275: Chandra Ram

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. And then just in the way there's been so much conversation about revenge travel, how everyone is traveling because we weren't able to for a few years, in the same way people are entertaining. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbarg.

0:59Chandra Ram is the Associate Editorial Director at Food & Wine and co-author of cookbooks, including Korean Barbecue and The Indian Instant Pot Cookbook. On this episode, Chandra takes us into the test kitchen at Food & Wine, and we hear about some of the cool stories she's been working on. We also talk about how post-war America and post-pandemic America share similarities in the way both events have changed the way we cook forever. It's really great catching up with Chandra, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:37Chandra Ram, welcome to This Is Taze. How are you? I am great. Thank you so much for having me. I love seeing your face in the studio. You're not always in New York. You live in Chicago, but you are the associate editorial director of food at Food & Wine. Yes. And you're just kicking ass. I love Food & Wine. Ah, thank you so much. I mean, I think the whole team, collectively, we are working so hard, and it's great to hear. Like we feel like we're kind of always pushing it and always saying like, okay, what can we do better? What else can we do? What do we add to the website today? What do we add to our events?

2:17What do we add to the print magazine that's just going to make it stand out and be super, super interesting? And then also, you know, it's food. So super fun. Inherently it should be fun. It shouldn't feel like work all the time. But clearly you're doing the work. It's hard right now. Like everyone's learning to cook on TikTok. People are learning to cook on TikTok. We were laughing the other day in a meeting because there was something about chaos cooking. And it was you open your refrigerator and you cook what's in there. And I'm like, friends, isn't that like basically a Tuesday? Like what do you call it when you actually make a list and go to the grocery store?

2:55So, you know, it's like I think some of that just feels like someone did a great job of coming up with an idea and figured out how to give it a catchy name and record a video and say like, OK, it's chaos cooking. And but it's also really interesting to see how people respond to that. And to remember, like one of the one of the things that I try and remain laser focused on in anything that I'm doing professionally is the fact that I want people who are into food but don't know how to cook to be able to find an entry point. Yeah. And so I might think this is actually my favorite thing to do. Like, you know, you like go somewhere with a group of friends or family and the second to last day, you've got all that random stuff in the refrigerator.

3:50Oh, my God. Yeah. You always have like a block of cheese. You have a few things in the crisper for vegetables and you obviously have protein in some way. It could be plant based or whatnot. And it's always just sitting there. And then taunting you. Right. Yeah. And you've got like a couple of lemons and a quarter cup of sour cream for some reason. And you're just like, OK, so what do I do with this? And that to me is like one of the really fun parts of a vacation is to figure that out. So like day six, day seven, what are you cooking? What are you? Yeah, what are you cooking? And, you know, why?

4:20Why will nachos always work? Always on vacation. Vacation nachos. Vacation nachos. Second to last day. Clean out the fridge nachos. So that's the thing where it's like, OK, so someone just made a tick tock about cleaning out your fridge. But actually, as much as I'm like, I can't believe that's something someone is claiming is new or different. It's like, that is really fun. Totally. And I think the chaos cooking, I mean, you got to reference the barren chaos menu. I mean, you're from Chicago. We'll get to that conversation. But that was like such a thread in the new season, this chaos menu and this like undefined.

4:54What does that mean? But let's talk about Chicago. You live in Chicago. You're in New York a lot for food and wine. But tell me about living in Chicago. Is there a food in Chicago that, you know, we don't really as civilians, as outside observers, we don't really give the respect it deserves? You know, Chicago has such a fantastic dining scene. And I think that rightfully so a lot of, you know, chefs like Jason Vincent and Sarah Gruenberg and Christine Sikowski and Josh Culp and like they're getting attention. I think that there are so many interesting little pop-ups, and as they are in any city, one thing that's really fascinating about Chicago is the impact of the sizable Polish population.

5:45And so, you know, like friends, come to Chicago because we have Korean Polish food. We have Dominican Polish hybrids. We have people who are sort of unafraid to just say like, hey, this is where I am. And I love that. I'm a third culture kid. My parents are immigrants. My father was born and raised in India. My mother was born and raised in Ireland. They met when they lived in London, got married, started the family, moved to America. And then I grew up in Kentucky. I did not know that. What part? In Lexington. Oh, right on. Cool. Cool. So Louisville, Lexington, like your great, great food cities.

