285: New York Times Food: Melissa Clark, Genevieve Ko, Emily Weinstein

24:23But if you don't love to cook, and there is a lot of people out there who don't love to cook, but they still have to get dinner on the table and they think of dinner as a problem. And so what I want to help them with is I'm solving your problem for you. I just tapped on the table and you told me not to. Oh, you know what? Tapping on the table is okay if it's you and it's very light. You know, I didn't hear it, so you're good. So where does it go? Where does this actual series go? Oh, I don't know. You think I think ahead? Yeah. Yeah. No. What about a book then that is not home cooking and is more journalistic third person writing about something happening?

25:00You've written this beautiful profile of Claudia Rodin. You wrote this beautiful story about sustainable seafood in, I believe, in Maine. Mm-hmm. Oysters. So you're a reporter, and I really think that our listeners should actually look at Melissa Clark's reporting and be like, top notch. I mean, you probably don't have time to do a lot of it with your other demands, but would you write a cookbook where you actually report on something? It's not top priority right now. Yeah, honest answer. I mean, I don't know that I have a subject that I'd want to immerse myself in for that long. I mean, the beauty of writing a reported article for The Times is that I get to immerse myself for a month, you know, or maybe like over the course of two or three months, but not full on, you know, like I dip my toes in.

25:42And I love learning new things and I love learning about other people and what they're doing and what they're cooking. And so that's – reporting to me is thrilling, but I also like the brief scope of it. And to write a reported book is a commitment that is years long, a dedication that I don't see myself wanting, I mean, in the near future. Maybe it's going to change. You know, people change all the time. And maybe I'll find something where I think, OK, I need to pursue this story and here I am. But not right now. But articles are the beauty. I mean, this is the beauty of articles. You get to dive into this world but not have to commit like 80 ,000 words.

26:18And we had Julia Moskin on the podcast in 2018. And I want to ask you the same question is, do you have a long list of features that you're working on? Is it always in motion? It is always in motion. I'm always working on things. Yeah, no, I'm thinking about a lot of different things. And so. What are you thinking about? Give us a teaser. Okay, so I'm working on a big salt piece. Amazing. Because I think that we still don't understand salt, even though, you know, we have written about it. Many people have written about it. I mean, of course, Samin's amazing. You know, salt, fat acid, heat takes on salt in a big way.

26:49But there's still questions about how – like basic questions that aren't answered. Like why are there different kinds of kosher salt? Why are there different, you know, textures? Why – how is sea salt made? Do you know how sea salt is made? Do you know how the crystals are formed? Like this is the stuff that I don't know that I'm fascinated by. So I want to go in depth and write about that. And so it will be – and also a little history of salt. I mean, we know about, you know, the word salary comes from the word salt. Salt is just a very rich topic to, again, immerse myself in for a few months.

27:28It's so great to do that, yeah. I mean, obviously, there are a lot of books written on it, so one could write 80 ,000 words on it. But I don't have to. I can write 2 ,500 words or 3 ,000 maybe, and it's going to be – I think it's going to be interesting and doable for me in a few months. I can't wait to read it. Morton's versus Diamond Crystal and like choosing the right one is such a topic of conversation always. It's perennial. And why can't you get Diamond Crystal ever? Why is Morton's – why does Morton's have the, you know, the monopoly on salt? It's such a – I'm Diamond Crystal all the way and I buy that on Amazon because sometimes you cannot find it.

28:03You cannot find it in stores. Yeah. Yeah. So why is that, Matt? I'm going to find out. I'm going to get to the bottom of that. Yeah. I remember once – do you remember when there was like a shortage of Diamond Crystal? when it was like on Twitter that Diamond Crystal was going out of business? Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. What else is on your list? Give us one more feature. Okay. So this is exciting too. So I'm very interested in sustainable, all issues of sustainability in food, but particularly sustainable seafood because why am I so interested in sustainable seafood? You know, it's just, you know, when you start researching something and you're like, oh my God, but there's more and yet there's more.

28:41I feel like the way that we eat out of the ocean obviously is not sustainable. The way we misuse the ocean is not sustainable. But yet seafood could be a big part of our diets. It could feed much more of the world if we change the way that we produce it, right? So one of the things that's on the horizon is land-based aquaculture. So aquaculture is hugely problematic, especially salmon aquaculture. Much maligned in the press, farm-raised. You just never really want to eat that food, eat that version of fish. But that's what we are going to have no choice because there is not going to be a wild ocean that we can sustainably fish from, right?

29:17So we have to have aquaculture. But how do you do it sustainably? I've written about scallops. I've written about shellfish and oysters and mussels. But those are still in the ocean. But they're very sustainable. But what about big fish? What about salmon? What about other types of aquaculture? So there is a movement – and shrimp actually is a big issue here. So there's been a lot of people developing basically giant fish tanks full of fish. So how do you do that in a sustainable way? And there's new technology that is helping fish farmers create sustainable, energy-efficient ways to— It's so fascinating.

29:53There's a guy up in Newburgh, New York, doing some cool sustainable seafood called Gulo, I think. Oh, okay. Doing shrimp up there. There's a bunch of shrimp because shrimp are really easy to do that way. Exactly. Love that. The problem is the waste. So anyway, but so as you can, I'm working on this story. There are people doing it. Can you imagine doing salmon in tanks? This is happening. It's happening in Maine. It's happening in, they're building it in Maine. It's happening in Florida. So anyway, that's - I can't wait to read that because I think it is a beat. As I mentioned, you had that great story about oysters recently.

30:24Let's talk about your recipe writing from the New York Times. I guess my question is like, what's it like being on deadline basically all the time? Because you're coming out every week with a recipe. What is that feeling like? I compartmentalize so well. It's like when I'm under deadline, I'm like freaking out because I'm under deadline. Right. But that's only a few days a week. And then the other few days a week, what deadline? Yeah. What deadline? Yeah. If I didn't compartmentalize, I could not have this job. Does it make vacation like worth it when you're on those like weekly deadlines? A little more.

30:54I'm always working though. Even when I'm on vacation, I'm like, I can't stop. But it's okay because I like my work. But I love not having the deadline. I mean, when I don't have a deadline, when I'm on vacation and I don't have to file. So that little, you know, I say I compartmentalize, right? So that little bit of my life where I'm not under deadline because in my head I'm not becomes longer. Does that get you out of bed, though, just like knowing you have work to do and this exciting job? Because you have a real passion and love of cooking. Yes. Does it get you out of bed every day? Well, I get out of bed every day early anyway because I just can't sleep past 6.30.

31:24I don't know what happened. Age? I can't sleep past 6.00. Yeah. Yeah. So I get up. It is great. It is great. But and also I don't know if you can tell, but I'm an active person. Like I'm anxious. I'm active. I move a lot. So it's just like lying in bed and I can't do it. My whole body rebels. Let's talk about the New York Times. How did you arrive there? How did you start your column? Like what's the path to the New York Times? Again, it's one of those stories being in the right place at the right time and saying yes to the thing that you're not so sure you can do, which I think is a big life lesson.

32:01Just say yes to the thing that you're not so sure you can do and figure it out. And that's what I did. I knew a – I mean it's a – a friend of mine was working for the former editor of – this was even before there was a dining section. There was a living section in The New York Times. And she was working for one of the editors in the living section helping him write a cookbook with Pierre Frenet who used to be a columnist and he wrote a column called The 60 Minute Formate. Beautiful story about Pierre Frenet. I'll link to it. Amazing. Yeah. I want to – oh, gosh, I missed that story. Yeah, yeah.

32:36I'll send it to you. It's great. And so Rick – this man named Rick Flast, he was an editor. He was working on Pierre's book and my friend Anna was his assistant. And she got it because of someone she knew. And then she went to India for three weeks and said, do you want to take my job while I'm gone? And so I met Rick and I took her job while she was gone. And then a few years later, Rick started the dining section and called me and asked me if I would like to freelance a little column, just like a little Q &A called The Food Chain. And this was before it was easy – you know, before – this was pre-WikiHow.

33:10Like you couldn't go – 1998. I look back at those food chain stories last night when I was prepping for this and it's like cool shit. It's like definitely really pertinent pressing questions you answer. Yeah. So people would ask me food questions and I would – they'd actually write letters, like physical letters, and they'd put a stamp on it and they'd mail it in a mailbox and I would open them up. Love that. Yeah. And so that's how I started. And then editors came and went. And then in 2012, Susan Edgerly was the then editor of the dining section and she asked me to come on staff. OK. And so then that's what really kicked off the column.

33:48Well, the column actually was a little bit before that. So I was freelancing from 1998 to 2007 was my first column. Interesting. Wow. But it's been like an – it's like probably the longest-running food column in New York Times? I think Pierre Frenet might be longer. Oh, it might be longer. Okay. Actually, good question. I should ask. I think I am longer than Mark Bittman at this point. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, this constant deadline we discussed, but I guess – can we get into like how you actually, you know, organize your thoughts for these recipes every week? Because they really – they come fast. And like anyone who's developed a recipe knows or has cooked a lot.

34:22It's like very hard to nail a recipe. Are you working on like 10 recipes at the same time? Absolutely. Yeah. You cannot – if I worked week to week, I wouldn't be able to do what I do. Right. The trick is to always be – to have things in motion all the time. So the first thing I do is, you know, to have a conversation with my editor and we figure out what is the right thing at the right time because timing of a recipe is really important. You know, you don't want to do a fresh peach recipe in January. You want to be where people are. You want to do cozy things in the winter, summery things. In the summer, sometimes I work a year ahead.

34:55I just had a recipe for a sheet pan chicken, of course, with sour cherries. And I did that recipe July 2021 when I could get sour cherries, knowing that you can't develop a sour cherry recipe in the same year because the season is so fleeting. So last year I thought, what am I going to do next year? I should have done it again. I should have done another sour cherry recipe this year. Yeah, what are you looking at for 23 right now? Is there something in the hopper? You know, I should be actually. I should be. You know, what are the really seasonal? Most things you can get. It's funny. Fresh sour cherries are a rare thing that you can't get.

35:31Like rhubarb for a while was really, now you can get forced hothouse rhubarb pretty much all year long. Yeah, you can find those in specialty stores or expensive stores. But yeah, I used to do that with rhubarb. I do rhubarb recipes a year ahead. Like corn you can get. You can definitely get corn. Even if it's not so great, you can get tomatoes. So it's really only a few ingredients. Are you at the Grand Army Farmer's Market quite a bit? As often as I can go. Yeah. Yeah. But so, yeah, I'm always working on several recipes at the same time. And they're what I eat for dinner. And sometimes I'll think, oh, my God, this is like I'll just be cooking something, you know, from whatever I have.

36:08You know how you just buy stuff and then you cook it. And if it tastes good, I write it down. Like, okay, idea for recipe. And then that becomes a starting point of a recipe testing process, which then takes a minimum of three times but can often take like, you know, 15 times. Yeah. Is there like a product that you've really been dwelling on recently? I mean, I think about like Impossible Burger had its moment like 18 months ago where everyone was like talking about Impossible this and that. Is there something like right now that's on your mind? A product? Yeah, like a product or some kind of or a condiment.

36:40Yeah. OK, I'm obsessed with this new condiment. This is really funny. So a friend of mine represents this – how do I describe it? It's like a vegan fish sauce. It's called Yondo. Yeah, cool. Do you know it? I know the category though and I know it's in a very emerging category. It's like pure umami. It's just – it's like liquid. I mean it's basically like – I mean I think fish sauce adds so much umami. I love to use it in nontraditional ways and this is a vegan version. It's just vegetarian. It's vegetarian. It doesn't have – and it's – I don't know if it's yeast extracts. The same way that I love nutritional yeast.

37:17I love nooch so much. Yeah, it's a great product. It's that same just savoriness. So I add it to everything now. I love it. I got a mushroom-based fish sauce from the Noma crew. They sent me a bottle of that. And I think – so it's mushroom-based, the ones I've had that – Yeah, I mean I think that – so, okay. So I guess the category would be vegan fish sauce like or just enhancers. I mean, and again, there's no reason for it to be like, I mean, I'm happy to use fish sauce, but sometimes you don't want that slight seafood flavor. Like you just want a cleaner umami. And it's just amazing. I made green beans.

