297: Luke Fortney & Ravinder Bhogal

32:09They're like, we do not want to make this. So I feel like this would really take someone. This would be a labor of love from someone who either loved me or loved tequila and vermouth. Yeah. Other one. Yeah. Well, I hope that you get to have it again someday. And I hope that I get to try it too because it sounds really good. Yeah. I feel like it would pair well with a beef pot pie. Ooh, yeah. Let's do it. Okay. And you know, like this is taste. We're asking you about your taste. I want to play a little rapid fire taste check with you. So I'll tell you like a category or question. You tell me the first thing that just pops into your head.

32:46Does that sound good? Yeah, that sounds great. Okay. Go to Bodega Snack. Bodega snack, chicken over rice. Go to weed bodega snack. Weed bodega snack, hot pot flavored Lay's. Go to bagel order. Probably a sausage, egg, and cheese on a sesame bagel. Untoasted. Untoasted? Untoasted. Okay, I have to ask why. You know, that's a good question. I feel like as a California transplant, I just never asked for a toasted and didn't look back. Right. That's kind of the right way to do it, I think. Is that right? I mean, that's what people say. I like Little Toast. Okay. I'll try that next time. Back to the wrap.

33:28Okay. Favorite cookbook. Favorite cookbook. I have been loving my former colleague James Park's Chili Crisp. Love it. Love it. Favorite New York City restaurant. Probably North Dumpling on Essex Street. Favorite New York City bakery. Golden Steamer on Mott Street. Favorite New York City bar. I think that's probably going to be El Pinguino and Greenpoint. Okay, restaurant that you wish could be your neighborhood restaurant. Ooh. I know, it's a dreamy question. That's a great question. What could be in my neighborhood? You don't have to move to the neighborhood. It just comes to your neighborhood.

34:11Oh, I totally know. I think it's got to be Marisco's El Submarino in Jackson Heights. Ooh. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay, a now-closed New York City establishment that you wish you could revive? Oh my gosh. Uncle Boone's for sure. That's where I had my birthday in 2019, right before the pandemic. And that was my last time eating there. Miss it so much. A great answer. And to close, a fictional food scene that you wish you could eat in real life. Ooh. I probably once a day, I think about the bacon and eggs that are cooked in Howl's Moving Castle. You know, it's just like so perfectly over easy, the eggs, and then Lucifer or Calcifer, the little fire, like gobbles them up.

35:00I feel like he didn't even appreciate them. You would appreciate them. I would appreciate them. I'd name them after myself. I believe it. Well, Luke, thanks so much for coming by. This was so fun. Aw, thanks, Eliza. Appreciate you having me.

35:21Ravinder Bogle, welcome to This Is Taste. How are you doing? I'm very well. I'm very excited to be chatting to you. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. It's really an honor and exciting to talk to you. You're a great chef based in London. You've done television. You've done a show with Jay Rayner. We'll talk about that guy. And we'll go into your sensibility, you know, what your food stands for. But first, how the hell has New York been? New York has been fast. I think fast is the word. Intense, fast, delicious. Actually, I've eaten some really delicious meals while I've been here. But it's just great to be back.

35:59And the weather has been very kind. And apart from we arrived last Thursday and then woke up very optimistically on the Friday morning thinking that we'd go out and get breakfast and walked out into completely apocalyptic weather. It was crazy. I've never seen rain like it. But thankfully, it's cheered up and it's been really quite warm. It's been beautiful weather here since that crazy was apocalyptic. Where have you eaten? We're just in a spot. Well, I mean, of course, I ate at all the Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern because I was cooking there. But Cosme has been my favorite meal here so far.

36:41I was just blown away by the flavors. And I think we don't get really great Mexican food in London. There are a few, but not enough the way they are here. And Cosme really took my breath away. It's so fresh and delicious and addictive and Moorish. Yeah, the corn, the nixtamalization there and the way that they think about the tortillas and just all the corn is amazing. It's just incredible. Yeah. Any in America or in New York only foods that you sought out when you were here? Definitely Mexican food. I think it was like the first day I was like, right, Mexican food. Because like I said, we don't get a whole load of great Mexican food in London.