6:26Great food cities, really wonderful, like products and ingredients and cooking style. And so I will tend to like I will lean into the commonalities between Indian food. And, you know, if you're going to lump all of that in as one thing and Southern food, which similarly is has all kinds of nuances. and regionalities to it. So it's something when I see that in Chicago where someone is like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm Korean, but I'm living in this Polish neighborhood and I found these ingredients at the store and this is how I'm going to pull all that together. I love it. I'm here for it all day. I love that sentiment.

7:15And highlighting Polish cuisine there is something that we haven't. I've had a lot of Chicago folks on the show and really special community there. when you talk about Korean Polish is there like a dish that blends the two cultures together that comes to mind I mean is it like a mandu but with like like a pierogi mandu hybrid that Juan Kim is doing and it's also it's it's just a lot of you know within Chicago you're in a major city you much in the same way New York has Hudson Valley nearby and that produce like we have all these farms in Michigan, in downstate Illinois, in Indiana, in Wisconsin.

7:56There's fantastic cheese coming out of Wisconsin. There's amazing, wonderful, like cherries and peaches and coming out of Michigan, apples. Yeah, shout to that, please. Thank you. Thank you for shouting out my home estate. I, you know, I just honestly flew to New York so I could talk to you about Michigan. I know. That's why I'm here. Yeah, West Michigan Fruit Belt, Albert Behrens was on the show recently. We talked about that. I'm so excited. I don't mean to rub it in your face, But am I going to be going to Grainer for a couple of dinners this fall? Yes. Amazing. Yeah. Go to Grainer. Definitely worth the visit if you're visiting Chicago or even Detroit.

8:29You mentioned the mashup of Polish and Korean cuisine. And you have a really deep interest in Korean cuisine. You wrote a book with Bill Kim, Korean Barbecue. Yeah. That was cool. I really like that book. Thank you. It stands the test of time. Many books don't. Let's talk about your cookbook writing career because I also want to get into more of your journalism. But what do you look for in projects when you're linking up with a chef or writing your own cookbooks? You wrote a book about the Indian Instant Pot or the Instant Pot and how Indian flavors can be integrated into the formerly popular, possibly dead appliance.

9:05You know, I'm going to say the Instant Pot is still very popular. I know. We don't know what's going to happen in terms of production and that. Yeah, it went bankrupt. The company literally went bankrupt. The company went bankrupt, and I liken it to the sort of classic theory of the everlasting light bulb. Because if you make something and it just keeps working, I've purchased one Instant Pot. Yeah. And I have beat that thing up. When I was working on that book, and I also had a full-time job. I was the editor-in-chief of Plate Magazine. I would get up at six in the morning and cook something and work on the book for a couple of hours and then get ready and go to work.

9:51And I and then I would come home and I would cook something else. And during the photo shoots for the cookbook, I photographed this with Huge Galdonis, who's amazing. Shout out. I love that. Love Huge. Huge on the show. I saw him at the Beard Awards. Love that guy. I will. Yeah, you need to talk to him. I know he's going to be in Chicago in September because he's because I was telling him he needed to come hang out for Best New Chef party. But I mean, my Instant Pot has cooked nine million meals and it's still going. And so and I think that, you know, the thing about the Instant Pot, like I live in an apartment, so I am not a gadget person.

10:33I it takes a lot for me to commit to add something to my cabinets because that means something's coming out or there's going to be like a daily Tetris game. And the thing about the Instant Pot is that it does make it so simple to cook a lot of these recipes that, you know, I have these Indian cookbooks that my aunties have given me that my mother had. And they all talk about using these stovetop pressure cookers. But it's an interesting thing that since my mother was Irish and not Indian, she didn't grow up using a stovetop pressure cooker. And she was like, uh-uh, I will sign on to a lot of things with this culture.

11:13My mother is an amazing cook, cooked Indian food. We ate Indian food at least once a week when I was growing up. She, as an Irish lady, has one of the spiciest palates I know of. I don't understand why. But she wasn't going to use a stovetop pressure cooker. But I was just like, oh, now I can do this. Now I can make all of these things. I can, you know, I can use it to make yogurt. And I love making yogurt in Instant Pot. That is a great call. We have it in Food IQ. I love that. Pressure cooker yogurt is great. It's so wonderful. And I kind of love it because I remember when I was a kid, when my parents moved to America, they couldn't find plain yogurt in a grocery store.