37:51I was cooking just green beans with, you know, garlic dressing, a little rice vinegar, which I make all the time. I just added a few drops of it, and it just transformed it into, as my daughter said, she's like, I still don't like green beans, but these are the best green beans I've ever had. Is your daughter cooked? Does she want to follow in your footsteps a little bit? No, not at all. Not at all. Cool. But she does make our family salad. I've been training her since she was eight. And so now she knows how to make our every night salad. Ah, so is it a vinegar-based dressing or a lemon, citrus-based?

38:23A lemon, yeah. So, you know, she does it. Sometimes when I do it, I'll add garlic because I like garlic in the dressing. But when she does it, she does just lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper, tossed right in the bowl with her hands. and she's got it. She's got it perfect. Does she know how to wash the greens too? No, we're working on that. The worst part about the salads. The worst part about the salads. I wrote in one of my cookbooks, I can't remember which one. I was like, if you ever want to be a really good house guest when someone invites you to stay, wash all their salad greens and put them in the fridge.

38:56So yeah, put them in the fridge and then bring them out and bring them out at the right time and be like in charge of the greens. Yes, so helpful. So helpful. Usually guests are not helpful. They're nice people, the guests, but they're not helpful. Well, you know, you want to have somebody to chat with while you're drinking wine and making dinner. So that's their job. Their moral support. Okay, so Dinner in One. I've had it for a little while, and it's been so great. Like I really – I made the caramelized carrots with pancetta, which is like a main that I brought out. And people are like, wow, like carrots for mains.

39:23Like not really my normal jam, but I just really love it. Tell me, this book, what's the Dinner in One? What does that mean? Dinner in one means dinner at like one pot meals, one pan, one skillet, one sheet pan. As you know, I love a sheet pan. So the idea is I took the concept of dinner changing the game and I streamlined it even further. I made it even simpler. But I kept the basic idea of you can make dinner quickly. I mean most of the recipes are under an hour. Many of them are under 30 minutes. So this is something that you come home from work. You don't want a lot of cleanup. But you want big flavors and you want something delicious.

40:00And so this is going to be your go-to weeknight cookbook. But the thing that I did in this book that I really love is that I – I mean – so define a – to me a one-pot meal. Like what is a one-pot meal? It needs to have your vegetables and your starch and your protein. It just needs to be the one thing you eat. You shouldn't need to have anything else with it. Maybe a salad, especially if your kid is making the salad and then you don't have to do it, right? So it's your one-pot meal. and the one thing I did for every single recipe was I figured out ways to either add more vegetables so a section called veg it up because all I often want to just add more veg I want you know my protein but I want more spinach or tomatoes or whatever it is so veg it up and then or to take the same recipe and take out the meat and so to create a vegan version or a vegetarian version for as many of the recipes as I could it's very modern that's what you need to be because that's Yeah, that's where we all want to eat more vegetables and less meat, right?

40:59So this is a book to show you how to do it practically. And also you can change your mind about what – like sometimes you want to eat more meat. So it's very flexible in that way is that you're in charge. You can make it more veg or more meaty. It is up to you. Is there a recipe that you worked on so hard that you feel like this is the one that is like the grail of the book? Like this is the one that you really sought out to achieve and it's there now? Okay. So is there a harissa chicken recipe? I'm maybe looking for that. You're looking for that, right? Yeah, I'm looking for that one. I mean, there is, I mean, okay, so on that note, there is a simpler chicken potatoes.

41:34So there, do you know this Italian chicken dish? It's like chicken, oregano, garlic, and lemon. And it's just like a lot of Italian grandmas made this. Wow, it's like clams oregano, but with just chicken. Yeah, and so this is a dish that I've had many times in many different, you know, Italian-American houses. like right this roast chicken with this big oregano big oregano like dried oregano right and it's like lemon and garlic and olive oil and it is always delicious so i took those flavors and i um added capers and potatoes and made into a sheet pan meal and it's just like so satisfying so that is a similar type of flavor profile to the harissa chicken easier let's not hide from big oregano let's not do that i hide from big oregano no oh some people do people don't like too much oregano.

42:22It's too Italian for them. Oh, really? Some people. I don't know those people. Yeah, those people are crazy. I've never met those people. It's a flavor. It's not like fennel, which is like super polarizing, but I think oregano can be quite polarizing to some palates. Interesting. I think, you know, I mean, that's a whole cilantro question too. Yeah. It's just like, I think those big kind of mint-based herbs. Do you dine out at all? Yeah, but not that often. Not that often. No, we really like to eat at home. Obviously, you're always on the clock. You always have to have recipes. But let's talk about New York dining because I just wanted to get, you know, just to give some shouts to any New York spots.

42:57Because I know a lot of our listeners like come to New York and they'll be coming in the fall, hopefully in St. High to our wonderful city. Are there restaurants that you're really loving right now? Well, last night we ate at Gage and Tolder in Brooklyn. And that was, you know, that was a childhood restaurant of mine. I ate there when I grew up. And to have it just redone the way it's redone is so wonderful. Downtown Brooklyn. It's fantastic. It's a steakhouse. And, you know, so I got to eat. We do not eat a lot of steak anymore, so that was a big treat. I also just recently went to King where I hadn't been in a while in the West Village, which I love.

43:33One of our neighborhood favorite places in Brooklyn is called Lalu. It's a little wine bar. It's really simple but just delicious. God, there are so many. So many. I have so much joy going to restaurants because also I need ideas. and if I don't eat out, I don't get ideas. I need to eat. I need to read cookbooks. I need to eat out. I need to, you know, just be looking for things because if I just ate my own food all the time, I would just, you know, do the same recipe. I try to always push the envelope and eating out is one of the ways that I get inspiration. I do need mood boards. Yeah, shout out to Claire DeBoer from King.

44:09I went to her place, Dissing House Upstate, and it's amazing. So I love King. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, and Jess, her partner. I mean, it's just... Really good. Good calls. Okay, we've given some space and years from this thing that happened. You did a recipe, a John George recipe. You really, it's his recipe and it was a guacamole with peas and, you know, don't need to relitigate the guacamole and peas thing, but I would like to find out about when you, when did you realize President Obama had actually tweeted about a recipe that you... Oh my God, that was a terrible day. I'm sorry I don't want to relive terrible things it was Twitter is horrible Twitter Twitter was horrible back then I mean it's horrible but I was more invested back then so I get this call from my editor it's like okay we have a problem so the background too is that Jean-Georges von Gerichten famous fantastic chef right created a recipe with his sous chef at the time at a restaurant called ABC Cochino which is in you know Union Square right by the farmer's market and it's farmer's market inspired mexican cuisine it was his personal take on it and so one of the things that he did was added a green peas to guacamole yeah i mean why did he do it it adds sweetness it helps preserve the color yeah so you can make it a little bit more in advance because you know how guacamole goes brown so quickly right so this gives it a brighter color there's so much logic to this okay so like let's like you think through everything like it's there are there's a reason to put green peas in guacamole.

45:40Absolutely. But people really, really don't want to hear about green peas and guacamole. Everybody got mad at me. And I didn't even write through. It wasn't even my recipe. I reported on it. It was a reported story. I was report. Don't kill the messenger. But yeah. So, yeah, people got really mad. And both, you know, George Bush and President Obama both actually commented on it. They both tweeted. Yep. And neither of them were fans. But I will say something about Obama's tweet. He said guacamole should only have avocado, onion and garlic. Guacamole doesn't usually have garlic. Yeah, come on. So I was like, all right, all right, dude, you know, you're putting garlic in guacamole.

46:17Can I just put the peas in? Wonderful man. Great president. Garlic is a no, no. Raw garlic? He didn't say. He just said garlic. Okay, well, maybe garlic powder. I could see that happening. Maybe. No? I mean, you know, honestly, I'm not a purist when it comes to anything. I think if it tastes good, you can put a lot of things in guacamole and it wouldn't make me mad. But it's not my I mean, here's another thing. So it's not my cuisine. So I don't I'm not as attached. Like, how do I feel if people how do I feel about rainbow bagels? You may ask, right? Like, you know, I mean, I'm actually fine with rainbow bagels.

46:49I'm fine with I'm I'm fine with experimenting with any kind of food as long as it tastes good and as long as you respect the tradition. So that's you know, I'm good. You can do whatever you want to the kreplach. Take the matzo ball soup and make it your own. That's fine. Yeah, put some foie gras on it or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Bacon. It's good. Oh my goodness. I know. On that note, will you write a Jewish cookbook, like a full, like, throated Jewish cookbook? I don't think so. Because, I mean, I grew up very reform. I identify as really New York Jew. It's very specific. And I don't know. I mean, of course, there's a cookbook there.

47:26There could be a cookbook there. But I don't know that I want to write it. I don't know that it's, so many people have written books like that. I mean, there's so many amazing books that already do that. I don't know that I need to add to that. Thank you for being honest about that, because I think like, you know, some folks would be like, oh, yeah, maybe, yes. But I think you have a really clear vision with your book projects and your program. So what is a book that you want to work on? Well, so I'm working on a memoir. Okay, so great. So that is, yeah, that is something that it's, oh my God, it's so hard.

48:00So yeah, obviously it's hard, but I didn't think it would be quite as hard, you know, because I've written a lot of personal narrative before and I've written a lot of stories before and my column at the beginning was very personal, but this is different. This is really a different kind of thing for me. So I'm struggling with that. So that's in the works, but that's going to take while. How much is done? I mean, I have so many words, Matt, but they're not good yet. They're not good yet. Thousands and thousands of words to get better. So, but you know, writing is editing, right? Exactly. And stepping away from the project for weeks and, you know, doing your, doing a great recipe and stepping back into the memoir.

48:38Exactly. Makes a lot of sense. And then I'm also working on an exciting new cookbook project that I am so happy about. it. It's a big, huge teaching cookbook that's designed for beginners. Well, I mean, really, people of all levels. So what I've noticed with people is that a lot of cooks don't have confidence to go off script, right? They follow the recipe exactly. And when they want to improvise, they're not sure where they can. They don't know the rules. They don't know which rules they can break. So the next book I'm working on is every recipe is going to tell you which rules you can break so you can make the recipe your own.

49:18Everything from the, and the recipes I'm choosing are the best of their kind. So I just tested, I think, 14 different banana breads. And I'm like, okay, this is my favorite banana bread. And this is why, and here's my recipe. And this is how you can then, turns out if you can change it in so many ways and having cooked through all of them, I know exactly which ways you can do it. So swaps and substitutions is the biggest challenge in cookbooks because it sometimes just isn't articulated. But the idea that you're breaking rules, that sinks in a little bit for me. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. And it's because you just, you know, you really have to deconstruct something and understand how it's put together.

49:54You got to look under the hood. You have to see how a recipe is put together. And so I want to show you the seams. I want to show you what you can do and what you can't do. There are certain things you can't do. Can banana bread have chocolate chips and can banana bread have lemon? Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's all fine. But the structure, right? So the structure. So for example, can I just be geeky for a minute? No, let's go. So the structure of a banana bread, right? You have a certain amount of moisture that you need. And some recipes use all bananas. Some recipes break it out and use sour cream and some bananas.

50:26Some use yogurt. Some use more oil. Some use more eggs. And each one, you get a slightly different result. So first of all, you have to pick which result. You have to understand which result you're looking for. Do you like a banana bread, Matt, that's really, really damp and moist on the inside? Or do you prefer one that's a little cakier and lighter? For me, I'm more moist. I'm glad you're going to psychology side of this like your parents. This is great. You're asking these questions. But I go more moist. It might be my Midwestern upbringing. I feel like I'm just in that zone always. It could be like processed foods that I ate as a kid.

50:57I think I'm moist. So super damp. Definitely. Okay. So then your banana bread is the one with all the bananas. You don't need yogurt. You don't need buttermilk. You don't need – you just need all bananas because that will give you the most compact, moistest, most dense cake, right? And so in my recipe, the way that I'm going to tell the story of the banana bread is you – here's – you can – if you want it a little lighter, then you add a little bit of yogurt. And these are the ways you can change it or you add the sour cream. And then the sweetness level, like how sweet do you want it? You need a certain amount of sugar for sweetness.