37:21So let me ask you about running a restaurant in London right now. I was just there in June and I've talked about the show. I got to go to Brat, which was a highlight, Jolene, Beagle Bake, Bagel Bake, whatever you want to call it. Amazing. I mean, London is so exciting. Tell me what's it like right now running the restaurant. Are there any places that you want to shout out? Yeah, I mean, running a restaurant right now in London, I feel like it's a lot more optimistic than it was a few years ago. Of course, anyone who went through the pandemic, whatever industry you were in, it was a really, really hard time.

37:57a really terrifying time. You know, we, Nadim and I, my husband and I, we run the restaurant together. And I remember getting to three years in and we were like, wow, we're about to have the best year yet. We've just broken into profit. We're about to do this amazing event with Salman Rushdie. You know, all these incredible things were coming together for us. And we were so excited. And I remember I commissioned an artist to make this sculpture in the restaurant of spring flowers because I was feeling particularly optimistic. And then by March, the government had mandated closures and we were in the middle of a pandemic.

38:36And it was just really, really hard. And we didn't think that we were even going to make it through, but we did. And right now, I would say we're having a really great time. You know, things are still hard. The cost of everything is crazy. You know, the cost of goods, rents, electricity, everything is really high. But there seems to be this hunger for pent up hunger for restaurants. Yeah. So we're happily, you know, full most nights where we're in a wonderful area called Marylebone, which is just full. It's such a great neighborhood. We get such interesting people coming in to eat all the time.

39:18For me, it's like this kind of random sampling of humanity every time you walk up the stairs. And I think that's what I love about running the restaurant. You never know who's in or who you're going to meet, how your day is going to go. So, but it's really joyful right now. And I have a team, we've been open now, we've just celebrated our seventh birthday. We have a team of 24 people. Out of those 24, about 12 of us have worked together for six years. That's amazing to have half the staff be there from the jump. So we're now getting ready for that next thing. You know, what's next? And we definitely have some exciting plans up our street.

39:59I can't wait to hear about them. Now, you call your restaurant proudly inauthentic, which I think is really original. I don't think enough of that is said. Like you're proudly inauthentic. You're not proudly authentic. And so what is, for Giacconi, your restaurant, what does that mean exactly? So it was very difficult for us for a long time to coin what we did as a cuisine because I wish it could have been as easy as saying, I run an Indian restaurant or an Italian restaurant or a Chinese restaurant or pizza restaurant. And it just wasn't that simple. What we do at Giaconi is immigrant food. And for me, that is for people who have the ache for what they've left behind and that longing and pining, which is what I had when I came to England age seven.

40:44and then the wonder of your new landscape and what happens when you reconcile those two things. And I think for immigrants, when you leave something behind, you become very precious about it. You want to preserve it. And in fact, I think with immigrants, the funny thing is it's always the food that's the last thing to go. You might lose the way you dress or your language, but the food is what remains. And we hold on to it so possessively in a way. But for me, I grew up in a very densely immigrant area and I became the product. And as I grew up, I was brought up by all those wonderful communities around me.

41:24I shopped at all those wonderful mini economies, you know, from the Chinese supermarket to the Turkish supermarket to the Iranian supermarket. And that, of course, fed into my food culture. So you weave together what you know with what's new. And in doing so, you're creating a completely new cuisine. And that's what I think immigrant food is. Yeah, well said. And let me ask you, what are some menu items at the restaurant that you feel reflects this point of view, which I think is well articulated. It's common as well, but oftentimes restaurants aren't positioned this way. They're usually positioned.

41:57We're doing Carolyn cuisine. We're doing, you know, Tamil Nadu cuisine or etc. So what are some of the dishes just so we get a little food in the conversation? So I think one that really is the emblem of everything that we believe in at Giaconi, and we call ourselves a no borders kitchen. And this really is that, is the prawn toast scotch egg with banana ketchup and pickled cucumber. And when people ask us to describe it, we say it's like the bonnie love child of a British scotch egg and a Chinese prawn toast. And when you bring them together, you're creating something that's better than the sum of its parts.

42:34and we feel that actually it's symbolic and it's political and we're quite political in our food. We're basically saying when you bring cultures together, you're creating something that's better than the sum of their parts and that is the power of immigrants and immigration and immigrant cuisine. It sounds so good too. I'm just going to say like a prawn toast done in a scotch egg. Scotch egg has got the outer golden crust to it, right? And this crust is extra special. So rather than just using breadcrumbs, what we do is we get those really spicy Thai prawn crackers. We make a crumb out of them and then we pané or coat the egg with those.