11:51It just wasn't around. And so my mother would have to make yogurt at home. Yeah, it was like Dan and vanilla in those little tiny like six ounce cups back in the 90s and 80s. Everything was like a weird shade of pink no matter what flavor. Yeah, every berry possible. But I'm hearing that the Instant Pot is not dead. I love that. It was kind of a trash article when it was said like it was dying because I think that's like kind of a lazy proposition. We know our world cooks with these gadgets in perpetuity. I mean maybe not sous vide, but definitely like Instant Pot, like the slow cooker, so to call on the whole appliance dead.

12:24So like you wrote this book that really unlocked a lot of the pressure cookers benefits. And you still feel like people are cooking the recipes from that book? People are. I mean, because I still get tagged all the time. I have a friend who's like, OK, the corn is coming in and now I'm going to be making like, you know, I'm going to be making this corn subsea. And it's just that it's wonderful. That's actually one of the great, great things about a cookbook is that people have them and they keep them. And it's this thing that lives in their home separate from the recipes inside it. But then also it's like a reminder to them like, oh, wait, this kind of squash is coming in or it's really cold and I want to make that aloo gobi chowder.

13:13And it's so wonderful when people say like, oh, I made this and this is part of like my family's regular rotation. I love it. It's so awesome. I'm going to link to that book in the show notes. Also, just to finish on Bill Kim Korean barbecue, what's your takeaway with writing a Korean cookbook with Bill Kim? One of the great things about that book is it gives you a fantastic insight into how a chef thinks. because Bill set it up with creating these sauces and spice blends. Oh, I remember. It's smart. And you make those and you throw them in your freezer and then you pull them out and say, okay, I'm going to need half a cup of this or two tablespoons of this.

13:53And then I can make this food in just minutes. And so it's wonderful in that respect. It's also when you're talking about like, what do I look for? I look for if I'm writing with someone, I'm looking for someone with a story. Yeah. and who wants to be there and share that story. But and at the same time, I fully believe with any cookbook, you need to be able to drop the cookbook on the floor, have it open to some page and be able to just jump in and cook from it. Chandra, the drop test. The drop test. I love this. You've created this idea that we think about, but now you're literally like throw it on the floor and where do you end up?

14:32And can you cook from it? Right. I mean, throw it on like a rug. so that the book isn't damaged. Yeah, you want to have a nice, like, pristine cover unless you cook with it and you want splatters on it. But you don't want it to be dented. Don't break your books, friends. Don't break your books. But you should be able to open it up and just have, like, create a banger meal. Banger meal. Okay, we're going to have the bear conversation. My dad grew up in Rogers Park. Many know who listen to the show. I love Chicago deeply. You love Chicago deeply. Are you into this show, Chandra? I'm so into the show.

15:05I'm so, so into the show. And I wasn't at first it took me a few weeks to watch it because I was you know, we're all used to these very these movies and television shows that offer this sanitized, unreal idea of what a restaurant is like. And you, you know, and it's hard because you're like, no, that's not what it's like. That's not what it's like to be a line cook and walk in and, you know, see that the previous shift didn't clean up or someone rated all your mise en place or, you know, like, hey, the dishwasher called out. So you're also going to be doing that or, you know, any of the things or the moment that you make something for family meal and your chef is like, wow, that's really good.

15:59Let's play around with that and put it on the menu. And you're just like, oh, my gosh. So when I started watching The Bear, I was sitting next to my husband, Jay, and I was just like, I kept hitting pause and I was like, this is so real. This is so real. Same, same, same, totally same experience. And then I got to episode seven, season one, which I sat ramrod straight on the sofa. I'm not sure I blinked or breathed during that entire episode when the ticket machine just kept going and going and going and everything was going wrong. And it's just so it took me straight back to my days as a line cook where you just have to put your head down and do the food.

16:43and you almost can't take in everything else that's happening. And then the thing about season two is I feel season one is very much about, it shares the very tough realities about working in a restaurant. And season two offers you insights into why people still do it. Yeah, exactly. And it's that joy. Oh, my God. So agree. The motivation behind it and also just the actual training that goes into it versus like the X's and O's in front of you. Season one was all about like the real like on the field, if you can use the metaphor of like a team sport, like the on the field X's and O's. And then season two is like the strategy, like building towards the season.