51:29What's the least amount – I mean not for sweetness, sorry. for structure. Sugar also gives structure aside from the perception of sweetness. What's the least amount you can do? To achieve this structure but not have the overpowering sweetness so it feels a little bit more neutral, the savory even. Exactly. What's the least amount you can get away with? But then there are people who like it on the sweeter side. So just giving the range, the different kinds of sugar, brown sugar. Okay. But the trick is to give a ton of information in a streamlined, easy way that is easy to digest, that is not overwhelming because I also want you to just be able to be like, all right, can you just give me a recipe for good, which is the best banana bread?

52:04Okay, this one here, then this is, you follow this recipe. So you have multiple prongs for each of these kind of core recipes? The trick is going to be designing the book so that you can have all of this information without it looking heavy and ponderous, with it looking light and fresh and like, oh my God, I can cook this and I can do it the way I want to do it. Listen, I can't wait for this to come out. I know, it's going to be, I mean, I'm really, and writing it is really fun because it's just, I mean, I just get to, I get to geek out and do 14 banana breads. But really, the design thing is going to be like, all right, how do we do this?

52:33Do you have a big team that you work with on the recipe development side? I mean, I have I've always had a recipe tester who different people over the years, not many people. I mean, I've kind of, you know, generally try to work with one person at a time because there's continuity in our tastes. So right now I have somebody who comes once a week and helps me with my New York Times stuff and my cookbook stuff. But for this project, I will be taking on. And luckily, I have kept in touch with all my former recipe testers. And so several of them are looking for work. And so it's like a big happy reunion.

53:06And we all cry when we see each other because it's just so nice. How fun. Well, we'll wait for that to be announced. I can't wait to check out the book. We ask all guests on the Taste podcast, if you could write a dream cookbook or food culture book without the burden of time, meaning you'd have no deadline, or budget, meaning you'd have unlimited resources, what would that book be? It's the one I'm working on. I just wish I didn't have a deadline. I wish I had – if I could just have – if I could have more time and more money, it could be even better. But deadlines are lifelines, right? And I will have a deadline and I will get this book out and it will be real.

53:39And hopefully it will help a lot of people cook really, really great food. I'm so excited about that. Thank you so much, Melissa Clark, for joining the Taste Podcast. Thanks for having me.

53:57I'm so excited to have you in. I just want to talk about your career at the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, writing cookbooks. We can talk about recipe guys. We can talk about lots of things. I was reading your LinkedIn. I like the little LinkedIn snooping. And I noticed you worked in college admissions at Yale and Caltech. I did. What? What? That job sounds so fascinating to me. What was that like? It was so fun. I really, really loved it. So it was the first job I had out of college because I had actually worked in the admissions office as an undergraduate. And every year they would hire a few kids, you know, out of school.

54:31And so I had applied for that and had also applied, obviously, for a ton of other jobs as a senior. But yeah, when that offer became available, I thought it would be really fun and interesting and fascinating. And it absolutely was. And yeah, it was a really, really great experience. So were you like reading essays? Were you giving essays grades? Were you like one of the people who decides if somebody gets into Caltech? Yeah. So at least when I was there, it was all done by committee. So we each were given – we each had certain regions of the country and the world, and we would read the applications, the full applications of all the students and then discuss them.

55:12But, you know, that was only part of it. Another big part of it was a lot of outreach. So a lot of – yeah, a lot of outreach to get people to apply. And then also once kids were accepted, spending a lot of time to convince them to come. Wow, that really humanizes the process to me. You think of it as like a bunch of bad news, but it sounds like you did a lot of good. Well, there is a lot of heartbreaking bad news, and that was always sad and hard. Yeah. But at least when I was there, I think it's changed a bit just because the number of applications has increased so dramatically. Definitely. But it was a very individual process.

55:46Like you really got to felt like you were getting to know every kid. So legitimately, like being honest, did you ever like weight someone a little higher because they mentioned food in one of their essays? If they wrote about it in a really compelling way, I have to confess to be like, well, this is a person after my own heart. OK, let's get to your career at the New York Times, Los Angeles Times. So we have had Emily Weinstein on the show. We've had lots of editors and lots of writers. And we'll get into many of your colleagues because we read them all the time. But I want to always hear about how you got to the New York Times food section.

56:19You're the deputy editor of the food section. How did you end up at the New York Times? It's funny because when I was interviewing for this position, the HR person had asked me, she said, well, why the New York Times? And it was, you know, it was something like, why now? And I was like, no, it's always been. And actually, it feels a little bit full circle for me. So I had started my very first job, you know, out of college, was in college admissions, and I really enjoyed that. And it was during that period of time where it finally occurred to me that my lifelong love of food could actually be a career.

56:55And so I was in New Haven at the time, and I went to a book signing by Mark Bittman. And we just got to chatting about his books, his work, his work at the Times. times, and it just so happened that he, you know, at that time was getting tons of big deals and had so much to do that for the first time, he felt like he might need an assistant. And so I actually got to work as his assistant for some time. You know, I was still working my full-time job because I had to pay rent, and Mark did pay me. This was after the huge success of How to Cook Everything, and he had gotten a few other book deals that were going to be these other big tomes.

57:36And so, you know, I was New York Times adjacent-ish and it was a great education. That was all while I was, you know, working in restaurant kitchens as well in terms of learning cooking. And it always seemed like just the most obviously wonderful, amazing place and just getting to know his work through, you know, getting to know the place through Mark's work. And, yeah, it was always just a dream, obviously. It was always a dream to write for them, to be there. And, you know, it's OK that it takes some time. How many cookbooks do you have under your belt right now? What's the number? I think it's been at least at least 16.

58:10But at a certain point, I lost count. 20, we'll call it. Backing up, though, because I will get into your work currently at the Times. But I want to know, like, why write about food and cooking? What drew you to this kind of topic? Well before, obviously, the foodie culture swept America. You've been doing this a minute. Yeah, why? I have always, always loved food. and I've always, you know, not, I can't say always loved cooking because I was a small child at one point without the ability to cook, but, but I was that kid who would prefer watching cooking shows to cartoons. And, and that sounds, that's a very common thing I think for a kid to say now, and I guess I'm dating myself, but I think I might've been sort of that very last generation of people who, I didn't fall into food per se, right?

58:55Like I very intentionally wanted to try to pursue a career in this, but it did start as this like, huh, like maybe this would be something that I could actually do for a living because I've, I've just always loved it. You know, I was raised in a family that really loved eating and loved good food and loved exploring it. But actually neither of my parents really cooked. And it was probably part of the reason why I did. And, you know, I came up in, I grew up in LA and at that time, the LA Times food section was massive and amazing. And, you know, I remember those are my we used to have to do current events where you clip out stories from the paper and present them each week.

59:35And I would always do food stories. Yeah. And it was interesting, though, because, you know, at that time there certainly were people exploring all these different cuisines. But I felt like I was almost living this parallel life of eating. I grew up in Monterey Park, which people now know for its Chinese food. And I grew up on the side of Monterey Park that was closer to East L.A. And so there's always also this amazing, so much amazing Mexican food. And there was so much delicious, wonderful, amazing food at a time when, you know, other things were happening in food in America. And obviously as a kid, I didn't have any consciousness around this per se.

1:00:13But certainly when I was in college and graduated from college and started thinking about food, and this was in fact what had sparked my initial conversation with Mark at the book signing, I realized that, gosh, there's a lot of food that I know so intimately that was out there, right? And people were starting to write about it. But it was always from the outside in. And I felt like, oh, I have this perspective that's from the inside and know of these dishes from the inside. and that was part of the motivation and the other part of it was just I love it. I loved it and I thought, well, could I make this happen?

1:00:51Could this actually become a reality? I wasn't sure. There wasn't any clear-cut path to it. So when you're talking, this is, Genevieve, really interesting that you kind of pinpointed something that we all now as editors and writers, we really try to tap into writing from the inside out and trying to actually get the real story or through the voices of the inside, right? We write about many different cuisines and taste and throughout our journalism, but... This is well before, I mean, parachute journalism was common in food writing at the time when you started writing it. So when you made these initial conversations with Mark and when you ended up working at Gourmet, I'd like to hear about that.

1:01:32Were there any like dishes or stories like I need to write about banh mi? Like banh mi was this like dish that no, I'm making this up, but like there's dish that, you know, isn't really being covered correctly. Was there something that you really thought about early in your career that kind of you unlocked? There wasn't any one particular topic, but there was sort of a whole category of food that I wanted to cover and, to be really frank, still very much want to cover now at NYT Cooking, which is I knew just from my upbringing that there's this whole array of dishes that we would cook and eat at home.

1:02:09I mean, it's not fair to say my parents never cooked, obviously. They cooked because we had to eat. But there's this whole array of dishes that I knew in my Chinese-American community growing up. They were very common. Like, we all eat them. But they weren't necessarily the dishes that you would see on Yan Ken Cook. He's an amazing, an amazing chef, but he's a chef, right? So he was doing chef dishes. And even if he was doing homestyle dishes, right, they were a bit different. But there were just, yeah, there was this whole genre of dishes that we ate all the time, like just every night. And my elementary school, like where I grew up, the kids were from all different places and, you know, just all different backgrounds.

1:02:53And they would bring things for lunch. And I didn't go to a school where anybody was made fun of for what they brought. Yeah. If anything, I remember one time I felt so bad. There was a kid who was, you know, people laughed at him for bringing a bologna sandwich. Nobody understood, like, what is that that you have? Oh, my. Because everyone else had rice and beans. And so I sort of knew that there were all these dishes that existed. And I thought, gosh, it'd be nice for other people to get a chance to cook them and try them. So there wasn't any one specific one. But I do remember one of my first or my very first recipe for gourmet was one of those dishes, which is just a Chinese.

1:03:28It's a stir fried tomato and egg. It's so simple and it's so delicious. But at that time, it wasn't that commonly known. I'm not even sure. I mean, yeah, Francis Lam did it for the Times, and I think it's been out there a little bit more now. But it wasn't like, oh, I want to showcase this one dish. As a Chinese dish, as like an iconic dish, it was not really being discussed at the time. Yeah, because it wasn't something that you would necessarily like order at a restaurant. Let's talk about gourmet because you were there near the end of gourmet's run. What was that like? Did you have an expense account?

1:04:01I did not, but it was, oh my goodness, it was amazing. So I was editing. I was sort of straddling a few different things. I was brought on primarily to work on books. So at that time, you know, I was doing a lot of books and there was an arm of gourmet books. So I was brought on primarily to work on books. And at that time, there was still a real effort to expand on the web, on the digital side. So it was like a cookbook club. And so and then in terms of for the print magazine, I wrote the display copy for the food oriented. So the head notes, you know, heads, decks and like the. And it was just it's such a wonderful, brilliant, talented team of people.

1:04:44And I learned so much. Like I just learned so much and I had such a good time and it was really. Yeah, it was amazing. It was really amazing to get to explore food in that way. It makes sense now that I know this about your career that you segued into collaboration and you've written so many books and I want to get into them. But that gourmet period when you were doing the books for gourmet, did you kind of you had talked about your love of writing about food. But did you fall in love with cookbooks at that point? Oh, that was before. I had always loved cookbooks. Yeah, I was I would just go and sit in a bookstore for hours and hours and hours and flip through them.

1:05:20And then you need to choose your very special which one you're actually going to take home. This is pre-Amazon days. Yeah. Well, you went on to write books with John George, Seamus Mullen, Katie Button, Carla Hall, and all really interesting people that we could get into. But I want to focus on two in particular that I kind of was introduced to your work. One was Pichet Yang's The Sweet Spot. I love Pichet's writing. Talk about that book in particular, what it was like working with Pichet on like a really progressive idea of dessert in a dessert cookbook. Yeah, absolutely. So Pichet and I actually met through Jean-Georges when I was working on Jean-Georges, the first cookbook collaboration I did with him, which had started actually with, I was just assisting Mark and Mark just got super busy.

