, it's going to hit.

19:12Right. And it is a really straightforward, like no bake recipe. So those words like no bake, those tend to really sort of draw people in, stuff like that. It's made in a loaf pan, which most people have. If you have one piece of cookware, I feel like, or bakeware, I feel like it's a loaf pan. So yeah, I think I was able to predict a little bit better in what's for dessert than for dessert person just based on kind of like seeing reception and sort of seeing what kinds of recipes really resonate for people. Are people making all of the old school custards and egg-based desserts in your new book?

19:45They are. Things like the creme brulee, I know you have a creme brulee in your book too, that's been popular. I'm trying to think. Some of the, a lot of the puddings. I think pudding is like such a, it sounds like such a comforting thing. And I think people have really positive associations. So those have also been really popular. Do you feel like people own kitchen torches at home? Or are they with the creme brulee? Like, I'm truly curious about this. I think some people really do. I do. I mean, I know Stan Mixer, but yes, a blowtorch. Natasha knows that I have a blowtorch because we used it on the pineapple galette.

20:17And then I lit the parchment on fire with it. so that obviously makes way into the video an extra like toasty flavor exactly I tend to light things on fire occasionally not intentionally unless it's a flambe which I have a couple flambe desserts which I talk about flambe safety and what's your dessert but yeah I think the popular desserts tend to be the ones that are just feel accessible and similar to what Natasha was saying I had kind of requirements that I put on myself for the second book which was no stand mixer there's only one or two recipes, I think, that require a food processor. So it's very low-tech in terms of required equipment.

20:57So that was really important because I wanted it to be a book where, even if you don't have an oven at home, you could still make stovetop desserts. So there's a whole stovetop dessert chapter. So accessibility was really top of mind for me in developing the recipes. Definitely. Natasha, are people tagging you in layer cakes all the time? Yeah, I mean, I feel like I've been completely blown away and surprised by the fact that a lot of people, it seems like, that are sharing with me, are diving into the book and the first thing they're making is a layer cake. Like I was, the first chapter of my book is the cookie chapter because I wanted the book to start like kind of gentle and with things that you could mix and bake off that day and eat.

21:39And the more projects are kind of like halfway into the book, you know, kind of work you up to that moment. But I have actually been like seeing that the opposite is sort of true, that people are just like, I want to dive into this cake right now. And I think that speaks to people's like excitement around projects too. and also this idea and this is something that I feel like Claire and I talked about a lot which is that for me like baking is not about a means to the end and it's not about like racing through something or getting a shortcut for something to get to that final product where you're like eating it and maybe for some people it is and that's amazing I'm just like speaking to my relationship with baking and with pastry where you know the act of browning butter is something that I enjoy doing.

22:25Like I don't need a shortcut to like get there already. Like I like seeing the bubbles and I like smelling those aromas and I enjoy all of those steps. It's like if you are really into like you know like knitting or gardening or something you're not about just like eating the tomato and having a lot of socks. Like you like knitting. Like it's about but it's like about doing the thing. It's not about like the stuff you get at the end and I think like Like, you know, we kind of live in this era of, like, getting there fast and shortcuts and, like, you know, hacks and stuff like this. And that's amazing.

22:59And those things are hard to stumble into. But I'm somebody where I'm, like, I appreciate, like, a project and building towards something and feeling satisfied and, like, you know, enjoying the thing at the end, like, the way it's meant to be enjoyed. And I, like any skill or craft, like it's one where I enjoy the process as much as I enjoy like what happens at the end. So I love that baker, you know, people have been doing that with layer cakes, like in some cases their first layer cake. And it's amazing. Yeah, the zen of layer caking, I think, is very real. And I'm curious what you think about this.

23:34But I do feel like there's been a really huge increase in people that are baking over the past couple of years that definitely started at least in part with sheltering in place during the pandemic and having free time to be baking. That's definitely when I was making the most bread and cakes that I ever have had. And then now through the work that I do with Cakesy and I have this like great window into dessert culture. And I feel like I always talk to people. They say like you're doing a magazine about cake and they think it's one thing. And then I have to tell them that there are all these interesting people doing like fascinating things and that they're independent bakers that are having traction on Instagram.

24:07and there are bake sales that raise thousands of dollars for Planned Parenthood. And there's just like so many exciting things happening with cake. I guess to quote your book title, it's more than cake. And I'm curious like what you guys are seeing in the pastry world and what is exciting to you. Eliza, I remember telling you this as you were telling, this is probably going back maybe a year or more. Eliza was telling me about Cake Scene and she was launching this cake magazine. And I was saying how kind of in agreement, like I feel like there is a cake renaissance happening and Natasha is part of that for sure.

24:38But I think the most exciting thing that I see really is kind of innovations in cake making, I think, in the kind of pastry realm. And Instagram is a great way to find inspiration from other creators and other chefs and recipe developers. So I think about people like, I was introduced not in person, but just to her work. Hannah Ziskin at Quarter Sheets in LA is making like incredible sheet cakes. I'm very into sheet cakes these days. This is like the best, no offense to anyone in this room, This is the best cake I've ever had, is Hannah's. Oh, wow, really? Princess cake. Taking offense. Yeah, yeah.

