325: We ❤️ Saveur with Kat Craddock

24:34So things we take for granted and showing a new lens or light on things. What is an example of something you've been working on with your team recently that that did that? Not to open up the door to scoop us or something, but I'm working on an ice cream sandwich matrix story right now. And, you know, I think that I think we take ice cream sandwiches for granted. And I think there's a lot of room for experimentation and play in there. And I'm excited to look at what an ice cream sandwich can be from a lot of different directions and provide inspiration for people to be able to do the same thing.

25:03I love that. So no scoops here. Safe zone. Ice cream sandwiches. Are we talking about like non-traditional, a non-traditional like not the bread of the sandwich? Are you talking about that? Are you talking about ways the ice cream is shaped in a sandwich? All of the above. The components, the inside, the outside, the drizzle, the stuff you roll it in, all of these different pieces really provide an opportunity to choose your own adventure, right? And I think that there are so many talented pastry chefs out there and ice cream shops in the United States and beyond that are doing really cool things with different flavors and incorporating ingredients and flavors from cultures that may not have been ice cream cultures before.

25:44And that's very exciting. So I want to be able to play with that a little bit and let other people dig into those sorts of recipes. I always find sandwich recipes in particular kind of weird because it's just put stuff together. Right. And I think that it's the components are where it's interesting. It's the bread. It's how you cook the meat. It's what the condiments are. So that's where I like to play. And I like to provide all of those pieces for people so they can do whatever they want with it. And I'm approaching ice cream sandwiches in the same way. So I want to be able to provide all of the different components for something.

26:14and let people run with it from there. And maybe you only want to make the ice cream. Maybe you only want to make the cookie or whatever the piece of the puzzle is. Or maybe you want to make all of it and have an ice cream sandwich party and let your guests play and riff and come up with new combinations. Kat, I love this. It's really smart, and I can't wait to read this package when it comes out. Let me ask you, we struggle with this a bit here, and you may have a take. Like right now, when talking about food content online, outside of the recipe, which is like, you know, obviously how to make something.

26:46It's a very specific format that we all know. But then when you get into that like middle of home cooking, like how to do something and when it's like in the written form, how do you negotiate that in this world where we observe day after day, more and more people are learning to cook from short form video, typically social like reels and TikTok, but also middle form to long form in YouTube and also on television. How do you square with that when you're thinking about doing more detailed, instructive content? I think there's room for both, right? You know, and we are looking at different ways that we're going to reenter a video.

27:23We used to do it a lot in the old days and got away from it for a while. I think it's really exciting to be able to learn how to do something in a 30-second clip and then absorb that information. And it's just your skill. It's just second nature at that point. But if you want to learn how to do something that you've never done before and you want to understand what it's supposed to smell like at this stage, what it's supposed to look like and sound like when you're cooking it. I think that having something written down is a lot more instructive if you really want to absorb, you know, how to recreate something that somebody else has made.

27:54And I think there is room for both. And I think people want both. Fully agree. Thank you. I think it's just a struggle to figure out who wants what. And also, of course, cookbooks will always be around. You know, cookbooks are ultimately that. It's like when you want to actually learn something, you pick up a cookbook and you read it and you learn. Yeah, I mean, cookbooks continue to sell. People still want them. I think there is this sort of false message out there that, you know, the kids don't want print media. The kids don't want recipes. The kids don't want books. They don't want magazines.

28:27I don't think that's true. I think, you know, the kids want vinyl records. You know, there is still a desire for quality print products and publications and the written word just because there is a new way of conveying information that people are excited about that I don't necessarily see it as a replacement or an either or scenario. Well, you've certainly lined me up to talk about cookbooks. We obviously are recording this here at Penguin Random House. We work at Crown with Tenspeed Press and Clarkson Potter and many other imprints that publish cookbooks. And I fully agree that the cookbook is stronger than ever.

29:00And the kids certainly want cookbooks. It's like such a it's a it's a affordable luxury to buy a cookbook. You're buying something for between 30 and 45 to 50 dollars. And it's a lot of information that short from video that even online content is not going to give you. And certainly I think the kids, it's funny that you say that. It's so true. Want to pick up books. Books are selling. Books are valuable. They they they're they're tactile. they're finite. And I think there's definitely a tendency to say, well, the kids don't want to do this because this is popular. So I fully agree with you. They kind of operate in different worlds.