1:06:06So finished up that project, including the desserts chapters. And at that time, Pichet was a pastry chef at Spice Market. Spice Market, yeah. Yeah. You know, when we were working on those recipes together, I think part of what we really enjoyed was that we had this shared connection of these flavors and textures and desserts that he was really introducing to the sort of high end New York dining scene. But that we had really both grown up with and known really intimately, both in Asia as well as in America. And so, you know, we just started talking and we realized there wasn't really a book out there.

1:06:44And so we decided that we would collaborate and do one together. And it was such a fun project. It was really, really a good time. Yeah. Yeah, I can't imagine. He wrote for me when I was an editor long ago at Food Republic. I loved collaborating with him as a writer. He's quite a good writer. Yeah. And the other book was George Mendes, My Portugal, which I loved so much. That book is special. The photography is top notch. But George just getting into his mind and the way you were able to collaborate with him. How did that one work out, that collaboration? I just decided to walk into Aldeo one night and sit.

1:07:20You know, I didn't even have a reservation, so I just sat in that front room. And obviously I'd read about his food, but I hadn't had a chance to go yet. And just eating it, there was just so much soulfulness in the food. And it was delicious, you know, sort of on every account. But there was so much heart in it, right? You could tell there was something more there. And I think I went up to him, like, you know, in the middle of service. Like, and yeah, I think that is what I did. I think I straight up just walked up to him and was like, hey, like, yeah, we should, I do cookbooks. We should do a cookbook together.

1:07:52Well, Genevieve, this was well before Porto and Lisbon became these Mecca tourist destinations and really a pioneering book to kind of crystallize Portuguese cuisine in Portugal, but also in the Connecticut. Yeah. Yeah. Right. The American side of it, which I haven't read anything like it since. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and, you know, he's from Danbury and that area, but we also went to, you know, what is Newark, you know, and other places. And we didn't actually make it to Massachusetts together, but there's also a big community in Massachusetts. And, yeah, it was really amazing. And I'm glad that I had the chance to go before Portugal sort of blew up as this travel destination.

1:08:32We sort of joked about it a little bit like, oh, do we do that? Because when the book came out, we did all these pieces for food and wine and travel and leisure and all this stuff. But it is such a wonderful country, and I'm so glad that it's – yeah. I've had the pleasure of visiting a few times, and I think you maybe did. I think that that book really got at least the editorial side, thinking about a destination. We love Spain, of course. We love France and Italy and the Med. Let's kind of head towards Portugal. I got to ask you about collaboration because you have authored your own book, but you mostly collaborate.

1:09:04And it is a real art. And we've had, you know, J.J. Good on the show. We've had plenty of collaborators. Describe what it's like to collaborate with a chef. Probably. It depends on the person. Oftentimes the hardest part is just scheduling. I've really enjoyed it because I really like being able to tell people's stories. And I love being able to tell people's stories in their own voices and in their own words when they don't have the time or, you know, or inclination to. But there's so much to tell through their food and also through, yeah, through the stories that they have to tell. And so I've really enjoyed it.

1:09:43I mean, it's – listen, like have there been tough projects? Like the ones that you don't know about. But I have considered it such a privilege actually, like really to work with other people because I've learned so much. It's basically like getting a master class, cooking class with phenomenal chefs who have such expertise in a particular area. And I've learned like so much of the cooking I've learned has come from these chefs. So I did, you know, I cooked in a restaurant to start to learn, learn the basics and just to learn about cooking. But yeah, I'm almost like embarrassed. Like it's so, it's such a privilege like to stand next to Jean-Georges and his like his lieutenants.

1:10:21And then, you know, I'm furiously taking notes the whole time. It is the greatest gift. I'm happy you bring that up because I think what we do is such a privilege to be able to experience behind the scenes at restaurants or in home kitchens of just like learning. It is a constant evolution as a home cook. I feel that way. Is there a cuisine that you really want to work on? I know you're a full-time staffer now and we get into your day-to-day and your times. But is there a cuisine you really want to collaborate on in your future? Gosh, you know, I haven't done a collaboration in a long time and I'm not sure if or when I will again.

1:10:54And it's really, again, it's just about timing. I mean, it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of flexibility, neither of which I feel like I have right now. But, you know, there are huge swaths of the world I haven't covered that I would love to be standing right alongside, you know, someone who's really an expert in any cuisine from Central or South America, from, you know, the Middle East, from South Asia. There are so many places in the world where it would be. Yeah, there's so many. I want to get to your average day-to-day at the New York Times because, you know, we've had your colleagues on.

1:11:28We have Eric Kim, Pete Wells, Melissa Clark, Priya Krishna, Emily Weinstein has mentioned. And each have kind of had a different story about their day-to-day working at the New York Times. And I keep saying the New York Times, and it has to be said, it's truly the top of the mountain when it comes to food writing. Like it is – we're inspired at Taste Every Day reading the recipes but also the Wednesday section. Tell me what is it like day-to-day for you? Sure. Yeah, and, you know, as you were listing off the names of my just wonderful colleagues, I was like, oh, we each have such different day-to-days.

1:12:00We really do. My day-to-day often is meetings. Those meetings really, you know, they range from obviously editorial meetings. But so I'm an editor for both the food section as well as NYT cooking. So we also have meetings with the product side. And then obviously just chatting with writers and recipe developers and the recipe editors and just, yeah, coordinating with the photo editors, coordinating with everyone across the board. So during the day, that's what it is. I try really hard to schedule time for story editing or recipe editing. But oftentimes I do that sort of first thing in the morning or at night.

1:12:39Morning, yeah. Yeah. And then and then in terms of my own recipe development for I have a column each month and then occasionally we'll find time to do special stuff. So usually that's weekends. Yeah. That's yeah. Just to have that sort of focus time to sort of cook start to finish. How do you brainstorm? I mean, we have our own process here. I've talked to other editors, but do you have a general idea meeting with some of your writers? And because I love those. Those are like the best part of our jobs. Like I love an ideas meeting. It's like so fun. So we have ideas meetings with our editors and then we also have, and then I also do ideas meetings with writers and gosh, you know, something I'm really looking forward to.

1:13:19One of my favorite ideas meetings with the editors was we did an offsite outdoors over the summer because we hadn't, we'd been doing it all by Zoom, you know, and like shared docs. And, but the natural flow of ideas that comes from sitting around a table together is really, really great. And the same is true, you know, with the writers, you know, we tend to just talk back and forth, usually by video conferencing. But one of our writers, we went for a walk in Central Park. And yeah, so I'm hoping, hoping, hoping to be able to do more of that. But right now it's mainly, yeah, virtual and with the editors and with the writers and editors and writers and just sort of always keep the communication flowing as ideas and stories develop.

1:14:05You mentioned your monthly column and you write occasionally as well. Do you get deadline anxiety, honest?

1:14:14Yeah, absolutely. Of course. Yeah. I was like, it took me a really long time. I was a super nerd throughout high school and college. I was like the person who had like a draft ready two weeks before. And, you know, I still do my very, very, very best to meet my deadlines, especially because I'm also an editor. So I know how important that is for the editor. But I think only in the last, gosh, four or five years, I realized like actually sometimes it's better to take a beat and wait if it's not there, right? Like if you're just trying to like force something and you're not – it's not there. For me, I think the part of the writing process that takes the longest is the thinking, is the sort of just circling the ideas in my head and like, okay, what is the outline?

1:15:00What is the story? What is the outline? What is the story? And I am so grateful for my brilliant colleagues. I've, you know, I have regulators, but every once in a while, you know, we switch around just too many people's schedules. And every single person has always made me, helped me think more clearly, helped me write more clearly, helped articulate, you know, whatever themes we're trying to get across. And certainly have caught mistakes big and small. I have to ask you, do you work with particular writers or are you doing general top edits? I know we're getting into a little bit of the weeds here, listener, but are you assigned to certain writers or are you doing general top edits, headline deck stuff?

1:15:41Yeah, so one of the things I really love about our team and the way Emily Weinstein has led us is that we really collaborate as a team. And so oftentimes the way we assign edits and editors is we do each have certain writers. So I edit Eric Kim, for example. Right. But, you know, if there's a particular week where I'm really slammed with X, Y, and Z, then, you know, somebody else will take that over. But yeah, we do have particular writers. One of my primary roles is assigning. And so oftentimes I'll work with a writer and a recipe developer to start and to start sort of getting those ideas around and then have them actually, you know, go ahead and get started on this story.

1:16:27And then when the story actually comes in, again, sort of just depending on scheduling, you know, I'll catch up whoever, you know, somebody else is going to take over as the first editor. I'll catch them up on like, hey, here's what this is, should be. Here's where we want it to land. And do you read the comments in the app? I asked Eric this as well. I mean, there's I think the New York Times, NYT cooking fans are real fans. I do read them. Honestly, I read them as an editor. I read them to catch to catch anything. You know, one of the things about NYT cooking is that we actually do continue to edit even after recipes are published.

1:17:03So I read the comments to see if you start to see like five, six comments of people saying like, I do not understand what step two is telling me to do. Then I'll call, you know, call the editors or the developer and be like, hey, like we need to edit step two. Like obviously this is not clear or like, you know, oh wait, is this ingredient the same thing as this other ingredient? and you see a few people ask that, and you realize, oh gosh, we should have mentioned that. And then we'll add that. Our recipes go through such a rigorous process that of course, in theory, there should be no mistakes by the time they're published.

1:17:36But for sure, sometimes, maybe we're using language that isn't clear or we're putting the steps in an order where maybe in another order, it'd be easier for home cooks or in the ingredient list, you know, measurements should be flipped. You know, maybe the number of apples should come before the weight of the apples. So I do read the comments actually both too. I am inspired by – I love hearing how home cooks make recipes their own. That's really fun. But I'm often scanning for like, okay, like is there anything here that we should do to make this recipe even more usable or user-friendly? I mean recipes – you could think about recipes as software and like fundamentally, I mean they need updates.

1:18:18Yeah. I want to get into home cooking. like I'd like to just hear we're recording this in in early September um I'm not sure when we're going to run this but we're getting in that we're that bridge season between summer and fall in the east coast where we are and I'd like to hear first um you mentioned off mic that you were working on some Thanksgiving content what what are you thinking about right now like right now are you thinking about fall winter or are you thinking further and what are some specific like recipes that you're working on. I just love to hear. I'm thinking right here, right now, fall, I'm thinking a lot about Thanksgiving all the time.

1:18:53I'm thinking about the holiday season, but I'm actually also thinking into January. So one of the things that I've really enjoyed about going back to newspapers, I've been in magazines for a long time, was, you know, in the magazine world, there was a very regular cycle, month to month to month to month. And at the newspaper, you know, that's a digital product really, is just this constant, like there's a constant flow of what you're thinking about. So we're really like deep in Thanksgiving now. But I think what I've been thinking about a lot for the fall and for the winter is not just the holiday cooking, but is really the home cooking.

1:19:32And I have been thinking, it's not so much how do we do it different, but like, how do we make it new and fresh and exciting again, but also doable? I think one of the things that I love most about my colleagues and, you know, on the cooking team, we have a group of editors who are dedicated to the cooking content. And they're just a wonderfully empathetic group of people who really understand what people need at home and want at home. So how do we balance recipes that are so simple? Because when, you know, at the end of the day, you're exhausted or you're busy, but balancing that with what is new and fresh and exciting, right?

1:20:14We're coming out of this crazy period of time in the world. Where nothing feels exciting about cooking. We really, you know, do you ever want to eat more comfort food again? I don't, you know, yes and no. Like, yes, because you always do, but gosh, doing something fresh and new and exciting. So all of our developers, you know, certainly on staff, like Melissa and Yawande and Eric on staff, And then we have developers who develop a lot. First, Ali, Kay Chun is another one whom I knew from Gourmet Days. And they're so great at thinking of like, you know, sure, so how do we make something feel fresh and exciting and get you like in the kitchen again?