43:18So when you deep fry, the rice in the prawn cracker kind of puffs up and goes really, really crisp. So you get this off-the-rick-to-crunch outside of the egg. and then you've got this very sweet, bouncy prawn mixture. I love it. And then a soft, runny egg in the middle, served with banana ketchup. I love it. It sounds so, oh my God. You must come. I love that you also said off the Richter. That is like the greatest phrase. I've never heard that in my life and I'm going to use it forever. Language, it's an amazing thing. Let me ask you about TV. You've done a lot of food TV. You hosted a show with Jay Rayner.

43:55It's kind of like the London's most feared restaurant critic. that's right and you're a chef and how does that work when you're a chef and you're doing a show with a feared critic yeah I mean you know at that time I was really just starting out and I remember I was approached by channel four who said look we're doing this show we're looking for some sort of action adventure cook who can travel to like all these parts of the world and I'd just written a book called cooking boots and I used to be a fashion and beauty writer so I wasn't your typical choice for something like that. And I just remember really wanting it because I was so interested in telling stories about food.

44:35For me, that's what food is about. It's about stories. It's about humanity. It's about the people behind the food. And I was really passionate about telling those stories. And I screen tested for it. And eventually they gave me the slot. And And then they announced, oh, and your co-host is going to be Jay Rayner. And I remember being completely terrified and feeling really out of my depth. But actually, Jay is wonderful. He is, I describe him as a mouth on legs. He really is that person. And I didn't have any idea at that time that I would open a restaurant. I had no ambition to open a restaurant.

45:17And when I was on set with Jay, he would eat the food that I was cooking. and he would just sort of say, your flavours are so idiosyncratic. I have never tried this combination of flavours together before and more people ought to eat your food. And if I were you, I would get serious and I would go and work in kitchens and learn the business of restaurants. And I'd never really had a mentor before. I came from a background where, you know, I'm the youngest of four sisters and my sisters were all married, you know, not really given an education, just married very off very early. And I had been told by my mother, you will cook for your husband and your children.

45:57And that is your parameter. You will not go beyond that. And to have this great man telling me this is what you can do. I took it very seriously. And I was very studious. And I went into kitchens and I worked and I worked really hard. And then I got in at that time, I think it was the luck of the draw as well, timing. The whole pop-up scene was like popping off in London. And I was approached... Like 10 years ago, 10 years ago, yeah. And I was approached by a couple of people, Anna Hansen first off, who was the chef at the Modern Pantry and said, I have this 90 cover space. Why don't you come and take it over for one night?

46:35And I'd never cooked for more than 20 people. My goodness, you did a 90 cover. And I did a 90 cover night. In fact, we were oversubscribed. And I remember the exhilaration, that adrenaline high of service, you know, and I was addicted instantly. It was like the biggest high I'd ever had. And I loved it. And then I, someone who was, someone who'd come as a guest that night worked with Mark Hicks, the British chef Mark Hicks, who had a restaurant in Selfridges. And she said, why don't you come and take over Selfridges? And the night I cooked at Selfridges, this guy approaches me and he's like, hi, I'm Mark Hicks' business partner.

47:16And I really think you have something. And do you want to start a conversation? No way. That's where it started. A restaurant. Yeah, cool. And I was like, no, actually, no, I don't want to open a restaurant. And this conversation went on for six years until finally I had been doing a series of private catering and pop ups. And actually, a lot of my clients for private catering ended up being chefs, which is such a compliment. So I remember being taken aside one night. I was doing a six-week run at the South Place Hotel. And Faye Mashler, who's another food critic, had been following my career.

47:54And she took me aside and said, when are you going to stop being such an effing coward and just commit to a space of your own? All that a coward by a restaurant critic. It's like, well, if you don't, you know, if you don't review me so negatively, let's work on it. And, you know, I think it took another woman to have me. And it felt like this kind of Virginia Woolf-esque challenge, you know, this space of my own. And I was so tired at that point of dragging boxes of produce around on the London Underground and being exhausted and upturning bottles of olive oil on myself, you know, when I was tired.