29:37Yeah. And, you know, we hear a lot of feedback that people don't want ads. They don't want, you know, ads interrupting their consumption of content. It's like, well, you could buy a cookbook. There are no ads in that cookbook, right? Yeah, no, totally. I mean, I think cookbooks are definitely that. They're not you're not going to get the pop up. And certainly there's an interesting future with how we make cookbooks that align with online culture and make them maybe faster, maybe make them more relevant to a different audience. And I think, do you guys have a cookbook future for you? So I know you have this archive, which I want to talk about, but do you have a future plan for that?

30:13Yeah, it's a great question. We actually, we have produced several cookbooks over the years. You sure have. And one of the most recent ones was a re-edition of the of our new classics, kind of in the same realm as, you know, The Joy of Cooking or The New York Times cookbook. It's our compendium of a thousand plus recipes from our pages over the years. And we revisited that about seven years after the original version, which James Oslund and Helen Rosner had worked on, revisited that, changed some things out, added some new photos, added a couple new chapters. I worked really closely with Shane Mitchell on overhauling that one and creating a new edition for people.

30:54It's available and out there now, and we're really proud of it. And we're absolutely open to working on new. Call us because we're absolutely open to working on more cookbooks moving forward. Love to call you. Love to work on something with you. I'd love to collab with you. I'd love to taste and sort of do something together. I think it'd be really exciting. That would be great. So you have recently been geeking out, as you have said, looking at the archive of recipes that you own now, that is part of Civil War's legacy. Let me ask you, what do you mean by geeking out? It must be so cool to go back and look in this archive going back all these years.

31:28Yeah, I mean, on some level, I feel like I won Storage Wars with this acquisition. So when all the boxes started coming in, yeah, I knew there were hard drives. I knew there were CDs of old photos. All that's going to be important, and we're working on digitizing that so it's easier for us to access. But, you know, I'll open another box and it'll be film negatives and prints that Christopher Hirschheimer shot in the mid-90s. Or I'll open another box and it'll be full of hand-painted illustrations that were commissioned for early era ciphers as well. So there are some amazing stuff in the archives that we're working with a couple different people, an art librarian to preserve properly and make sure that we can access them and that we can use them so other people can see them too.

32:10We also have 8 ,000 some odd recipes on the website. when the website launched in, I want to say 2001, 2002, a long time ago, SEO didn't really exist. Maybe it existed, but people weren't thinking about it. And a lot of those recipes were just kind of copied and pasted out of the print magazine. They're there. You can use them. The recipes are great. They've been tested, but a lot of them don't have their photographs. It's hard to find them. And a lot of them don't. Since they were just copied and pasted out of a story, they don't have the links. They're not connected back to their original context.

32:45And we're all about connecting recipes to their original context. So taking the time to go back through those, rework them to our most current style guide, reconnect the head notes back to their original source, make sure that things are properly bylined, that recipe sources as well as story sources are acknowledged. And that has been – it's a lot of work, but it's really exciting. And it's this kind of scavenger hunt project that we're working through gradually. Yeah, amazing project. I mean, are you also publishing some of the feature well from the 90s into the 2000s, some of the stories that maybe weren't living online?

33:17A lot of them are online already. It's just it's hard to navigate to them. So it is allowing us to unearth them and re-promote them. That's really cool. What does the archive look like? Like physically, is it in a space that you say you're going through boxes? Where are those boxes and what does it look like? It's in a storage unit in my basement. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, they were. I mean, our former, former parent company, Bonnier, they were based in Winter Park, Florida. So a lot of their creative director was down there for a while. And a lot of the visual archive came up from Florida and then was in recurrent storage unit in New Jersey and then really has been shuffled up and down the East Coast for a while.