1:20:54That isn't going to require, you know, 20 pots and pans and trips to seven markets. And so we're always, yeah, we're always trying to figure out what are, you know, what are those moments? What can we do? What can we offer? And so certainly for all the holiday stuff that we're doing, like, oh, you're having people over, you know. But also just like, okay, it's what day is today? Tuesday. It's Tuesday today. And like, what are you going to do for dinner? Like, we're always trying to answer all those questions. I love that about New York Times cooking. It really is for home cooks. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing I do say, you know, all of our developers, you know, I should mention Alexa Weibel on our staff.

1:21:36She's actually an editor, but also a great developer. And so she develops for us too. The hardest thing to do, the hardest recipes to do are the simplest ones. Oh, gosh. For sure. For sure. Like, can you make something delicious with 23 ingredients and a sous chef? Absolutely. You know, or whatever, like having somebody do your dishes. but yeah I really value how hard our developers work to to take something and make it so delicious but it feels really effortless Hedy McKinnon is another one of our developers yeah that's so well like it just feels so like easy peasy but then when you taste it like you have all these different textures and flavors and testers too I you know I don't want to neglect our testers do such a great job like just yesterday one of our testers you know I think I'd written something like until there's an inch of water and I had written how much water that was for me she's like well you know for my pot it was half a cup more and I think maybe you should just give the amount of water I was like oh that's a really good point because she's like clearly my sauce is thinner and it just like you said yeah yeah wow thanks so much like that's such helpful I have to ask you about ingredients and books two separate topics but anything that's on like the tip of your tongue right now as you're looking into fall we're entering the fall cookbook season so maybe a couple cookbooks that you're enjoying um i know you're biased you can very well be biased um and also yeah ingredients like i have to ask you like something like what's the new dukkha i i did ask that that's that's actually not a real question that was a joke well i will say um melissa's book just came out and yeah gosh it's so lovely she's so masterful at doing just what we're talking about like um simple with minimal um work i you know it's a little bit hard for me to say right at moment, like ones I'm really excited about because, you know, we apply the same rigor to our cookbook, end of year cookbook review as we do our recipes and our stories.

1:23:27And we're right in the thick of it right now. So I've actually just been looking at like hundreds of galleys and early copies. We will await your general thoughts in a tidy article at the end of the year. What about an ingredient what are we thinking right now so one of the things that i really feel really strongly about with like ingredients both in terms of ingredients that we use in our recipes and the way that we talk about them and write about them and i think this goes all the way back to what i was talking about before like how i got into this or why i got into this i sort of hate the notion of ingredients being hot or trending thank you special or new because yeah i very much grew up with like, I grew up with fish sauce.

1:24:12I'm Cantonese, but like I grew up with fish sauce and then when like, oh, fish sauce, you know, new. And I was like, what? This is not new. And I just think it's so relative, the idea of like an ingredient being new or hot or like, have you tried? And it's true that there are a lot of people who haven't tried a lot of things. And so that is a totally valid experience for salmon to have. But I think to cast it in that light or to look at it in that way, to have that sort of framework, you know, I don't love it. I think othering is a terrible problem with food writing and trying to like say something is hot or new makes my stomach turn a bit.

1:24:49We actually think about that and talk about that so much and we edit so carefully and consult so many levels, you know, spellings, immigrants, descriptions, and trying to find that balance between trying to change the framework through which we're talking about food and ingredients and techniques where, again, understanding that this may be the most familiar, intimate sort of technique or ingredient or dish for some, and for some, it may be absolutely new. And so always trying to find that balance of obviously conveying the information as well as understanding that the audience, how vast, you know, what a range of experiences the audience has.

1:25:26So yeah, so it's something we just, we spent a lot of time just thinking about. And the way I often put it to my editors and writers is, you know, it's not actually necessarily about background. Well, it is about background, but it's not necessarily about race or heritage. It's almost a way of thinking about it really is thinking about culinary background. Like think about the range of people, you know, in terms of how much or how little they know about food at all. And that's who you're writing to, right? So you could be writing to someone who comes from a particular culture and you could be writing about that cuisine it's very possible they have never ever heard yeah this dish right yeah so you really want to just think about the whole range of experiences that people have in the kitchen or with food in general well said thank you that's really articulate thank you for pointing that out because i think getting to the point of like the actual cooking and the subtext being important but not the foundation of the recipe is important um your business is good at the new york times it seems like the cooking app like is popular more popular than ever it's like the kind of thing that changes stock prices i mean is it i'm joking but like clearly you're the nyt cooking the app the paid subscription is really important to the new york times is that is that my like it's a big part of the business you know i I think as an editor, I work really hard to just remember sort of why we do what we do, which is to help people cook, to help people live richer lives through food.

1:27:05And, you know, and I think that's something that, you know, for all of, you know, all the people on my team and as we talk about our recipes and again, like the rigor with which we bring to our recipe editing, it's like we're doing this. We're doing this to, yeah, to help people cook and enjoy food more. And one of the things that we do think a lot about as editors, we absolutely want to expand our audience. We absolutely want to get more people on the app and more people cooking because they just think it's just an amazing way to experience the world. You know, we very much see cooking and the app as not, you know, not like an extension of the New York Times.

1:27:45We really see it as a New York Times. And so, you know, when we're editing, when we're talking to our writers, like we're like every top note here, like this is like a tiny, tiny food story. This is like a hundred word food story. And we want everyone to not only like learn about what we do from just reading, you know, those top notes or looking at the photos, but then actually experiencing it. Like what we feel like, we feel like we're actually giving you news to eat. Yeah, I love that. But your audience is so massive. It's not just a hundred word head note in photo. I mean, you're getting you're reaching the world.

1:28:19And it seems to me that home cooks are getting younger and younger. When we started Taste in 17 and I worked in Food Dietitial for 15 years prior, like it was an older audience. I don't know if you agree with me. It seemed like food, like recipes and cookbooks were for older. Do you feel like it's getting younger? I hope it is. Me too. I hope so.

1:29:10seeing people who are younger getting engaged with, um, getting engaged with our app. And certainly with, um, we have a, an amazing social media team. So getting engaged through our content on YouTube or on TikTok or on Instagram and, um, yeah. And it's really exciting to see all of these sort of pieces melding together, um, with NYT cooking and, um, yeah. And we're really, we're just excited to, to try to keep growing, you know, and even what days, like in a few weeks, gosh, we're launching this. I'm so excited. We're starting these. We have a cooking festival in New York City. Even leading up to that, we're doing these events across the country to actually get to meet users in real life.

1:29:54Yeah. It's super fun. And then we have these cooking kits that you can order and you get just the pantry stable ingredients, which is super fun. Like what you're talking about, are any of these the hot and trendy ingredients? I'm not going to phrase that way but they're delicious ingredients sure chosen curated and i think that's sometimes that's the thing that i sometimes miss working in food media instead of working in a restaurant kitchen it's like i want to feed you i want to meet you i want to like talk to you and yeah so it's super fun that we like are um doing these sort of like nyt cooking experiences where you can actually like come and hang out with with the writers and the editors and also chefs that we're we're collaborating with and yeah so how many uh minutes a day are you on tiktok zero i know i should be i feel like i should be i i think i mean we had bettina mccalintal on the on the show uh she is big on tiktok and like studies and writes about it for eater and i i just think tiktok excites me it certainly is younger but excites me because it shows a brand new audience meaning they're brand new to cooking oh absolutely like engaging with food and that's cool i love that you know one of the things i really love about it is how it can how can how it can really help bring dishes to light in a way gosh yeah i feel like you know it's it's amazing like and this is a minute ago but who doesn't know what birria is now i know right there's all these there are all these kids like teenagers making birria and i'm like that's amazing like that's really wonderful right this dish has been around for so long well you grew up you know near east la right so much grippy yeah um but but the way that it took over the world really it was like an international phenomenon and and tajel wrote a lovely piece on it for us and we're dipping tacos yeah yeah exactly exactly so i do i do appreciate that like wow it can really in food it can really help um help get the word out on on certain dishes okay so speaking of tajel in early September, Tejal drops a story about recipe question mark and the recipe reply guy.

1:32:00I thought it was a great piece. I think it covered a lot of things that get discussed on social media and in Slack channels at publications. And the idea that when you produce a piece of content, you put it on social media. It could be a photo. It could be a reel. It could be a TikTok. There's somebody, she gendered it as male. And fair enough, there's probably plenty of males, plenty of all genders. There's someone who always replies, recipe question mark. Recipe, where's the recipe? And I thought the piece was interesting. What do you think about the recipe question mark idea? So I need to, you know, the disclaimer here is that I am almost never, really almost never on social media.

1:32:42I don't see it as much, I think, as other people are very engaged on those platforms. And I don't see the threads of following it. So I'm not quite as attuned to the cadence of what that means. You know, the one thing I had shared with Tejal when we were talking about this early on was I found it really interesting. You know, for me, when I check my Instagram once in a blue moon and somebody will ask for a recipe, I was like, oh, that's so nice. That's my gut reaction. It's like, oh, that's so nice. You'd like to cook this dish. Of course. Here's the recipe. and I was saying, oh, the one thing that I've had happened in my experience that I find really interesting is that sometimes those conversations will continue with like, well, can you then also give me a recipe for this?

1:33:24And can you tell me how to make this thing? I was like, whoa, okay. This is really interesting that there's this intimacy in this exchange of making requests. Yeah. Annoying intimacy for some. Well, yeah, I mean, sort of it's always really interesting to me. So I have to confess, like, I would encourage everyone to read Tejal's piece. I think it's really, really fascinating. And I think it does speak a lot to it. I kind of agree with you. My initial instinct is that, yes, it's annoying, but it is almost like an extension of the like, of the thumbs up. It's like they're almost co-signing on their love of the piece of content.

1:34:06Yeah. So much that they're saying, I'd like a recipe. I commit like that. That's my initial take. But I think if you read the piece and I'll link to it in the show notes, it's it's really fascinating. She really articulated something that I think boiled a lot of blood around the Internet. And I see it. Yeah. In my in my very, you know, optimistic and idealistic worldview, I'm like, I hope everybody who's asking for a recipe just wants to cook it. That's my my hope is my hope. Though, you know, I think one of the things I really love about NYT cooking that I've thought more and more about is, you know, it actually it's totally fine if you don't want to cook this.

1:34:42It's totally fine if you're not interested in going to the store and buying these ingredients. A lot of times, you know, I feel like it's, I hope it's fun for our users just to look and see what's there, just to sort of scan, just to, even if it's just to look through the photos, our photo editor is so brilliant. And she works with so many teams to get all these beautiful images. But I like to think of the app, or I hope that people use the app almost just as like, yeah, just a way to learn as entertainment and not necessarily having to cook a whole dish start to finish. But I think of the same way I'm working on a cookbook with Dookie Hong right now, Korea World, and we think about the same as like, it's almost like a mood board.

1:35:24It's almost like extension of knowledge. And I look at your app and I think of the same thing. I obviously can't cook everything I star or save to the recipe box, but it's true. And back to the recipe question mark, I think it's maybe somebody who just wants a little more information about the cool thing that's happening. But I see the point of Tejal and many other, it can be quite annoying when it's simply that. I will confess early on, like, boy, you know, early on with earlier recipe sites, I've worked in a number of magazines and have had digital extensions with recipe sites. I used to get, as a recipe developer, I used to get annoyed.

1:36:00I used to get annoyed if somebody would write in and say, well, you know, this dish was really bad. I mean, I used chicken instead of fish and I used olives instead of tomatoes and I used whatever crazy things. And I remember I used to feel like, well, then you didn't make the dish and how can you respond like that? But now when I see those sorts of comments on NYT cooking, maybe this is just, I don't know, this is some sort of evolution. Optimism in the air. Transolution, optimism, you know, where I'm like, cool, great, go for it, you know, like, but I do think the spirit of that has changed.

1:36:41Because I think, I remember, you know, these comments used to have sort of a very mean-spirited quality towards the recipe and therefore the recipe creator of like, well, this isn't good, you know. Whereas now it feels more like, hey, I made this and I made all these changes and it was okay. And I think in that sense that stance is a little bit more like, well, this is what I did and this is what I think of it, as opposed to like you gave me a bet. It's almost collegial within the comments section of N.Y.T. cooking. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I like that about it. I love that. I love that. It's a community.