48:33And I just thought, yeah, it's time. And then by that point as well, I'd really birthed the idea and the philosophy of Giacconi and what I wanted to do and what I wanted to represent. And I'd really got it clear in my head. And then it was about finding a site, which took another two years because I only wanted to open in Marylebone. And then that was it. We, you know, we found the site. Again, the chances of me getting that site, I'd been told by the landlord there was no way they were going to give it to me. I had no reputation, no operational experience, no money. And they were like, you know, they literally laughed me out of their offices.

49:14What changed it then? What drew them to you eventually to sign the lease? Well, I think it was my bloody mindedness. I just wouldn't stop. I just kept saying to them, look, I'm not treading on anyone's toes. The concept I have is so unique and you don't have another woman on your estate. And, you know, I have a story to tell and you have to listen and you have to hear me out. And I think I ended up pitching to them three times before they finally caved. and I remember they called me on, it was 2015 and it was the 23rd, the 23rd of December. So right before everyone was going off for Christmas and they said, you haven't got the deepest pockets but you've got the biggest mouth.

49:58We're going to give you the sights. Oh, what a good story. And eventually you've opened, you've run there since in the same space, upgraded there. Yeah, seven years. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Let me ask you, do you read food media in London? in? I always want to tap in with chefs and writers because, you know, it's an amazing scene to cover and it really didn't have a lot of coverage for a long time. It had critics, but now places like Vittles are open. And what do you read? Do you know what? I have to say, I don't read a lot of food stuff because I feel that restaurants and the food industry are so all consuming that, and I love reading.

50:36I'm an avid reader. I'm, you know, I studied English. So it's kind of my thing. So when I read, I choose to read things like fiction because otherwise I would be fully consumed. There is so much out there. The volume is so great. And I just feel that I now want to focus. I've been, I love telling stories. I'm a bit of a story writer. Even in my columns, I try and tell stories through food that are ultimately about food, but not about food, about humanity. And that's kind of what's been interesting. So I take a lot of time to read fiction. Yeah, fair enough. I like that. Yeah. And so I think that is kind of where I'm kind of trying to get to as well.

51:22Let me ask you about your new book, Comfort and Joy. It's plant-based and it's not your general mission in life, but this book is tackling plant-based cooking. What brought you to that concept? So Comfort and Joy, it's a bit of a long story, but it started during the pandemic. And, you know, like so many restaurants, we were mandated, you know, shut by the government. And I just think that hospitality is something that is so deeply entrenched in us as people that I found that after two weeks of sitting at home thinking, what are we going to do and panicking that most of us just sort of thought hang on a minute we've got these fantastic kitchens and we should put them to use and just because the government has shut our doors it doesn't mean that our hospitality will stop and there are people there are vulnerable people in the city hospitals frontline workers who need feeding so let's put our kitchens to work And so it was at that time we weren't allowed to have our teams in.

52:30So it was literally myself and my husband. We were going into the restaurant. We were cooking 60 meals a day for King's College Hospital. A dear friend of mine is a doctor there. And when I heard what they were going through, the hours they were doing, I was just I just wanted to do anything. Was that supported by the government? Were they paying you to do that or was that just out of your own pockets? That was out of our own pockets at that time. So we were just cooking and a lot of our guests and regulars and friends donated money for us to buy ingredients. And, you know, it was such a lovely community effort.

53:04And so many people in our industry did that. And that's what I think is beautiful about our industry. And I remember saying to my husband at the time a couple of things, one of which was, wow, you know, hospitals are just such international community. And yet when you go to the hospital cafe, all you can get is a sandwich or like fish and chips. And for all these people who are from all over the world working in restaurants, I want them to have a sense of comfort and home. And so I'm going to cook these like vegetarian, globally inspired meals. And hopefully people will taste home. You know, for all those people who are spending 15 hours a day working in a hospital, being away from their family.

53:49Some of them were staying away from their families because they were at such high risk with COVID. And then I said, you know, all people need right now is comfort and joy and something about it just stuck. And it was really the first time I'd had off from running the restaurant to really sort of think and reminisce. And I started thinking about my grandfather a lot. And his story is extraordinary. I mean, it's like an epic. So he was this man who was born in India, in the north of India, and wanted a better life and better opportunities. So he ran away from home, ended up in Bombay with his brother.