25:11If you want to change my thoughts, I will eat your cake any day. But it is an exceptional cake, really. I haven't tasted any of them, just full disclosure. This is only from what I've seen, like the tiny square of my cell phone. But they just look incredible. And the kinds of, the sort of, what I feel like are innovations in cake decorating and what you can do with frosting and using it as truly as a tool, I think. like a medium and what I think pastry chefs are creating now really feels like art and I love that idea that and I've always kind of felt like this and even as a recipe developer creating recipes for a popular audience where I'm keeping myself focused on limitations like ingredient sourcing and equipment and time I've felt like for me personally and Natasha I'm sure you would agree with this I do sort of feel like baking is an art practice and I think that with cakes that we're seeing now from Pasture's Apps like Hannah Ziskin and many others it takes it to that, it really elevates it to that kind of art form level which I just love seeing and find it like super super inspiring so yeah, she's a great follow if you guys check her out I mean I guess just to follow I agree with what you're saying and just to I agree with what you're saying about me, just kidding but just to like follow up with what you were kind of observing which is also this idea of like maybe perhaps like this defiance of what we think of of this tradition and like who is making the desserts and like where you get to eat them and who gets to share them and obviously like social media is such a big part of like this democratization of like this you know like canon of pastry and like what makes a great plated dessert and and who's doing it and that's a world that's like largely male it's mostly white and it's at restaurants that most people I know can't afford to go eat at and like those are all great things but I think like as much as we can sort of break beyond those conventions and sort of invert ideas and like do different things and you know make cakes that don't look perfect and like cakes that don't have sharp edges and that aren't draped in fondant but like are covered with like beautiful inviting organic things like this is so important I think like I you know I didn't go to culinary school so there are like certain things I don't know how to do but I think also like a sugar rose like doesn't serve my palate either like that's not something I want to eat it doesn't feel delicious to me so I prefer to dress things with you know things I'm finding at the market or the garden and I think like thinking about dessert pastry like that world beyond what we have come to expect up until this point like feels super you know energizing and refreshing to me yeah I think it's really exciting and as like the food media person every couple weeks I feel like I see an article that's like the new trend in cakes is messy cakes or the new trend in cakes is sexy cakes or chaotic cakes like they're all these different trends and like to me these are all real articles also I think but to me the answer is always like yes and like yes there are people that are doing this style and at the same time there are people that are making the like grocery store sheet cakes that you can literally print out a picture of yourself on and like fondant cakes that look like fire trucks and like 80s style wedding cakes.

28:29Like there are enough people doing all of these things and maybe the attention goes to one or the other. But I think even as your own books show, there are so many different ways that you can approach doing dessert or cake in the first place. That's my sermon. Sorry. So I'm curious if you could tell me a little bit about like what's going on in your kitchens right now. Like what are you developing and working on? Big, big breath. Yeah. Oh, another. Well, this is another thing in common but gardening Natasha and I both got into gardening the last couple years I would say I mean I don't feel like you garden now you're kind of like beyond you have like on your little tractor I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to gardening at all um but it is the kind of pursuit that you can just try stuff and if it doesn't work you just try again the next year so we made a couple mistakes in our garden plan one of which was sowing all of our pole beans at the same time so we have in the last week I think we've had like 25 pounds of pole beans that we've harvested.

29:24So right now we're just trying to find creative ways to consume and process like a ton of produce coming out of our garden, which is an amazing problem to have. So we're just like eating so many tomatoes, so many zucchini, tons of, I love Romano beans. We have like a bunch of like Romano style beans in our garden. So a lot of like salad nicoise, a ton of BLTs, mostly cooking, a ton of just tomato toast. I love like a tomato melt with like white American cheese on top of the tomato. It's so good. So yeah, it's mostly a focus on summer produce right now, which is just makes this my absolute favorite time of the year.

30:01We're also getting into that. We will be soon in that amazing overlap between summer and fall produce, which is just incredible with the eggplant and grapes and apples and you're getting into fall, but you still have like incredible tomatoes. So I'm just trying to be very in the moment seasonally and enjoy all this stuff because there's so many summers that went by when I was working on book recipes and recipe developing where I felt like, oh, I didn't eat enough tomatoes or I didn't, you know, appreciate the zucchini or make enough eggplant parm or that kind of thing. So things are a little bit calmer for me now.

30:34So I'm just trying to really appreciate the garden and like, you know, get my hands in dirt every day and that kind of thing. So it's been really fun. And if anyone has any whole bean recipes that they love, please let me know. Yeah, like having baked with whole beans. We've pickled them, braised them, blanched them. I'm out of ideas. You should have brought them here. We could have distributed them in this crowd real fast. Natasha, what are you cooking and making? Are you growing any melons or anything like that? No melons. Maybe next year. We want to try next year. Because in New York State, this is the moment, and this is the time, and melon season is so ephemeral and like incredible and when it's happening it's really happening but I'm I'm at the Union Square Green Market tomorrow morning I'm like doing a melon demo at Norwich Meadows Farm which is kind of like in the center of the market and they are known for their like incredible variety of melons and I have this panna cotta recipe in my book and the way that it's addressed in the book is you grate fresh melon on top and then kind of spoon the pulp and the juices just like on top of the panna cotta and I add like vinegar after um and it's it's so good it's so simple like it's so juicy you know you get these strands of like the grated melon and when I was developing the recipe I wanted to be sure that like if you weren't at the Union Square Farmer's Market and got like the perfect French melon like cantaloupe from Norwich that you could make this recipe and it would still be good so I tested the recipe with like conventional honeydew and like weird underripe cantaloupe from like my sea town just because I was like this might like some people might make that this might be what's available to them so I kind of like you know pump it up with vinegar and with like you know extra things to make it taste like really vibrant and bright but I'm so excited to go to the market tomorrow and just like pick the warm melon that's like never been in a refrigerator it's never been on a truck and just like you know get in there so can't wait yeah that sounds great i might have to show up what time are you gonna be oh yeah i'll be there at 11 tomorrow if anybody wants panna cotta at 11 a.m um i'll be handing it handing it out i feel like as far as breakfast dessert goes that feels like a pretty solid breakfast that doesn't seem weird at all yeah but again like layer cake for breakfast also worthwhile if there's no losing in that situation?