1:37:11You really have built a community from a whole cloth. Absolutely. Pretty cool. Genevieve, we asked all guests on the Taste podcast if there was a dream cookbook or food culture book project you could work on without the burden of budget, meaning you have unlimited money. the advance was like a billion dollars or time, meaning you didn't have a job. What is your dream cookbook project? When I saw this question, you know, and I thought about it, you know, the question I had back for you is, well, is time travel involved? Can time travel be involved if there was a real dream cookbook? I don't know if this is just because have you seen Russian Doll?

1:37:44Yes. Usually you watch Russian Doll and then you watch Palm Springs and have just been thinking a lot about time travel and time loops and all this. Both are great. I love Palm Springs. Yeah, so my dream cookbook experience would be to be able to travel in time and to see dish, like really, you know, see cooking evolve, see how it's changed. You know, we study it all the time. I love going into the Times archives and other, you know, other great libraries with old cookbooks. But my dream cookbook would be to do, you know, a sort of evolution of cooking. I'd probably choose maybe like one cuisine or one place or something just to have a cohesive book, right?

1:38:25I'm still thinking like an editor. I'm like, well, what is that? Like Quantum Leap? Yeah, something like that. You know, would that be amazing? Because we can research it and we can do interviews and we can look at archival footage. But I want to be in the kitchen. I want to be standing next to, you know, I want to be there. Where's the there on the spot, Genevieve? Where do you want to go? Are we talking about like Milan, 1950 post-war, building up from the ashes? Are we talking French Nouvelle? I don't know if you've ever watched. This is one of the shows I was obsessed with as a kid is Great Chefs of the World, Great Chefs, Great Cities.

1:38:59Those books too, yeah. Right. Those feel like they're very much of a time and place. I would like to be in those kitchens at that time. But I think, you know, one thing that I increasingly want to explore more is I was, you know, born and raised in the U.S. and Chinese American. And I do think Chinese cuisine is – it's not underrated by any means, but it has such a deep, deep, deep history that in the Western world, we don't get as much of an education, you know, with that because of just really the language barrier, ultimately the cultural barrier. You know, a lot was lost in the cultural revolution, to put them outly.

1:39:36So it would be amazing to go through that time loop. I guess, you know, I guess the thing is that I would also have to acquire much more intense language skills than I have now. But I need the time machine. That would be my dream. I mean, so I guess short of that, I guess it would be researching something of the same. But, yeah, I love seeing how food evolves and changes. You know, again, like something we hear about every day is like, well, this isn't you did it this way. This isn't how it's done. This isn't how it's supposed to be done. This isn't. And sometimes it's not. Right. Well, hopefully not.

1:40:10I think we do. But sometimes there's stuff out there that maybe isn't quite right. But I think the way I look at it is like this is cooking evolves. Food evolves. Communities evolve. And, yeah, this is how dishes change. It's software. Genevieve Koch, thank you for joining the Taste Podcast. Oh, thank you so much for having me.

1:40:38I have to say Anna and I are such fans of what you do at the New York Times, long-term readers, long-term subscribers, but also you as a person. You've supported taste. You've been just – the little notes and just seeing you at events. We really thank you for that. Thank you. It's so sincere. I remember the – I think it was the first time I actually met you in person. And I was like, I feel like I'm meeting someone from one of my favorite bands. I just really have appreciated what y 'all have been doing for years now. So kind. And I want to get into your story because it's a really good one. Before you joined the New York Times and the food desk, you are the food and cooking editor of the New York Times.

1:41:21Yes. You're the boss. I you're you're an MFA student and grad at Columbia. So how did you get from MFA Columbia to the New York Times food desk? So first of all, you don't need an MFA to work in a newspaper, but I do have one. And so I was working at the Village Voice and and it was just clear there were changes there. The voice was about to be sold. And I had a friend who was at Columbia and I always loved to write. And I knew that, you know, I knew that what I wanted to do was either write or be an editor or an editor who wrote or, you know, some combination of the two. And so I ended up in this program at Columbia and nonfiction writing and loved it, totally loved it.

1:42:14And then at the end of my coursework, I still had to write a master's thesis, basically to write a book. And I just needed a freelance job, you know, to support myself while I was still like paying Columbia in order to write this thesis. And I happened to run into a friend of mine who you might know, J.J. Good. He's a cookbook author. Sure. A columnist for taste, longtime contributor. A columnist for taste. That's right. So I just happened to know J.J. and I ran into him and he and J.J. and his wife and I are old friends. And I said, yeah, I'm just looking for a freelance job. You know, copy editing, fact checking.

1:42:52That was the sort of work I had done before I went to grad school. And he had heard about some like random freelance fact checking job at the New York Times. And I was like, great. Sounds great. And I figured it must be for the magazine. I mean, who else at the Times would be fact checking? Newspapers don't really do that. But it turned out to be for the food section. And I went to the Times and this was at the old building on 43rd Street. The Times used to have this office that really looked like a newspaper from the movies. and a newsroom for the movies. And I met Pete Wells, who was the food editor then, and Trish Hall, who oversaw the feature sections, and spoke with them.

1:43:30And they hired me to fact check the restaurant listings database. Yes. What a grind. It was not a good job. But it was a job. I really needed a job. And it was at the New York Times. And I got a pass. I could go to the office and work at the office. And I remember the first day I went to the office and I had no – I loved restaurants. And at The Voice, I had worked with Robert Sietzma. One of my tasks at The Voice was to fact check Robert Sietzma's column, the food critic there. Counter culture? Yeah. So I had this real love of what he did. I loved restaurants. I loved eating out. But I had never really thought about being a food writer or editor.

1:44:12It just wasn't in my frame of reference really. And I got there and I looked around and I was like, oh. These are my people. I was like, oh, this is good. And I just resolved. I was like, I'm going to work like crazy and hopefully I'll get to stay. And so what a cool story. And I feel starting from the bottom now we're here moment with this story because you really did work your way up. What were some of the jobs after you were, you know, fact checking the restaurant listings? What were some of the other jobs you held on the food desk? So when I got hired on staff at the Times, I actually did not get hired on the food desk.

1:44:53But I got hired on the culture desk, which is those are the art sections of the paper, like the daily art sections, arts and leisure. But they needed somebody to do their listings. And they're like, well, you're already doing the restaurant listings. You're checking this database. And by the way, at the time, the Times did not really care about its recipe database. They were sitting on this archive of recipes going back to 1981, and they just were totally focused on the restaurant listings. And I understood why. I mean, I still understand why. So they hired me to do the listings, and they hired me in a job that doesn't exist anymore, a web producer.

1:45:27Oh, yeah. And back then— Remember those? Remember those, right? CMS management? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The CMS. I mean, I've been through so many CMSs at the New York Times, you know, and the job then was basically you had all these writers and editors who, you know, made the newspaper. They like put together the New York Times and then like it went to the printing plant and everybody went home. And the web producers were there just like elves in Santa's workshop, you know, putting it all on the Internet. Control C, control V style. Yeah. Like nobody had any idea what we did or who we were or what even happened.

1:46:01But it all ended up on NYTimes.com. So and that was that was my job and I focused on the listing. So I was always working with the food section, including I helped launch a blog that Mark Bittman wrote at the time. So so very early on, I was working really closely with like Mark Bittman, of all people, which is an amazing education. and then some time passed and I got more involved with the culture desk and the arts coverage. And then the web producer job on the food desk opened up and back then it was the dining section. So I moved over there. Wow. And I've really been there ever since. What year are we talking about?

1:46:38Did you make that switch over? Oh, my gosh. I, you know, time is a river. I've just been doing this for so long. I want to say like 2009 probably. Like 2009. What an interesting time for digital media for food. Like Eater is really just starting to pick up steam. You've got places, City Search and Metro Mix where I work. We're doing like listing stuff. And then there's like all sorts of blogs. All sorts of blogs. I mean and Grub Street. Of course Grub Street, of course. And, you know, a big reason The Times was really interested in those restaurant listings is because New York Magazine had a really robust listings database.

1:47:16Also, is it Foursquare? Yeah. Foursquare. Foursquare. And this is before Yelp really took off in New York. I think Yelp was happening in San Francisco at that point. There were just all these different players and like digital food space, especially restaurants and especially listings. You know, this idea of like, hey, can we tell people where to go eat? Yeah, it's really changed so much. And the way the recipe has kind of changed over time. I say most legacy media, quote unquote legacy media places, did not put all their database on the internet. Like Gourmet is a great example too, right? Yeah.

1:47:56So let's fast forward to your current job, which is running cooking and food, which is – there are two very different aspects. I'd like to hear about the difference. But also I'd like to hear about your day-to-day. What is it like running the food desk, running the cooking app? All of these different aspects of the New York Times food section. It's really cool, like impressive too. Thank you. Well, it's fun because everyone's so excited about it. Internally, externally, there's just a lot of momentum and excitement around what we're doing in Food at the Times and NYT cooking. My day-to-day is a lot of meetings, which I think, you know, in between those years of being a web producer and what I do now, you know, I was an editor.

1:48:41I edited stories and all kinds of stuff. And so now I don't edit as much as I used to, which, you know, was my first love. But that's cool. But I do talk with people all day, which is really interesting. And the meetings really reflect sort of the vast array of things that we are up to right now. So, you know, we, you know, I'll sit at my desk. I'll read some things. I usually call into the New York Times newsroom morning news meeting. It used to be called the page one meeting. Page one meeting, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. There's documentary about it. So I call into that meeting and just get a sense of the news of the day.

1:49:19But as told by the editors running those departments before the news is online. So, you know, the Washington editor is talking about the stories they're following. International editor. Whatever the biggest news story of the day is the person. Sarah Palin dining in a restaurant without a mask having COVID maybe. Yep. Maybe that. So and, you know, we have editors to go to that meeting, too. So usually I start the day just listening in on that, getting a sense of what's going on. We have a staff meeting every morning just for the editors and reporters who do in the newsroom, in the food desk and cooking, sort of the editorial part of the cooking team.

1:49:56You know, we just catch up. We have brainstorm sessions. We have ideas meetings. I go to meetings with the cooking product leadership team. So that's, you know, I represent the editorial part of the operation. But, you know, dozens and dozens of people work on NYT cooking, you know, engineers, designers, product managers. Which is a real business for the Times. NYT cooking, the app. Huge business for the Times. They announced in December we passed a million subscribers for cooking. Amazing. Congrats. So cool. Thank you. Hey, nobody ever thought that would be possible for a recipe website. So we're pretty excited about that.

1:50:31But I speak with those people. I speak with the marketing people. I speak with the other – I go to meetings with the other leaders of the other features desks at the Times, you know, culture styles. I meet with writers on our team. I meet with writers outside the paper. All kinds of stuff all the time. It sounds like the meetings take over your life with any, you know, job of leadership. That's the case. But also it sounds like you are an editor at heart and you want to make sure the stories are executed. Do you dip in with your pen once in a while? I do. You know, it's – I think you have to kind of let people – you know, you have – every editor is going to edit a story a little differently and you have to let people do what they're going to do.

1:51:18But, yeah, I read our stories before they go live for the most part. Sometimes some get by me. But, you know, I really try to read them all at least. and usually I'm like, great. And then every once in a while I'm like, ah, I'm not sure about this. And, you know, we kind of go from there. I'm sure what you're not saying too is that your staff comes to you with like the hard questions too because I'm sure that there are, I mean, you're not covering just cooking. Like to be clear to our listeners, the culture aspect of food covering your times is tremendous. You know, Priya Krishna, friend of taste and contributor is doing some of the work, Eric Kim as well.

1:51:53It's like reporting on the world of food. So I'm sure you have some tough – were there any tough decisions, not getting into any specifics, but like what types of questions do you get often? Well, you know, we – and in addition, you know, so just a little more context there. So, yeah, so we're producing MIT Cooking, right? So this is an enormous recipe resource, this app. But we're also producing investigations. You know, two of our reporters won a Pulitzer for their Me Too coverage with the reporting on Ken Friedman and the Spotted Pig. It was Kim Severson and Julia Moskin, amazing reporters.