33:58So the fact that all of this stuff has survived in a new condition is a miracle. I was going to say, it's amazing to hear that. There wasn't like a flood. There wasn't a lost truck. There wasn't a lost box. Oh, my God. Don't even say flood. Oh, no. I'm so worried about a flood in my basement. But we're in Stytown, but we're pretty near the river. So I do worry about it. But yeah, I mean, it's two big storage units full of paperwork and hard drives and CDs. And then we also have our whole, the Silver Prop collection is in our Culinary Producers home studio out in Brooklyn. Oh, my gosh. These archives are so valuable and useful.

34:33And I just can't wait to see what you do with the archive. I mean, that is like truly what's exciting about Savor. How do you wake up in the morning? What do you feel like when you've got this massive project? Do you have excitement? Do you have anxiety? What do you feel like? All of that. Yeah. I mean, I wake up feeling pretty terrified. And then once I start moving, you know, there's a lot to do and work through that to-do list of the business side of, you know, running a publication at this point and still trying to be involved and edit as much as possible and spinning all of these different places up.

35:06Impossible to do line edits and run a business. It's impossible. Not impossible. You are right. It is hard to do it all. I mean, I never make it through the whole list at the end of the day. But, you know, we tick through it as much as we can. And I have a really impressive team, too, that is supporting a lot and has taken on a lot more. Each of them have taken on a lot more responsibilities as well after the acquisition. So I certainly could not do this by myself. Yeah. And you told me off mic, you're getting the team together. You're a remote staff. You're all over the world, but you're getting everyone into New York.

35:38What is that agenda going to be like and where are you guys going to eat? Yeah, great question. I'm very excited about that. We have most of our meals booked, but there are still some open spaces. So if you have suggestions for a group, I would love them. But we're going to have one of our monthly photo shoots next Tuesday. After dinner on Tuesday, we're going to all eat at Cafe Spaghetti out in Brooklyn. Sal and Bollia and I work together at Lafayette, and he is such a great chef and good dude. So I'm excited to eat there. And then the following day, we're all going to convene in my apartment in Stytown.

36:11Um, we're getting Mala project delivered. We're going to do some kind of, um, workshopping, a bunch of different projects that we have in the pipeline. Um, and yeah, that's about it. I just, I get so excited to hear about new projects and where you're going to take it. Consider us a huge fan here at Taste and whatever we can do to collab and help you out, spread the word. Thank you. Not that you need us, but like, it's exciting. Food media is hard. It's challenging. Let me ask you about recipes. um when you are testing a recipe is there a flaw that you're looking for first that that occur time after time in a recipe um we get recipes from so many different places and people and i usually go into testing any recipe assuming that it is right and it is my job to translate that and make it clear for the home reader.

37:05The first things that I go in and I look for are like, well, are the measurements all in the same type of unit? If there are multiple components, are you going to have crazy leftovers of one component after you use up the other component? And how can we balance that out and make sure that people aren't over-making or over-buying ingredients? Those are really the problems that I look for first. I don't really assume that there's going to be something flawed about the actual knowledge behind the recipe. Open-minded. We try. I love it. I love that approach. Is there a certain recipe that you enjoy, you know, testing yourself?

37:40Is there like a challenge that you enjoy with testing? I think that this is sort of a testing issue and also a recipe editing issue. Whenever there is any involved shaping technique that needs to be described, I think it's very hard and very satisfying when it's done right. So a lot of that ends up being like a bread baking recipe or maybe a pasta shaping recipe or something like that. Or often pastry comes into it. But figuring out a way to describe something that maybe should be a TikTok video showing how to do it. Is there a way to explain to somebody a technique, a particular way that you hold your hand, a particular way that you fold a piece of dough?

38:24I find figuring out how to do that really, really satisfying. It is such a challenge, and it goes back to my original, and I'm glad you brought up the TikTok video. Like a small football, for example, when you say something is a small football shape, it's like there's many small footballs out there. Yeah, how small? Exactly. Exactly. And like when it's in written form and there isn't a diagram or some kind of illustration and sidebar, it's so challenging. So when you crack that code, you're satisfied. I will say my one absolute pet peeve, and whenever I bring in an intern or train somebody on testing recipes or editing recipe, a lemon is not a unit of measure.