54:30They got on a migrant boat sailing for 26 days to Kenya, where apparently there were opportunities. Something went badly wrong with the ship. And this is, you know, I can't imagine the hardships they would have faced, starvation, bodies being thrown overboard. and they ended up back in Bombay and his brother was like, I'm never doing that trip again. Yet my grandfather, this incredible pioneer, gets back on this boat, takes a voyage in the dark, ends up in Kenya. You know, this is a time where Kenya then was still a British colony. There were racial divides, language barriers, alienation, poverty.

55:11He faced it all, yet he spent all of his time falling so deeply in love with this beautiful alluvial benevolent soil that just seemed to give and give and he bought a little plot of land and he began to you know plant and as I was growing up I just witnessed him on this shamba the allotment and to see this spiritual relationship he had with the land and the love that ebbed between him and the land was just such a gorgeous experience. And to see someone who had come from such scarcity and his gratitude for And will. Yeah. And will. I mean, getting back on that boat is just, it's a real brassy moment.

56:02Exactly. And to see just the gratitude he had, I think he said, thank you a million times a day to providence, you know, to this invisible force of nature that was giving him this joy. And his philosophy was just beautiful because he would pick up something as simple as an onion and he would say, this is a miracle because this thing has withstood pests, blight and bad weather. And yet it comes to our table. We can cook with it and we can share what we cook with it with those that we love. And I think we have become so disassociated from where our food comes from that this book was this manifesto of celebrating the joy of the plant kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, and saying that there are all these wonderful things that you can do.

56:52And why should we only reserve our love and tenderness and care for a chop or a steak when actually I come from a culture where vegetables have always been at the center of the table, where vegetables have been the whole meal? and there are so many ways to enjoy them. And I want to share that with people. I want to share how you can take something as unsexy as a turnip and do something by adding a friction of spices to it and doing something magical and ending up with something that has gone from ordinary to extraordinary. It's a great story, Ravinder. I thank you for sharing your family story and how this will from India to Kenya of your grandfather has really informed, it seems like, your life, obviously, but your spirit with cooking.

57:43Are the recipes, in a sense, from a place, or is it really as varied as you explained? I think that is how I cook. I cook. I'm an immigrant. my sensibility is a very immigrant you know style of cooking I am a Londoner I am exposed to all these and I travel a lot so I'm exposed to flavors from around the world all of the time and I'm excited to embrace them and and yeah and I also think it comes from you know my style of cooking is also very maternal. So the maternal cook is the cook who has this strong intuition. The interplay between you and the ingredient is like this really intuitive one. And because I grew up in a kitchen surrounded by these women who just knew which flavors went together with what, my nose as well, because I grew up around so many spices, is attuned almost like a bloodhound to flavors and scents.

58:49And I instinctively know what flavors are going to go with what. And I think people say this at the restaurant, like there's a recipe in the book for chargrilled peaches with whipped tofu and a Thai basil gremolata. And I promise you make it. It's very easy. It's a 15-minute recipe. Yeah, it sounds cool. It sounds really, really smart. But there's something about the aniseed of basil next to the sweetness of a peach that somehow makes the peach taste even more of itself than you thought was possible. I love that. It's like, even if they're out of season with the grilling, it's going to work really well.

59:26Exactly. I love that. On This is Taste, we ask guests about their discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. Ravinder, are you ready? I am ready. The best American breakfast food? Pancakes. I mean, slabs of carbohydrate. Who can resist? Oh, my gosh. Do you have a favorite style or flavor of pancake? I love, I don't know if they're so American, though, but like ricotta hotcakes. Oh, definitely. Oh, very American. Very Italian, but also very American. The best British breakfast food. Best British breakfast food, I'd say, is a full English.

1:00:02You know, the sizzle of, the promise and the sizzle of bacon and sausages and eggs in a pan is really kind of welcoming, I'd say. but actually another tradition that I have is a Punjabi breakfast on a Sunday, which is a similar sizzle, but it's a paratha. And because I cook in such a cross-cultural way, so in the Chikoni cookbook, there are kimchi parathas. So parathas are this sort of flatbread, and we stuff them normally with potatoes or cauliflower, but these are stuffed with kimchi and cheese with a fried egg on top. That sounds extremely good. Wow. I'm really, really fascinated by this. It's like a pagine.