1:52:28So we're doing investigations, reporting news about the restaurant industry. We're writing feature stories about food culture in America. You know, we're producing restaurant criticism. We're doing all kinds of things. Tough questions. You know, usually it's sort of about picking our shots. you know where are we going to put our energy where are we going to put our resources how do we want to shape the story we're also just one part of the New York Times you know so is it like well should we do this or should we see if Metro is going to do it should we do this or is Biz going to cover it so there's a lot of that like understanding like how are we going to proceed on something tricky or how do we want to think about this tricky thing and how are we going to move forward on it Makes a lot of sense.

1:53:15We have to pick our battles to a taste. It's important when you have limited resources. You can't do every story and you have to pick your swings. You mentioned reviews and I have to ask, do you go to any review meals with Pete? Pete's been on the podcast and we've talked about his process and his deadline anxiety as everyone has. But do you go to dine with him? I have in the past. Sadly, I don't go anywhere anymore right now because of COVID. I'm not dining with anyone so much right now, but I did before COVID. Not a ton, but I go out with Pete sometimes. Pete, if you hear this, I am available again.

1:53:54You know, the last— Throw some time on my cow. It can be after 5. It could be 5.30. I love—it's really—I mean, look, it is really fun to go out to eat. with Pete. I just really enjoy talking with Pete. I think he's a remarkable thinker and so interesting and fun to talk to. He's so funny. And last time I ate with Pete, I'm trying to remember, I think it was in 2019. We went to the Second Avenue Deli. Wow. And it was not for a review. I remember meeting him and we were supposed to go somewhere nearby and the place was closed unexpectedly. And he was like, ah, you know, for Pete, every meal kind of has to count.

1:54:34You know, he has to eat at so many restaurants in order to do the work that he does. So we're like, all right, well, how are we going to salvage this? And we just walked over to the Second Avenue Deli. And I'm pretty sure we had pastrami sandwiches and celery's and pickles. I'm sure I had matzo ball soup. I can't imagine leaving the Second Avenue Deli without having matzo ball soup. So, yeah, it was not a review meal, but it was great. It was a great meal. I've had the pleasure of dining with him as well. And he is really – I mean he was a culture editor before Food. So he obviously has a lot of great – he has great taste in music and film and just cool dude.

1:55:15And I'm waiting for my invite too, Pete, as well. So if you're listening. Pete, we're here. I have to talk about you as a writer because you write a weekly newsletter as well in addition to all this work called Five Weeknight Dishes. And I love it. It's really well written. It's very tightly packaged and you're an editor at heart. Do you get deadline anxiety? Every week you got to do this thing? You know, no. You know, writing requires a muscle and you work the muscle every week. You know, it's, you know, if you try to get on a treadmill and run a mile and you haven't done it in a long time, it's going to be really hard.

1:55:47You know, you do it several times a week. You know, you're going to be fine. But I am a terrible procrastinator. Who isn't? I know, but I'm bad. And I'm, like, not supposed to be bad, right? Like, I'm supposed to be good. I need to, like, be the change I want to see in the world. around deadlines and procrastination. But no, I just know it's just something I have to do. And it's something I love to do. And for me, it keeps me writing. And. You know, I'm not a recipe developer. I'm not a culinary professional. I'm an editor. I'm a writer and I'm an editor who loves food. I'm quite a passionate home cook.

1:56:26And so really I'm just like a fan. So it keeps me really closely tied to the recipe development work we do at NYT Cooking. And, you know, I'm just constantly cooking from the app. I want to know what our writers are doing. I want to know what's new. I want to know what's interesting. And then I get to tell people about it. So and it also keeps me close to readers. I think it's a way of sort of showing appreciation for them and their needs. I mean, the reason we launched that newsletter is that we developed this like very clear understanding that like what a lot of people needed was just ideas for a Tuesday.

1:57:01You know, they're busy. You know, they don't want to spend an hour and a half cooking dinner on a weeknight. Maybe they have young kids at home. Maybe they just have demanding professional life and they don't actually love to cook. Not everyone loves to cook. and those people needed better service from us. And you just edit it in a cool way where you pick the right things and you say the right words. I mean it really is encouraging and I appreciate – wish you would write more to be honest because just talking to you, you've got a lot to say. Oh, thank you. I mean it. I love writing and I always loved writing and it was one of the only things I ever did where I would lose the time.

1:57:39I would lose track of time. And such is my love of sitting there and doing it. However, it's like really hard to just like sit and do it. And that's the procrastination, you know. Speaking of writing and writers, your team has greatly expanded in the past couple of years. You've scooped up amazing talents. Some are familiar for taste. Priya Krishna, Eric Kim, Christina Morales, Genevieve Koh as an editor, Brett Anderson. I just want to say and ask you, like, what makes a New York Times reporter and why do you hire somebody? Oh, such a good question. And those are all extraordinary talents, right?

1:58:18Just an extraordinarily skilled. You know, it's not just about talent. It's about skill and work. And a really great New York Times reporter. First of all, you know, again, reporting is a craft. Reporting is a skill. You know, people who have really honed those skills and worked at their craft. People who know how to spot a story, know how to shape a story for a national audience, are sort of fearless in thinking about stories. And, you know, you also have to be a good writer and you have to file a deadline. So it really is a tall order. You have to be able to work quickly, you know, and to be able to do that, you know, at the at the level that the Times wants to be working, you know, it's hard.

1:59:07And also these are people who all really understand the food space, whether it's home cooking or the food industry or cookbooks. They all bring some sort of specialty in terms of how they approach the beat. It's a remarkable blend of skills. And you've said it so well. And I just want to add just the weight of having the New York Times as your byline is there. And I've written for the Times. There's an absolute – there's a serious dedication to the byline and really – and the masthead, I guess you could say. So I think the fact that you put out so much under this – with this pressure is remarkable.

1:59:42They say, you know, it's the job. And it's very, it's too bad we're not all like physically in the newsroom at the office. I don't know if you've ever been there. You should come. I've never been, actually. I've seen it in film and television. No, you should come when it's open. And winning Pulitzers. When we can like have people come again, you should come. There's just this tremendous energy there, especially at the end of the day when deadline is approaching. It's really cool and it really helps carry you along. How do you develop your stories with your staff? I know that you said you have ideas meetings.

2:00:17And then so you self-generate you and your editorial staff. But are you also accepting pitches from like a Priya Krishna writer? Is she pitching you ideas or Eric? How does that work? Yeah. You know, well, it comes about a couple different ways. First of all, if news is breaking, it's breaking. And we're looking to see like, okay, which of our reporters can handle it right now? Oh, that's another skill. You have to be able to do breaking news, which is hard, you know. No one really does it in food. I mean Eater does it really well too, but it's very rare. Yeah, and look, there's not a ton of breaking news in food the way there is on like metro.

2:00:50You know, you cover the city, you cover the courts or, you know, there's breaking news. We don't have as much breaking news, but it definitely happens. And so if news comes, that's one thing. Yeah, we have ideas meetings for sure and assignments come out of that. But I will say the best ideas, you know, reliably come from reporters. And most of the time they're discussing them kind of with each other, with their colleagues, with and principally, you know, with their editor and thinking about, OK, are we going to do this? When are we going to do it? Just working out the logistics and also sort of shaping it.

2:01:24And, you know, and that that makes perfect sense to me that more ideas would come from reporters and writers and from editors. You know, COVID has, you know, messed with this a little bit. But generally speaking, like you don't find ideas at your desk. You don't find ideas at the office. You can from reading. Obviously, the Internet, you know, there are stories there. But really, the best ideas come from being out in the world and talking to people. We call it pre-reporting. And when we take on pitches, we require it. I mean, what you're saying is what we experience every day. Like, we get an idea, but it's like you need to pre-report it.

2:01:58It's just so important. But you bring up COVID, and Anne and I struggle with this, too. It's like you can't get out in the world as much. Yeah, no, it's really, really hard. I mean, and that's why you get, you know, you get ideas from people. And look, like, absolutely, you need to cover food culture online. And, like, you don't need to be out in the world to cover food culture online. But we don't just do that. We do all kinds of things. In order for the report to feel dynamic, you need people who are out in the world looking around, bringing those stories, you know, to you. The editors, I think, do a really good job of thinking about sort of like big picture lines of coverage, packages, big projects, sort of franchise ideas.

2:02:43Editors, I think, are really good at sort of conceiving of those and thinking about like, OK, like here is this here is this bucket. And like, what are we putting in it and how do we want to think about that? Mm hmm. Without spoiling any any any surprises. What are you working on right now? Are there any are there any topics that you feel like you've had across your desk this past couple of weeks that you want to talk about? Ah, well, we like the element of surprise. Yes, as do we. We do have a few really big things planned for 2022 that I can't I can't talk about yet. But this is tantalizing.

2:03:20It's going to be great. Personally, of course, you know, the big stories to me this year are the restaurant industry. What's going to happen? You know, and there are so many different storylines that thread through the restaurant industry. And then climate change and climate change coverage and food, you know, has persisted all these many years through COVID. But but there was this huge moment in 2019 where there was quite a lot of it. And then in 2020, the focus shifted because COVID was such a shock to the whole world, to the whole system. And, you know, all the while we've been producing stories that touch on climate change.

2:03:56But I think in a more concerted way, we're going to come back to it this year. What makes a good climate change food story? I ask this because we pitch them often. We can't publish as much as you, but we try to publish as much climate change. It is the biggest story of our generation right now in food. But we've struggled with finding an audience. And it's just sometimes it's either people don't want to hear or read about certain topics. Sometimes it's too obscure. Sometimes it's too, like, if you watch Don't Look Up, it's too far in the future. So what makes a good story? Oh, you know, and I should say, too, the Times has a whole desk devoted to climate change coverage.

2:04:37Yeah, you do. So, and they're always doing work. And there's climate coverage across almost all the desks at the Times in various ways. So institutionally, you know, it's a priority and a big story, one among many but a priority. You know, I think you're right. It's too abstract. There's this impending sense of doom, but it's just too hard to wrap your heads around. And maybe that's just the limit of the human mind. I don't know. But, you know, we see a lot of stories about waste and we see a lot of stories about agricultural shifts. I actually find the agricultural shift stories compelling because it's like, oh, my God, like Vermont is going to have the climate of North Carolina and what are they going to grow there?

2:05:22Things like that, you know, because I can it conjures an image in my mind. I think a lot of I think something that I find missing from a lot of climate coverage is actually just actionable information. I think part of that is because actionable information is so confused and confusing. And, you know, it's very easy to feel hopeless. It's like, well, what does it mean if I give up X, Y or Z? Like, does that really make a difference? And somebody over here is saying, well, no, it's really about policy. But you still want to do something. And I think about that a lot. And I think about, OK, you know, we report.

2:05:56We also provide service. Like, NYT cooking is service. and how do we bring some of that thinking into how we think about climate change. Why it's such an interesting job that you have because you do blend peer service journalism and like how to put dinner on the table, quote unquote, with like big ideas and big swings. And it's remarkable. I want to know outside of the Times staff, is there anybody in food writing that you have enjoyed, anybody on Twitter even? I know you don't have time to read everybody, but I always want to give editors a chance to kind of give a little shout out. Well, I mean, I think Helen Rosner at The New Yorker is just like a genius.

2:06:33I mean, like big fan, friend, fan of the show. I don't really know. I mean, I don't really know Helen. I've like met her once or twice in passing. So I'm just a fan. And everything she does, even, you know, she'll post an Instagram story about something and she'll something that is kind of percolating. But it's in the air and she finds a way to talk about it in ways that are compelling and funny. And, you know, she's just a genius. I really admire her work. Salejo. Yeah. I mean, I think it's been really thrilling to see what Salejo is doing in San Francisco. I mean, she's just doing the job totally differently from anyone who's done the job before.