38:59I do not like calling for the juice of one lemon or something like that. That is not a volume. Go to the grocery store and look at two lemons and make sense of that with yourself. I always try to provide as many pieces of information as possible. Let's get into it. Weight versus volumetric for pastry, grams versus spoons. How do you negotiate those two things? Because I feel pastry chef in you is going to want to go one way. Yeah, I mean, if it were entirely up to me, everything would be written in grams. And I think a lot of people from the industry feel the same way. I have tried to start integrating more gram measurements on baking and pastry recipes.

39:36I feel like when it matters, it really matters. And I don't mind deviating from the style guide if it's going to help somebody, you know, execute a recipe better. We, you know, for years we relied on one unit of measure because it was a matter of fitting into print. That isn't necessarily a problem if you're presenting a recipe online. However, if it's super long and too much information, it's going to overwhelm people. So we try and find that balance between what are too many pieces of information and what is going to just make it more accessible to different people. And I think that, you know, the King Arthur flour website does a really nice job of having kind of toggling functions on there.

40:15And I'd love to be able to offer that at some point. The toggle is great. I love those guys. And I feel like only you can, you know, determine your destiny. And I feel like using grams for pastries is what everyone should use. I mean, buying a$12 digital scale is essential if you're going to bake anything in your home kitchen. Yeah. And I mean, you dirty less things if you just put a bowl on a scale and throw everything into it. You know, I don't like to have to wash every measuring spoon and cup. There's a thing about the scale and listeners will know we've discussed this many times. But there's a thing about the scale that people, home cooks feel it's complicated that the tear button scares people.

40:51Like there's going to be some kind of complicated step when in fact it's literally one button that does literally one thing. Yeah. I also wonder if it's a little too associated with diet culture and being finicky about, you know, how much of an ingredient you're consuming. and it takes the fun out of cooking on some level in that way. The cocaine trade as well. Sure, yeah, pharmaceutical industry. That comes into play. But I agree that there's definitely this like stigma about having a scale in your kitchen that might be like a little weird with diet culture. Good point. Really good point. I just think listener, just buy that digital scale.

41:25Crack open like a Yodem book. Crack open a David Leibowitz book where there's definitely very well-tested gram measurements. check out Savoir where there's really well-tested gram measurements, and it's going to make your pastry experience better. That cookie is not going to be cakey. It's going to actually be crispy. And that's because of the gram scale. It's not because of the products. It's not because of you being good or bad. It's like literally you're messing it up by using volumetric. Yeah, and we can explain to somebody a million times how to scoop flour into a measuring cup and level off the top.

41:58Half the people in the world are going to do that, and the other half are not. And a cup of flour is going to be wildly different amounts of flour from one person to the next. Well, Kat, I mean, our instinct, I think, as people is to put the most possible, like the highest amount of something into a box. Like when we're packing, it's like having a light packing touch is not our human instinct. It's like we need more, more, more. And that's what screws you up with flour measurements. You pack, pack, pack. Sure. And a measuring cup looks like a scoop, right? Your instinct is to scoop with the scoop.

42:30So scooping into the scoop and dirtying another spoon to do that is not intuitive at all. Good point. Scooping into the scoop is essential, right? Because you're going to be packing way too much if you actually scoop with the measuring cup. Oh, my gosh. We can talk about that forever. Why don't you come back and we can actually have a baking episode. We talk about that in detail. That would be great. But on This Is Taste, we ask guests about their discerning tastes. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire Fast and Furious taste check for you. Are you ready? Yes. Okay. The best AM pastry with coffee.

43:00I am a sweets person in the afternoon, in the morning. It's sourdough toast and cultured butter. Oh, sick. Love that. The best dessert, period. This is going to sound very pretentious, but when I was working at Per Se, the pastry chef at the time, Elwyn Boyles, made a marjolin for a while. And I don't know, have you ever had a marjolin? It's a very classic old French dessert. And it's layers of hazelnut de croix, chocolate ganache, whipped creme fraiche, and hazelnut buttercream. And, of course, I mean, they made big sheets of it. And, of course, they would cut, you know, laser-cut perfect little strips of this stuff for service.