1:00:43It's like a Korean style pancake, but with different carbohydrate, different bread. The best dessert? Tiramisu every single time. And there is one that I dream of forever. And it was made. It's in Cortona in Italy, which is a restaurant on the sort of Tuscan-Umbrian borders called Trattoria Dardano. and I think I went there for a week and I ate at that restaurant four times while I was there and by the end he knew that I loved his tiramisu so much that he just bought it to me in a whole bowl and left the whole bowl at the table and just said, knock yourself out Oh, it's so cool But you know, it was that kind of dreamy tiramisu that is so light and bubbly and has no shape or form it just sort of slops on your plate and it's just delicious It doesn't do pretty, to be honest I love that tip, too, of if you find yourself enjoying a meal on vacation, you don't need to go to the other place.

1:01:45Keep going back. Yeah, exactly. Great, great call. Your favorite cookbook of all time? My favorite cookbook of all time is probably Mother Jafri's Eastern Vegetarian Cooking. I just think she was so forward thinking. I think she had a lot of trouble as well being sort of pigeonholed as just an Indian cook and cookery writer. But Eastern Vegetarian Cooking, she was writing about, you know, Szechuan cuisine and Turkish cuisine and Indian cuisine and regional Indian cuisine. It's just such a smart book. It's a Bible for me. Is there a recent favorite cookbook discovery that you have? I do. And that is by my friend Jeremy Lee.

1:02:24And it's called Cooking Simply and Well for One or Many. And when you get to know Jeremy, he is this complete, charming, completely unique man. And the writing in the book is so sharp and witty and fun. And there are aphorisms that only Jeremy could come up with. He describes a particular pie. It's a leek pie or something. And he says it has the Presbyterianism of a leek pie. And I just think it's a very germy thing. It's a good turn of phrase, yeah. A couple more. Your favorite vegetable. Favorite vegetable changes with the seasons. Right now, I'm loving corn, all things corn. Late season for us, and it's really still very good right now.

1:03:11It's still very good. We just, so for my pop-up at the Gramercy Tavern, we did a recipe from the book, which is a hot and sour sweet corn risotto. And it is this, and everyone loved it. So it's this risotto cooked very much in the Italian tradition. So you start by sweating onions with some chili and some garlic and then you go in with your carnaroli rice. But rather than just using a vegetable stock, I make a hot and sour broth in the Thai style and then sort of start spooning that in. And then in goes some fresh corn, some corn puree and a lime leaf butter at the end. And so you have all those kind of wonderful aromatics of Thailand, the ones that make you feel very well and nourished.

1:03:55but in the sort of comfort of an Italian risotto and it's a dream dish. Mike Anthony, was he into that one? He loved it. Yeah, I can imagine. It sounds great. He was just, I think he just loved the dishes. I loved working with him and his team. They're just such professionals but the kind of respect, the curious intelligence of his team, you know, asking all the right questions but just the way they embraced. I mean, Mike and I were saying Our cooking is so different in so many ways, but also our sensibility is a very casual one. It's about making the person who eats it feel nourished, well, taken care of.

1:04:36Your favorite sandwich? Favorite sandwich is something that I still dream of all the time. It is a leftover sandwich. So my mother used to make this cauliflower curry and she would make a lot of it. And then when it was left over the next day, it would go into a Breville toaster mixed with cheese, normally mozzarella, like melty mozzarella and a sharp cheddar. And because the cauliflower curry had turmeric in it, it would seep through and dye the bread sort of this lovely amber golden color. And it would go so crisp and she would brush it with ghee, so clarified butter. So it would go super crisp.

1:05:17Love that. With these two types of cheese, the sharp cheddar. Yeah, exactly. It sounds like an amazing way to use a toaster. It's an amazing sandwich. Let's shout out your friend who reached out to me and made this happen. I just want to. Sham Sandhu. I adore him. He's not just my friend. He's my adopted brother and I just adore him. Well, thanks for listening to the show, Shams, and for making this beautiful introduction. I loved talking to you. Ravinder Bogle, thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

1:05:51This is Taste is hosted by Matt Rodbard and me, Eliza Abarbanel. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumbert. 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 happening.