2:07:16Those are the two people who really come to mind, who I don't work with. I love all the New York Times. Yeah, as do we. No, I think Tulay deserves a shout out. And I think she is doing it differently. I think the way she covers San Francisco and the Bay Area as a critic jumps outside of like just reviewing restaurants. And, you know, she's extremely creative. I have to just say that outside of having great taste and just really doing the job and putting in the work, great taste. Yeah. I mean, honestly, she's really conceived of the job differently. And it's really exciting. to sort of track like, oh, you know, just the way she's doing it.

2:07:58I also I read quite a lot. I mean, mostly like in my free time, I'm not reading about food. You know, I read a lot of fiction. I read, you know, I there are a lot of times writers who don't work for food who I'm just kind of obsessed with and I'll read anything they write. So, yeah, I love that answer. Let's talk about your own home cooking, because I want to dive into you are a passionate home cook. You say you're not professional, but I think by now you know your way around a home kitchen. So in general, what excites you personally as a home cook? And then I guess the second part of the question is, as an editor, are there any home cooking concepts or trends that you really want to acknowledge as like something you're interested in?

2:08:39So what excites me as a home cook is just the days when I feel excited to cook. And I only say that because, you know, of COVID, I mean, there were days where I was like, I never want to walk into this kitchen. Oh, my gosh. Right. So like when I start to feel excited, that alone is like, yeah, you know, and I do feel like my I was pretty confident before COVID. I do feel like my cooking has gotten a lot better just because cooking is another craft and it just rewards repetition. And I see that in my own cooking. I see the improvements and I'm really excited about them. And they're like tiny things and they're easy things for a professional cook.

2:09:20Like nobody would even think about this if you're a professional cook. But for me, I'm self-taught. I'm a home cook. It's great. What I'm excited about. So I am in a certain exclusive bean club. Oh, right. The Rancho Gordo Bean Club, which I coincidentally happened to sign up for before the pandemic. So I'm just like constantly looking in my cabinet and being like, oh, my God, I have all these things to use up. And some of these are beans I've cooked with forever. And some of them I like never cooked with and never would have bought myself. It just wouldn't have occurred to me. And so I feel like I'm constantly kind of looking at what's in my cabinet and being like, all right.

2:09:58I mean, it's the same way I think people used to talk about their CSA boxes. Yeah. I also, you know, my husband and I decided a while ago, like, hey, we really have to eat less meat, which is really. That was a personal choice, truly. Wouldn't push it on anybody. No. And I realized pretty recently that, like, we used to really have to think about it. You know, I might not shock you to learn I do all the meal planning in our home. Definitely not shock you. My husband can cook, actually. But this is revealing. People often assume that my husband can't cook. That's bullshit, man. It is bullshit. That's bullshit.

2:10:36That shouldn't be the case. I think that a healthy partnership, you know, you're chipping in and that's a modern household. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People assume he's like, oh, he must not cook. I was like, he cooks? Yeah, dude. So, but I do plan the meals and I'm happy to do it. And I'd rather do that than like, you know, clean the bathroom. So in the beginning when thinking about changing our eating habits, I used to have to think about it a lot. And I realized pretty recently that I don't have to think about it much anymore. Like the transition has been made and it's just the way a habit sort of settles into your life.

2:11:11And that was actually a really cool moment for me to think like, oh. We're there. We're not cooking as much meat, right? We're there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It used to be something I had to think about. And now it's just like I look at, you know, what I bought. I look at what I'm thinking about cooking and I'm like, ah, you know, and that feels good. It's a great feeling. And like let's go back to the beans because I'm also a Rancho Gordo head myself. I'm not in the club. I am on the waiting list. But I do have quite a bit of stock. And so what I – I've been doing the 15-minute hard boil. So after like a two to three hours soak, I never plan like 12 to 24 hours at a time.

2:11:46I do a hard boil for 15 minutes. But backing up, I usually do like onion and I've been doing lemon a lot and just searing lemon peel. Yeah. And shallot and then a lot of spices and variety and mostly chilies. Ancho. So are you 15-minute hard boil? Let's talk beans. Let's go there. So I've been futzing around with this for a little bit because for a while I was just like putting them in the Instant Pot. Oh, word. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just putting them in the Instant Pot and figuring it out. And cooking – I would cook a lot. I would cook the whole pound. Now I'm just cooking a half pound at a time.

2:12:20It's pretty wasteful when you go to the full pound. Yeah, well, you know, I use them all up. But by the time we're done with them, I'm like, oh, my God, I don't want to eat this anymore. um so uh yeah so i was doing the instant pot but you know you get really inconsistent results with the instant pot um and i have finally accepted that and i and i do it sometimes like even i don't know two nights ago can't remember what i was going to cook for dinner but for some reason it did not come to fruition and i was like all right i'm just going to go downstairs i'm gonna put the black beans in the instant pie we have tortillas we have chilies we have this we have that you know put together a pretty tasty dinner um and the beans were fine you know but now i'm doing like when i cook them on the stovetop i actually do try to soak them i know you don't have to i do yeah um and then i'll do like a 10 minute hard boil and then i'll go to a low simmer and i'll cover the pot oh and i do salt i know some people don't i know this is controversial right You don't salt it away or you don't salt at the end?

2:13:24You salt before or salt through. I salt the cooking water. Yeah. You know, I salt the cooking water and then, you know, I salt at the end. I'm not salting all the way through. But some people would say don't salt. Some people would say don't salt until the very last moment or even upon serving and let the diner, the person eating salt. But I'm with you. I need to salt throughout or at least the beginning. I love Steve Sando. Have you met him? I've never met him. No. I would love to meet him. I want to meet him. I it's not just because I want to be in his club. He's like a celebrity in my world.

2:13:58He really is. My world. I mean my home. Yeah, your home. Yeah, me too. A few more questions. I want to know your favorite food is ice cream. Is that real or is that just from Twitter? No, that's your website. OK, no, no, that's totally real. Like, isn't everyone's favorite food ice cream? No, but that's OK. I love it. So tell me why why ice cream? You've actually covered ice cream quite a bit in the New York Times. Now it makes sense. I really love ice cream. What makes good ice cream? Okay, we'll get there. Let's go there. What makes good ice cream? Oh my God. That's too big a question. It's like you're asking me about God.

2:14:36I know. Anyway, I, um, I, uh, what makes good ice cream? I love ice cream that is, is very creamy and I don't like delicate flavors. I mean, I do like delicate flavors, but I'm totally cool with ice cream, I'm just like beating you over the head with the flavors. Like I used to live quite close to the first Ample Hills location. In Gowanus or Park Slope? The one on Vanderbilt and Prospect Heights. I used to live near there. And, oh, man, I would go there a lot. And, you know, and then Gowanus open and go there. Anyway, so that really creamy, lots of mix-ins, you know. Not super sweet. You know, I'm not like a Cold Stone person.

2:15:27But, oh, that's sort of silky, super premium. You know, I like eggy ice cream, too. Not Philadelphia style. I like an eggy. I love that. And I love that your team mix in. Your team, like Ben and Jerry's, you know, you like the chunky stuff. Yeah. Hey, look, like, you know, the pandemic gave me time to meditate on things like what's my preferred vanilla? ice cream. Yeah. And like you really kind of can't beat Haagen-Dazs. Haagen-Dazs. I know, right? Have you had the Ben & Jerry's vanilla? I have. I shouldn't call that on specific brands. I will. It's not good. But, you know, but like also like Haagen-Dazs chocolate peanut butter, like so good.

2:16:07I interviewed Ina Garten long ago and she said she melts down a full pint of Haagen-Dazs to make creme anglaise. It's like basically the same thing. My God. I think that's genius and I think that is the perfect ice cream, the Haagen-Dazs vanilla. She's so fabulous. Just hearing that just made my heart beat a little faster. Yeah. That's what I want to do. She's great. She is great. She's great, and she's got books coming along. She's just a real national treasure. And we were doing a—Anne and I are going to riff about banned words. Okay. Because we have our list of banned words on Taste. Do you have a banned word list for The New York Times?

2:16:47Oh, I thought you meant band B-A-N-D. Okay, so I'll do that again. And I was like, are you naming your band? Band words. Like the words that are banned. Like we do not, like one of them is unctuous. We just cannot print the word unctuous in taste. Like unctuous is not happening. Like it is, there's like something we put into our CMS where it does not allow. This is a great question in part because we were talking about this not so long ago in the Food Desk Slack channel. at work. You know, we have a Slack channel, as everyone does. So my colleague, Patrick Farrell, who is an editor on food and like a longtime editor at the Times.

2:17:27Shout out to Patrick Farrell, of course. Shout out to, do you know Patrick? I've never met Patrick Farrell. I know of him, and he's an amazing editor. He is an amazing editor. I've heard it said that he is one of the best editors of the New York Times, and like, I believe that. And also, Patrick is just like a lovely colleague and a generous soul. He's just amazing. So anyway, Patrick, longtime editor, has a list of words that he does not want in the food section. And it came to light recently that Priya Krishna, who has worked with Patrick for a really long time now, he's been her editor for a long time, like kept a running list of those words.

2:18:02Nice. Like words, Patrickates. Anyway, so if I'm remembering right. Okay. Lux. Foodie. We don't like foodie. Oh, my God. Luscious also we try to avoid. Luscious does get in. Lux, however, is totally banned. Oh, my God. I need to think of other ones. I'm so sorry. I can't think of them. Those are really good ones. I think Lux and Luscious. I think moist is definitely on the edge. I mean, moist means something specific, so we have to print it. But our other one, I think, is Bistro. When referring to a restaurant, that is not a French origin Bistro Bistro. Just calling it like a Vietnamese bistro.

2:18:45Or calling a restaurant a concept. Oh, my gosh. Please. Like band. Band. It's a restaurant or a deli. Like that's like use a noun. Use a different noun. Concepts. So the Times actually in the style book doesn't want you to use the word launch even for a website. Launching is for rockets. It is not for companies. Digital media. It is not for restaurant concepts. So one thing you won't see in The New York Times unless it has snuck through is the idea that you would like launch a restaurant or launch a takeout business. Very cool. Yeah. I think along the lines, I think a program, when you say something has a program, like a really excellent olive oil program.

2:19:33Yeah. Not happening. We don't. Yeah, we don't really do that. I think we do wine program. I'm pretty sure we do wine program. But no, no, no, no more programming. And also at some point curators left the world of the arts and moved throughout the world of everything. Culture. Word. Yes, yes, yes. Emily, we ask all guests in the Taste podcast if there was a dream food book or cookbook project that you could work on personally without a deadline or a budget. It was just you and this project. What would that cookbook be? So, and partly this is COVID, right, but I think I would have said this anyway.

2:20:12Like what I want to do is I would want it to be a book or some other project where I just travel around the world eating and like at a totally leisurely pace. And I just go for as long as I need to go. And like, you know, I'm like, bye. I'm so sorry. I'm just I have to go. It's for this project. I have to. I'm sorry. I can't help it. I have to go travel around the world and eat at a leisurely pace. that is totally what I would want to do the other one so I love sweets I mean we just talked about ice cream for a while but I really really love to bake and ever since I was a kid I just like I have the craziest sweet tooth um and um you know I I did always think like oh it'd be really fun to do like a pastry course like to really learn how to bake in in that kind of way and it would be really awesome to work on a cookbook, like a baking cookbook, where everything was delicious and really tasty.

2:21:14And it magically just turned out great, like the first time. And there was not a lot of like extensive testings or revision and just like a magical book of treats and recipes. And, you know, I, hey, look, like I, so I'm not a recipe developer, right? I don't, I don't do that. and I have such reverence for that work. It is so hard to do that work well. I have so much admiration for the great cookbook authors I know, the recipe writers I know, the ones I don't know and I really admire, right? So I don't think I could write that dessert book. But in a magic plane. Yeah. Like, yes, that is what I would do.

2:21:55I love that answer. It's like you want to have the perfect brownie, but like on the first shot, Not the like 17th Dory's Greenspan, like 17th draft, which is obviously what it takes her to do it. Yeah. Oh, my God. She's a legend. She's a legend. Yeah. Emily Weinstein, thank you for joining the Taste podcast. Thank you so much for having me.

2:22:18This is Taste is hosted by Eliza Abarbanel and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumber. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things that are happening.