43:40So there was a ton of trim left over after every single batch. And I must have eaten, like, my weight in this stuff. It was unbelievable. Was the hazelnut cream the best part? It sounds like that to me. It just all comes together in these beautiful different textures and a lot of layers of really sweet and bitter. Yeah. Perfectly balanced, perfectly delicious. I love this. The best bread, period. I mean, I still crave Lafayette's Pan-O-Levin. Yeah. But there is a bakery in Paris called Mamiche that has a muesli miche. So it's like a rye, kind of sour rye with lots of dried fruit and nuts and oats in it.

44:16And it's absolutely the best bread with cheese. Oh, my God. With cheese is so good. I love that combination. Is it slightly toasted or just the bread sliced? I just bought a hunk of it. They sell it by the whole half or quarter, I think. And yeah, I mean, when I was in Paris last, I tore it apart in my hotel room. There was no slicing. There was no toasting. No, you just ate it. The most underrated piece of kitchen equipment? Plastic bowl scrapers, I think. I mean, I use them all the time. They're great for cleaning up messes. I use them instead of spatulas pretty frequently. I probably have like 10 of them floating around in my kitchen.

44:50Yeah, keep them on your counter. I mean, just keep them there and you'll find reasons to use it. Whenever you drop an egg on the floor, just scoop that right up. Oh, my gosh. Always happens. Yeah, great for cleanup. That's a great point. Or bench scrapers is great for cleanup. The most overrated piece of kitchen equipment. I mean, anything with a single use that lives on the counter, probably. Oh, my gosh. A single use, like we're talking about a lemon juicer? Yeah, I mean, maybe the big stand-up lemon juicers. Yeah, the big guys. People are very committed to rice cookers. I believe in a rice cooker, but I am never going to give up space on my tiny New York City counter for a rice cooker.

45:28Ice cream maker, waffle iron, all of that stuff. Yeah, I totally agree. One New York City restaurant that you are super into right now. I love King so much. And I mean, I'm excited about Jupiter as well. So the same chefs, but King is probably my favorite spot. It's great. Kat, your favorite cookbook of all time, single title. One title. Oh my gosh. It changes all the time. I probably need the most inspiration with cooking vegetables. So I always go back to Debra Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everybody. A real classic. Definitely agree. Recent cookbook discovery that you've really been impressed with.

46:03I'm very excited about Laura Lee's new cookbook, A Splash of Soy. Her first one, Coconut and Sambal, was really great too. She's Indonesian, has grown up in Australia, lives in London. And the new book really kind of brings in all of those different influences really well. And I'm very excited to make several things out of it. A terrific recipe writer. Absolutely, Laura Lee. Your favorite story to work on at Savore. Do you have a single favorite story that you worked on? It could be a recipe development story. It could be a travel story. I'm going to be hard pressed to pick a single story. I will tell you one of the writers I'm most excited about right now is Von Stafford Gray.

46:38He came to us through a cold pitch about mangoes, and he is such a delight to edit. He is hilarious. His writing is detailed and smart, and all of his recipes come in in great shape, and they always kill it for us online as well. He's primarily writing Jamaican and Caribbean recipe content for us, and they're so popular and so good. Awesome. Von Stafford Gray. Von Stafford Gray. Remember that name. Is there a favorite food media that's not called Sever that you subscribe to, that you like, that you want to call out? The Taste Podcast. Oh, my God. Please, no. That's never the intention. Anything else?

47:12I just like you have great taste and you follow the industry. What do you like? What are you reading? I mean, I think the guys at Food & Wine are doing a great job. There are a lot of Sever vets over there. Sure. I also love the food coverage at Bitter Southerner, too. Last question. Your favorite sandwich of all time. What is that? I've been getting the fried chicken sandwiches from Rowdy Rooster at least once a month right now. It's pretty close to my apartment. They recently started delivering as well. Yeah, they do a great job. It's like one to five. What's your spice? Oh, man. When I was younger, it would have been a four or five.

47:50But my gut health is not what it once was. So I usually kind of linger around two or two or three these days. They don't mess around. They don't mess around. I'm definitely on the two scale and two is like hitting like right at the edge for me. I totally agree. Rowdy Rooster sandwiches are so, so good. Love that. Kat Craddock, thank you for joining This Is Taste. Thanks so much for having me.

48:13This 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.