17:25So well said. And how much joy restaurant people find in creating hospitality for others. And that to me, like the episode in season two that had me unblinking and just barely breathing was Forks in which Richie is learning why you want to actually take care of people, why when people come into your space, you are in charge of their birthday, their, you know, time to reconnect with a friend or a partner. They're, you know, stressful. Maybe it's a work meeting or bringing families together or whatever it is. Maybe it's a breakup. Maybe it's a breakup. Yep. I mean, we've all done that. Yeah, it's definitely part of restaurant going.

18:13It's all emotions. And a lot has been written about this show and how it taps into that. Yeah, I think they do a fantastic job. I saw the cast a couple of months ago while they were filming season two. I was eating at La Select in Chicago and the cast came in and I was chatting with their former Cara, who was the GM at the restaurant at the time. and it was the night before Food & Wine was dropping our March issue cover, which is the chocolate cake from the bear. And I said, hey, and she was like, oh, I know these guys. I'll totally introduce you to them. And I was like, hi, I'm from Food & Wine, and here's the cover that comes out tomorrow, and it's your cake.

18:55Who did you talk to? Maddie was there. Ayo was there. There was like a whole group. Yeah, the whole group. Speaking of the cast, you remember we were at the James Beard Awards in 2022. were in the like media room and jeremy allen white like walks in this is like three weeks before the first episode appeared and we were all literally and we meaning me was like snarking about the who this kid from this guy from shameless is on this like weird and i think it goes back to your point like most food restaurant shows have been so bad that you just can't take it seriously and like literally no one talked to him do you remember that like literally we're a room of journalists no one talked to this guy and i don't watch i hadn't watched shameless so i was like either oh okay there's some guy here and now of course and that that was um wasn't that right before like the tornado almost hit it was a tornado the entire power went out the entirety of chefs and restaurant people at the beard awards were like are we gonna be wiped out are we gonna be okay that's actually very funny that was not funny but a curious uh moment there but i think the point was that like we didn't know what was about to hit like us with the bear and it has not stopped since and it's over like two years ago.

20:08We had no idea how much and how much it was going to impact us. And I actually, when I was talking to the cast, I said, look, I just want to thank you. I want to thank you for portraying what this really is and sharing this part of restaurant culture that most people don't get to see. And now to see after season two where it's just everywhere and so many people are just obsessed with the show and people who aren't connected to the food world at all. And I'm like, yes. What's your favorite cameo that Chicago has made, the city of Chicago, in the last couple seasons, the first two seasons? I really, really loved the episode in season one that opened with Lynn Bramer, who passed away within the last year.

21:01And he is a morning show DJ in Chicago who had been doing it for decades and would just pull up to the microphone and yell, it's good to be alive. And I loved the fact that they had him narrate the opening sequence because it just felt so Chicago. It felt like, OK, you guys get us. And you really made an effort. Like you understand the city. you understand that thousands of us for decades listened to this guy say it's great to be alive every morning and like help like get you out of bed yeah and then i really loved seeing donny medea in season two really cool to see them like sitting down and actually in the in a real meeting it looked like i mean they really it looked like they had just dropped a camera in a real like meeting front of house meeting or something and i i honestly i i look at the creation of the restaurant the bear and the show and it reminds me of the early days of blackbird because there are some there are a certain number of commonalities in terms of getting the space together and figuring out how to get drywall and not having money and not having money and then going to a cousin and getting, okay, we're going to get$20 ,000 from this person and we're going to try and put it together because you look at that group, one-off hospitality, and you see all of the talent and all of the polish.

22:34And I was a culinary school extern at Blackbird when it first opened and remember when they had no money. And we were struggling to, you know, get the stove working and put out service and people were just discovering this restaurant and just discovering like, hey, this guy, Paul Kahn, is really talented. And now he's like, you know, the godfather by all rights. Oh, my God. I got to go there as a kid or not a kid, but a young young youngster and experience that restaurant early days. And it was it was phenomenal for just as a diner to experience it. Yeah. And to see like the impact that Avec, you know, which they really show off in the show and PQM and Publican Quality Breads and Publican and all of that.

23:20To see everything that they've built and to know that they honestly, everyone goes through some version of opening a restaurant in the bear when they're opening a restaurant in the real world. Let me ask you, this is totally an aside. Is schwa still open? I think about schwa a little bit. I feel that restaurant, like I feel like the bear channels a little bit of that energy too. It does. It does, just in terms of like this really small crew and – Chaos menu. Chaos, yeah. Writing menus like literal chaos. I mean there's a lot of – There was a long time where you would finally figure out how to get a reservation at Schwa and show up and have no idea if the restaurant would open that night.

24:04It feels the Bear Channel Schwa and like Coco and Chris Storer I'm sure knew and know about Schwa. and I have a friend who the way he got a reservation at Chois was literally leaving a bottle of probably either Black Maple Hill or some like nice boutique bourbon with a note at the door. I mean like. Insanity. Like offerings. Like an offerings. Like giving an offering. Like literally. Is it still open? I don't know. Is that place still open? It is. No shit. I believe it is. Okay. I haven't been in a minute. Okay. Enough said. Did we enough said about that restaurant? A transition here back to food and wine and your recipe driven work and what you do day after day.

24:49You're coming from a photo shoot, just like literally to come to our studio and you're always shooting. You're always developing. Chandra, what has been the biggest code to crack recently for a recipe for you and your team? I think a lot of it is trying to hit the balance. Like food and wine is 45 years old. And that means that it's a long history of, you know, recipes and that. And then I've been there for a year and a half at this point. And I'm looking at it and saying, OK, but what have we missed? And it's tough because there's so many cuisines. There's cuisines upon cuisines in different cultures.

25:34and so a lot of it is trying to figure out how do we represent these cuisines how do we make sure the recipes are created by people from those cultures who are also able to share their stories and also to say like how do you how do you how do you share a complicated recipe in a way that is palatable to the reader, to someone because... Without compromising. Without compromising. That's the trick, right? Because you want to make the reader cook this at home and enjoy it, but you also don't want to compromise and just neuter the tone and the voice and the spirit and the culture. Right. So it's recipes like a we did.

26:26I worked with Chidi Kumar out of Raleigh, North Carolina, on a recipe for this wonderful lamb biryani. And she was just like, look, if you can make a stew, if you could make any kind of like if she's like, if you can cook Thanksgiving dinner, you can make a biryani. And so we talked about all the different ways that you can cook some of this in advance, that you can actually get your family together and have like a group assembly line where you're layering everything into the biryani. And that this can be something that is a shared experience and a shared meal. And so we were laughing about the fact that like over the holidays, you know, like after the big sort of holiday meal in the next days, everyone's sort of hanging out and people are still hanging out in the kitchen.

27:22You're like, OK, well, if you're hanging out, you're going to like loiter here. Help me make birani. Help me make this. And the same sort of thing like with cassoulet, with any of these dishes that are so wonderful and special. It's, you know, it's cracking the code of being true to the recipe, being true to the culture around it and the intentions. And also making sure that you don't feel like you had to, you have to be an expert chef to cook this. I love this response. I was like hoping maybe for like, yeah, we couldn't get the yeast rolls to fucking rise. But you actually said so much more than I really expected.

28:01I love it. I mean, everyone has a day when the rolls won't rise, man. Oh, my God. Yeah. And that's that's definitely something that isn't said enough about, you know, you guys and BA and Epi and all the places that are developing their own recipes to put out there into the world, oftentimes for free is like it's a lot of work to create a recipe. It's a lot of work to create a recipe because I need everyone. I should say I want everyone to have this amazing experience, but I actually need it. And maybe I need to untie so much of my emotional ties to the recipes. But I want everyone to be able to make something and say like, wow, at the very least, you just made one hour of my day better.

28:47I love that. That's a great sentiment. I was actually making dinner a few weeks ago, and I'm listening to The Splendid Table, which I do sometimes, and shouts to Francis and the team there. And you were on. It was at Ask Me Food and Wine, and you were on a stage talking to Francis, and you said something that I was like I stopped on. And I was like, oh, my gosh, Chandra needs to come in and talk about this with our show. And it's the parallels between post-World War II America and the rapid changes in home cooking then and 2023. You've linked the two. Please share this again if you listen to Unsplendid.

29:19Hey, you should listen to it again. It's really important to hear. It's complicated. So what is to say is that we're all still grappling with what happened a couple of years ago and is still happening and lingering in a lot of ways. This pandemic. This pandemic. This thing that completely shut down the world. And the last time something like that happened in a very short amount of time was World War II. And prior to World War II, America was—the way we ate was very different. It was—there were convenient foods available, but they were very expensive. They were difficult to access. And so much of it was dependent upon farming.